Hellenization

See also: Hellenism (disambiguation)

Hellenization (American English) or Hellenisation (British) is the historical spread of ancient Greek culture and, to a lesser extent, language, over foreign peoples conquered by Greece or brought into its sphere of influence, particularly during the Hellenistic period following the campaigns of Alexander the Great (King of Macedon 336–323 BC). The result of Hellenisation was that elements of Greek origin combined in various forms and degrees with local element; these Greek influences spread from the Mediterranean basin as far east as modern-day Pakistan. In modern times, Hellenisation has been associated with the adoption of modern Greek culture and the ethnic and cultural homogenization of Greece.

Historic usage

Classical period

A map showing the Greek territories and colonies during the Archaic period.

The concept applies to a number of other ancient historical contexts, starting with the Hellenisation of the earliest inhabitants of Greece such as the Pelasgians, the Leleges, the Lemnians, the Eteocypriots in Cyprus, Eteocretans and Minoans in Crete (prior to Classical antiquity), as well as the Sicels, Elymians, Sicani in Sicily and the Oenotrians, Brutii, Lucani, Messapii and many others in territories constituting Magna Graecia.

Hellenistic period

Map of the Macedonian Empire, circa 323 BC

Main article: Hellenistic civilization

See also: Hellenistic Judaism

During the Hellenistic period, following the death of Alexander the Great, considerable numbers of Assyrians, Jews, Egyptians, Persians, Parthians, Armenians, and a number of other ethnic groups along the Balkans, Black Sea, South-Eastern Mediterranean, Anatolia, Middle East and Central Asia were Hellenized. The Bactrians, an Iranian ethnic group who lived in Bactria (northern Afghanistan), were Hellenized during the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, and soon after various tribes in northwestern regions of the Indian subcontinent (modern Pakistan) during the Indo-Greek Kingdom. There also was Hellenisation of Thracians, Dardanians, Paeonians, and Illyrians south of the Jireček Line and even Getae.

Hellenisation during the Hellenistic period, however, had its limitations. For example, areas of southern Syria that were affected by Greek culture mostly entailed Seleucid urban centers where Greek was commonly spoken. The countryside, on the other hand, was largely unaffected since most of its inhabitants spoke Syriac and continued to maintain their native traditions. Moreover, Hellenisation did not necessarily involve assimilation of non-Greek ethnic groups since Hellenistic Greeks in regions such as Asia Minor were conscious of their ancestral lineages.

Middle Ages

Main article: Byzantine Greeks

Hellenisation can also refer to the medieval Byzantine Empire and Constantine's founding of Constantinople (Eastern Roman Empire that was Hellenized). Moreover, it can refer to the primacy of Greek culture and the Greek language after the reign of Emperor Heraclius (r. 610–641) in the 7th century.

Ottoman rule

Main article: Rum millet

Hellenisation is also the result of the higher status which the Greek culture and the Greek Orthodox Church enjoyed among the Christian Orthodox population of the Balkans during Ottoman rule.

Modern usage

Main article: Geographical name changes in Greece

See also: Grecomans

In 1909, a commission appointed by the Greek government reported that one 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 toponym. Some village names were formed from a Greek root word with a foreign suffix, or vice versa. The majority of the name changes took place in areas populated by ethnic Greeks, where a strata 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 reflect the diverse ethnic, and linguistic, origins of their inhabitants.

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 Hellenic Republic), i.e. the Hellenisation of minority groups in modern Greece.

In 1870, the Greek government abolished all Italian schools in the Ionian islands, annexed to Greece six years earlier. This led to the diminution of the community of Corfiot Italians, resident in Corfu since the Middle Ages; by the 1940s there were only four hundred Corfiot Italians left.

Modern scholarship

The twentieth century witnessed a lively debate over the extent of Hellenisation in the Levant and particularly among the ancient Jews that has continued until today. History of Religion's interpretations of the rise of early Christianity (applied most famously by Rudolf Bultmann) were wont to see Judaism as largely unaffected by Hellenism, while 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 Hellenized well before the beginning of the Christian era, and even the Greek language was well known throughout the cities and even smaller towns of Jewish Palestine. Scholars have continued to nuance Hengel's views, but very few continue to doubt the strong Hellenistic influences throughout the Levant, even among the conservative Jewish communities who were most nationalistic.

See also

• Byzantine Greeks
• Byzantine culture
• Culture of Greece
• Dehellenization
• Greek nationalism
• Greek Orthodox Church
• Hellenistic Judaism
• Hellenistic philosophy and Christianity
• History of Greece
• Koine Greek, the language of the New Testament
• Philhellenism, particularly from the mid-19th century
• Turkification

References

Sources

• Samsaris D., The Hellenisation of Thrace during the Geek and Roman Antiquity (Diss.in GreeK), Thessaloniki 1980

External links

• Waterloo Institute for Hellenistic Studies
• Richard Bulliet – History of the World to 1500 AD (Session 8) on YouTube is a 74-minute video primarily exploring the issues of Hellenisation.