Greeks

context: Greek colonies and communities have been historically established on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea and Black Sea, but the Greek people have always been centered around the Aegean and Ionian seas, where the Greek language has been spoken since the Bronze Age. Until the early 20th century, Greeks were distributed between the Greek peninsula, the western coast of Asia Minor, the Black Sea coast, Cappadocia in central Anatolia, Egypt, the Balkans, Cyprus, and Constantinople. Many of these regions coincided to a large extent with the borders of the Byzantine Empire of the late 11th century and the Eastern Mediterranean areas of ancient Greek colonization. The cultural centers of the Greeks have included Athens, Thessalonica, Alexandria, Smyrna, and Constantinople at various periods.

context: The evolution of Proto-Greek should be considered within the context of an early Paleo-Balkan sprachbund that makes it difficult to delineate exact boundaries between individual languages. The characteristically Greek representation of word-initial laryngeals by prothetic vowels is shared, for one, by the Armenian language, which also seems to share some other phonological and morphological peculiarities of Greek; this has led some linguists to propose a hypothetical closer relationship between Greek and Armenian, although evidence remains scant.

context: Around 1200 BC, the Dorians, another Greek-speaking people, followed from Epirus. Traditionally, historians have believed that the Dorian invasion caused the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization, but it is likely the main attack was made by seafaring raiders (sea peoples) who sailed into the eastern Mediterranean around 1180 BC. The Dorian invasion was followed by a poorly attested period of migrations, appropriately called the Greek Dark Ages, but by 800 BC the landscape of Archaic and Classical Greece was discernible.

context: The Greeks of classical antiquity idealized their Mycenaean ancestors and the Mycenaean period as a glorious era of heroes, closeness of the gods and material wealth. The Homeric Epics (i.e. Iliad and Odyssey) were especially and generally accepted as part of the Greek past and it was not until the 19th century that scholars began to question Homer's historicity. As part of the Mycenaean heritage that survived, the names of the gods and goddesses of Mycenaean Greece (e.g. Zeus, Poseidon and Hades) became major figures of the Olympian Pantheon of later antiquity.

context: The ethnogenesis of the Greek nation is linked to the development of Pan-Hellenism in the 8th century BC. According to some scholars, the foundational event was the Olympic Games in 776 BC, when the idea of a common Hellenism among the Greek tribes was first translated into a shared cultural experience and Hellenism was primarily a matter of common culture. The works of Homer (i.e. Iliad and Odyssey) and Hesiod (i.e. Theogony) were written in the 8th century BC, becoming the basis of the national religion, ethos, history and mythology. The Oracle of Apollo at Delphi was established in this period.

context: The classical period of Greek civilization covers a time spanning from the early 5th century BC to the death of Alexander the Great, in 323 BC (some authors prefer to split this period into 'Classical', from the end of the Persian wars to the end of the Peloponnesian War, and 'Fourth Century', up to the death of Alexander). It is so named because it set the standards by which Greek civilization would be judged in later eras. The Classical period is also described as the "Golden Age" of Greek civilization, and its art, philosophy, architecture and literature would be instrumental in the formation and development of Western culture.

context: In any case, Alexander's toppling of the Achaemenid Empire, after his victories at the battles of the Granicus, Issus and Gaugamela, and his advance as far as modern-day Pakistan and Tajikistan, provided an important outlet for Greek culture, via the creation of colonies and trade routes along the way. While the Alexandrian empire did not survive its creator's death intact, the cultural implications of the spread of Hellenism across much of the Middle East and Asia were to prove long lived as Greek became the lingua franca, a position it retained even in Roman times. Many Greeks settled in Hellenistic cities like Alexandria, Antioch and Seleucia. Two thousand years later, there are still communities in Pakistan and Afghanistan, like the Kalash, who claim to be descended from Greek settlers.

context: This age saw the Greeks move towards larger cities and a reduction in the importance of the city-state. These larger cities were parts of the still larger Kingdoms of the Diadochi. Greeks, however, remained aware of their past, chiefly through the study of the works of Homer and the classical authors. An important factor in maintaining Greek identity was contact with barbarian (non-Greek) peoples, which was deepened in the new cosmopolitan environment of the multi-ethnic Hellenistic kingdoms. This led to a strong desire among Greeks to organize the transmission of the Hellenic paideia to the next generation. Greek science, technology and mathematics are generally considered to have reached their peak during the Hellenistic period.

context: In the religious sphere, this was a period of profound change. The spiritual revolution that took place, saw a waning of the old Greek religion, whose decline beginning in the 3rd century BC continued with the introduction of new religious movements from the East. The cults of deities like Isis and Mithra were introduced into the Greek world. Greek-speaking communities of the Hellenized East were instrumental in the spread of early Christianity in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, and Christianity's early leaders and writers (notably St Paul) were generally Greek-speaking, though none were from Greece. However, Greece itself had a tendency to cling to paganism and was not one of the influential centers of early Christianity: in fact, some ancient Greek religious practices remained in vogue until the end of the 4th century, with some areas such as the southeastern Peloponnese remaining pagan until well into the 10th century AD.

context: Of the new eastern religions introduced into the Greek world, the most successful was Christianity. From the early centuries of the Common Era, the Greeks identified as Romaioi ("Romans"), by that time the name ‘Hellenes’ denoted pagans. While ethnic distinctions still existed in the Roman Empire, they became secondary to religious considerations and the renewed empire used Christianity as a tool to support its cohesion and promoted a robust Roman national identity. Concurrently the secular, urban civilization of late antiquity survived in the Eastern Mediterranean along with Greco-Roman educational system, although it was from Christianity that the culture's essential values were drawn.

context: The Eastern Roman Empire – today conventionally named the Byzantine Empire, a name not in use during its own time – became increasingly influenced by Greek culture after the 7th century, when Emperor Heraclius (AD 575 - 641) decided to make Greek the empire's official language. Certainly from then on, but likely earlier, the Roman and Greek cultures were virtually fused into a single Greco-Roman world. Although the Latin West recognized the Eastern Empire's claim to the Roman legacy for several centuries, after Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne, king of the Franks, as the "Roman Emperor" on 25 December 800, an act which eventually led to the formation of the Holy Roman Empire, the Latin West started to favour the Franks and began to refer to the Eastern Roman Empire largely as the Empire of the Greeks (Imperium Graecorum).

context: A distinct Greek political identity re-emerged in the 11th century in educated circles and became more forceful after the fall of Constantinople to the Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, so that when the empire was revived in 1261, it became in many ways a Greek national state. That new notion of nationhood engendered a deep interest in the classical past culminating in the ideas of the Neoplatonist philosopher Gemistus Pletho, who abandoned Christianity. However, it was the combination of Orthodox Christianity with a specifically Greek identity that shaped the Greeks' notion of themselves in the empire's twilight years. The interest in the Classical Greek heritage was complemented by a renewed emphasis on Greek Orthodox identity, which was reinforced in the late Medieval and Ottoman Greeks' links with their fellow Orthodox Christians in the Russian Empire. These were further strengthened following the fall of the Empire of Trebizond in 1461, after which and until the second Russo-Turkish War of 1828-29 hundreds of thousands of Pontic Greeks fled or migrated from the Pontic Alps and Armenian Highlands to southern Russia and the Russian South Caucasus (see also Greeks in Russia, Greeks in Armenia, Greeks in Georgia, and Caucasian Greeks).

context: Following the Fall of Constantinople on 29 May 1453, many Greeks sought better employment and education opportunities by leaving for the West, particularly Italy, Central Europe, Germany and Russia. Greeks are greatly credited for the European cultural revolution, later called, the Renaissance. In Greek-inhabited territory itself, Greeks came to play a leading role in the Ottoman Empire, due in part to the fact that the central hub of the empire, politically, culturally, and socially, was based on Western Thrace and Greek Macedonia, both in Northern Greece, and of course was centred on the mainly Greek-populated, former Byzantine capital, Constantinople. As a direct consequence of this situation, Greek-speakers came to play a hugely important role in the Ottoman trading and diplomatic establishment, as well as in the church. Added to this, in the first half of the Ottoman period men of Greek origin made up a significant proportion of the Ottoman army, navy, and state bureaucracy, having been levied as adolescents (along with especially Albanians and Serbs) into Ottoman service through the devshirme. Many Ottomans of Greek (or Albanian or Serb) origin were therefore to be found within the Ottoman forces which governed the provinces, from Ottoman Egypt, to Ottomans occupied Yemen and Algeria, frequently as provincial governors.

context: For those that remained under the Ottoman Empire's millet system, religion was the defining characteristic of national groups (milletler), so the exonym "Greeks" (Rumlar from the name Rhomaioi) was applied by the Ottomans to all members of the Orthodox Church, regardless of their language or ethnic origin. The Greek speakers were the only ethnic group to actually call themselves Romioi, (as opposed to being so named by others) and, at least those educated, considered their ethnicity (genos) to be Hellenic. There were, however, many Greeks who escaped the second-class status of Christians inherent in the Ottoman millet system, according to which Muslims were explicitly awarded senior status and preferential treatment. These Greeks either emigrated, particularly to their fellow Greek Orthodox protector, the Russian Empire, or simply converted to Islam, often only very superficially and whilst remaining crypto-Christian. The most notable examples of large-scale conversion to Turkish Islam among those today defined as Greek Muslims - excluding those who had to convert as a matter of course on being recruited through the devshirme - were to be found in Crete (Cretan Turks), Greek Macedonia (for example among the Vallahades of western Macedonia), and among Pontic Greeks in the Pontic Alps and Armenian Highlands. Several Ottoman sultans and princes were also of part Greek origin, with mothers who were either Greek concubines or princesses from Byzantine noble families, one famous example being sultan Selim the Grim, whose mother Gülbahar Hatun was a Pontic Greek.

context: The roots of Greek success in the Ottoman Empire can be traced to the Greek tradition of education and commerce. It was the wealth of the extensive merchant class that provided the material basis for the intellectual revival that was the prominent feature of Greek life in the half century and more leading to the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence in 1821. Not coincidentally, on the eve of 1821, the three most important centres of Greek learning were situated in Chios, Smyrna and Aivali, all three major centres of Greek commerce. Greek success was also favoured by Greek domination of the Christian Orthodox church.

context: The relationship between ethnic Greek identity and Greek Orthodox religion continued after the creation of the Modern Greek state in 1830. According to the second article of the first Greek constitution of 1822, a Greek was defined as any Christian resident of the Kingdom of Greece, a clause removed by 1840. A century later, when the Treaty of Lausanne was signed between Greece and Turkey in 1923, the two countries agreed to use religion as the determinant for ethnic identity for the purposes of population exchange, although most of the Greeks displaced (over a million of the total 1.5 million) had already been driven out by the time the agreement was signed.[note 1] The Greek genocide, in particular the harsh removal of Pontian Greeks from the southern shore area of the Black Sea, contemporaneous with and following the failed Greek Asia Minor Campaign, was part of this process of Turkification of the Ottoman Empire and the placement of its economy and trade, then largely in Greek hands under ethnic Turkish control.

context: The terms used to define Greekness have varied throughout history but were never limited or completely identified with membership to a Greek state. By Western standards, the term Greeks has traditionally referred to any native speakers of the Greek language, whether Mycenaean, Byzantine or modern Greek. Byzantine Greeks called themselves Romioi and considered themselves the political heirs of Rome, but at least by the 12th century a growing number of those educated, deemed themselves the heirs of ancient Greece as well, although for most of the Greek speakers, "Hellene" still meant pagan. On the eve of the Fall of Constantinople the Last Emperor urged his soldiers to remember that they were the descendants of Greeks and Romans.

context: Before the establishment of the Modern Greek state, the link between ancient and modern Greeks was emphasized by the scholars of Greek Enlightenment especially by Rigas Feraios. In his "Political Constitution", he addresses to the nation as "the people descendant of the Greeks". The modern Greek state was created in 1829, when the Greeks liberated a part of their historic homelands, Peloponnese, from the Ottoman Empire. The large Greek diaspora and merchant class were instrumental in transmitting the ideas of western romantic nationalism and philhellenism, which together with the conception of Hellenism, formulated during the last centuries of the Byzantine Empire, formed the basis of the Diafotismos and the current conception of Hellenism.

context: Homer refers to the "Hellenes" (/ˈhɛliːnz/) as a relatively small tribe settled in Thessalic Phthia, with its warriors under the command of Achilleus. The Parian Chronicle says that Phthia was the homeland of the Hellenes and that this name was given to those previously called Greeks (Γραικοί). In Greek mythology, Hellen, the patriarch of Hellenes, was son of Pyrrha and Deucalion, who ruled around Phthia, the only survivors after the great deluge. It seems that the myth was invented when the Greek tribes started to separate from each other in certain areas of Greece and it indicates their common origin. Aristotle names ancient Hellas as an area in Epirus between Dodona and the Achelous river, the location of the great deluge of Deucalion, a land occupied by the Selloi and the "Greeks" who later came to be known as "Hellenes". Selloi were the priests of Dodonian Zeus and the word probably means "sacrificers" (compare Gothic saljan, "present, sacrifice"). There is currently no satisfactory etymology of the name Hellenes. Some scholars assert that the name Selloi changed to Sellanes and then to Hellanes-Hellenes. However this etymology connects the name Hellenes with the Dorians who occupied Epirus and the relation with the name Greeks given by the Romans becomes uncertain. The name Hellenes seems to be older and it was probably used by the Greeks with the establishment of the Great Amphictyonic League. This was an ancient association of Greek tribes with twelve founders which was organized to protect the great temples of Apollo in Delphi (Phocis) and of Demeter near Thermopylae (Locris). According to the legend it was founded after the Trojan War by the eponymous Amphictyon, brother of Hellen.

context: In the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, Graecus is presented as the son of Zeus and Pandora II, sister of Hellen the patriarch of Hellenes. Hellen was the son of Deucalion who ruled around Phthia in central Greece. The Parian Chronicle mentions that when Deucalion became king of Phthia, the previously called Graikoi were named Hellenes. Aristotle notes that the Hellenes were related with Grai/Greeks (Meteorologica I.xiv) a native name of a Dorian tribe in Epirus which was used by the Illyrians. He also claims that the great deluge must have occurred in the region around Dodona, where the Selloi dwelt. However, according to the Greek tradition it is more possible that the homeland of the Greeks was originally in central Greece. A modern theory derives the name Greek (Latin Graeci) from Graikos, "inhabitant of Graia/Graea," a town on the coast of Boeotia. Greek colonists from Graia helped to found Cumae (900 BC) in Italy, where they were called Graeces. When the Romans encountered them they used this name for the colonists and then for all Greeks (Graeci.) The word γραῖα graia "old woman" comes from the PIE root *ǵerh2-/*ǵreh2-, "to grow old" via Proto-Greek *gera-/grau-iu; the same root later gave γέρας geras (/keras/), "gift of honour" in Mycenean Greek. The Germanic languages borrowed the word Greeks with an initial "k" sound which probably was their initial sound closest to the Latin "g" at the time (Goth. Kreks). The area out of ancient Attica including Boeotia was called Graïke and is connected with the older deluge of Ogyges, the mythological ruler of Boeotia. The region was originally occupied by the Minyans who were autochthonous or Proto-Greek speaking people. In ancient Greek the name Ogygios came to mean "from earliest days".

context: Homer uses the terms Achaeans and Danaans (Δαναοί) as a generic term for Greeks in Iliad, and they were probably a part of the Mycenean civilization. The names Achaioi and Danaoi seem to be pre-Dorian belonging to the people who were overthrown. They were forced to the region that later bore the name Achaea after the Dorian invasion. In the 5th century BC, they were redefined as contemporary speakers of Aeolic Greek which was spoken mainly in Thessaly, Boeotia and Lesbos. There are many controversial theories on the origin of the Achaeans. According to one view, the Achaeans were one of the fair-headed tribes of upper Europe, who pressed down over the Alps during the early Iron age (1300 BC) to southern Europe. Another theory suggests that the Peloponnesian Dorians were the Achaeans. These theories are rejected by other scholars who, based on linguistic criteria, suggest that the Achaeans were mainland pre-Dorian Greeks. There is also the theory that there was an Achaean ethnos that migrated from Asia minor to lower Thessaly prior to 2000 BC. Some Hittite texts mention a nation lying to the west called Ahhiyava or Ahhiya. Egyptian documents refer to Ekwesh, one of the groups of sea peoples who attached Egypt during the reign of Merneptah (1213-1203 BCE), who may have been Achaeans.

context: In Homer's Iliad, the names Danaans (or Danaoi: Δαναοί) and Argives (Argives: Αργείοι) are used to designate the Greek forces opposed to the Trojans. The myth of Danaus, whose origin is Egypt, is a foundation legend of Argos. His daughters Danaides, were forced in Tartarus to carry a jug to fill a bathtub without a bottom. This myth is connected with a task that can never be fulfilled (Sisyphos) and the name can be derived from the PIE root *danu: "river". There is not any satisfactory theory on their origin. Some scholars connect Danaans with the Denyen, one of the groups of the sea peoples who attacked Egypt during the reign of Ramesses III (1187-1156 BCE). The same inscription mentions the Weshesh who might have been the Achaeans. The Denyen seem to have been inhabitants of the city Adana in Cilicia. Pottery similar to that of Mycenae itself has been found in Tarsus of Cilicia and it seems that some refugees from the Aegean went there after the collapse of the Mycenean civilization. These Cilicians seem to have been called Dananiyim, the same word as Danaoi who attacked Egypt in 1191 BC along with the Quaouash (or Weshesh) who may be Achaeans. They were also called Danuna according to a Hittite inscription and the same name is mentioned in the Amarna letters. Julius Pokorny reconstructs the name from the PIE root da:-: "flow, river", da:-nu: "any moving liquid, drops", da: navo "people living by the river, Skyth. nomadic people (in Rigveda water-demons, fem.Da:nu primordial goddess), in Greek Danaoi, Egypt. Danuna". It is also possible that the name Danaans is pre-Greek. A country Danaja with a city Mukana (propaply: Mycenea) is mentioned in inscriptions from Egypt from Amenophis III (1390-1352 BC), Thutmosis III (1437 BC).

context: The most obvious link between modern and ancient Greeks is their language, which has a documented tradition from at least the 14th century BC to the present day, albeit with a break during the Greek Dark Ages (lasting from the 11th to the 8th century BC). Scholars compare its continuity of tradition to Chinese alone. Since its inception, Hellenism was primarily a matter of common culture and the national continuity of the Greek world is a lot more certain than its demographic. Yet, Hellenism also embodied an ancestral dimension through aspects of Athenian literature that developed and influenced ideas of descent based on autochthony. During the later years of the Eastern Roman Empire, areas such as Ionia and Constantinople experienced a Hellenic revival in language, philosophy, and literature and on classical models of thought and scholarship. This revival provided a powerful impetus to the sense of cultural affinity with ancient Greece and its classical heritage. The cultural changes undergone by the Greeks are, despite a surviving common sense of ethnicity, undeniable. At the same time, the Greeks have retained their language and alphabet, certain values and cultural traditions, customs, a sense of religious and cultural difference and exclusion, (the word barbarian was used by 12th-century historian Anna Komnene to describe non-Greek speakers), a sense of Greek identity and common sense of ethnicity despite the global political and social changes of the past two millennia.

context: Today, Greeks are the majority ethnic group in the Hellenic Republic, where they constitute 93% of the country's population, and the Republic of Cyprus where they make up 78% of the island's population (excluding Turkish settlers in the occupied part of the country). Greek populations have not traditionally exhibited high rates of growth; nonetheless, the population of Greece has shown regular increase since the country's first census in 1828. A large percentage of the population growth since the state's foundation has resulted from annexation of new territories and the influx of 1.5 million Greek refugees after the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey. About 80% of the population of Greece is urban, with 28% concentrated in the city of Athens

context: Greeks from Cyprus have a similar history of emigration, usually to the English-speaking world because of the island's colonization by the British Empire. Waves of emigration followed the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, while the population decreased between mid-1974 and 1977 as a result of emigration, war losses, and a temporary decline in fertility. After the ethnic cleansing of a third of the Greek population of the island in 1974, there was also an increase in the number of Greek Cypriots leaving, especially for the Middle East, which contributed to a decrease in population that tapered off in the 1990s. Today more than two-thirds of the Greek population in Cyprus is urban.

context: There is a sizeable Greek minority of about 105,000 (disputed, sources claim higher) people, in Albania. The Greek minority of Turkey, which numbered upwards of 200,000 people after the 1923 exchange, has now dwindled to a few thousand, after the 1955 Constantinople Pogrom and other state sponsored violence and discrimination. This effectively ended, though not entirely, the three-thousand-year-old presence of Hellenism in Asia Minor. There are smaller Greek minorities in the rest of the Balkan countries, the Levant and the Black Sea states, remnants of the Old Greek Diaspora (pre-19th century).

context: The total number of Greeks living outside Greece and Cyprus today is a contentious issue. Where Census figures are available, they show around 3 million Greeks outside Greece and Cyprus. Estimates provided by the SAE - World Council of Hellenes Abroad put the figure at around 7 million worldwide. According to George Prevelakis of Sorbonne University, the number is closer to just below 5 million. Integration, intermarriage, and loss of the Greek language influence the self-identification of the Omogeneia. Important centres of the New Greek Diaspora today are London, New York, Melbourne and Toronto. In 2010, the Hellenic Parliament introduced a law that enables Diaspora Greeks in Greece to vote in the elections of the Greek state. This law was later repealed in early 2014.

context: In ancient times, the trading and colonizing activities of the Greek tribes and city states spread the Greek culture, religion and language around the Mediterranean and Black Sea basins, especially in Sicily and southern Italy (also known as Magna Grecia), Spain, the south of France and the Black sea coasts. Under Alexander the Great's empire and successor states, Greek and Hellenizing ruling classes were established in the Middle East, India and in Egypt. The Hellenistic period is characterized by a new wave of Greek colonization that established Greek cities and kingdoms in Asia and Africa. Under the Roman Empire, easier movement of people spread Greeks across the Empire and in the eastern territories, Greek became the lingua franca rather than Latin. The modern-day Griko community of southern Italy, numbering about 60,000, may represent a living remnant of the ancient Greek populations of Italy.

context: During and after the Greek War of Independence, Greeks of the diaspora were important in establishing the fledgling state, raising funds and awareness abroad. Greek merchant families already had contacts in other countries and during the disturbances many set up home around the Mediterranean (notably Marseilles in France, Livorno in Italy, Alexandria in Egypt), Russia (Odessa and Saint Petersburg), and Britain (London and Liverpool) from where they traded, typically in textiles and grain. Businesses frequently comprised the extended family, and with them they brought schools teaching Greek and the Greek Orthodox Church.

context: Greek culture has evolved over thousands of years, with its beginning in the Mycenaean civilization, continuing through the Classical period, the Roman and Eastern Roman periods and was profoundly affected by Christianity, which it in turn influenced and shaped. Ottoman Greeks had to endure through several centuries of adversity that culminated in genocide in the 20th century but nevertheless included cultural exchanges and enriched both cultures. The Diafotismos is credited with revitalizing Greek culture and giving birth to the synthesis of ancient and medieval elements that characterize it today.

context: Greek demonstrates several linguistic features that are shared with other Balkan languages, such as Albanian, Bulgarian and Eastern Romance languages (see Balkan sprachbund), and has absorbed many foreign words, primarily of Western European and Turkish origin. Because of the movements of Philhellenism and the Diafotismos in the 19th century, which emphasized the modern Greeks' ancient heritage, these foreign influences were excluded from official use via the creation of Katharevousa, a somewhat artificial form of Greek purged of all foreign influence and words, as the official language of the Greek state. In 1976, however, the Hellenic Parliament voted to make the spoken Dimotiki the official language, making Katharevousa obsolete.

context: Modern Greek has, in addition to Standard Modern Greek or Dimotiki, a wide variety of dialects of varying levels of mutual intelligibility, including Cypriot, Pontic, Cappadocian, Griko and Tsakonian (the only surviving representative of ancient Doric Greek). Yevanic is the language of the Romaniotes, and survives in small communities in Greece, New York and Israel. In addition to Greek, many Greeks in Greece and the Diaspora are bilingual in other languages or dialects such as English, Arvanitika/Albanian, Aromanian, Macedonian Slavic, Russian and Turkish.

context: Most Greeks are Christians, belonging to the Greek Orthodox Church. During the first centuries after Jesus Christ, the New Testament was originally written in Koine Greek, which remains the liturgical language of the Greek Orthodox Church, and most of the early Christians and Church Fathers were Greek-speaking. There are small groups of ethnic Greeks adhering to other Christian denominations like Greek Catholics, Greek Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and groups adhering to other religions including Romaniot and Sephardic Jews and Greek Muslims. About 2,000 Greeks are members of Hellenic Polytheistic Reconstructionism congregations.

context: Greek art has a long and varied history. Greeks have contributed to the visual, literary and performing arts. In the West, ancient Greek art was influential in shaping the Roman and later the modern western artistic heritage. Following the Renaissance in Europe, the humanist aesthetic and the high technical standards of Greek art inspired generations of European artists. Well into the 19th century, the classical tradition derived from Greece played an important role in the art of the western world. In the East, Alexander the Great's conquests initiated several centuries of exchange between Greek, Central Asian and Indian cultures, resulting in Greco-Buddhist art, whose influence reached as far as Japan.

context: Notable modern Greek artists include Renaissance painter Dominikos Theotokopoulos (El Greco), Panagiotis Doxaras, Nikolaos Gyzis, Nikiphoros Lytras, Yannis Tsarouchis, Nikos Engonopoulos, Constantine Andreou, Jannis Kounellis, sculptors such as Leonidas Drosis, Georgios Bonanos, Yannoulis Chalepas and Joannis Avramidis, conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos, soprano Maria Callas, composers such as Mikis Theodorakis, Nikos Skalkottas, Iannis Xenakis, Manos Hatzidakis, Eleni Karaindrou, Yanni and Vangelis, one of the best-selling singers worldwide Nana Mouskouri and poets such as Kostis Palamas, Dionysios Solomos, Angelos Sikelianos and Yannis Ritsos. Alexandrian Constantine P. Cavafy and Nobel laureates Giorgos Seferis and Odysseas Elytis are among the most important poets of the 20th century. Novel is also represented by Alexandros Papadiamantis and Nikos Kazantzakis.

context: The Greeks of the Classical era made several notable contributions to science and helped lay the foundations of several western scientific traditions, like philosophy, historiography and mathematics. The scholarly tradition of the Greek academies was maintained during Roman times with several academic institutions in Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria and other centres of Greek learning while Eastern Roman science was essentially a continuation of classical science. Greeks have a long tradition of valuing and investing in paideia (education). Paideia was one of the highest societal values in the Greek and Hellenistic world while the first European institution described as a university was founded in 5th century Constantinople and operated in various incarnations until the city's fall to the Ottomans in 1453. The University of Constantinople was Christian Europe's first secular institution of higher learning since no theological subjects were taught, and considering the original meaning of the world university as a corporation of students, the world’s first university as well.

context: As of 2007, Greece had the eighth highest percentage of tertiary enrollment in the world (with the percentages for female students being higher than for male) while Greeks of the Diaspora are equally active in the field of education. Hundreds of thousands of Greek students attend western universities every year while the faculty lists of leading Western universities contain a striking number of Greek names. Notable modern Greek scientists of modern times include Dimitrios Galanos, Georgios Papanikolaou (inventor of the Pap test), Nicholas Negroponte, Constantin Carathéodory, Manolis Andronikos, Michael Dertouzos, John Argyris, Panagiotis Kondylis, John Iliopoulos (2007 Dirac Prize for his contributions on the physics of the charm quark, a major contribution to the birth of the Standard Model, the modern theory of Elementary Particles), Joseph Sifakis (2007 Turing Award, the "Nobel Prize" of Computer Science), Christos Papadimitriou (2002 Knuth Prize, 2012 Gödel Prize), Mihalis Yannakakis (2005 Knuth Prize) and Dimitri Nanopoulos.

context: The most widely used symbol is the flag of Greece, which features nine equal horizontal stripes of blue alternating with white representing the nine syllables of the Greek national motto Eleftheria i thanatos (freedom or death), which was the motto of the Greek War of Independence. The blue square in the upper hoist-side corner bears a white cross, which represents Greek Orthodoxy. The Greek flag is widely used by the Greek Cypriots, although Cyprus has officially adopted a neutral flag to ease ethnic tensions with the Turkish Cypriot minority – see flag of Cyprus).

context: Greek surnames were widely in use by the 9th century supplanting the ancient tradition of using the father’s name, however Greek surnames are most commonly patronymics. Commonly, Greek male surnames end in -s, which is the common ending for Greek masculine proper nouns in the nominative case. Exceptionally, some end in -ou, indicating the genitive case of this proper noun for patronymic reasons. Although surnames in mainland Greece are static today, dynamic and changing patronymic usage survives in middle names where the genitive of father's first name is commonly the middle name (this usage having been passed on to the Russians). In Cyprus, by contrast, surnames follow the ancient tradition of being given according to the father’s name. Finally, in addition to Greek-derived surnames many have Latin, Turkish and Italian origin.

context: The traditional Greek homelands have been the Greek peninsula and the Aegean Sea, the Southern Italy (Magna Graecia), the Black Sea, the Ionian coasts of Asia Minor and the islands of Cyprus and Sicily. In Plato's Phaidon, Socrates remarks, "we (Greeks) live around a sea like frogs around a pond" when describing to his friends the Greek cities of the Aegean. This image is attested by the map of the Old Greek Diaspora, which corresponded to the Greek world until the creation of the Greek state in 1832. The sea and trade were natural outlets for Greeks since the Greek peninsula is rocky and does not offer good prospects for agriculture.

context: Notable Greek seafarers include people such as Pytheas of Marseilles, Scylax of Caryanda who sailed to Iberia and beyond, Nearchus, the 6th century merchant and later monk Cosmas Indicopleustes (Cosmas who sailed to India) and the explorer of the Northwestern passage Juan de Fuca. In later times, the Romioi plied the sea-lanes of the Mediterranean and controlled trade until an embargo imposed by the Roman Emperor on trade with the Caliphate opened the door for the later Italian pre-eminence in trade.

context: The Greek shipping tradition recovered during Ottoman rule when a substantial merchant middle class developed, which played an important part in the Greek War of Independence. Today, Greek shipping continues to prosper to the extent that Greece has the largest merchant fleet in the world, while many more ships under Greek ownership fly flags of convenience. The most notable shipping magnate of the 20th century was Aristotle Onassis, others being Yiannis Latsis, George Livanos, and Stavros Niarchos.

context: Another study from 2012 included 150 dental school students from University of Athens, the result showed that light hair colour (blonde/light ash brown) was predominant in 10.7% of the students. 36% had medium hair colour (Light brown/Medium darkest brown). 32% had darkest brown and 21% black (15.3 off black, 6% midnight black). In conclusion the hair colour of young Greeks are mostly brown, ranging from light to dark brown. with significant minorities having black and blonde hair. The same study also showed that the eye colour of the students was 14.6% blue/green, 28% medium (light brown) and 57.4% dark brown.

context: The history of the Greek people is closely associated with the history of Greece, Cyprus, Constantinople, Asia Minor and the Black Sea. During the Ottoman rule of Greece, a number of Greek enclaves around the Mediterranean were cut off from the core, notably in Southern Italy, the Caucasus, Syria and Egypt. By the early 20th century, over half of the overall Greek-speaking population was settled in Asia Minor (now Turkey), while later that century a huge wave of migration to the United States, Australia, Canada and elsewhere created the modern Greek diaspora.