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Greeks (Έλληνες)
Ioannis Kapodistrias • Pericles • El Greco • Alexander the Great •
Total population
approx. 16,000,000
Regions with significant populations
Greece 10,186,013 (2001 census) 1  United States 1,380,088a (2007 est.) 2  Cyprus 635,914 (2001 census) 3  Australia 365,147 (2006 census) 4  Germany 304,607 (2008 estimate) 5  United Kingdom 250,000 (estimated) 6  Canada 242,685b (2006 census) 7  Albania 70,000 (est.) 8  Russia 128,000 9  Ukraine 91,500 (2001 census) 10  South Africa 55,000 (2008 estimate) 11  Brazil 50,000 (2008 estimate) 12  Belgium 15,742 (2007) 13  Italy 30,000 (2008 estimate) 14  Argentina 30,000 (2008 estimate) 15  Sweden 12,000–15,000 16  Kazakhstan 13,000 (est) 17 18  Sweden 12-15,000 estimate 19  Switzerland 11,000 estimated 20  Uzbekistan 9,500 estimate 21  Romania 6.500 2002 census 22 Elsewhere see Greek Diaspora
Languages
predominantly Greek
Religion
predominantly Greek Orthodox
Footnotes
a An estimated 3,000,000 claim Greek descent.23 b An additional 3,395 Cypriots of undeclared ethnicity live in Canada.

The Greeks (Greek: Έλληνες, IPA: [ˈe̞line̞s]), also known as Hellenes, are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighbouring regions who can also be found in a plethora of Omogenia communities around the world.²⁴

Greek colonies and communities have been historically established in most corners of the Mediterranean but Greeks have always been centred around the Aegean Sea, where Greek has been spoken since antiquity.²⁵ Until the early 20th century, Greeks were uniformly distributed between the Greek peninsula, the western coast of Asia Minor, Pontus, Cyprus and Constantinople, regions which coincided to a large extent with the borders of the Byzantine Empire of the late 11th century and the Eastern Mediterranean areas of the ancient Greek colonization.²⁶

In the aftermath of the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922), a large-scale population exchange between Greece and Turkey transferred and confined ethnic Greeks almost entirely into the borders of the modern Greek state and Cyprus. Other ethnic Greek populations can be found from Southern Italy to the Caucasus and in diaspora communities in a number of other countries. Today, the vast majority of Greeks are at least nominally adherents of Greek Orthodoxy.²⁷

History

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Religion

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Languages and dialects

Greek Calabrian Greek · Cappadocian Greek Cretan Greek · Griko · Cypriot Greek Maniot Greek · Pontic Greek · Tsakonian Yevanic · Aromanian · Arvanitika Meglenitic · Slavika · Urum

History of Greece

v • d • e

Main article: History of the Greeks

The Greeks are an Indo-European people and their language forms its own unique branch of the IE language family tree.²⁵ They are part of a group of pre-modern ethnies that have managed to survive for millennia and are described as an archetypal Diaspora people.²⁸²⁹

The modern Greek state was created in 1832 when the Greeks liberated a part of their historic homelands from the Ottoman Empire.³⁰ The large Greek Diaspora and merchant class were instrumental in transmitting the ideas of western Romantic nationalism and Philhellenism,³¹ which together with the conception of Hellenism formulated during the last centuries of the Eastern Roman Empire, formed the basis of the Greek Enlightenment and the current conception of Hellenism.³²³³³⁴

Mycenaean

Main article: Mycenaean Greece

	This section may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this section if you can. (December 2008)

Kouros, Archaic period. Proto-Greeks are thought to have emerged in Central Europe, in what is today called the Pannonian Plain. They probably arrived in the area now referred to as "Greece" (the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula) at the end of the third millennium BC.35N 1 Due to the paucity of physical evidence in support of this theory,36 it has been suggested that the proto-Greeks were present there since Paleolithic times.3738 The Mycenaeans were the first Greek-speaking people attested through historical sources, especially through their written records in the Linear B script,39 and through their literary echoes in the works of Homer, a few centuries later. The Mycenaeans quickly penetrated the Aegean and by the 15th century BCE had reached Rhodes, Crete, Cyprus where Teucrus (a characteristic Cypriot name) is said to have founded the first colony, and the shores of Asia Minor.2540 From 1200 BCE the Dorians, another Greek-speaking people, followed from Epirus.41 The Dorian Migration was followed by a poorly attested period of migrations, appropriately called the Greek Dark Ages, but by 800 BCE the landscape of Classical Greece was discernible.25 In the Homeric epics, the Greeks of prehistory are viewed as the forefathers of the early classical civilization of Homer's own time,42 while the Mycenaean pantheon included many of the divinities (e.g. Zeus, Poseidon and Athena) attested in later Greek religion.4344

Classical

Main article: Ancient Greece

Further information: Ancient Greek dialects and Greek tribes

Nike of Samothrace, Louvre (220-190 BC).

The classical period of Greek civilization covers a time span from the early fifth century BCE to the death of Alexander the Great, in 323 BCE. It is so named because it set the standards by which Greek civilization would be judged in later eras.⁴⁵

This section may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this section if you can. (December 2008)

The ethnogenesis of the Greek nation is marked by the first Olympic Games in 776 BCE when the idea of a common Hellenism among the Greek speaking tribes was first translated into a shared cultural experience and Hellenism was supremely a matter of common culture.²⁴

This is attested in Herodotus who writes that the Athenians declared, before the battle of Plataea, that they would not go over to Mardonius, because in the first place, they were bound to avenge the burning of the Acropolis; and, secondly, they would not betray their fellow Greeks, to whom they were bound by:⁴⁶

• Common language (ομόγλωσσον homoglosson – the use of one of the dialects of the Greek language),
• Common blood (όμαιμον homaimon – descent from Hellen, son of Deucalion),
• Common shrines, statues and sacrifices (practice of the ancient Greek religion)
• Common habits and customs.

Scene from daily life, olive gathering.

Later, the rhetorician Isocrates, after speaking of the Greeks’ common origin and religion, would say: "the name Hellenes suggests no longer a race but a culture and education,...the title Hellenes is applied best to those who share our culture rather than to those who share our common blood".⁴⁷ While the Greeks of the Classical era understood themselves to belong to a common Greek genos their first loyalty was to their city and they saw nothing incongruous about warring, often brutally, with other Greek Polis. The Peloponnesian War, the large scale Greek civil war between Athens and Sparta and their allies, is a case in point as there was nothing civil about it, either metaphorically or literally.⁴⁸ This local patriotism, (topikismos) remains a part of Greek culture.³¹

Most of the feuding Greek city-states were, in some scholars' opinions, united under the banner of Philip's and Alexander the Great's pan-Hellenic ideals, though others might generally opt, rather, for an explanation of "Macedonian conquest for the sake of conquest" or at least conquest for the sake of riches, glory and power and view the aforementioned "ideal" as useful propaganda directed towards the city-states.⁴⁹

In any case, Alexander's toppling of the Persian empire --following victories at the battles of Granicus, Issus and Gaugamela-- and advance as far as modern day India and Tajikistan, provided an important outlet for Greek culture, via the creation of colonies and trade routes along the way.⁵⁰ 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.⁵¹ Two thousand years later, there are still communities in Pakistan and Afghanistan who claim to be descended from Greek settlers.⁵²

Hellenistic

Main article: Hellenistic Greece

Further information: Hellenistic civilization

Bust of the queen Cleopatra Thea Philopator of Egypt.

The Hellenistic age was the next period of Greek civilization, the beginnings of which are usually placed at Alexander's death.⁵³ This Hellenistic age, so called because it witnessed the partial Hellenization of many non-Greek cultures and a combination of Greek, Middle Eastern and Indian elements, lasted until the conquest of Egypt by Rome in 30 BCE.⁵³

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.⁵⁴⁵⁵ Greeks however remained aware of their past, chiefly through the study of the works of Homer and the Classical authors.⁵⁶ 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 Hellenic paideia to the next generation.⁵⁶

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 BCE continued with the introduction of new religious movements from the East.²⁴ The cults of deities like Isis and Mithra were introduced into the Greek world.⁵⁵⁵⁷

In the Indo-Greek and Greco-Bactrian kingdoms, Greco-Buddhism was spreading and Greek missionaries would play an important role in propagating it to China.⁵⁸ Further east, the Greeks of Alexandria Eschate became known to the Chinese as the Dayuan.⁵⁹

Eastern Roman

Main article: Byzantine Greeks

Further information: Byzantine Greece and Eastern Roman Empire

From the 11th c. Trebizond Gospel

Of the new Eastern Religions introduced into the Greek world the most successful was Christianity. 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 maintain its cohesion and promoted a robust Roman national identity.⁶⁰ Concurrently the secular, urban civilization of late antiquity survived in the Eastern Mediteranean along with the Greek educational system, although it was from Christianity that the culture's essential values were drawn.⁶¹

The Eastern Roman Empire (which was later misnamed by Western historians as the Byzantine Empire, a name that would have meant nothing to Greek speakers of the era),⁶² became increasingly influenced by Greek culture following the 7th century when Emperor Heraclius (575 CE-641 CE) decided to make Greek the Roman Empire's official language.⁶³⁶⁴ 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 King of Franks Charlemagne 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 Catholic Franks and began to refer the Eastern Roman Empire largely as the Empire of the Greeks (Imperium Graecorum).⁶⁵ Greek speakers at the time however referred to themselves as Rhomaioi (Romans) and were conscious and proud of their Roman Imperial and Christian heritages.⁶²

These Roman Greeks were largely responsible for the preservation of the literature of the Classical era.⁶¹⁵⁶⁶⁶ Byzantine grammarians were those principally responsible for carrying, in person and in writing, ancient Greek grammatical and literary studies to early Renaissance Italy to which the influx of Greek scholars gave a major boost.⁶⁷⁶⁸ The Aristotelian philosophical tradition was virtuall unbroken in the Greek world for almost two thousand years, until the Fall of Constantinople in the 15th century.⁶⁹

To the Slavic world, Roman era Greeks contributed by the dissemination of literacy and Christianity. The most notable example of the later was the work of the two Greek brothers Saints Cyril and Methodius from Thessalonica, who are credited today with formalizing the first Slavic alphabet.⁷⁰

A distinct Greek nationalism 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.³² That new notion of nationhood engendered a deep interest in the classical past culminating in the ideas of the Neo-Platonist philosopher George Gemistus Plethon who abandoned Christianity.³² However it was the combination of Orthodoxy with a specifically Greek identity that shaped the Greeks notions of themselves in the empire's twilight years.³²

Ottoman

Hermes o Logios, Greek literary magazine of the 18th and 19th c.

Main article: Ottoman Greeks

Further information: Ottoman Greece and Phanariotes

Following the Fall of Constantinople in the 15th century, many Greeks sought better employment and education opportunities by leaving for the West, particularly Italy, Central Europe, Germany and Russia.⁶⁷

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.³³ The Greek speakers were the only ethnic group to actually call themselves Rhomioi,⁷¹ (as opposed to being so named by others) and, at least those educated, considered their ethnicity (genos) to be Hellenic.⁷²

The roots of Greek success in the Ottoman Empire can be traced to the Greek tradition of education and commerce.⁷³ 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 1821.³¹ 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.³¹

Modern

Main article: Greece

Greeks work some of the longest hours in the OECD.⁷⁴

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 1840.⁷⁵ 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, while the majority of the Greeks displaced (over a million of the total 1,5 millions) had already been been driven out by the time the agreement was signed.^{N 276777879} The Greek genocide, contemporaneous with 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.⁸⁰

While most Greeks today are descended from Greek-speaking Rhomioi there are sizeable groups of ethnic Greeks who trace their descent to Aromanian-speaking Vlachs and Albanian-speaking Arvanites as well as Slavs and Turking-speaking Karamanlides.⁸¹ None of the latter groups were ever considered less Greek than the Rhomioi.⁸² Today, Greeks are to be found all around the world as and there are many talented Greek scholars, entrepreneurs and artists.⁸³

Identity

Main article: Greek identity

Greek heroine Laskarina Bouboulina, 1827 lithograph.

The terms used to define Greekness have varied throughout history but were never limited or completely identified with membership to a Greek state.⁸⁴ By Western standards, the term Greeks has traditionally referred to any native speakers of the Greek language, whether Mycenaean, Byzantine or modern Greek.⁸⁵³³ Byzantine Greeks called themselves Rhomioi 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.⁸⁶ 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.⁸⁷

The Greeks today are a nation in the meaning of an ethnos, defined by possessing Greek culture and having a Greek mother tongue, rather than by citizenship, race, religion or by being subjects of any particular state.⁸⁸ In ancient and medieval times and to a lesser extent today the Greek term was genos which also implies sharing a common ancestry.⁸⁹⁹⁰

Names

Main article: Names of the Greeks

Throughout the centuries, Greeks and Greek speakers have been known by a number of names, including:

• Hellenes
• Greeks (Γραικοί)
• Rhomioi
• Achaeans, Argives, and Danaans
• Javan or Yavana, traditionally in Hebrew
• Yona or Yavana (Ίωνες)

Modern and ancient

Family group on a funerary stele from Athens, National Archaeological Museum, Athens.

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.⁹¹ Scholars compare its continuity of tradition to Chinese alone.⁹¹⁹² Since its inception, Hellenism was primarily a matter of common culture²⁴ and the national continuity of the Greek world is a lot more certain than its demographic.⁹³ Hellenism also embodied an ancestral dimension through aspects of Athenian literature that developed and influenced ideas of descent based on autochthony.⁹⁴ 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.⁹³ Such revivals would manifest again in the 10th and 14th century providing a powerful impetus to the sense of cultural affinity with ancient Greece and its classical heritage.⁹³ The cultural changes undergone by the Greeks are, despite a surviving common sense of ethnicity, undeniable.⁹³ At the same time, the Greeks have retained their language --though the assimilation of non-Greek-speaking groups to the modern Greek nation should not be ignored-- and alphabet, certain values, 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),⁹⁵ a sense of Greek identity and common sense of ethnicity despite the many political and social changes of the past two millennia.⁹³

Genetic origins

Modern studies have constructed Greek genetic trees revealing a strong degree of homogeneity between Greeks from different geographical locations.⁹⁶ Median networks revealed that most of the Greek haplotypes are clustered to the five known haplogroups and that a number of haplotypes are shared among Greeks and other European and Near Eastern populations.⁹⁷ Within the loci studied, the genetic composition of the Greeks indicates a significantly low level of heterogeneity compared with other European populations.⁹⁸⁹⁷ The levels of the R1a1 haplotype, associated by some with Slavic migrations, have been found to be less than 12% in the general Greek population (by way of comparison the relevant percentage for Syria is 10%, and Poland 60%.⁹⁹ Pericic actually links the spread of R1a primarily to ancient migratory movements from the Ukrainian refugiuum after the LGM, as well as by the hypothesized movement of Indo-Europeans from the Ponto-Caspian steppe.¹⁰⁰ Slavic migrations might have enhanced the frequency of R1a in the Balkans.¹⁰⁰ However, the latter is under the assumption that the Slavic migrations were sufficiently large, numerically-speaking. Rosser et. al., amongst others, however, suggested that language is not the primary force driving genetic differences in Europeans.^10110299

A 7%–22% contribution of Y chromosomes by Greeks to Southern Italy was estimated by admixture analysis in the same study.¹⁰³ Other studies also point out the significant frequency drop of the R1a marker over the short geographic distance between Greece and its Slavic northern neighbours (since prehistoric times).¹⁰⁴ Modern scholars and scientists have supported the notion that there is a racial connection to the ancient Greeks. Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Paolo Menozzi, and Alberto Piazza, have found evidence of a genetic connection between the ancient and modern Greeks.¹⁰⁵

Demographics

Main articles: Demographics of Greece and Demographics of Cyprus

Scenes of marriage and family life in Constantinople

Today, Greeks are the majority ethnic group in the Hellenic Republic,¹ where they constitute 93% of the country's population,¹⁰⁶ and the Republic of Cyprus where they comprise 78% of the island's population (excluding Turkish settlers in the occupied part of the country).³ 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 1828.¹⁰⁷ 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 following the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey.¹⁰⁷ About 80% of the population of Greece is urban, with 28% concentrated in the city of Athens¹⁰⁸

Greeks from Cyprus have a similar history of emigration, usually to the English speaking world as a result 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.¹⁰⁹ After the ethnic cleansing of a third of the Greek population of the island in 1974,^{110111112113114} there was also an increase in the number of Greek Cypriots leaving, especially for the Middle East, which contributed to a decrease in population which tapered off in the 1990s.¹⁰⁹ Today more than two thirds of the Greek population in Cyprus is urban.¹⁰⁹

There is a sizeable Greek minority of about 105,000 people, in Albania.¹¹⁵ The Greek minority of Turkey which numbered upwards of 200,000 people after the 1923 exchange has now dwindled to a few thousand, following the 1955 Constantinople Pogrom and other state sponsored violence and discrimination.¹¹⁶ This effectively ended, though not entirely, the three-thousand year old presence of Hellenism in Asia Minor.¹¹⁷¹¹⁸ 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).¹¹⁹

Diaspora

Main article: Greek diaspora

The total number of Greeks living outside Greece and Cyprus today is a contentious issue. Where Census figures are available it shows around 3 million Greeks outside of Greece and Cyprus. Estimates provided by the SAE - World Council of Hellenes Abroad put the figure at around 7 million worldwide.¹²⁰ According to George Prevelakis of Sorbonne University, the number is closer to just below 5 million.¹²¹ 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.¹¹⁹ Recently, a law was passed by the Hellenic Parliament that enables Diaspora Greeks to vote in the elections of the Greek state.¹²²

Ancient

Greek colonization in antiquity

In ancient times, the trading and colonising 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, Spain, the south of France and the Black sea coasts.¹²³ Under Alexander the Great's empire and successor states, Greek and Hellenizing ruling classes were established in the Middle East, India and in Egypt.¹²³ The Hellenistic period is characterized by a new wave of Greek colonization which established Greek cities and kingdoms in Asia and Africa.¹²⁴ 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.⁶³

Modern

Greek Diaspora (20th century).

During and after the Greek War of Independence, Greeks of the Diaspora were important in establishing the fledgling state, raising funds and awareness abroad.¹²⁵ 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.¹²⁶ Businesses frequently comprised the whole extended family, and with them they brought schools teaching Greek and the Greek Orthodox church.¹²⁶

As markets changed and they became more established, some families grew their operations to become shippers, financed through the local Greek community, notably with the aid of the Ralli or Vagliano Brothers.¹²⁷ With economic success the Diaspora expanded further across the Levant, North Africa, India and the USA.¹²⁷¹²⁸

In the twentieth century, many Greeks left their traditional homelands for economic reasons resulting in large migrations from Greece and Cyprus to the United States, Great Britain, Australia, Canada, Germany, and South Africa, especially after the Second World War (1939-45), the Greek Civil War (1946-49), and the Turkish Invasion of Cyprus in 1974.¹²⁹

Culture

Main article: Culture of Greece

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.¹³⁰¹³¹ Ottoman Greeks had to endure through several centuries of adversity which culminated in a genocide in the 20th century but which nevertheless included cultural exchanges and enriched both cultures.^{132133134135136} The Diafotismos is credited with revitalizing Greek culture and giving birth to the synthesis of ancient and medieval elements that characterize it today.³²³³

Language

Main article: Greek language

Iliad, Book 8, lines 245-253, in a Greek manuscript of the late 5th or early 6th century, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan.

Most Greeks speak the Greek language, an Indo-European language which forms a branch itself, with its closest relations being Armenian (see Graeco-Armenian) and the Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan).⁹¹ It has one of the longest documented histories of any language and Greek literature has a continuous history of over 2,500 years.¹³⁷ Several notable literary works, including the Homeric epics, Euclid's Elements and the New Testament, were originally written in Greek.

Greek demonstrates several linguistic features that are shared with other Balkan languages, such as Albanian, Bulgarian and Romanian (see Balkan sprachbund), and has absorbed numerous foreign words, primarily of Western European and Turkish origin.¹³⁸ 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.¹³⁹

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).¹⁴⁰ 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, Aromanian, Macedonian Slavic, Russian and Turkish.^{141 91}

Religion

Uncial script, from a 4th-century Bible manuscript.

Main articles: Religion in ancient Greece and Eastern Orthodox Church

The vast majority of Greeks are Eastern Orthodox Christians, belonging to the Greek Orthodox Church. During the first centuries after Jesus Christ, the New Testament was originally written in Koine Greek, which is mutually intelligible with modern Greek to a large extent, as most of the early Christians and Church Fathers were Greek-speaking.¹³⁰¹³¹ While the Orthodox Church was always intensely hostile to the ancient Greek religion, it did help Greeks retain their sense of identity during the Ottoman rule through its use of Greek in the liturgy and its modest educational efforts.¹⁴² There are small groups of ethnic Greeks adhering to other Christian denominations like Greek Catholics, Greek Evangelicals, Pentecostals and Jehovah's Witnesses, and groups adhering to other religions including Romaniot and Sephardic Jews and Greek Muslims. In particular there are Greek Muslim communities in Tripoli, Lebanon, (7,000 strong) and Al Hamidiyah in Syria, while there is a large community of indeterminate size in the Pontus region, who were spared of the population exchange because of their faith.¹⁴³ About 2,000 Greeks are members of Hellenic Polytheistic Reconstructionism congregations.^144145146

Art

El Greco's Assumption of the Virgin (1577-1579).

Main article: Greek art

Greek art has a long and varied history. Greeks have made several contributions to the visual, literary and performing arts.¹⁴⁷ 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.¹⁴⁷ Well into the 19th century, the classical tradition derived from Greece played an important part the art of the Western World.¹⁴⁸ 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.¹⁴⁹

Byzantine Greek art, which grew from classical art and adapted the pagan motifs in the service of Christianity, provided a stimulus to the art of many nations.¹⁵⁰ Its influences can be traced from Venice in the West to Kazakhstan in the East.¹⁵⁰¹⁵¹

In turn, Greek art was influenced by eastern civilizations in Classical Antiquity and the new religion of Orthodox Christianity during Roman times while modern Greek art is heavily influenced by Western art.¹⁵² Notable Greek artists include Renaissance painter El Greco, soprano Maria Callas, and composers Iannis Xenakis and Vangelis. Greek Alexandrian Constantine P. Cavafy and Nobel laureates George Seferis and Odysseas Elitis are among the most important poets of the twentieth century.

Science

Further information: Greek mathematics, Medicine in ancient Greece, and Byzantine science

Nicholas Negroponte. 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.153 Greeks have a long tradition of valuing and investing in paideia (education).56