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Hellenization or Hellenification is the adoption of Greek Greek culture, religion, Greek language, and Ethnic identity by non-Greeks. In the Ancient Greece, colonisation often led to the Hellenization of indigenous people in the Hellenistic period, many of the territories which were conquered by Alexander the Great were Hellenized.
When it was advantageous to do so, places like Side and Aspendos invented Greek-themed origin myths; an inscription published in SEG shows that in the 4th century BC Aspendos claimed ties to Ancient Argos, similar to Nikokreon of Cyprus who also claimed Argive lineage. (Argos was home to the Kings of Macedon.).. Like the , the Antigonids claimed descent from Heracles, the from Apollo, and the Ptolemies from Dionysus..
The Seuthopolis inscription was very influential in the modern Thracology. The inscription mentions Dionysus, Apollo and some Samothrace gods. Scholars have interpreted the inscription as evidence of Hellenisation in inland Thrace during the early Hellenistic, but this has been challenged by recent scholarship.
However, Hellenization had its limitations. For example, areas of southern Syria that were affected by Greek culture mostly entailed Seleucid Empire urban centres, where Ancient Greek was commonly spoken. The countryside, on the other hand, was largely unaffected, with most of its inhabitants speaking Syriac language and clinging to their native traditions.: "South Syria was thus a comparatively late addition to the Seleucid empire, whose heartland was North Syria. Here Seleucus himself created four cities—his capital of Antiochia-on-the-Orontes, and Apamea, Seleucia and Laodicia—all new foundations with a European citizen body. Twelve other Hellenistic cities are known there, and the Seleucid army was largely based in this region, either garrisoning its towns or settled as reservists in military colonies. Hellenisation, although intensive, seems in the main to have been confined to these urban centers, where Greek was commonly spoken. The country people appear to have been little affected by the cultural change, and continued to speak Syriac and to follow their traditional ways. Despite its political importance, little is known of Syria under Macedonian rule, and even the process of Hellenisation is mainly to be traced in the one community which has preserved some records from this time, namely the Jews of South Syria."
By itself, archaeological evidence only gives researchers an incomplete picture of Hellenization; it is often not possible to state with certainty whether particular archaeological findings belonged to Greeks, Hellenized indigenous peoples, indigenous people who simply owned Greek-style objects or some combination of these groups. Thus, literary sources are also used to help researchers interpret archaeological findings..
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Worship of the Greek pantheon of gods was practiced in Lydia. Lydian king Croesus often invited the wisest Greek philosophers, orators and statesmen to attend his court. Croesus himself often consulted the famous oracle at Delphi-bestowing many gifts and offerings to this and other religious sites for example. He provided patronage for the reconstruction of the Temple of Artemis, to which he offered a large number of marble columns as dedication to the goddess.
It was in the towns that Hellenisation made its greatest progress, with the process often being synonymous with urbanisation. Hellenisation reached Pisidia and Lycia sometime in the 4th century BC, but the interior remained largely unaffected for several more centuries until it came under Roman rule in the 1st century BC.. , Aeolians and Dorians settlers along Anatolia's Western coast seemed to have remained culturally Greek and some of their city-states date back to the Archaic Greece. On the other hand, Greeks who settled in the southwestern region of Pisidia and Pamphylia seem to have been assimilated by the local culture..
Hellenization of members of the Jewish elite included names and clothes, but other customs were adapted by the rabbis, and elements that violated the halakha and midrash were prohibited. One example is the elimination of some aspects of Hellenistic banquets, such as the practice of offering libations to the gods, while incorporating certain elements that gave the meals a more Jewish character. Discussion of Scripture, the singing of sacred songs and attendance of students of the Torah were encouraged. One detailed account of Jewish-style Hellenistic banquets comes from Ben Sira. There is literary evidence from Philo about the extravagance of Alexandrian Jewish banquets, and The Letter of Aristeas discusses Jews dining with non-Jews as an opportunity to share Jewish wisdom..
Mopsus is a legendary founder of several coastal cities in southwestern Anatolia, including Aspendos, Phaselis, Perge and Sillyon. A bilingual Phoenician and neo-Hittite Luwian inscription found at Karatepe, dated to 800 BC, says that the ruling dynasty there traced their origins to Mopsus. Mopsus, whose name is also attested to in Hittites documents, may originally have been an Anatolian figure that became part of the cultural traditions of Pamphylia's early Greek settlers. Attested to in Linear B texts, he is given a Greek genealogy as a descendant of Manto and Apollo.
For centuries the indigenous population exerted considerable influence on Greek settlers, but after the 4th century BC this population quickly started to become Hellenised. Little is known about Pisidia prior to the 3rd century BC, but there is quite a bit of archeological evidence that dates to the Hellenistic period. Literary evidence, however, including inscriptions and coins are limited. During the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, native regional tongues were abandoned in favour of koine Greek and settlements began to take on characteristics of Greek polis..
The Iron Age Panemoteichos I may be an early precursor to later regional Hellenistic settlements including Selge, Termessos and Sagalassos (believed to be the three most prominent cities of Hellenistic Pisidia). The site is evidence of "urban organisation" that predates the Greek polis by 500 years. Based on Panemoteichos I and other Iron Age sites, including the Midas şehri and the Cappadocian fortification of Kerkenes, experts believe that "behind the Greek influence that shaped the Hellenistic Pisidian communities there lay a tangible and important Anatolian tradition."
According to the writings of Arrian the population of Side, who traced their origins to Aeolians Cyme, had forgotten the Greek language by the time Alexander arrived at the city in 334 BC. There are Numismatic and stone inscriptions that attest to a unique script from the region but the language has only been partially deciphered.
The twentieth century witnessed a lively debate over the extent of Hellenisation in the Levant, particularly among the ancient Jews, which has continued until today. Interpretations on the rise of Early Christianity, which was applied most famously by Rudolf Bultmann, used to see Judaism as largely unaffected by Hellenism, and the Judaism of the diaspora was thought to have succumbed thoroughly to its influences. Bultmann thus argued that Christianity arose almost completely within those Hellenistic confines and should be read against that background, as opposed to a more traditional Jewish background. With the publication of Martin Hengel's two-volume study Hellenism and Judaism (1974, German original 1972) and subsequent studies Jews, Greeks and Barbarians: Aspects of the Hellenisation of Judaism in the pre-Christian Period (1980, German original 1976) and The 'Hellenisation' of Judaea in the First Century after Christ (1989, German original 1989), the tide began to turn decisively. Hengel argued that virtually all of Judaism was highly Hellenised well before the beginning of the Christian era, and even the Greek language was well known throughout the cities and even the smaller towns of Jewish Palestine. Scholars have continued to nuance Hengel's views, but almost all believe that strong Hellenistic influences were throughout the Levant, even among the conservative Jewish communities, which were the most nationalistic.
In his introduction to the 1964 book Meditations, Anglican priest Maxwell Staniforth discussed the profound influence of Stoicism on Christianity:
The process of the change of toponyms in modern Greece has been described as a process of Hellenisation. A modern use is in connection with policies pursuing "cultural harmonization and education of the linguistic minorities resident within the modern Greek state" - the Hellenisation of minority groups in modern Greece.. The term Hellenisation (or Hellenization) is also used in the context of Greek opposition to the use of the Slavic dialects of Greece.
In 1870, the Greek government abolished all Italian schools in the Ionian islands, which had been annexed to Greece six years earlier. That led to the diminution of the community of Corfiot Italians, which had lived in Corfu since the Middle Ages; by the 1940s, there were only 400 Corfiot Italians left..
There are no monolingual Arvanitika-speakers, as all are today bilingual in Greek. However, while Arvanites are bilingual in Greek and Arvanitika, Arvanitika is considered an endangered language as it is in a state of attrition due to the large-scale language shift towards Greek among the descendants of Arvanitika-speakers in recent decades, becoming monolingual Greek speakers in the end,Salminen (1993) lists it as "seriously endangered" in the Unesco Red Book of Endangered Languages. ([3]). See also Sasse (1992) and Tsitsipis (1981). and since Arvanitika is almost exclusively a spoken language, Arvanites also no longer have practical affiliation with the Standard Albanian language used in Albania, as they do not use this form in writing or in media.
Phrygia
The latest dateable coins found at the Phrygian capital of Gordion are from the 2nd century BC. Finds from the abandoned Hellenistic era settlement include imported and locally produced imitation Greek-style terracotta figurines and ceramics. Inscriptions show that some of the inhabitants had Greek names, while others had Anatolian or possibly Celts names.
Many cult objects were Hellenised during the Hellenistic period, but worship of traditional deities like the Phrygian mother goddess persisted.. Greek cults attested to include Hermes, Kybele, the Muses and Tyche.
Syria
Greek art and culture reached Phoenicia by way of commerce before any Greek cities were founded in Syria,. but the Hellenisation of Syrians was not widespread until it became a Roman Syria. Under Roman rule in the 1st century BC, there is evidence of Hellenistic style funerary architecture, decorative elements, mythological references, and inscriptions. However, there is a lack of evidence from Hellenistic Syria; concerning this, most scholars view it as the case that the "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"..
Bactria
The Bactrians, an Iranian ethnic group who lived in Bactria (northern Afghanistan), were Hellenised during the reign of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom and soon after various tribes in northwestern regions of the Indian subcontinent underwent Hellenisation during the reign of the Indo-Greek Kingdom.
Early Christianity
The periodisation of the Hellenistic Age, between the conquests of Alexander the Great up to victory at the Battle of Actium, has been attributed to the 19th-century historian J. G. Droysen. According to this model the spread of Greek culture during this period made the rise of Christianity possible. Later, in the 20th century, scholars questioned this 19th-century paradigm for failing to account for the contributions of Semitic-speaking and other Near Eastern cultures.
Again in the doctrine of the Trinity, the ecclesiastical conception of Father, Word, and Spirit finds its germ in the different Stoic names of the Divine Unity. Thus Seneca, writing of the supreme Power which shapes the universe, states, 'This Power we sometimes call the All-ruling God, sometimes the incorporeal Wisdom, sometimes the holy Spirit, sometimes Destiny.' The Church had only to reject the last of these terms to arrive at its own acceptable definition of the Divine Nature; while the further assertion 'these three are One', which the modern mind finds paradoxical, was no more than commonplace to those familiar with Stoic notions.
Eastern Roman Empire
The Greek East was one of the two main cultural areas of the Roman Empire and began to be ruled by an autonomous imperial court in AD 286 under Diocletian. However, Rome remained the nominal capital of both parts of the empire, and Latin was the state language. When the Western Empire fell and the Roman Senate sent the regalia of the Western Emperor to the Eastern Emperor Zeno in AD 476, Constantinople (Byzantium in Ancient Greek) was recognised as the seat of the sole Emperor. A process of political Hellenisation began and led, among other reforms, to the declaration of Greek as the official language., , .
Modern times
In 1909, a commission appointed by the Greek government reported that a third of the villages of Greece should have their names changed, often because of their non-Greek origin.. In other instances, names were changed from a contemporary name of Greek origin to the ancient Greek name. Some village names were formed from a Greek root word with a foreign suffix or vice versa. Most of the name changes took place in areas populated by ethnic Greeks in which a stratum of foreign or divergent toponyms had accumulated over the centuries. However, in some parts of northern Greece, the population was not Greek-speaking, and many of the former toponyms had reflected the diverse ethnic and linguistic origins of their inhabitants.
Arvanites
Arvanites are descendants of Albanians settlers who came to the present southern Greece in the late 13th and early 14th century. With participation in the Greek War of Independence and the Greek Civil War, this has led to increasing assimilation amongst the Arvanites.Hall, Jonathan M. Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity. Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 29, . The common Orthodox Christian faith they shared with the rest of the local population was one of the main reasons that led to their assimilation. Other reasons for assimilation are large-scale internal migration to the cities and subsequent intermingling of the population. Although sociological studies of Arvanite communities still used to note an identifiable sense of a special "ethnic" identity among Arvanites, the authors did not identify or never identified a sense of 'belonging to Albania or to the Albanian nation'.Trudgill/Tzavaras (1977). Many Arvanites find the designation "Albanians" offensive as they identify nationally and ethnically as Greeks and not Albanians. Because of this, relations between Arvanites and other Albanian-speaking populations have diverged over time. During the onset of the Greek war of Independence, Arvanites fought alongside Greek revolutionaries against Muslim Albanians. For example, Arvanites participated in the 1821 Tripolitsa Massacre of Muslim Albanians,Heraclides, Alexis (2011). The essence of the Greek-Turkish rivalry: national narrative and identity. Academic Paper. The London School of Economics and Political Science. p. 15. "On the Greek side, a case in point is the atrocious onslaught of the Greeks and Hellenised Christian Albanians against the city of Tripolitza in October 1821, which is justified by the Greeks ever since as the almost natural and predictable outcome of more than ‘400 years of slavery and dudgeon’. All the other similar atrocious acts all over Peloponnese, where apparently the whole population of Muslims (Albanian and Turkish-speakers), well over twenty thousand vanished from the face of the earth within a spat of a few months in 1821 is unsaid and forgotten, a case of ethnic cleansing through sheer slaughter (St Clair 2008: 1–9, 41–46) as are the atrocities committed in Moldavia (were the "Greek Revolution" actually started in February 1821) by prince Ypsilantis." while some Muslim Albanian speakers in the region of Bardounia remained after the war, converting to Orthodoxy.Andromedas, John N. (1976). "Maniot folk culture and the ethnic mosaic in the southeast Peloponnese". Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 268. (1): 200. "In 1821, then, the ethnic mosaic of the southeastern Peloponnese (the ancient Laconia and Cynouria) consisted of Christian Tsakonians and Albanians on the east, Christian Maniats and Barduniotes, and Moslem Albanian Barduniotes in the southwest, and an ordinary Greek Christian population running between them. In 1821, with a general Greek uprising impending, rumors of a "Russo-Frankish" naval bombardment caused the "Turkish" population of the southeastern Peloponnese to seek refuge in the fortresses of Monevasia, Mystra, and Tripolitza. Indeed, the Turkobarduniotes were so panic stricken that they stampeded the Moslems of Mystra along with them into headlong flight to Tripolitza. The origin of this rumor was the firing of a salute by a sea captain named Frangias in honor of a Maniat leader known as "the Russian Knight." Some Moslems in Bardunia,’ and elsewhere, remained as converts to Christianity. Thus almost overnight the whole of the southeastern Peloponnese was cleared of "Turks" of whatever linguistic affiliation. This situation was sealed by the ultimate success of the Greek War for Independence. The Christian Albanians, identifying with their Orthodox coreligionists and with the new nationstate, gradually gave up the Albanian language, in some instances deliberately deciding not to pass it on to their children." In recent times, Arvanites have expressed mixed opinions towards recent Albanian settlers within Greece. Other Arvanites during the late 1980s and early 1990s expressed solidarity with Albanian immigrants, due to linguistic similarities and being politically leftist.Lawrence, Christopher (2007). Blood and oranges: Immigrant labor and European markets in rural Greece. Berghahn Books. pp. 85–86. "I did collect evidence that in the early years of Albanian immigration, the late 1980s, immigrants were greeted with hospitality in the upper villages. This initial friendliness seems to have been based on villagers’ feelings of solidarity with Albanians. Being both leftists and Arvanites, and speaking in fact a dialect of Albanian that was somewhat intelligible to the new migrants, many villagers had long felt a common bond with Albania." Relations too between Arvanites and other Orthodox Albanian-speaking communities such as those of Greek Epirus are mixed, as they are distrusted regarding religious matters due to a past Albanian Muslim population living amongst them.Adrian Ahmedaja (2004). " On the question of methods for studying ethnic minorities' music in the case of Greece's Arvanites and Alvanoi." In Ursula Hemetek (ed.). Manifold Identities: Studies on Music and Minorities. Cambridge Scholars Press. p. 60. "That although the Albanians in Northwest Greece are nowadays orthodox, the Arvanites still seem to distrust them because of religious matters."
See also
Notes
Citations
Sources
(2025). 9789058679796, Leuven University Press. ISBN 9789058679796
Further reading
(2015). 9789004290365, Brill. ISBN 9789004290365
External links
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