Was there a Greece or not in ancient and medieval times?

Matt Riggsby

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Depends on what you mean by Greece.

There was certainly a geographical region which was called Greece or the equivalent in various languages. Greece, as a place, was a thing people talked about and could point to on a map.

There was also a Greek nation, in the sense of a people. Again, what they were called depended on what language you spoke, but certainly in antiquity there was a strong sense of people thinking they were Greeks/Hellenes based on language and association with certain items of culture like the Olympic games. This sense of nationhood declined somewhat during the Middle Ages (people in Greece identified themselves first and foremost as Romans but also understood that, secondarily, they might be distinguished from other Romans by language), but it never entirely went away.

Greece as a nation-state, of course, did not. There weren’t nation-states at the time. That was a development of the modern world. Greece as the nation-state is the modern world’s manifestation of a long-standing Greek identity.

Brian Overland

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Of course there was, BUT…

the cultural identity, as the world’s most innovative and skeptical intellectuals, was greatly diminished in Late Antiquity. Plato’s Academy continued for 500 years but was finally closed, as Neo-Platonism was first opposed to, but then later subsumed by, Christianity.

But the biggest turning point was the destruction of the Library of Alexandria and the murder of its great Librarian, a woman philosopher and scholar named Hypatia, in 415 CE. A Christian mob, led by the local bishop, committed these acts against Truth and Inquiry, killing this poor woman. There had been devastation of the library before, but this was, as they say, “the final insult.”

From then on, the intellectual light of ancient Greece became dim and Greek regions part of the Eastern Roman Empire — called “Byzantine” — and Greek culture itself became dominated by a mostly conservative version of Christianity. The connection between the Greek language and the Orthodox Church was strong because, after all, the New Testament had been originally written in Greek. But as a place that fostered original thinking, Greece declined.

But many centuries later, the Greek Nationalist Movement, which arose after the fall of the Byzantine Empire, worked toward bringing the modern nation of Greece into existence. It had to contend, though, with the Ottoman Turks, who finally lost their empire in World War I.

And while this modern nation no longer was home to the world’s greatest philosophers and scientists, at least Medieval and modern Greece was sufficiently self-aware of its glorious past to preserve as much of its ancient heritage, in the ruins and monuments, as possible.

As for the so-called Dark Ages, these were years of progress and enlightenment in the Islamic countries, but within most of Europe itself (outside of Spain) the source of intellectual enlightenment eventually moved to the West and (especially) to Northern Europe, especially after the English Renaissance.

HYPATIA, GREECE’S GREATEST FEMALE SCIENTIST IN ANCIENT TIMES….

Jason Almendra

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I might not have a time machine. But I do know the exact situation. Homer referred to Greeks as Achaeans. Then Hellas became more popular. Check out this answer.

Eleftherios Tserkezis

 · 1y

Why was Greece called Hellas in the stone inscriptions, but in the old books only Ἑλλάδα Elláda?

Both parts of the premise are wrong. This is the text of an inscription (IG II² 448) from the agora of ancient Athens. It is dated to 323/2 BC, shortly after Alexander the Great’s death. The form Hellada is visible in line 56, as is the form Helladi in line 52. This is a page from the old book Hellas and Koraēs, a long poem by Socrates Philippides. It was published in Marseille, France in 1873. The form Hellas is visible in lines 1 and 8. So what’s going on? Greek is a highly inflected language. Nominals, articles, pronouns and verbs each have multiple grammatical forms, which they alternate depending on their syntactical function. The Greek name for Greece has always had the root Hellad-, hence words like helladikos (“Helladic,” from Hellad- and the suffix -ikos). In standard Attic Greek, it was a third declension feminine noun with five grammatical cases: * Nominative: Hellas (from Hellad-s) * Genitive: Hellados * Dative: Helladi * Accusative: Hellada * Vocative: Hellas (from Hellad-s) In modern demotic Greek, things have been reshuffled a bit. Nouns now have only four grammatical cases —the dative has been dropped—, and many endings have changed. That gives us the following forms: * Nominative: (H)ellada * Genitive: (H)elladas * Accusative: (H)ellada * Vocative: (H)ellada Having said that, it’s worth pointing out that any clear-cut distinction between classical and modern Greek is potentially misleading. In standardized expressions and specific frames of communication, the genitive Hellados and even the nominative Hellas haven’t gone completely out of fashion. So to get back to our examples above. In the inscription, Helladi is dative, because that’s what the verb synebē demanded, and Hellada is accusative, because it’s the object of the immediately next word, the infinitive idein. In Philippides’ poem, Hellas in line 1 is nominative, because it’s the subject of the verb ephaineto, and in line 8 it’s vocative. Late 19th-c. scholars were pretty archaistic, hence the use of the older, instead of the demotic, forms.

The Romans called southern Italy Magna Graecia. Centuries later, Emperor Theodosius abolished all pagan religions and “heretical” Christian sects in 394AD. The only legal religions were Nicene Christianity and Judaism. Greece or Hellas was a pagan concept. Europe was also a pagan concept. Queen Europa of Crete was a Baal worshiper. Everybody called themselves Roman. Their empire was either Rome or Christendom. Then the Western Roman Empire was abolished by Odoacer in 476AD.

The medieval Latin term for the Eastern Roman Emperor was “Imperator Graecorum”. This was actually very offensive as Liutprand of Cremona found out. The emperor insisted on being addressed as “Imperator Romanorum (Vasileus Rhomaion),” thank you very much. The empire was referred to as Rhomania.

Liutprand of Cremona - Wikipedia

Then Sultan Mehmet II did his conquest of Constantinople thing in 1453AD. Refugees fled to the West. They brought a copy of the Iliad which was translated into Latin and printed in Venice. In it, Homer referred to Europe as the western shores of the Aegean Sea. Suddenly people rediscovered they were “European”.

Greek scholars in the Renaissance - Wikipedia

Diaspora Greeks attended western universities where they rediscovered the concept of Greece or Hellas. They resolved to make Greece independent as opposed to reviving the Eastern Roman Empire aka Byzantium. The latter moniker was invented by some German guy named Hieronymus Wolf. He had a raging hate-boner for the Eastern Romans.

Modern Greek Enlightenment - Wikipedia

Dimitris Stathatos

In a Holy book named the Bible there are verses in a chapter which refer to Greeks so we can conclude that at least for the son of God Greeks existed. The place where they lived however had become a Roman province.

Galatians 3:28 states: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

Ambrax Alexandros

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Yes. The Hellenic people are the same then and now.
The Hellenic Civilization still exists, as Hellenic people still practice it.
The classical Hellenic Ethnos (ethnic nation), as described by Herodotus, also still exists.

Modern countries, borders and governments come and go.
Only nativity counts.

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