This would change over time. As the Greeks became more cosmopolitan, coming into wider and more frequent contact with each other and with other nations, the Greek language became more uniform. The development of literature and song also became a force for standardization, although never to the degree that we have seen for our own language under the influence of the printing press and television. Attic-Ionic This dialect group defines a series of closely related dialects spoken by Athenians and the Ionians occupying islands in the Aegean and the coast of modern day Turkey, but also includes several dialects spoken by peoples on the Aegean coast of the Greek mainland. This suggests that the Athenians are culturally related in some way to the Ionian Greeks, and some archaeologists suggest that the Ionians are refugees from Attica who fled during the Dark Age period.
Most literature surviving from ancient Greece today is in the Attic or Ionic dialects.
Aeolic This defines the dialects spoken by Greeks occupying the north and central islands of the Aegean, such as Lesbos. Sappho wrote many of her poems in her native Lesbian dialect, which is an Aeolic dialect. But Aeolic includes the dialects spoken by the Boeotians, northern neighbors of Attica, and the Thessalians above them. This dialect preserves most closely the language believed to have been spoken by the prehistoric Mycenaeans. This conclusion is based on many similarities with the language of the Linear B tablets.