View Full Version : History of the Greeks
Before starting, I wanted to explain why I put this thread in the Italian section istead than in the Greek. For the simple reason that Greeks, considerated by the same Nietzsche "as the most beautiful, elegant and envied race ever" had an important role in Italy, cultural but not only, especially in Southern Italy.
Second, I start this thread becouse I have read many insults addresses to our Greek users, especially by Spanish users (!!!). I was very disappointed about it, but I was even more disappointed about some false ideas that they spreaded about Greeks, especially calling them "Middle Eastern". The first posts will do concern, for this reason, their ethnicity, or better, the peoples that settled Greece, their characterists, their languages.
The source I am using is "Storia dei Greci" by Indro Mondanelli, Italian journalist, writer and historician.
Ps: take it clean. Don't start a dispute between Spaniards and Greeks also here. This thread is ONLY historical and concerns Ancient Greece.
The Hellenic Middle Age: Minoics, Miceneans and Dores
Minoics
The oldest civility of Europe developed on the isle of Crete, 12-13 centuries before Christ; Minosse was our first, and surely illustrious fellow citizen.
Evans' descoveries have demonstred that the Cretes civility, called Minoic in reference to king Minosse, has effectively existed; he also dug up the palace itself: Cnosso.
Omero described the city has having the beauty of 30 cities: surely it was divided in more boroughs, Festo, the harbour; Palaikastro, the recidence borough; Gurnia, the moral capital, Hàgia Triada, the summer recidence of the king and of the government.
Minoics played chests, used to haunt, played some sports, especially the boxing. They had a god called Velcano, pretty quick-tempered, to such an extent that sometimes, to appease him, they need the mediation of a female goddess, Mother Earth or the Big Mother, a sort of Madonna ante litteram.
It was a people of painters, warriors and sailors.
We dunno how their civility came down: it seems the collapse was fast, probably due to a natural catastrophe, that concluded tragically a decadence started with the arrival of Acheos, who settled the Peloponnesus and elected Micene as their capital.
What we know about Minoics is that they were not Indo-European but pelasgian (litt. "men of the sea") and didn't speak Greek. Probably they were from Asia Minor, arrived in Crete crossing the sea, though some have ipothized they were from Egypt. From the painting we know more or less their physical apparance: women had pale skin, men tanned skin, indeed they were called also foiniked (=red skinned).
Whatever were their origins, they were not Greeks, but probably they were the fundators of Troia, after destroyed by the Acheos.
Miceneans
Acheos (or Miceneans) are connected with one of the most known epic chants of the Ancient Time, the Iliad.
At the beginning, historicians used to think that Acheos were also a Pelasgian tribe, but William Ridgewey, analyzing their language, culture and cults saw that between Miceneans and Minoics there were many and deep differences. Now it is thought that Miceneans/Acheos were from central Europe and were of Celtic stock. They were not sailors, but a land people, indeed they occupied Peloponnesus, so the continental part of Greece, but not the isles. Their first crossing of the sea happened when they move to Troy to destroy it, mostly for economical reasons. Troy, indeed, dominated the Strait of the Dardanelles and controlled the trades between Europe and Asia.
Well, Troy was destroyed by this indo-European tribe, who after all was polite with the Troian losers, if we consider the way Troians are described in the Iliad.
Some historicians see in this war the first, milleniar crash between Europe and Middle East. Probably it was and, thank to the Miceneans, the first round went to Europe. ;)
- Homer -
Homer (Homerus in Latin), wanting to compliment the Acheos (he was Acheo himself), described them as a people physically very handsome. This detail shows us that for Acheos beauty was the highest virtue and elegance was very important for them. Surely, their morality was not so high picked if we consider the way Achilles threats Ector's corpse, or the fact that Priamo must gift his clothe to Achille to have back the corpse of his son (let's say it was a sort of kickback). Acheos had beautiful houses but hadn't temples, preferring to leave their gods homeless. And to conclude, their biggest hero, Ulixes, was everything but honest. Today we would consider him a liar and even a rogue.
Well, morality was not the main care of Acheos...
An other thing we know about them is that they knew iron but didn't work it, preferring to import iron object from abroad. This point was the weakness that, when Dores came, led this latter to submiss Acheos without great efforts.
Dores
About 1100 b.C. it happened the so called "Invasion of the Dores", the people who brought to Greece the "Hallstatt culture" and, with it, the practice to work iron. We know that Dores were more barbaric respect to the Acheos and were a nordic race with blue eyes and rounding skull. Not only they conquered the mainland, but arrived also to Crete, destroying what of the Minoic civility had survived.
In a first moment, they imposed the local populations (Acheos and Pelasgian) a racial segregation, excluding mixed-marriages.
But Dores and Acheos were both Indo-Europeans and spoked a language very similar, more or less dialects of the same language: the Greek. Most of the ancient Greek dictionary is from Doric and Acheo, while most of the words concerning the sea were from Cretese (like "thalassa" - sea -, a word that was understood, according to ancient historicians, also in Asia Minor, confirming the Asiatic origin of Creteses).
The racims of Dores originated a counter-racism of Acheo-Pelasgians, now united though in a first moment the same Acheos had been racist towards Pelasgians. Dores had in Sparta their capital, while the second built Athens and settlted mostly the Jonic side of Greece, producing the Jonic dialect, while the dialect of Sparta and of the rest of Greece was Doric.
With the time, anyway, Dores accepted the most developed culture, already rich in literature, of the indigenos, and started to mix with them.
Greeks, therefore, are a mix of this three peoples, but the great part of them is of Indo-European origin.
All the events that occurred until the Doric invasion constitute the Hellenic Middle Age, whose biggest product was the birth of the polis.
The polis and the need of emigration
Poleis born in this caos called "The Hellenic Middle Age", they were the fruit of the Doric invasions. When Dores came in Greece, they found Pelasgians and Acheos already mixed in a population that they considered "bastard", though Acheos had the same blood of Dores. The invasions and the segregation that Dores established pushed the local farmers to look for safe zones in elevated hills on which they started to build their towns, called acropoleis (high cities).
It can be said that cities born this way in many parts of Europe and of the world, but in the case of Greece they were particular, becouse every city was also a State and there were no relations between the various States. Particularism was extreme, a person in Athens really didn't feel the need to visit Tebe, differently from Romans who built streets and bridges to connect the various colonies as soon as possible. But the Greek cities had an element of unification: the language. They also united in an alliance in the case of external threats.
With the time, citizens of the poleis from peasants became city dwellers. Even those who had farms, on evening came back to the polis to meet friends and talk. He was no more a real peasant.
Besides the poleis were not able to mantain a big population. Platone said that an ideal polis must not have more than 5000 inhabitants. The land itself could not supply for an increment of population too much high. So, since the VIII century b.C., Greeks started to do organized colonizations in the rest of the Mediterranean Sea, including Turkey, France, Southern Italy and Spain.
They called the colonies apoikia, that means "the outside house". As the word says, they didn't plan to conquest territories, but to found cities where move people.
The most colonized areas was Southern Italy, in particular Sicily, Calabria and Campania.
An other particularity: once established the new colonies, they lost any dependence with the mother country. Colonies were in turn Cities-States themselves, and the bonds with the Mother Country were just emotional, not economical nor political.
Syibaris and Croton - Pitagora
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_zOmopcKbEaY/S8R0wgJoS3I/AAAAAAAACM8/NEToPjYTMW0/s1600/magna_grecia_metropoleis.jpg
Some of the richest colonies flourished in Italy. Among this the reachest par excellence: Sybaris. It was so rich that the adjective sibarita in Italian still today means sophisticated/refined.
In Sybaris people didn't work: slaves worked for people and people enjoyed the life: cuisine, fashion and sport were their favourite activities. Nobody had to do the militar service. After some times, this happy city started to pretend also the economical egemony, but Croton, less rich but more serious, was not happy of its decision. Sybaris, that had not a good army (obviously) was levelled and destroyed so well that, after neither one century, when Erodoto wanted to visit the ruins of Sybaris, he was able to find neither the ruins.
But Croton, destroyed the enemy, felt in the same illness: the sybaritism.
It was for this reason that Pitagora choosed Croton to live, after having left Samo, in the hands of a dictator. As Pitagora was more dictator than the dictator of Samo, he choosed Croton to establish his college.
Both males and females could enter the college, but they had to remain chaste, they hadn't to laugh and could not eat meat, eggs, wine and broad beans. Nobody has ever understood why he hated so much broad beans, but those were the rules!
The students were divided in external, who went to follow curses in the college but during the night came back home, and internal, that lived in the college that was similar to a monastery. Pitagora taught bodily only to the internal students, that were called the esoterics. The esoterics could meet the teacher only after 4 years of lessons received via post, only after 4 years they were allowed to meet Pitagora.
The Pitagorian School and the Esoterics
What did he teach them so secret that only the most loyal and selected could learn?
The fist step was mathes, but not the concrete mathes taught in Egypt. His mathes was abstract and meant to train the mind to the logic.
The second step was geometry, based on axiom, theoreme and demostraction. Pitagora himself invented theorems, like the famouse Pitagora's theoreme of the triangles.
The third step was the arithmetic, based on proportions. Pitagora discovered that the music is a numeric ratio and also the silence is. Pitagora said that silence is the music of the planets: spheres that rotate on themselves from West to East, making the cosmos.
We could not hear this sound only becouse it has no pauses.
Esoterim included the idea that the soul was immortal and reincarnated after a period of purification in Ade. He also vaunted for the whole life that he had never killed nor damaged any animal.
Pitagorians planned for Croton a coup-d'-etat to establish an illuminated Despotism, but were descovered and killed. Pitagora had to flee on night, but - what a strange destiny had for him the Fortune - he came in a field of broad beans and, to don't hidden himself in it, was found and killed.
Lucky he had entrusted his Commentarii to his daughter Damona in order that she divulgated them in the world.
This way Italian Greek colonies started. Today, in XX century, among the various, an other Italian of Magna Grecia, Majorana, invented the astronomic spettrography.
In 490 b.C. Xerses led 2.5 millions men and around 1200 ships against Greece, to revenge the Persian defeat of some years before. The Northern Greek states surrendered, while Athens, only it, decided to fight. An other little secondary polis, Platea, decided to support Athens, and so did also the little Tespi. Endly, also Sparta decided to fight next to Athens.
Leonida was killed with his 300 soldiers at Termopili, after having killed 20.000 Persians.
Athens was evacuated and his soldiers moved to Salamina, to embark them. Although Persians were marching towards Athens, the polis had not gave up yet.
Persians entered then in Athens, a void city, taking their float in the inlet. Temistocle, with a stratagem, forced the Greeks to fight: Xerses lost 200 ships against only 40 Greek ships. As Xerses' men were not able to swim (only his Greek mercenaries were) almost all his sailors drowned.
So, in 480 b.C., for the second time after Maratona, at Salamina Greeks defeated Persians and safe Europe from the Orient.
In the same year that Greeks defeated Persians in Salamina, the Greeks of Sicily had defeated Carthaginians in Himera. In the whole Eastern Mediterraneum, the Atheniese float took the leadership over Persians and Carthaginians. On the ground, Greek soldiers continued to fight against Persians for a decade, but the battles moved more on more easternward.
Sparta, capital of Laconia, was a Greek polis founded by the Doric conquerors (they were more or less 30.000 in Sparta). The Dores were here the only ones to have social and political rights. Licurgo created a sum of laws that stratified once and for all the society in two classes: lords and slaves.
Ligurgo's laws were so harsh that in short it can be said that they aimed to accustom Spartans to a lifestyle based on the contempt for everything comfortable and pleasing.
Sparta had not army: it was an army.
A commision had to examine the newborns and throw the ones who were physically imperfect from the pick of Taigeto Mount. The others were left to sleep for a night at the outside in winter, so that only the strong ones survived. People could choose whom to marry, but men had to tolerate the infidelity of his wife if she had for lover a man taller and stonger than her husband. Children entered the military school at the age fo 7, the State paid for his istruction. The Spartan continued to serve the army until he was 30. If, after 20 years of this life, he was not dead yet, he could go back home and marry.
Women had to play naked in a gym, so that the men could choose their wifes basing on her floridity and health. Bachelorhood was a crime and, like during the Fascism, was punished, but, differently from Fascism, bachelors didn't have to pay a tax, rather he must remain naked also in winter and sing a song in which he declared to have infringed the law.
When a Spartan man went to war, his mother used to follow him singing: <<Come back with your shield or on it>>.
But this strictness had a limit, a limit that led Sparta to don't evolve like Athens (Sparta today is nothing but a little village): its law, so strict, didn't allow any social/cultural progress. Sparta was the most appreciated polis by philosophers and survived longer than Athens, yet its morality permitted no evolution.
The main reason that drove Ancient Greeks to move to Italy was the big demographic growth happened in Greece in its golden age and the shortage of fertile lands. In the waves of people who arrived from Greece, some were also escaping from dictatorial regimes or trials, so the new cities were built in the name of freedom and autonomy respect to the mother city and to the other twin colonies built nearby.
For this reason the State-cities built in Italy had a more rigid character. Particular were also the relations between Greeks and the indigenous peoples.
The oldest colony, according to tradition, is Cuma (Campania), end of VIII century b.C., actually the settlement on the Isle of Ischia is even older, dated at the beginning of the same century (Pitecussa).
Why did Greeks started the colonization in Campania, so in a Tyhrrenian region? After all it is not that close to Greece.
Greeks pointed Campania becouse their first economical target was the commerce via sea. From Campania they could exchange traffics with Sardinia and Latium.
In the same century was started also the foundation of Neaples.
In the South, peoples of Peloponnesus continued to colonize. Laconians from Sparta founded Taranto (Taras) in Apulia. It was the same Sparta to finance its building.
Peoples from the Northern part of Peloponnesus, in particular from Acaia, founded Metaponto, Sibari, Crotone and Caulonia (in modern Calabria and Basilicata).
A group of Calcedonians founded Reggio Calabria and Messina (the two cities on the Strait of Messina).
Greeks and Italics, Etruscans, Messapes, Sicules, Sicans
There was a problem: Italy was not deserted. On the contrary various peoples already lived there, mostly organized in tribes of sheephards who weren't willing to yield their lands to Greeks. So it started a violent contrast between the natives and the new arrived.
Like many colons (just think to Americans), Greeks coming to Italy desired to break the links with the mothercountry and to found something new. They remained astonished from the beauty of this new land, not as rocky as Greece, but full of woods and green spaces, therefore they called it Megale Hellas (The Big Greece).
Indeed their dream was realized. The new colonies acquired a so big prestige that in various epoque they overshadowed Greece itself, especially in the intellectual field. Pitagora, Erodoto and Senofone were born in the colonies and Platone visited Magna Graecia.
Main routes of colonization:
http://www.magnagrecia.it/pagare/calabria/italiano/itinerar/storia/colonie.jpg
Some archeological finds in Magna Graecia colonies
ZDFXqCgOZvQ
Music of Ancient Greece
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Turkophagos
02-02-2011, 08:48 AM
Main routes of colonization:
http://www.magnagrecia.it/pagare/calabria/italiano/itinerar/storia/colonie.jpg
Some archeological finds in Magna Graecia colonies
ZDFXqCgOZvQ
Music of Ancient Greece
GQLXl49khKA
j0gDnZ7Qw3c
Before starting, I wanted to explain why I put this thread in the Italian section istead than in the Greek. For the simple reason that Greeks, considerated by the same Nietzsche "as the most beautiful, elegant and envied race ever" had an important role in Italy, cultural but not only, especially in Southern Italy.
Second, I start this thread becouse I have read many insults addresses to our Greek users, especially by Spanish users (!!!).
Nice contribution (and crying, as ever)... we all know spaniards are evil conquistadores, inquisidores and all that but...
Regional > The Apricity Regional > Italia
History of the Greeks
This is, despite these senseless words, a wrong place.
Ελλάδα, Greece Section should fit better in a thread called "history of the Greeks".
Ps: take it clean. Don't start a dispute between Spaniards and Greeks also here. This thread is ONLY historical and concerns Ancient Greece.
Then don't touch our fucking calloused and hardened
balls with the same history and just ignore naming Spain or Spaniards in a thread about Greece.
As simple as that.
poiuytrewq0987
02-02-2011, 12:02 PM
Before starting, I wanted to explain why I put this thread in the Italian section istead than in the Greek. For the simple reason that Greeks, considerated by the same Nietzsche "as the most beautiful, elegant and envied race ever" had an important role in Italy, cultural but not only, especially in Southern Italy.
Second, I start this thread becouse I have read many insults addresses to our Greek users, especially by Spanish users (!!!). I was very disappointed about it, but I was even more disappointed about some false ideas that they spreaded about Greeks, especially calling them "Middle Eastern". The first posts will do concern, for this reason, their ethnicity, or better, the peoples that settled Greece, their characterists, their languages.
The source I am using is "Storia dei Greci" by Indro Mondanelli, Italian journalist, writer and historician.
Ps: take it clean. Don't start a dispute between Spaniards and Greeks also here. This thread is ONLY historical and concerns Ancient Greece.
You're insane.
Nice contribution (and crying, as ever)... we all know spaniards are evil conquistadores, inquisidores and all that but...
This is, despite these senseless words, a wrong place.
Ελλάδα, Greece Section should fit better in a thread called "history of the Greeks".
Then don't touch our fucking calloused and hardened
balls with the same history and just ignore naming Spain or Spaniards in a thread about Greece.
As simple as that.
That some of you Spaniards have called some Greek users "hairy monkeys" is true, I remember it well. And of course it has nothing to do with conquering spirit (I remeber you that Greeks were the first to establish an empire in Europe, the Macedonian Empire, so there's nothing to teach to them about it) but just with rudeness.
Greeks MOVED to Southern Italy in the ancient time. It is not like the Spanish conquest, becouse they COLONIZED part of Italy, brought genes. How goes otherwise that Southern Italians and Peloponnesiacs have the same genes?
This thread anyway is more specific of Magna Graecia, but if you want to open an other one in Greece you are welcome. I don't think Greeks are jelouse, in Southern Italy Greeks are considered at home.
http://dnatribes.com/images/dnatribes-europa-map.jpg
Vasconcelos
02-02-2011, 01:07 PM
Separating Portuguese and Spanish in such a map doesn't make much sense, it's not like we're really different.
And why do "we" have Northern Iberia and not the Algarve? OMG SPAIN STOLE OUR BEACHES.
Peyrol
03-01-2011, 06:34 PM
Before starting, I wanted to explain why I put this thread in the Italian section istead than in the Greek. For the simple reason that Greeks, considerated by the same Nietzsche "as the most beautiful, elegant and envied race ever" had an important role in Italy, cultural but not only, especially in Southern Italy.
Second, I start this thread becouse I have read many insults addresses to our Greek users, especially by Spanish users (!!!). I was very disappointed about it, but I was even more disappointed about some false ideas that they spreaded about Greeks, especially calling them "Middle Eastern". The first posts will do concern, for this reason, their ethnicity, or better, the peoples that settled Greece, their characterists, their languages.
The source I am using is "Storia dei Greci" by Indro Mondanelli, Italian journalist, writer and historician.
Ps: take it clean. Don't start a dispute between Spaniards and Greeks also here. This thread is ONLY historical and concerns Ancient Greece.
This map show the Greek genetic heritage in Italian peninsula
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/it/b/b6/Mappageneticaitalia.jpg
you can see that in the South is still marked
This map show the Greek genetic heritage in Italian peninsula
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/it/b/b6/Mappageneticaitalia.jpg
you can see that in the South is still marked
I agree, the massive presence of J2 in Southern Italy cannot be just a coincidence, becouse Calabria and Eastern Sicily were the regions in which Greeks arrived in largest number and Calabria, Roman sources say, was populated, during the Greek age, by a mixed people (Italic+Greek).
To more infos watch the thread "languages and cultures of Italy - Calabria" ;)
Ibericus
03-01-2011, 06:50 PM
http://dnatribes.com/images/dnatribes-europa-map.jpg
This map doesn't make any sense. From a genetic point of view spaniards and portuguese are not different. Also, the Irish, English and Scottish are far from being Celtic, they are more Germanic than anything. And the Ashkenazies right there in the middle of Europe is laughable, considering they are half middle-eastern genetically.
ITS ORIGINS
Social tensions due to the drastic growth of the Greek population and commercial purposes originated a migratory stream from Greece to some regions of Southern Italy (Sicily, Campania, Calabria, Basilicata and Apulia).
Future colons must consult the Oracle of Apollo in Delfi before leaving Greece, the Oracle would suggest the locality in which a new polis would be built.
DELFI ORACLE
http://puzzolenere.ilcannocchiale.it/mediamanager/sys.user/51186/delfi2.jpg
DIFFERENT STOCKS
People from the isle of Eubea in Calcide built the first colonies in Campania, then they, in addition to other colons from Eolic Cuma, founded various cities in Calabria and Sicily, near the Strait of Messina.
Later Acheians built new cities in Calabria and Basilicata, such as the famous Sybaris and Kroton. Finally Spartans arrived to Apulia and founded Taras (today called Taranto).
The last colony was founded in Calabria by Locreses arrived from the Gulf of Krisa.
EUBEA
http://www2.luventicus.org/mapas/grecia/eubea.gif
SPARTA
http://www2.luventicus.org/mapas/grecia/laconia.gif
AREAS ONCE BELONGING TO LOCRIDE
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dd/GreeceFthiotis.png
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/GreeceViotia.png
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