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The first Greek-speaking people, called Myceneans or Mycenean-Achaeans by historians, entered present-day Greece sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age. Homer refers to "Achaeans" as the dominant tribe during the Trojan War period usually dated to the 12th–11th centuries BC, [1] [2] using Hellenes to describe a relatively small tribe ...
According to the historian Georg Busolt, the Graecians were among the first to colonize Italy (i.e., Magna Graecia) in the 9th century BC when they established the city of Cumae; they were the first Greeks with whom the Latins came into contact, which then made them adopt the name of Graeci by synecdoche as the name of the Hellenes. [2]
The Greeks or Hellenes (/ ˈ h ɛ l iː n z /; Greek: Έλληνες, Éllines) are an ethnic group and nation native to Greece, Cyprus, southern Albania, Anatolia, parts of Italy and Egypt, and to a lesser extent, other countries surrounding the Eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea.
In Greek mythology, Hellen (/ ˈ h ɛ l ɪ n /; Ancient Greek: Ἕλλην) is the eponymous progenitor of the Hellenes. He is the child of Deucalion (or Zeus) and Pyrrha, and the father of three sons, Dorus, Xuthus, and Aeolus, by whom he is the ancestor of the Greek peoples.
In the east, Greek was the dominant language, a legacy of the Hellenistic period. [9] Greek was also the language of the Christian Church and trade. [10] Most of the emperors were bilingual but had a preference for Latin in the public sphere for political reasons, a practice that first started during the Punic Wars. [11]
By the latter half of the 4th century in the Greek-speaking Eastern Empire, pagans were—paradoxically—most commonly called Hellenes (Ἕλληνες, lit. "Greeks") The word had almost entirely ceased being used in a cultural sense. [26] [27] It retained that meaning for roughly the first millennium of Christianity.
Each of the Greek ethne were said to be named in honor of their respective ancestors: Achaeus of the Achaeans, Danaus of the Danaans, Cadmus of the Cadmeans (the Thebans), Hellen of the Hellenes (not to be confused with Helen of Troy), Aeolus of the Aeolians, Ion of the Ionians, and Dorus of the Dorians.
A map of Hellenistic Greece in 200 BC, with the Kingdom of Macedonia (orange) under Philip V (r. 221–179 BC), Macedonian dependent states (dark yellow), the Seleucid Empire (bright yellow), Roman protectorates (dark green), the Kingdom of Pergamon (light green), independent states (light purple), and possessions of the Ptolemaic Empire (violet purple)