GRECIA

GREECE. – The kingdom comprising the more articulated southern part of the Balkan region, the Ionian and Aegean islands (except Imbros and Tenedos), Crete, eastern Macedonia, and western Thrace.

SUMMARY:

I. Geography

II. Prehistory and history up to Christianity

III. Religion

IV. Civil history from Christianity to the present

V. Ecclesiastical history

VI. The Septuagint

VII. Greek versions of the Bible

VIII. Literature

IX. Archaeology and art

X. Educational system.

I. GEOGRAPHY.

It is the southernmost and most insular state in Europe: 132,562 sq. km., of which 108,707 (82%) are on the mainland.

The country is almost entirely covered by mountains (Olympus 2,917 m.; Pindus 2,637 m.), between which open a few small plains, more often in the form of closed basins, which difficult communications isolate from one another. The climate is Mediterranean or sub-latitudinal, with mild and rainy winters, hot and dry summers, to which the accentuated relief, the nearby sea, and frequent breezes impart a less extreme character. Rather than forests, the calcareous mountains are covered with scrub and sparse pastures: arable land represents only 10% and tree crops 3% of the territorial surface. Agriculture remains, despite this, the basis of the Greek economy; cereals are insufficient for domestic consumption, the most important products being tobacco (first place in Europe), the olive tree, and especially the vine (currants of Corinth and sultanas of Crete). In livestock breeding, goats and sheep prevail. Fishing is of modest importance. Mineral resources are not lacking (iron, lead, silver, zinc, etc.), but their industrial exploitation is hindered, besides by a lack of capital, by an insufficiency of motive power (little lignite, modest hydroelectric capacity). The imbalance of the trade balance is mitigated by the proceeds from maritime trade, favored by a good merchant navy (1.3 million tons burden), very active especially in the eastern Mediterranean.

Regions (and provinces, or *nòmoi*)

CONTINENTAL
Insular

After the Second World War, the Italian Aegean islands were assigned to Greece (15 Sept. 1947), incorporated into the Kingdom, and divided into four provinces (Rhodes, Kalymnos, Karpathos, and Kos).

The population (7.8 million inhabitants) is 87% Greek, with Turkish, Albanian, Slavic, and Armenian minorities. A third of it is considered urban; but of the inhabited centers, only two exceed 100,000 inhabitants (Thessaloniki and Piraeus) and two exceed 50,000 (Patras and Volos), while the capital has now surpassed one million (if considered as a single unit with its port, Piraeus).

Greece has been an independent kingdom since 1830 (with a republican interlude in 1923–24); the Constitution of 1911 is now under revision.

II. PREHISTORY AND HISTORY UP TO CHRISTIANITY.
FROM THE ORIGINS TO THE ROMAN CONQUEST. – Almost absent is the Paleolithic, Greek prehistory began with the Neolithic (from the mid-4th millennium B.C.), the deposits of which are located in the eastern part of the mainland, in the northeastern Peloponnese, and in Crete. Cretan civilization is notably different from that of the mainland (v. AEGEAN, RELIGION) and the latter (its principal monuments are the ceramics) can be divided with relative approximation into two epochs, the first of which, named after Sesklo in Thessaly, seems to derive from immigration, the second, named after Dimini, also in Thessaly, rather from evolution from the first, without excluding in this a new influx of peoples. The homeland of the Neolithics (Thracians, Pelasgians) would, for the first wave, be sought in Asia Minor (the itinerary would have followed the routes of Thrace and Macedonia), for the second in Mesopotamia (entry into Greece would have occurred, in any case, in the north).

Neolithic culture disappears with the Metal Age (from the mid-3rd millennium B.C.): new invaders come from the southern and eastern seas (Carians, Leleges, Cilicians of later Greek mythology), and subsequently from the north. These latter are the Achaeans (or Indo-Achaeans), who, from the 12th century B.C., constituted the Mycenaean civilization, under the cultural—and, for at least three centuries, also political—influence of Crete. Becoming a great power, the Mycenaeans (Achaeans), from the mid-15th century B.C., conquered the islands of the Aegean and Crete itself, and established themselves on the coasts of Asia Minor (Trojan War at the beginning of the 12th century B.C.).

From the revolt of Policrates of Samos, which ended miserably, Darius was given the opportunity to launch an expedition onto the mainland, an expedition that ended with Persian control over the Hellespont, Thrace, and perhaps Macedonia. A new revolt, more substantial because of the participation of the cities of Aeolis and the Hellespont, Caria, and Cyprus, led by Aristagoras of Miletus and suppressed after the naval battle of Miletus, advised Darius to attempt even the conquest of Greece. But the attempt failed with the defeat of the Persians by the Athenians and Plataeans led by Miltiades in the plain of Marathon (490). The subsequent expedition of Darius’s son and successor, Xerxes, met with the same fate. This time he had to face a league formed by Spartans, Athenians, Corinthians, and others. After the success at Thermopylae, which opened the way for the Persians to take and destroy Athens, Xerxes suffered a severe naval defeat at Salamis, a defeat that forced him to retreat. Mardonius remained in Greece, but he too was defeated and killed by the Spartans at Plataea (479), while at the same time the Greek fleet once again dispersed the Persian fleet off the promontory of Mycale. The victory was completed with the conquest of the islands and Greek cities of Asia Minor (Cimon’s victory on the Eurymedon, c. 469), and was sanctioned by the Peace of Callias (c. 448), by which Xerxes’ successor, Artaxerxes, recognized the independence of the Asian colonies. Meanwhile, Greek dominion was consolidating in Sicily and southern Italy at the expense of the Carthaginians and Etruscans.

Meanwhile, Athens, to which command of the war had been entrusted shortly after the battles of Plataea and Mycale by the Delian League (478)—a league in which the Peloponnesians participated and in which the individual cities held the position of autonomous federates, providing ships and financial contributions—by virtue of this very preeminence within the League was moving toward becoming a great power. After the battle of the Eurymedon, the League, composed of Euboea, the Ionic Cyclades, the Ionic and Aeolic cities of Asia Minor, those of the Hellespont, the Propontis, the Thracian and Macedonian coast, Lydia, and Caria, slowly transformed into the Athenian Empire, and Athens, now conscious of its position as a dominator, entered into conflict with Sparta. United with those of Thebes, the Spartans defeated the Athenians at Tanagra (457). Athens quickly concluded an armistice with Sparta in order to devote itself to the subjugation of Boeotia and other regions of central Greece. But when Boeotia rebelled again and the Athenians were defeated at Coronea (447), central Greece regained its independence. After suppressing a subsequent revolt led by Euboea, Athens concluded a thirty-year peace with Sparta (446–45), by which the status quo between the two adversaries was recognized. Hostilities resumed in 431: on one side Athens with a few allies, on the other Sparta with the Peloponnese, Megara, Boeotia, Phocis, Locris, and the Corinthian colonies of the Ionian Sea, a very large following that Sparta had managed to assemble by positioning itself as the champion of the oppressed. The war had fluctuating fortunes and concluded in 421 (Peace of Nicias) with a new recognition of the prewar status quo. This was once again disturbed by the outbreak of a conflict between the Athenian colonies of Magna Graecia and Syracuse. Athens and Sparta intervened against each other, and the campaign ended disastrously for the Athenians (413), also giving the subject Ionic cities the opportunity to rebel with the help of Darius II of Persia and the Spartans. The fortunes of war were initially favorable to the Athenians (naval battle of Cyzicus, 410), but soon the Spartans recovered at Notium (407), and, though defeated at the Arginusae (406), they were able to definitively defeat the Athenians at Aegospotami (405). The war ended in 404, sanctioning Sparta’s clear predominance in the Greek world. It was a change of masters, not liberation from Athenian tyranny, as the cities that had turned to Sparta for help had hoped. Hence new discontent, which Sparta did not bother to quell, indeed spoiling its relations with Persia and breaking them off altogether to aid the Ionic cities threatened by Tissaphernes. The Persians were defeated at Sardis (395). Meanwhile, an anti-Spartan league was forming in Greece, favored by the Persians, which included Boeotia, Athens, Corinth, and Argos, as well as Sparta’s former allies in central and northern Greece. After the league was defeated at Coronea (394), Spartan victory was undermined by the naval defeat suffered shortly before at Cnidus, an outcome of Persian action. All then abandoned Sparta, and Athens, with Persian help, was able to reconstitute part of its empire. But two powers could obviously not coexist in Greece, and a new clash therefore loomed between Sparta and Athens. This time the Persians entered the conflict as moderators, obtaining with the Peace of Antalcidas dominion over the Greek cities of Asia Minor, the dissolution of all leagues except the Peloponnesian, and the reaffirmation of the autonomy of the individual Greek states. Sparta, advantaged by this situation, sought in the following years to extend its power at the expense of Thebes. When this plan initially succeeded, a war arose between Spartans and Thebans, the latter supported by a league in which the Athenians also participated. After the Spartan fleet was defeated at Naxos (376), Athenian power revived in parallel with that of Thebes, and the Athenians, jealous of it, sought to draw closer to the Spartans. But when the Spartans were defeated in 371 at Leuctra by the Theban Epaminondas, the Athenians emerged from the conflict weakened. To complete the work of conquest, Epaminondas attempted an expedition in 362 but fell at the head of his troops. Thus ended the Theban hegemony, and a general peace was concluded in which “Sparta and Athens remained weakened, the Peloponnesian League broken, and Greece disorganized.”

While the peninsula was tormented by continual conflicts, to the north the Macedonian state was forming. Having ascended the throne, Philip II (360) turned his attention to the conquest of Greece. Philip began hostilities in 357 by occupying Amphipolis in Thrace and continued the campaign for several years, bringing it to a conclusion when in 349 he turned against Athens. The Macedonians initially succeeded in officially entering the Greek world (346), then defeated a Boeotian League at Chaeronea (338), and finally concluded the Peace of Demades with the Athenians, by which Philip remained the effective master of the peninsula. He was then preparing to begin an expedition against Persia when he was assassinated (336). He was succeeded by his son Alexander the Great. The stages of

culture were spreading, indeed animating the entire Mediterranean world that had become Roman (v. also HELLENISM).

Mario Camozzini

Greek religion arose from the fusion of the culture of the Aryan-European invaders with that of the indigenous peoples, which, according to a current but conventional expression, is called Mediterranean (for the Cretan, Minoan territories). Beyond its literal meaning, however, this classification has no deeper significance and resolves none of the problems that an attempt to penetrate the inner nature of Greek religion poses to the scholar.

It is true that the Aryo-European civilization was of a patriarchal type and the Mediterranean civilization of a matriarchal type, but it is equally true that the terms “patriarchate” and “matriarchate,” when applied not to a culture known in its elements and development, indicate simply a category with very broad limits within which notable differences may be found—and indeed are found—which are realized in the process of individuation of those cultures that, in a very broad sense, may be said to fall within the aforementioned categories. Thus the Aryo-European culture was evidently a well-defined type of patriarchal culture; yet to the period before the Diaspora, that is, to the entire age in which there existed only a “pure” Aryo-European, it is not possible to apply a priori the categories of a patriarchate constructed for the most part on the elements furnished by the so-called “primitive” peoples of today. The same holds for Minoan culture, and this observation serves to highlight the difficulty of a historical understanding of Greek religion—a religion that becomes appreciable only in the historical age, when literature begins, and yet does not present itself as a complex of “primitive” beliefs and norms, but rather as a whole already fixed by a long and unknown travail. To this difficulty of a historical order is added another, equally disquieting and common to the study of many ancient religions, of a psychological order. Having been conditioned (one might almost say habituated) for about two thousand years to a religion that, though revealed, is rich in rational elements and even possesses its own philosophy, it is very difficult for moderns to approach a religion that is entirely non-rational and to understand it in its intimate essence without distorting it and without assuming, at least in the act of comprehension, an attitude of more or less sufficient criticism, justified by the conviction that that type of religiosity is “outmoded.”

A third and final preliminary difficulty presents itself to the scholar: there is no trace in Greek religion of sacred books or of a markedly religious or canonical literature. “There is not even, even in the philosophical schools, any doctrinal speculation that has taken as its object a formulary of more or less official and fixed beliefs; finally, in the Elfalde, there is no record of the activity of constructors of prophets and religious reformers” (Picard, q.V. bibliography, p. 10). Theology for the Greeks was the doctrine of the persons and works of the various gods, a doctrine that was fixed only once (by Cornutus), and which the only personality who might have systematized it (Plato) disdained.

Nevertheless, the sources for the knowledge of Greek religion are not lacking: in literature one finds historical-religious references in every author, references that have been confirmed by archaeology, epigraphy, and numismatics, which together constitute an exceedingly rich body of material for research and study.

The first author who is significant in the history of Greek religion is Homer. Within his orbit lives Hesiod, who, however—and perhaps in reaction—rejects Homeric ideals in his concern to systematize religious data in the light of his personal tendencies. The elegiac poets, the lyric poets, and the tragedians provide abundant information about myths and rites, and the specific contribution of the last is of particular importance for the knowledge of the religiosity and morality of ancient Attica (especially Aeschylus). A markedly ethical motive is discernible in Pindar, while the mythical material already treated by Aeschylus and Sophocles finds in Euripides an excessively subjective interpreter. A rationalistic concern is evident in Herodotus’ attempt to systematize religion according to a preconceived historicism, by which he was also guided in Ecphantus. But the historians, especially after Thucydides, when history becomes truly critical, are a source of great value.

Among the mythographers, who prove to be the most worthy collaborators of the poets and exegetes, besides the already cited Hesiod, are to be remembered Pherecydes, Hellanicus, in the 5th century, when mythology had in a certain sense become specialized, Herodorus, Socrates, and Stesimbrotus. Occasional mythographers are the philosophers, especially the rationalistic critics of mythological systematization, the grammarians, who use historical-religious material as a means for the explanation of ancient authors, and the historians, polygraphers, etc., of the Hellenistic age. The figurative tradition, for its part, preserves the most notable documentary value; indeed, the oldest sources on gods, heroes, and cults are constituted precisely by the material offered by archaeological discoveries, which are continually enriched by new results. Excavations at Athens, Eleusis, Olympia, Delphi, Epidaurus, Pergamum, etc., have brought to light documents of fundamental importance comparable to those furnished by numismatics (divine types, Olympic and heroic legends, festivals and ceremonies). Epigraphy, finally, provides rich material for investigation: “acts of consecration, accounts of the construction of cultic buildings—temples, treasuries, altars, etc.—sacred laws, temple chronicles, official decrees for the founding of cities or for pious associations, whether in the private cultural domain or in others connected with religion; to these are added rituals, oracles, catalogues of priestly personnel, calendars, minutes, etc.” (Picard, q.V. bibliography, p. 19). In this material, which represents in essence the entire Hellenic cultural patrimony, Greek religion is enclosed. This religion, while it does not seem to have been subject to development—for the principal beliefs found in Homer are valid for the citizen of the 5th or 4th century B.C. (it is the attitude of the individual toward religion that changes, not religion itself)—is composed, like the majority of religions, of a mythology and a cult. The subject matter of mythology, which is “a manner of expression whose place could not be taken by another because it is the only material of expression consonant with the times” (according to K. Kerényi), is the works of the divinities, in which the divine figures realize and assume their personalities. The principal of these is Zeus (q.v.), the sky god of the common Aryo-European tradition, king of gods and men. Dwelling, with his divine court, on Olympus, he is the protector of society, the family, the clan, the city, and the State.

His consort is Hera (q.v.), sister and wife, probably a pre-Hellenic divinity, as attested by her function as protectress of Argos, the localization of her most famous temple at Mycenae, and the setting of her most important myths in the Argolid. Her function is exhausted in protecting marriages and married women. Also of pre-Hellenic origin would be Athena (q.v.; cf. J. van Windekens, *Elements d'origine pélasgique dans la religion grecque*, in *Le Muséon*, 63 [1950], pp. 97 ff.), daughter of Zeus (already in the Mycenaean age she is the representation of an armed goddess, covered by a shield), who, for the Hellenic world, is the goddess of active but not exclusively martial strength: protector of cities, of artisans, of women who wish to adorn themselves, and of many other activities in which wisdom is necessary.

Brother of Zeus is Poseidon (v.), god of the sea and of all waters (springs, rivers, lakes), but also, in ancient times, lord of the earth (he was, according to a very ancient tradition, the spouse of Demeter), a divinity whose entire importance derives from the natural world; a fact that deprives him of the moral value proper to the other gods of the Greek pantheon. Alongside Zeus, the Apollo (v.), who may also be of non-Greek origin, the “pure” and “holy” par excellence; he who oversees the norms that rightly govern human coexistence, the musician, the inspirer of singers, and also the revealer of the future and the unknown. He is the brother of Artemis (v.), the goddess symbolizing feminine freedom, who is also likely of non-Greek origin, queen of the forests where she lives as a huntress and conceals her shyness, which she abandons only to assist women in childbirth (or to bring them death) or to care for newborns.

Afrodite (v.), whose homeland may be Mesopotamia, is also of non-Greek origin; she is the goddess of love, of the peace of the sea from whose foam she is born, and of tranquil navigation. All—men and gods alike—are enslaved to her arts, with the exception of Artemis, Athena, and Hestia.

Far removed, yet not estranged from the world of the Olympians, Hermes (v.), an extremely ancient divinity whose name may be connected with the heap of stones (*herma*). He is the dispenser of gifts to men, whom he protects in their gain—especially the unexpected, but also the calculated or rationally pursued, even by means not entirely lawful. He is a thief from birth; it was he who placed in the heart of woman “lies, flattering words, and deceits.” Yet he is also the protector of flocks and shepherds—a dual spirit that at once stirs unease and a sense of protection in men.

Personification of brute force, god of war as an end in itself, Ares (v.): of slight spiritual content, whose minor importance is equaled only by that of Hephaestus (v.), the god of fire and, at the same time, the artisan god who dwells in volcanoes (especially Etna), and by that of Hestia, daughter of Rhea and Cronus, the personification of the hearth. She is “represented in an imperfect human form, so much so that respect and veneration are always directed toward the hearth itself and its fire, not the goddess” (Nilsson).

Beyond these (Olympian) deities, Demeter (v.) and Dionysus (v.) attained great importance, though they were initially excluded from the official religion.

More than in mythology, the beliefs of the entire Greek nation can be discerned in its cult, which

is the outward expression of the social aspect of religion—especially in Greece, where religious practice was under state control. From the perspective of cult, the increasingly clear connection between the foundation of official religion and that of the state comes to light, so much so that Greek religion ended with the polis. Its long endurance was aided by the paradoxical stance adopted by critics of religious tradition, who flourished even during the height of Greek civilization, critics who, while disparaging the tradition, never ceased to pay homage to the very deities they assailed.

There is no trace in Greece of a priestly class, with the possible exception of the priests of Zeus at Dodona (v. DONNA, oracle of) and those serving in the mystery cults, where religious confraternities also appear outside the official religion. At Eleusis (v. ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES), the high priest and other subordinates were drawn exclusively from a particular *genos*. But nothing of this sort existed in civic religion, in which religious authority always emanated from the people, who, whether elected or chosen by lot—usually for a limited term—delegated priests to carry out the decisions of assemblies or magistrates. This did not, of course, preclude incompatibility between the priestly function and any other activity; it was sufficient that during celebrations the officiant devote himself solely to sacred duties. Some cults were presided over by priests, others by priestesses, and still others by both. On certain occasions, even civil and military authorities directed the rites.

The place of worship naturally underwent a certain evolutionary process: originally, every altar was the seat of the deity when invoked, and the primitive altar was nothing more than a rough square, round, or elliptical stone. Later, two types of sacred areas emerged: the *bōmos* and the *eschara*, while a third type, the *bothros*, served for chthonic deities. These altars were then placed at the center of a sacred precinct (*temenos*), itself surrounded by a wall (*peribolos*) and enclosed within the temple, which thus became the true residence of the deity. The cult image, which has a table for offerings before it, is placed in a cella (*naos*), sometimes containing an *adyton* that only the priest could enter, and under certain circumstances. Access to the sacred precinct was regulated by precise norms depending on the rites and deities: sometimes restricted to specific occasions, even annually, though generally daily entry was permitted.

The temple was usually dedicated to a single deity, and the most important sanctuary was originally on the acropolis—though this was likely only in the period when the acropolis was the sole enclosed temple, while open-air sacred sites are preserved: in groves, near springs, rivers, mountain peaks, etc.

Cultic practices did not differ greatly between the two areas: they included sacrifices and offerings, hymns and prayers, rites of expiation and purification. The usual practice was first to invoke the god’s presence with a *hymnos klētikos* and then perform the sacrifice. This could be bloody or bloodless, a sacrament if the deity was incorporated by the faithful through a meal, or an offering if the gift was left for the deity. Different animals were sacrificed to different deities; white animals were offered to the Olympians, black to the chthonic gods. The rite was usually performed to obtain something (as was also the case with purifications), under specific circumstances. The same applied to processions, which were especially practiced in connection with “agricultural” deities. The intensity with which a rite was performed in honor of a god is evidenced by the fact that, in the act of worship, the individual deity subsumed the entire *bothros*—a practice at least honorable.

To complete this schematic overview of Greek cult, it should be noted that rites, the calendar, and even the types of cult never extended beyond the city walls. The intensely particularistic spirit of the Greek people meant that, while beliefs were roughly uniform, the specific expression of faith and reverence toward one deity rather than another depended solely on the citizens’ discretion. Perhaps only one type of cultic organization assumed pan-Hellenic significance: the oracle. In the earliest times, that of Dodona in northern Greece, “which could have guided the migrations of the Dorians,” and in later ages, that of Delphi (v.). Here Apollo was venerated, having likely supplanted an autochthonous deity, and at a certain point became a common meeting ground for all Greeks. From Delphic Apollo arose the traditions of the Seven Sages and the collection of Delphic maxims, the poetry of Pindar, and all that radiance of wisdom emanating from Apollo’s spiritual equilibrium: here Socrates found his γνῶθι σεαυτόν.

Among the official festivals of the Athenian calendar, the following should be remembered: in honor of Zeus, the **Dúpólie** (v.); in honor of Athena, the **Pánòpsie** (v.); in honor of Apollo, the **Targhele** (v.), the **Muniche** (v.), the **Brauronic** (v.), and the **Tauropole** (v.) in honor of Artemis, among others.

Alongside the official religion, of which poets, philosophers, historians, and polygraphers were the spokesmen, a "popular religiosity" can be discerned in Greece, which, though not ceasing to exist alongside civic religion, would rise to notable sublimation. Disregarding the mysteries (v.), the culmination—despite their very ancient origin—of popular religiosity, traces of less precise beliefs and practices can be ascertained especially through Pausanias. In his *Periegésis*, mention is made of stones (ἐποὶ λίθοι), perhaps originally believed to possess magical powers and later associated with some deity; of the veneration of trees (e.g., the olive on the Acropolis of Athens) and their connection to specific deities (Zeus, Dionysus, Artemis, etc.); of an original theriomorphism, evidenced both by the epithets borne by some gods in historical times and in myths where deities transform into animals or in cults where the priest bears the name of an animal. More striking elements of popular religiosity are rites of clearly magical character: those to summon rain; annual sacrifices to the Winds, the Clouds, the Thunders; rites intended to ensure the fertility of the earth and of humans, and so forth.

To the magical sphere also belongs a series of beliefs involving rites of elimination, centered around a kind of maleficent fluid (μᾶσμα) that could emanate from persons and things under certain circumstances. This idea gave rise to the formation of concepts of the pure and the impure, though the boundary between them remained rather fluid. It is certain that whoever has approached certain persons or things, or performed certain acts, is invested by the fluid emanating from them and must be purified. This is particularly the case in precise circumstances: sacrifices, for example, had to be offered ἀγνῶς καὶ ἀνδραφός. The μᾶσμα had to be removed if it emanated from having shed blood or having been touched by it; from having attended a funeral when a woman was of childbearing age; from having approached a pregnant or menstruating woman; from the physical impurity arising from sexual intercourse; from having committed a crime or having approached the guilty party, and so on. The practices to free oneself from the μᾶσμα were varied: lustrations with water, fire, fumigations served this purpose, as is also attested by the presence of a water basin at the entrance of temples, so that one might purify oneself before entering, since one could have been struck by the μᾶσμα without knowing it; and, on the other hand, the μᾶσμα could be transferred to an animal, a person, or an object.

The characteristic of all these rites has led some to speak of a certain "pre-deism," not meaning by this that they belong to a stage of Greek religion in which gods do not appear, but that they do not imply any god, the implication not being essential to the rite. It is rather the idea of taboo that is expressed in the belief "in supernatural forces, beneficial or harmful, that act by contact or contagion; one seeks to capture directly the good forces as to repel or destroy the bad ones."

In the primitive religious environment, ancestor worship (v. degli; DEFUNTI, venerazione dei) must also have flourished, from which derives the cult of the hero (v.), as revealed by the mystery cults, which, perhaps originally "agricultural" rites, touch upon the most distant times, persist alongside civic religion, and later blossom into the great Orphic and Eleusinian manifestations. A continuity of relations between the deceased and the living is attested by the annual festival celebrated in honor of the dead: on that day, the deceased visited the living and remained with them, returning at evening to their gloomy abode. Here arises the idea of the soul surviving death and represented in material form, often in the guise of an animal, such as the serpent or a bird. Yet the cult of the deceased was rendered as if he continued to maintain a corporeal form, even after the introduction of cremation, a practice that might have been expected to lead to a more spiritual conception.

As already noted, Greek religion dissolved with the dissolution of the political unity of the country. The dispersion of Hellenic culture throughout the Mediterranean world and the ease with which the Greeks identified their deities with those of foreign lands led to the loss of the genuine character of the deities themselves and of the cults connected with them. Moreover, with Alexander’s expedition, new cults were introduced, and to these the now skeptical populace turned, as they did to the mystery cults—Greek, to be sure, but placed outside official religion, which was increasingly neglected in their favor (v. ELKENISMO).

**

IV. CIVIL HISTORY FROM CHRISTIANITY TO THE PRESENT.

### I. IMPERIAL ERA.
From the beginning of the imperial era, Greece, devastated in its territory—where the last battles of the Republic had been fought (Pharsalus, Philippi, Actium)—and decimated in population, impoverished in resources (Strabo, in Book VIII of his *Geography*, provides a pitiable account), was able to greet its restoration with the advent of Augustus to the Empire. In 27 B.C., he detached the Peloponnese from Macedonia, reconstituted local administrations, especially those with pan-Hellenic significance, such as the Amphictyony of Delphi, and established new ones, such as that for the populations of Achaea, with its seat in Argos, headed by an "elladarch," a symbolic resurrection of the ancient Achaean League; and he revived the Areopagus, though substituting election for the former sortition.

It was Rome’s policy to be generous with local autonomies while centralizing general governance in imperial hands, the titular head of which was of senatorial appointment. Athens, Sparta, and Rhodes enjoyed the privilege of free cities, exempt from the control of the Roman governor.

During the first two centuries of the Empire, the history of Greece presents no events of particular note. The life of the country was entirely absorbed by administrative affairs and municipal rivalries, bound to the memory of its glorious past, and reluctant to contribute its men to the governance of the Empire, even after the Edict of Caracalla granted Roman citizenship to the Greeks. Hellenism was felt most keenly in the celebration of the Olympic Games, a traditional symbol of Panhellenism that had been held without interruption since 776 BC (and from the 4th century BC also served to fix the calendar) until AD 393, when Theodosius I forbade their further celebration.

Religiously, apart from Corinth, which was destroyed by Sulla and rebuilt by Caesar through the influx of foreign colonists, there was a blending of Latin and Greek elements, despite the sympathy that the emperors showed toward Greece. Claudius (d. 54), steeped in Hellenism, did not stint his favor toward it; Nero (d. 68) won easy laurels there; Hadrian (d. 138) spent long periods in Athens, in 131 dedicated the new Olympieion, and founded in the city a common assembly (synedrion) of the Greeks around the temple he had built to Zeus Panhellenios, with an attached imperial cult, a priestly college, festivals, and games.

But in the 3rd century, during the crisis of the Empire, the tranquility of the region began to be disturbed. Under Decius (d. 251), the Goths threatened its frontiers, so much so that under Valerian (d. 260) the walls of Athens had to be raised, and in 267, under Gallienus (d. 268), the city was occupied by Goths and Heruli, who were driven back by the Greek general Dexippus. In 396 it appeared again before Athens; it did not attack the city because it was terrified by the statue of Athena Promachos dominating the Acropolis, but it destroyed the sanctuary of Eleusis (395) and devastated the Peloponnese, from which Stilicho drove it back.

The provincial organization established by Augustus lasted until the reform of Diocletian, who assigned Greece, under the name of Achaea, to the praetorian prefect of Illyricum. The only survivor of classicism was the University of Athens, faithful to traditional Platonism, which remained alive in its realistic but Neoplatonic interpretation, hostile to Christianity. Its closure, ordered by Justinian in 529, marked the death of cultural paganism in Greece.

II. MIDDLE AGES

Under Byzantine rule, which began with the foundation of Constantinople (330) and took on its specific character under Justinian (527–565), Greece’s position became secondary. By virtue of the division into themata, which Diocletian had already applied in the provinces of Ravenna and Africa—whereby civil and military administration, which Diocletian had entrusted to separate officials, was once again united under a single governor (strategos)—the province of Achaea was abolished and replaced by two districts: 1. Hellas, which included Attica, Boeotia, Phocis, Locris, and Thessaly, with Thebes as the residence of the strategos; 2. Peloponnese, with its seat at Corinth.

Invasions from the north by the Vandals (467–477) and Slavs (549, 588) in the Peloponnese, where the latter eventually settled permanently, altered the ethnic composition of the population, though the Greeks, with their superior culture, managed to absorb the predominant Slavic element. The ancient cities were reduced to villages, and large estates spread over lands once cultivated. These dire conditions of the Greek people culminated in an open rebellion, soon suppressed, which broke out in Athens in 727, when Leo III the Isaurian began the iconoclastic struggle. Nor did Greece’s tribulations cease there, for in 746–747 a severe plague depopulated Athens; the country had to endure continuous struggles to stem the progressive Slavic invasion of its territory; the raids carried out by Muslim Arabs, who had settled in Crete since 823, against the islands and coasts of Greece; and the invasion of the Bulgars, whom Basil II, known as the Bulgar-Slayer, defeated near Athens in 1018, as well as the sack of Acarnania and Aetolia by Roger II of Sicily in 1147–49, who occupied the two commercial centers of Corinth and Thebes.

The conquest of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade (1204) brought profound upheaval to Greece, which the Latin leaders, especially from France, occupied and subjected to the feudal system. Thus arose the Principality of Morea, ruled by the dynasty of Geoffrey of Villehardouin, the Duchy of Athens, which passed from Boniface III of Montferrat to Otto de la Roche, Walter of Brienne, and finally to the Acciaioli of Florence. Nor should we forget the commercial and political relations that, due to the importance of the Adriatic coast, southern Italy always maintained with Greece; so much so that the catastrophe of Constantinople in 1453 was a catastrophe not only for the Greeks but also for Latinity, which was excluded, along with its Western culture, from the region.

The Ottoman Turks of Mehmed II conquered Constantinople in 1453 and took Athens in 1456. Greece was divided into six military districts: Morea, Boeotia and Attica, Thessaly, Aetolia and Acarnania, Epirus, and Euboea. Thus its territorial unity was reconstituted, and under Turkish rule the country enjoyed a wretched but effective peace. This, however, brought no civil improvement, for the Ottoman administration, modeled on that of nomadic hordes, was like an encampment in the occupied territories, ruling by the law of the desert and ignorant of civic administration. During these long centuries of Ottoman rule, there are no internal political events to record, except for the progressive Turkish occupation, at the expense of the Venetians, of Euboea (1470), Lepanto, Coron, Modon, and Navarino (1499–1501), that is, of almost all of Greece.

Hostilities between Venetians and Turks, despite the peace treaties of 1503 and 1573, continued unabated until, in the long war from 1645 to 1669, the Venetians lost after heroic resistance the island of Crete, and in that from 1685 to 1689, the Peloponnese. It was during this war that the Parthenon, used by the Muslims as a powder magazine, was almost destroyed by a Venetian bomb launched by Francesco Morosini (27 Sept. 1687). With the help of Emperor Leopold I, Morosini was able to retake the Peloponnese, whose possession was confirmed to him by the Peace of Karlowitz (1699), but only for a few years, for in 1718, by the Peace of Passarowitz, it reverted to the Turks, without regret on the part of the Greeks, who declared they preferred the Sultan to the Venetians and the Greek patriarch of Constantinople to the Latin pope of Rome.

III. NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE

The French Revolution, by provoking the rise of nationalism everywhere, including among the Serbs, Bulgarians, and Romanians of the Balkan peninsula subject to the Turks, also aroused that of Greece, encouraged (as with the other peoples mentioned) by Russia, which since Peter the Great had always considered itself the natural protector of the Orthodox populations.

Opposition to this movement of liberation came from Austria under Metternich, who opposed, in the name of the principles of the Holy Alliance, any spirit of nationalism that, if it had prevailed, would have ended by undermining, as in fact later occurred, the Austrian state itself; but it was encouraged in a purely theoretical way by Russia, which supported secret societies (heteriae) and welcomed Greeks fleeing from Turkey into the ranks of its army and civil service; and more effectively by England, which, once the insurrection had broken out, sent its fleet to support II. The revolution broke out at Jassy at the initiative of Alessandro Ypsilantis, aide-de-camp to Tsar Alexander I, and developed in Acarnania under the leadership of P. Mauromichalis and T. Kolokotronis, with the blessing of the Archbishop of Patras, who raised the flag of the insurrection on the walls of Kalavryta, and with the effective action of M. Bozaris and the admirals Kanaris and Miaoulis.

The first effect of the insurrection was the gathering at Epidaurus on 16 January 1822 of an assembly of the insurgents, which proclaimed the independence of Greece and elected a council of five members and a senate of 59 members presided over by Demetrios Ypsilantis, brother of Alessandro. While the powers received the appeal of the insurgents with coldness, illustrious European liberals responded to the call as volunteers: suffice it to recall Lord G. Byron, who later fell at Missolonghi, and Santorre di Santarosa, who fell at Sparte. Meanwhile, to quell internal discord, Greece had established a dictatorial regime under the guidance of Count Giovanni Capodistrias (1827), formerly minister to the court of Tsar Alexander I, who was soon assassinated (1831) for his authoritarian conduct.

In defence of the Sultan, Muhammad Ali, Viceroy of Egypt, appointed for the occasion Pasha of the Morea, sent his son Ibrahim to occupy Navarino, Tripolitza, and Missolonghi (1827). The three powers most concerned in the events (France, England, and Russia) interposed their mediation, but Ibrahim, after accepting it, refused to abide by the armistice conditions; whereupon the English fleet went into action and annihilated the Egyptian fleet, thus securing Greece’s liberation from the Turks. The Treaty of Adrianople (September 1829), confirmed by the London Conference (1830), recognized the independence of Greece within the limits of the Peloponnese, Euboea, and some islands of the Archipelago, fixing the northern frontier along a line from the Gulf of Volos to that of Arta, which excluded the populous provinces of Epirus, Thessaly, and Macedonia, as well as the large islands of Crete, Rhodes, Samos, and Chios.

The crown of the new kingdom was offered to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, but upon his refusal it was offered to Otto, second son of King Ludwig I of Bavaria, who made his solemn entry into Nauplia, the provisional capital, in 1833 and established Athens as the capital of the kingdom. Owing to his system of government, too centralized along German lines, a revolution broke out in 1862 that persuaded Otto to return to Bavaria. He was succeeded by Prince George of Denmark, favoured by England, which on this occasion ceded to Greece the Ionian Islands (1864), which it had held since 1815.

The new constitution, which gave the monarchy a democratic character by recognizing the sovereignty of the people through the parliamentary system, came into force in 1864.

Under the reign of George I, Greece improved its internal condition; thanks to the two Balkan Wars, it increased its territory with the conquest of Thessalonica, achieved by Crown Prince Constantine, who ascended the throne (as Constantine XII, to link up with the last of the Palaeologi who had fallen beneath the walls of Byzantium in 1453) after his father’s assassination in Thessalonica (1913). But the prosperity attained was nullified by the events of the First World War, to which the Cretan Venizelos wished Greece to participate, against the advice of the King, who wanted neutrality, and who had to go into exile (1917), from which he was recalled following a plebiscite in 1920. But the defeat inflicted on him by the Turks in Asia Minor (1922) forced Constantine XII to a definitive abdication in 1922. He was succeeded by his other son, George II, who, following the republican revolution led by Plastiras, was compelled to abdicate in 1924.

The republican regime lasted until 1935, when the National Assembly, by an overwhelming plebiscite, recalled George to the throne. The unstable balance of parties persuaded the new prime minister, Metaxas, to adopt a dictatorial stance. Meanwhile, events drew the country into the Second World War: the Italian attack on Greece, launched from Albania, was repelled by the skilful defence of General Papagos (1940–41); the German intervention in Greece (1941); the landing of the Anglo-American allies (1944); the king’s withdrawal to England; the regency of Archbishop Damaskinos (1945); the bloody guerrilla warfare between the National Front (ELAM) and the communist-controlled Greek People’s Liberation Army (ELAS), under the leadership of Markos; the institutional plebiscite (1946) that voted for the return of the King. He died in 1947 and was succeeded by his brother Paul II. After the cession to Greece of the Dodecanese islands (1946), a treaty of friendship between Italy and Greece was signed at San Remo on 5 November 1948.

V. ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY.

I. FROM THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY TO THE 20TH CENTURY

1. Apostolic Age

The Hebrew Bible calls the Greeks “Javan” (“Ionians”). Javan was a descendant of Japheth; the Septuagint (‘Iovàn) and the Vulgate (Iavan) render his name in the genealogies (Gen. 10:2, 4; 1 Chron. 1:5, 7); elsewhere they translate it as “Hellenes” and “Greeks,” or “Hellenes” and “Greece.” In Assyrian it was said Yavan, Yavanu, Yavanu (“Ionians”). In Isa. 66:19, Javan promises to bring the Israelites to the Greeks and to “the islands.” Ezek. 27:13, 19 and Joel 3:6 (Heb. 4:6) speak of the trade in slaves, vessels, and metals that the Tyrians conducted with the Greeks. Dan. 8:21 ff. and 11:2 describe the power of the ram, or Alexander “king of the Greeks” (“first king of the Greeks”: 1 Macc. 1:1; 6:2). Even the Seleucids are “kings of the Greeks” (Dan. 10:20; Zech. 9:13; 1 Macc. 1:11; 8:18: against them the Jews ask the Romans for help to free them from the “yoke of the Greeks”).

The first political relations between the Jews and the inhabitants of Greece proper took place (1 Macc. 12:20–23) under King Areius I of Sparta (309–265 BC) and the high priest Onias I (325–300) or II (c. 265). Jonathan Maccabeus (168–142 BC) appealed to an ancient kinship between Spartans and Jews (1 Macc. 12:6, 21; 14:20; cf. 2 Macc. 5:9, and Flavius Josephus, Antiquitates Judaicae, XIV, 10, 22); Simon (142–134) renewed the alliance at Sparta’s request (1 Macc. 14:16–23).

In the “Greek” or “Hellenistic” period, which began after the conquests of Alexander the Great (d. 323 BC), Palestine, after a brief period under Ptolemaic rule, came under the “Greek” empire of the Seleucid kings of Syria.

Then among the Jews, especially under Antiochus IV (v.), the pagan customs of the "Greeks" spread, despite the resistance of the faithful (2 Macc. 4, 15; 9, 24); the Hellenistic language and Greek coins (v. DHARMA; DIDRAMMA) came into use. But the encounter of Judaism with Hellenism (v.) took place mainly in Alexandria (v.), and later had other centers in Antioch, Cyrene, Smyrna. For the Jews called "Hellenists," because they spoke Greek, diaspora (v.), Greek versions of the Bible were made, the oldest and most important of which is called the Septuagint; moreover, an important Jewish-Hellenistic literature developed, whose principal exponent was Philo (v.). At the time of the apostolic preaching, G. properly so called was the Roman province of Achaia. Conquered in 146 B.C., it was first attached to Macedonia; it was elevated to a senatorial province by Augustus in 27 B.C., with Corinth (v.) as its capital, "totius Graeciae lumen" (Cicero, Pro lege Man., 5). Of Achaia, distinct from Macedonia (Acts 20, 2), was proconsul Gallio (v. Acts 18, 12) when St. Paul arrived, fleeing from Thessalonica, to Athens and Corinth. Jewish communities and synagogues flourished there (Acts 18, 1-4); the Apostle introduced Christianity there.

The books of the New Testament mention numerous Hellenistic Jews in Jerusalem (Acts 6, 1; 9, 29): Ἑλληνιστής (from ἑλληνίζειν "to live like the Greeks" or "to speak Greek"), translated by the Vulgate (wrongly) as Graecus, is the Jew who speaks Greek (Acts 21, 37-39) because he was born or domiciled in the Greek-speaking and culturally Hellenistic world. The term "Ἕλλην (Vulg. Graecus) in the New Testament is equivalent to "pagan" (John 7, 35; Acts 11, 19; 14, 1; 18, 4; Rom. 1, 14; 16, 2, 9 ff.; 3, 9; Gal. 3, 28) in opposition to "Ioudaicos," and "Ἕλληνες" is equivalent to τὰ ἔθνη (cf. Acts 13, 47), with explicit reference to the Greco-Roman cultural world. Greek-Roman civilization and power were indeed identified with paganism (1 Cor. 1, 22-24). But in Christianity, all distinction was removed except for faith in Christ, so that there is no longer any distinction between Jews and Greeks (Rom. 10, 12; Gal. 3, 28), nor between Greeks and barbarians (Rom. 1, 14; Col. 3, 11). G. was the focus from which civilization spread throughout the ancient "oikoumene." Its philosophical and religious thought contributed indirectly and more often negatively to preparing humanity for the universal and personal Christian message. A.-J. Festugière sets forth, in a rich synthesis, the deep currents, not infrequently esoteric, that reveal the underlying struggle in the restless Greek inquiry about God, the soul, the cosmos, and the time of the appearance of Christianity.

The faith brought by St. Paul to G. developed rapidly there. St. Clement of Rome (1st century) supposes numerous communities there. Many bishops already existed there in the first three centuries. Athens became again the center of learning for the West; the pagan Academy there was closed only in 529. From the time of Constantine, most of ancient G. passed to the Prefecture of Illyricum; under Valentinian I, G. was united with the Prefecture of Italy; in 379 it passed again to the Eastern Roman Empire.

Antonino Romeo

15. Subapostolic Age

The subsequent external development of the Greek Church is manifested in the participation of its bishops in the ecumenical councils. Already at the Council of Nicaea (325) there were present 4 or 5 bishops from Macedonia and Thessaly, 3 from Achaia, 4 from the islands. At the Council of Ephesus (431) the presence of 5 bishops from Macedonia and Thessaly is noted, one of whom represented also the bishop (papal vicar) of Thessalonica, the metropolitan of Corinth with 6 suffragans, the metropolitan of Old Epirus with 2 suffragans, and the metropolitan of Rhodes with 4 suffragans. At the Seventh Ecumenical Council (787) the synodals of G. are found, namely the metropolitan of Thessalonica, that of Gortyna with 9 suffragans, the 5 bishops of the islands of Corfu, Zante, Cephalonia, Aegina, Lemnos, the metropolitan of Nicopolis (Epirus) and 3 other bishops from the Peloponnese and other Greek regions.

The entire ecclesiastical organization of Eastern Illyricum, to which the dioceses of G. were incorporated, except however the bishops of the metropolis of Rhodes, included from the end of the 9th century and even later about sixty dioceses. This development was due at least in great part to the harmony with the Roman See to which those dioceses belonged both by right and in fact until 732; to the sacrifices made in the early persecutions by martyrs such as Dionysius, Publius, Leonidas, Cyril of Crete, Demetrius, Isidore, the Ten of Crete; to the apologetic and dogmatic theology taught by the apologists Aristides and Athenagoras, by the teacher Theodore, the future archbishop of Canterbury, by Andrew of Crete, by Joseph of Thessalonica brother of St. Theodore the Studite, and by the future apostles of the Slavs, SS. Cyril and Methodius from Thessalonica; to the zeal and good example of Nicone Metanoiete (d. 998) and the founders of famous monasteries, Luke (d. 946), Athanasius the Athonite (d. 1000; V. ATHOS), and Christodulus of Patmos (d. 1093). The separation of Byzantium from the Catholic Church (v. CONSTANTINOPLE, I, II patriarchate) dragged the Greek Church into the same unhappy fate. The two ecumenical councils of Lyons (1274) and Florence and many other attempts by the popes had only temporary success. Indeed, after the refusal of union attempts, hatred against the Catholic Church often grew, as is shown by many writings of Greek controversialists. Then in the 14th century the new heresy of Palamism, propagated by Gregory Palamas, metropolitan of Thessalonica, and by his followers and successors Nilus and Nicholas Cabasilas, added a serious obstacle to union. The Latin domination, which from the 13th century embraced many parts of modern G., did little to promote union; indeed, because of the methods used by the governments, it often resulted in a boon to the dissenters, although their bishops were not officially admitted to their sees. When Latin rule ceased, the serious detriments suffered by the Catholic Church could be better ascertained, especially because of mixed marriages. A characteristic example is offered by Crete, occupied from the 13th century until 1669 by the Venetians; there arose the most anti-Catholic patriarchates such as Meletius Pegas and Cyril Lucaris. Under Turkish rule, the Greek hierarchy was able to reorganize itself again. However, its culture and influence were certainly not flourishing, mainly because of the sad condition of their patriarchs. Precisely in those times, as will be seen below, the dissident Greek Church eagerly sought and accepted the services of Catholic missionaries and the Roman See. It must not be denied, however, that even in those times, particularly with the help of Orthodox benefactors from abroad, schools were founded, e.g., on Mount Athos, in Athens, Chios, Patmos, Ioannina, Missolonghi, the Ionian Islands, etc.

After liberation from the Turks, the Greek government promoted primary and secondary schools and in 1837 founded the University of Athens with a faculty of theology. Certainly the Greek Church derived several advantages from these state institutions, but also suffered some detriments because of the liberal statolatry of the rulers of that time. The Greek Church itself underwent a transformation, inasmuch as the liberal government, with the consent of an assembly of bishops, proclaimed in 1833 the independence of the Greek Church from the Byzantine patriarchate. Other events of capital importance followed, such as the suppression of many bishops and of many male and female monasteries. On these and other difficulties V. ATENE, ARCIDIOCESI di.

Gregory XVI, in his strenuous defense of religious principles in the internal disputes of Greece (first half of the 19th century), certainly rendered services to the cause of holy freedom against statolatry. He established the Apostolic Delegation. In the second half of the 19th century the influence of Protestants, which had already begun earlier, continued; also the fact that many professors of theology had been trained in German universities, particularly under Protestant teachers, had little salutary effect. The encyclical letters of Pius IX and Leo XIII inviting dissidents to union met with strong opposition in Greece, even in the press. Nevertheless, even in those sad days the confidence of “Orthodox” parents was not lacking; they entrusted their children to Catholic institutions run by religious and nuns.

II. THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, FROM THE 13TH TO THE 20TH CENTURY

Pope Innocent III established in 1209 the Latin archbishop of Athens with 11 suffragan sees. Other Latin bishops were erected about the same time in Crete and elsewhere. Indeed, Greece at that time presented a large ecclesiastical organization. Only those few bishops who took the oath of obedience to the Pope and his representatives were allowed to remain in office. Western religious also came to the aid of souls.

Thus the monastery of Daphni came into the hands of the Cistercians. The Dominicans, Franciscans, and other religious founded residences in Greece, especially in Crete. But the conversions of Greeks were not numerous. Latin domination did not bring the native inhabitants to the Catholic faith of their lords. It was not the fault of the Church that several of the lords and even some ecclesiastics were not of exemplary conduct. A happy initiative, promoted especially after the Council of Florence, was that of attracting dissidents to the Catholic Church by means of Catholic priests of the Greek rite; indeed, perhaps the main cause of the meager results of Catholic apostolate in previous centuries was precisely Latinism. In Crete, in Methone, and in Coron strong groups of Catholics formed under priests of the Greek rite. The Catholic bishop of the Greek rite Giuseppe, who previously bore the name Giovanni Plusia, was a valiant writer and exemplary prelate, who died among his flock during the expulsion from Methone in 1500. Cardinals Bessarion and Isidore of Kiev supported with their authoritative influence the Catholics of the Byzantine rite. In the 17th century many dissident prelates of Greece addressed letters to the Roman Curia asking for help; the same was done by the Greek monasteries of Athos, Nea Mone (Chios), and Patmos. The Holy See was kind and charitable toward such supplications, although at times it showed reluctance because of some sad experiences with the Easterners. Conversions of dissident prelates were also obtained; some, however, did not persevere. In any case, the apostolate of Catholic missionaries in Greece often found trust among the “Orthodox.” The schools of the Jesuits, Capuchins, and Lazarists were attended by not a few children of dissident parents. When in the 19th century a flourishing of charitable and educational foundations with all modern equipment began in Athens, Piraeus, Thessalonica, Crete, Chios, Naxos, Syros, Santorini, Tinos, Corfu, and elsewhere, “Orthodox” parents showed the greatest confidence in these schools and in other such institutions. This has remained the case up to the present day, although attacks on Catholic works have not been lacking in the course of time. For the cultural contribution of Greek Catholics in the West, V. COLLEGI ECCLESIASTICI (IX. Greco, Pontificio).

III. IN THE 20TH CENTURY

The “Orthodox” Greek Church received a new Constitution in 1940. Until 1923 it had been governed by a permanent Synod of 5 members presided over by the archbishop of Athens. The Statute of 1923 replaced this Synod with another composed of all the bishops, leaving to the archbishop of Athens the handling of ordinary affairs. This arrangement lasted until 1925. A new Statute in 1931 established a General Assembly of all the bishops to meet at least every 3 years and a permanent Synod of 8 members. The Statute of 1940 retained these two bodies, merely reducing the Synod to 6 members, to whom was entrusted the task of electing new bishops by presenting candidates to the government, which would then choose one. Some dioceses were suppressed and others merged, so that there resulted 65 dioceses and the archdiocese of Athens, subject to the Synod of Greece, while the province of Crete, subject to the Byzantine patriarchate, numbered one metropolitan and 7 suffragan bishops.

In 1938 Archbishop Chrysostomos Papadopoulos was succeeded at his death by Chrysanthos Philippides, who in turn was succeeded in 1941 by Damaskinos, who later became regent of the Kingdom until the return of the king; he died in 1949 and was succeeded by Spyridon.

In the last 20 years the “Orthodox” Church has had tense relations with the Catholic Church and instead very friendly ones with the Protestant churches. The tension, whose cause was the arrival in Greece of numerous Catholics of the Greek rite together with their bishop after the war against Turkey (1921), has manifested itself in numerous legislative acts against “proselytism,” in the constant refusal to recognize the Latin archbishop of Athens, in the opposition of the clergy to the institution of civil marriage (the law recognizes only the “Orthodox” marriage of “Orthodox,” so that a mixed marriage “made in the Catholic Church is considered invalid”), in the new law of 1938 that explains the constitutional clauses on religion, and finally in the effective opposition to the establishment of diplomatic relations with the Holy See.

The Greek Church has been represented at all the major pan-Christian conferences (Lausanne 1927; Edinburgh 1938; Amsterdam 1948). Relations with the Anglicans are particularly close. Delegates were sent to the Lambeth Conferences of 1920, 1930, and 1948 at the invitation of the latter. In 1931, official discussions were held on doctrine and the possibility of intercommunion with Anglicans and Old Catholics. It was not until 1938, however, that the Greek Church recognized Anglican ordinations, an example later followed by other “Orthodox” Churches.

The level of clerical education in the Greek Church is, due to its great poverty, rather low. The majority of students in the theological faculty at Athens do not aspire to the priesthood but only to some career connected with the Church (e.g., chancellorship in dioceses, teaching posts in theology, most of which are held by laypeople). The adoption of the new calendar in 1924 gave rise to local dissensions that still persist.

In 1907, an association called Zōē (Life) was founded, mainly by laypeople, with a monastic-style rule for the formation of catechists and for the running of Sunday schools. It publishes a weekly newspaper of the same name. In 1938, the Christian Union of Graduates arose to elevate the level of religious life; it publishes Auxilie (Rays). After the First World War, other movements have flourished, especially through lay initiative, for religious renewal.

The situation of Latin Catholics in Greece during the 20th century has not undergone any significant changes. Catholic Action has been organized according to modern directives. In 1947, the diocese of Chios was placed under the administration of the archbishop of Naxos, and that of Santorini under that of Syros.

IV. THE GREEK RITE

Until a few years ago, this term was always used to designate the rite of the Byzantine Church observed in various regions. To distinguish the languages and countries of this rite, one spoke of Greek-Russian, Greek-Bulgarian, Greek-Georgian, Greek-Melkite (Arabic), etc. Now the expression “Byzantine rite” has become current; V. BYZANTINE, LITURGY. Placido de Meester

VI. THE KOINĒ

The Koinē (“common”) is the Greek language from the time of Alexander (c. 330 B.C.) until the Byzantine period; it is post-classical Hellenism that spread from Alexandria (q.v.) throughout the Roman world. A language of conversation and commercial relations, it lasted until A.D. 500, when the phase of Modern Greek began; it is also called “Hellenistic,” for Hellenism (ἑλληνισμός) designated the grouping of all the Greek people, beyond the barriers of individual states, into a common cultural world (400–500 B.C.). The Koinē extended to the various forms of Hellenistic literary production (inscriptions, private letters, historical and biblical works); it remained a compromise between the spoken language and the tradition of classicism.

This international language, convenient for transactions, broke up the existence of Greek dialects. The literary language, which differed noticeably from the spoken language and remained under the influence and imitation of classical Greek, from the 1st century B.C. onward strove to draw closer to the ancient classical models (Atticism); while the spoken language developed on its own, and its end result was Modern Greek. The Atticizing tendency did not affect the monastic tradition of the New Testament, although sporadic Atticization of the Synoptics can be detected in individual manuscripts or groups of manuscripts (Michaelis).

The Koinē was formed on the basis of Attic, whose phonology and inflection it mostly preserves; Doric influence is minimal or nonexistent, while the contribution of Ionic is abundant. The choice of “o” or “ō,” the vocalism of certain words, cases of aspiration, the laws of contraction, declension, and conjugation adhere, with few exceptions, to the rules of Attic; while Ionic, which penetrated only accidentally into the inflection and vocalism of the Koinē, had a greater influence on vocabulary, leaving a trace even in Modern Greek, whose core is rooted in the Koinē.

In the 4th century, inscriptions on vases, lapidary inscriptions, and formulas of oaths adopted foreign terms, especially Ionic in everyday speech and in literary compositions, Doric in epigraphy. In the 3rd and 2nd centuries, the Koinē gained ground, spread, and had its effective beginning; but already in the 3rd century B.C., Hellenistic inscriptions in Ionia show that its islands contributed to the spread of the Koinē. In the 1st century A.D. in Rhodes the spoken language was Doric, but the epigraphy was in the Koinē.

According to Thumb, Ionic poetic terms are vulgarisms due to the large number of Ionic soldiers and merchants who helped to Hellenize the East; according to Mayser, these terms are due to particularistic tendencies of certain authors of Ionic origin and to the conscious imitation of poetic language.

In the elaboration of the Koinē, foreign influences from outside the Hellenic world intervened: 1) from Phoenicia; 2) from Asia Minor (Phrygia, Lycaonia, Lydia), where the Greek element fused with the indigenous in phonetics (modifications in the vowel system, loss of labial articulation, softened consonants after a nasal, tendency to level long and short vowels, etc.); 3) from Egypt, where, however, apart from the names of months and persons, the vocabulary remained essentially Greek in matters of cult, military service, weights, measures, and coins.

Having appeared in Egypt as a superior language, rich in vocabulary and suited to convey nuances of thought, the Koinē influenced the natives, who, when they wished to revive their own language, made use of Greek letters and many Greek words.

The language of the Bible is nothing other than the “common” Greek or Koinē, as it was spoken and written in non-literary and purist circles. After the discovery of the papyri, there can be no doubt about the existence and development of a non-literary Koinē, spoken or written, then current in the Hellenic world, although it may not have been entirely identical from province to province. The language of the Bible has a certain originality only because it was used to translate Semitic originals or because of the nature of the new teaching of which it was the vehicle.

The Septuagint (q.v.) imparts a particular character to the Koinē in its version. Thus the immoderate use of forms, locutions, and phrases that are certainly Greek but whose frequency can only be explained by their coincidence with Hebrew (“accumulation” theory): secondary Hebraisms. Primary or properly so-called Hebraisms, avoided when the Hebrew locution is accommodated to the spirit of the Hellenistic language (Pentateuch), consist of forms not of the Koinē, due to the superstition of the letter (2 Kings, etc.).

The Semitisms of the New Testament are either Hebraisms (conscious or unconscious imitations of the literalism of the Septuagint) or Aramaicisms, i.e., slavish translations of oral or written Semitic sources, including conceptions rendered slavishly in Greek according to the Semitic spirit of the writer.

Latin terms entered into circulation in the East following the Roman conquest. The integrity of the Hellenistic language was not impaired by the “Latinisms” introduced into the vocabulary of the Koinē (administrative, military terms, etc.).

DBs, III, cols. 1320-69. More notable studies: A. Thumb, Die griechische Sprache im Zeitalter des Hellenismus, Strasbourg 1901; A. Deissmann, Licht vom Osten, Tübingen 1908; A. Maidhof, Zur Begriffsbestimmung der Koine besonders auf Grund des Atti- zisten Mairis (Beiträge zur historischen Syntax der griechischen Sprache, 20), Würzburg 1912; W. Michaelis, Der Attizismus und das Neue Testament, in Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, 22 (1923), pp. 91-121; R. Laqueur, Hellenismus (Schriften der hessischen Hochschulen), Giessen 1925; F.-M. Abel, Grammaire du grec biblique, Paris 1927; M. Jaquet, Grammaire du grec du Nouveau Test., 1917; H. Pernot, Etude sur la langue des Évangiles, Paris 1927; id., Observations sur la langue de la Septante, in Revue études grec., 42 (1929), pp. 411-25; P. Regard, La langue du Nouveau Test., in Revue études anciennes, 30 (1928), pp. 220-32; G. Sacco, La K. del Nuovo Testamento e la tra- smissione del Sacro Testo, Rome 1928; F. Zorell, Lexicon Grae- cum Novi Test., 2nd ed., Paris 1931; U. Holzmeister, De qui- busdam generibus Hebraismorum in textu Novi Test. occurrentibus, in Verbum Domini, 12 (1933), pp. 295-302; G. Bonaccorsi, Primi saggi di filologia neotestamentaria, I, Turin 1933; B. Botte, Grammaire grecque du Nouveau Test., Paris 1933; G. Lattey, The language of Holy Writ, in Clergy review, 6 (1933), pp. 32-45; E. Mayser, Grammatik der griech. Papyri aus der Ptolemäerzeit, Berlin-Leipzig 1933-34; J. Vergote, Het probleem van de Koine in het licht der moderne linguistiek, in Philol. stud., 6 (1934-35), pp. 81-107; G. Bardy, Hellénisme, in DBs, III, cols. 1449-53; G. Bertram, Der Sprachschatz der Septuaginta u. der des hebr. Alt. Test., in Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 16 (1939), pp. 85-101; E. C. Colwell - J. R. Mantey, A hellenistic Greek reader. Selection from the Koine of the New Test., Chicago 1939; M. Zerwick, Graecitatis biblicae cognitio, quid ad S. Scri- pturam interpretandum conferat, exemplis illustratur, Rome 1944.

Emmanuele da San Marco

VII. THE GREEK VERSIONS OF THE BIBLE

As the Greek language and culture spread throughout the civilized world (v. HELLENISM), the Jews—especially those of the Diaspora residing in Alexandria (v.)—took care to provide a translation of the Hebrew Bible that would be accessible to the Hellenistic world (v. SEPTUAGINT). However, in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, the old Alexandrian Greek version fell into disrepute among the Jews for two reasons. With the destruction of the Temple, they had lost the center of worship and thus needed a new spiritual bond of unity; they found this in subjecting world Judaism to Rabbinism. In this struggle for internal unity, the unification of the biblical text played an important role, beginning around AD 100, chiefly under the influence of the great Rabbi ‘Aqiba’ (v.), who, in order to base all Jewish oral tradition upon Holy Scripture, attributed significance to every smallest word and syllable; such hermeneutics required a fixed text. Now the Greek manuscripts of the Septuagint differed from one another in many points and also from the official Hebrew text. The resulting aversion to the Septuagint grew further due to the use that Christians made of it in their Christological controversies against the Jews. Official Judaism therefore rejected the Alexandrian Greek version. Yet the Hellenistic Jews, who did not know Hebrew, still needed a Greek version.

Thus, around AD 140, a Greek proselyte named Aquila (Aquila) produced one. He knew Greek very well and also acquired a good knowledge of Hebrew. Imbued with the hermeneutical method of Rabbi ‘Aqiba’, he sought to reproduce the official Hebrew text in Greek with the utmost precision, even in the smallest details. He accomplished this task with great skill, though not without violating the Greek language. This completely new version, independent of the Septuagint, was highly esteemed by the Jews and used for a long time in their synagogues.

Not all Jews, however, were willing to renounce the venerable Septuagint version. Therefore, shortly afterward, perhaps around AD 180, another proselyte, Theodotion by name, produced a version from the Hebrew that followed the ancient Alexandrian version as closely as possible, or rather revised it, harmonizing it with the Hebrew text. This version, less favored by the Jews than Aquila’s, was all the more esteemed by Christians.

A third interpreter, the Ebionite Symmachus, perhaps around AD 200, set about translating the Hebrew Bible, though following a different principle from his predecessors. He strove not to translate word for word, as Aquila did, but rather to convey the sense of the Hebrew phrases. He did so in good Greek, often happily adapting to the genius of the Greek idiom.

The Christians, however, still favored the Septuagint version, despite recognizing the great differences among individual manuscripts and its discrepancies from the Hebrew text. The first to attempt to remedy this inconvenience was the great Origen, who in a vast work (v. HEXAPLA) harmonized the Alexandrian text with the Hebrew text by means of the three Greek versions mentioned above, from which he took entire words and phrases to replace less accurate expressions and fill gaps in the Septuagint. These insertions, almost all drawn from Theodotion, are particularly numerous in Job and are still found, as in the oldest manuscripts, in the editions of the Septuagint, though marked in A. Rahlfs’ edition with asterisks. In the book of Daniel, Theodotion’s version nearly entirely supplanted the original Alexandrian version.

Lucian, who produced another famous recension of the Septuagint, also used the "Three," as they were commonly called, but preferably Symmachus, whose elegant Greek greatly appealed to him. Thus, many "exilara" readings—i.e., readings from the "Three"—infiltrated the manuscripts of the Septuagint to such an extent that neither Origen’s and Lucian’s work nor the subsequent history of the Septuagint text can be understood, let alone its original form critically restored, without constant comparison with the surviving fragments of these later versions.

These versions are of particular interest for their influence on our Latin Vulgate, since St. Jerome, in carrying out the difficult task of translating from the Hebrew, consulted them frequently. He held the "Three" in high esteem but placed special trust in Aquila, whom he considered "the most diligent explainer of words." From Aquila, for example, he took the overly literal expression of Moses’ "horned" face (Ex. 34:29).

Apart from these versions of the entire Old Testament, there existed other partial and anonymous versions: the Quinta, the Sexta, and perhaps even a Septima. In ancient Christian literature, mention is also made of the Syro, which is a Greek version made from the Hebrew by an unknown Syrian; the Samaritan, of which some fragments still exist; and the Hellenic.

Most of these Greek versions have been lost. Traces of them are found, for example, in the commentaries of St. Jerome and other Fathers, in the margin of Codex Marchalianus (Q), codices 86 and 710, and in the Syro-Hexaplar version. In 1875, the then-known fragments were collected and carefully edited by F. Field, though since he could not use the manuscripts, his work does not always inspire confidence. Meanwhile, new fragments have been discovered, scattered in various publications.

In Venice, there exists a manuscript containing an incomplete Greek translation of the Old Testament made from the Hebrew. It is written in ancient Greek, though the Aramaic parts of Daniel are translated into the Doric dialect. G. Mercati proved that the author of this "Venetian Greek" is Simon Atumano, Archbishop of Thebes. It was published by O. Gebhardt (Leipzig 1875), but it holds no value for textual criticism.

Isaias, ed. I. Ziegler 1939, pp. 106-15, and XIII. Duodecim Prophetae, ed. J. Ziegler 1943, pp. 102-109; E. Kantz, *A fresh Aquila fragment recovered from Philo*, in *Journ. of theol. Studies*, 47 (1948), p. 31 sqg. — 2) Other books and articles: G. Mercati, *L'età di Simmaco interprete e s. Epifanio*, Modena 1892; M. Friedmann, *Onkelos und Aquila*, Vienna 1896; A. Bludau, *Die Apokalypse und Theodotion*, Dantelberg, 1896; D. D'Acquaroli, “Il ‘1877”, pp. 1-26; G. Mercati, *D'Acquaroli frammenti exaplari sulla V° e VI° edizione greca della Bibbia* (*Studi e Testi*, 5), Rome 1901, pp. 28-46; H. B. Sweet, *An introduction to the Old Testament in Greek*, Cambridge 1902, pp. 29-56, 62 sq.; A. Rahlfs, *Quis sit*, *Sept. Unternehm.*, 7 (1915), pp. 404-12; J. Reider, *Problema tenuto a Grech-Hebrew and Hebrew-Greek Index to Aquila*, Ladelfia 1916; G. Mercati, *Se la versione dall'ebraico del codice veneto Greco VII sia Simone Atumano arcivescovo di Tebe* (*Studi e Testi*, 30), Rome 1916; A. Rahlfs, *Über Theodotion-Lesarten im NT und Aquila-Lesarten bei Justin*, in *Zeitschrift f. neun. Wissenschaft*, 20 (1921), p. 182; Th. Zahn, *Herkunft und Lehr-richtung des Bibelübersetzers Symmachus*, in *Neue kirch. Zeitschr.*, 34 (1923), pp. 197-209; W. W. Cannon, *Jerome and Symmachus, some points in the Vulgate translation of Kohelet*, in *Zeitschrift f. neun. Wissenschaft*, 45 (1928), pp. 101-99; A. E. Silverstone, *Aquila and Onkelos*, Manchester 1931; J. Ziegler, *Textkritische Notizen zu den jüngeren griechischen Übersetzungen des Buchs Isaias*, Göttingen 1939; id., *Die jüngeren griechischen Übersetzungen als Vorlagen der Vulgata in den prophetischen Schriften*, Braunsberg 1943; M. Johannesson, *Hieronymus und die jüngeren griechischen Übersetzungen des Alten Testaments*, in *Theol. Lit. Zeit.*, 73 (1948), pp. 145-52. Ernesto Vogt.

VIII. LITERATURE

### I. ANTIQUITY

At the origins stands the legend that attributes to the mythical Orpheus, priest of Apollo, and to his disciples and successors, Musaeus, Eumolpus, Linus, songs celebrating the lives of gods and heroes. The legend confirms them as representatives of religious poetry by the very fact that their memory is always linked to the cult of some deity. According to Pausanias (I, 18, 5), the Lydian Olenus composed the first hymn to Ilithyia, which the Delians used to sing during the goddess’s festivals.

Within the continuity of this tradition must be sought the origin of the 34 hymns that have come down to us under the name of Homeric hymns, of varying length and composed in different periods (8th–4th centuries BC). The longer ones exalt, in epic form, the deeds of a god and the legends relating to his life, a vivid example being the Hymn to Hermes; or they narrate the origin of a sanctuary, as in the hymns dedicated to Apollo and Demeter. The shorter ones serve simply as a prelude to a more extensive epic narrative. The descriptive element, while distinguishing the Homeric hymns from the conciseness and fervor of the Orphic ones—as Pausanias already noted (IX, 30, 12)—nevertheless does not detract from their content.

Taken as a whole, this collection may be considered the first document of religious poetry, as well as an important testimony to the cults that arose in the various centers of Greece. For Homer and Hesiod, see the respective entries.

In the 7th century BC, elegy marks the transition from epic—exhausted in the cumbersome poems of the Epic Cycle—to lyric poetry. Elegy and iambus originated among the Ionians; the former became warlike and political with Callinus and Tyrtaeus, amorous with Mimnermus, gnomic with Solon and Simonides. Archilochus of Paros, refining pre-existing popular metrical forms, expresses his bold aggressiveness in iambics, while Hipponax, in the same meters, gives vent to his often plebeian virulence.

In the Aegean islands, on Lesbos, flourished the passionate song of Sappho and the warlike verse of Alcaeus, in keeping with the Aeolian tradition of expressing every impulse of the heart in verse.

Lighter and smiling was instead the muse of Anacreon of Teos.

On the mainland, adapting to the religious character of the Dorian tribes, lyric poetry became choral, and one of the earliest melic poets was Terpander, author of severe religious hymns sung to the accompaniment of the lyre (νόμος). Other lyric poets included Alcman, a native of Sardis, a delicate writer of partheneia; the mythical Arion; and several born in Magna Graecia, such as Ibycus of Rhegium and Stesichorus of Himera. The poetic imagery of the latter came closest to epic form.

Beyond being an expression of personal sentiment, lyric poetry reflects the changed political conditions of Greece, with the rise of democratic institutions in contrast to the decline of the aristocratic ruling class. Many of these poets were exiles from their homeland, like Theognis, whose pessimistic tone cannot forget the injustice he suffered. His poetry represents a final attempt to cling rigidly to the positions of ancient noble morality. He too attributes to the gods the predestination of human fortunes (133 ff.; 1029 ff.) and submits to their will (441), yet he reveals the anxieties of his time when he asks Zeus how it is that the wicked can enjoy the same fortune as the just (373 ff.). The motif of the omniscience of the gods and the smallness of mortals before the will of divinity is also found in Pindar, though the approach is different. For Theognis, the gods represent the inevitable; for Pindar, they embody a more severe religiosity. In his work, which ideally concludes the archaic age, the Orphic demand for an order established in the hereafter—reward for the good and punishment for the wicked—is strongly felt.

By virtue of this loftiness, his lyric poetry stands apart from that of his contemporaries Simonides and Bacchylides, who were also authors of epinicia.

Pindar’s religious faith is frankly monotheistic; through the valor of athletes, the poet sings of the virtue of the individual (ἀρετή). Under penalty of decline, man must know how to preserve it, venerating the gods who granted it to him and taking care to avoid their wrath (φθόνος). He must also respect earthly laws. Even in the Homeric hymns, the invocation recurs: δίδου δάρετήν, and the core of Herodotus’ histories is this value of the Greeks, which, nourished by wisdom and observance of the laws (VII, 102, 1), enables them to defeat the brutal hordes of the Persians (VII, 103, 4), while the gods curb the ὑβρις of Xerxes, oppressor of the freedom of the Hellenes.

After the Persian Wars, in the 5th century BC, in Athens, under the enlightened leadership of Pericles, the splendor of the arts was matched by that of the various literary genres, especially tragedy and comedy, both of which originated from the cult of Dionysus. The flourishing of the school allowed for a wider dissemination of culture, which soon became a spiritual ideal.

Isocrates, one of the most celebrated leaders of the rhetorical school, would later write, admiringly, that the Greeks were now those who shared a common culture rather than those born in the same land (Paneg., 50). The sophistic preaching, which began in the middle of the century, fostered political interest, thereby encouraging individualism, pushed to its extreme by Critias. This interest in real values would be championed by historiography, which, after Herodotus' geographical and genealogical tendencies, found in Thucydides the most acute judge and investigator of human events. Studies in linguistics and rhetoric, initiated by the Syracusans Corax and Tisias, advanced prose and judicial and political eloquence. This, in the 4th century BC, reached perfection with the series of Attic orators, among whom Demosthenes excelled.

Yet, behind this undeniable stylistic and cultural progress, a crisis in religious and moral values was taking shape, of which signs could be discerned in dramatic theatre. After the severe religiosity of Aeschylus, who respected the omnipotence of the gods and the laws of the state, Sophoclean drama became more detached in its contemplation of human passions.

The characteristic concept of archaic morality, whereby children atone for the sins of their fathers—already appearing in Solon’s elegy (12-31 sg., Diehl) and deeply rooted in Aeschylus—begins to lose much of its importance in Sophocles. Even the state is called into question, and in *Antigone* the conflict appears between the codified norms of the πόλις and the unwritten laws of natural right (ἀγρὰφος νόμος). Finally, Euripides’ dramas reveal the doubt that had insinuated itself into human actions and their relationship with the divine. Comedy, moreover, openly caricatured the gods, as in Aristophanes’ *Birds*, even though this poet adhered to a conservative ideal. Satirical drama had brought onto the stage the burlesque adventures of a god, albeit a minor one, Heracles, and made him its hero.

The confusion in which Athens was embroiled at the end of its power, and which Thucydides left us a suggestive portrayal of (I, III, ch. 82-83), would find its denouement in the trial and death of Socrates, whose solitary reaction against the sophists was judged an offense to the divine values that were now being rehabilitated after having been drained from consciences. A world built solely on human values soon demonstrated its fragility, so that Plato, in the course of his philosophical speculation as well as spiritual renewal, would reject this reality and turn back toward the divine.

Plato’s work encapsulates all the experiences and aspirations of the Attic age. From the 3rd century BC onward, as a result of Alexander’s conquests, Greek civilization, in contact with the countries of the East, absorbed and transformed its various spiritual currents. The rise of new cities, foremost among them Alexandria and Antioch, the economic progress of the kingdoms of Egypt and Syria, the emergence of a bourgeois class devoted to trade and commerce, and the spread of a common language (κοινή), were among the elements of a civilization no longer purely Greek but diffused throughout the countries of the Mediterranean, which Droysen aptly termed Hellenistic.

Athens, having declined from its former political and commercial prestige, became a city of rhetoricians, where people went to specialize. Even religion was transformed by the influx of numerous Egyptian and Eastern deities, and people now turned to those gods they believed best suited to their protection. Magical papyri give a clear idea of the religious syncretism that was forming and of the turbid blending of different rites. The individual tended to withdraw—“live in obscurity,” Epicurean ethics recommended—and to avoid any spiritual conflict by following a morality based on practical utility. Even fortune (τύχη) was understood not as the protector of the community but of the individual. In light of these factors, one can understand how literature acquired a particular expression, shifting across different literary genres. Old forms of elegy, tragedy, and epic revived, but their content was different.

Callimachus’ religious hymns were composed with refined stylistic technique, artfully expanded with mythological imagery, yet lacked genuine and spontaneous feeling. Apollonius of Rhodes, with his *Argonautica*, introduced the theme of love into epic. In general, art conformed to human reality, capturing its immediate value without transfiguring II. Thus, Menander’s comedies capture the petty-bourgeois situations of his age in their intimacy, while Herodas’ mimes depict the most trite and vulgar aspects of life. The latter almost correlate with the sculpture of the period, which was not averse to depicting wrinkled fishermen or drunken old women. Only Theocritus’ idylls constitute an exception, even if the bucolic reality he idealizes sometimes lapses into preciosity.

New literary forms emerged, such as the novel, while the epigram, favored for its brevity, testifies to a more refined predilection for a state of mind skillfully captured with smoothness and conciseness. The greatest merit of the Hellenistic age lies in the fervor of scientific and philological studies, greatly advanced by the foundation of the Museum of Alexandria, through the work of its scholarly librarians who edited classical texts and laid, with Herodotus and Aristarchus, the foundations of the Homeric Question. Geographical and ethnographical studies attained the status of science, particularly with Eratosthenes and later Posidonius. Alongside national histories, those of the peoples of the East were compiled, such as Megasthenes’ account of the peoples of India and Hecataeus of Abdera’s history of ancient Egypt, written with philosophical and scholarly intent. Polybius of Megalopolis, the greatest of the Hellenistic historians and living in the Roman age, gave his histories a pragmatic direction, meaning that they focused on political actions; he himself, criticizing the method of Timaeus of Tauromenium, stated that one cannot fulfill the office of historian if one relies solely on books and lacks political and military experience and direct knowledge of places (XII, 25 h).

With Roman domination (1st–2nd century AD), literature continued along the paths already laid out by the flourishing activity of the Hellenistic period, but without any real conviction. Among the many authors who abounded in this period across various literary genres, Plutarch stands out with his fifty biographies of men illustrious in Greek and Roman history, written with didactic and moralizing intent; the unknown author of *Peri Hypsous*, a fine aesthetic treatise; and Longus the Sophist’s pastoral romance *Daphnis and Chloe*. A learned rhetorical movement known as the “Second Sophistic” had as its most notable representative Dio of Prusa, called Chrysostom, author of numerous speeches. The last representative of this declining Hellenism was Lucian of Samosata, with his brilliant, irreverent, and irreligious works. In his *Dialogues*, the names of the gods serve no purpose other than as literary pretexts. The times were now ripe, and according to tradition, the voice of the Apostle Paul had already risen in the Areopagus of Athens to hasten its conclusion.

Among the works that consider Greek literary expression under the urgency of various moral problems, the following are significant: I. Girard, Le sentiment religieux en Grèce d'Homère à Eschyle, Paris 1869; R. Hirzel, Themis, Dike und Verwandte, Leipzig 1907; U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, Der Glaube der Hellenen, 2 vols., Berlin 1935; W. Jaeger, Paideia, I, Berlin 1935, II-III, Oxford 1943-44 (Italian trans. I vol., Florence 1936); W. Nestle, Vom Mythos zum Logos, Stuttgart 1942; F. Heinemann, Nomos und Physi, Basel 1945; C. Del Grande, Hybris da Omero a Cleante, Naples 1947; H. I. Marrou, Histoire de l'éducation dans l'antiquité, Paris 1948; W. Chase Greene, Moira, Fate, Good, Evil in Greek thought, Cambridge (Mass.) 1948; M. P. Nilsson, Grekish Religiositet, Italian trans. edited by C. Diano, Florence 1949, Lanfranco Fiore.

II. MIDDLE AGES

The period of transition between the decline of the imperial age and the Byzantine age is called the “late empire” and runs from Constantine to Justinian. It is a transitional period in which, among writers of Greek language, historians such as Eusebius of Caesarea (v.), Socrates and Sozomenus stand out; as erudite scholars, Stobaeus; as rhetoricians, Libanius and Julian the Apostate; as orators, the great Cappadocian Fathers St. Basil (v.), St. Gregory Nazianzen (v.), St. Gregory of Nyssa (v.); as philosophers, Proclus and the epigoni of the Athenian school; as poets, Nonnus of Panopolis, Quintus Smyrnaeus and Musaeus.

Justinian is the emperor who stamps his mark on Byzantine civilization, which is revealed in his Christian conception, grandiose in the monuments of art, rigidly theological in the explication of religious truth, hostile to free philosophical inquiry, indifferent to rigorous historical investigation, yet conscious of the five centuries of Christian thought and practice that had shaped the culture of the empire.

Byzantine literature is characterized by the contrast between respect for ancient form and the new currents brought by Christian thought. The Byzantines, in fact, read the ancient authors extensively, especially the Alexandrians, who were more erudite than inspired, and thus tended to place new content within ancient forms. This constitution of various elements—namely, the solemn Roman character of the Empire, upon which administrative life and court customs were modeled, and the Christian vision in thought and practice, of a Christianity already mature and dramatically fixed, which had become, indeed, with its creed the token of unity and recognition among the various Christian peoples that made up the Empire—projected toward the East, took from it religious manifestations of heavy asceticism mingled with strange external displays, and politically, servile obedience to the despot who ruled in Byzantium.

Disregarding the transitional period, Greek medieval or Byzantine literature can be divided into three periods: 1) from Justinian (6th century) to the rise of the Macedonian dynasty (9th century); 2) the age of the Macedonian emperors (10th–12th centuries); 3) the age of the Comneni and the Palaeologi (12th–15th centuries), under the last of whom Byzantium fell into the hands of the Turks.

For the strictly theological and moral production of these three ages V. BYZANTINE, LITERATURE. Here a brief panoramic overview of non-ecclesiastical literature will be given, arranged according to the above periods, referring to individual entries for the most important figures.

1. In the age of Justinian, historians stand in the foreground. Procopius (d. c. 562; v.), author of the History of the Wars of Justinian: Persian, Vandalic, Gothic, in 8 books; Agathias of Myrina (d. 582), who continued the history from the year 552, where Procopius had left off, to 558, and was in turn followed by Menander Protector (mid-6th century) up to 582; John Malalas of Antioch (mid-6th century), author of a Chronography from the origins of the world to the death of Justinian.

Probably also to be placed in the age of Justinian is the hymnographer St. Romanus (v.) of Emesa in Syria, to whom we owe those admirable kontakia, poems structured on a fixed schema (irmos) with non-quantitative but syllabic meter. Romanus was followed by later melodes, authors of canons rather than kontakia, among whom the most notable are St. John Damascene (v.) and his brother Cosmas the Singer, Theodore the Studite (v.) and his brother Joseph of Thessalonica. Epigram, already the glory of the Alexandrian poets, also flourished in the 6th century, but naturally transformed by Christianity, which freed it from the suffocating imitation of mythology and allowed freer personal expression. The most celebrated epigrammatists of the time are Rufinus, Paul the Silentiary, and the scholastic Synesius.

2. The age of the Isaurian emperors, entirely absorbed by the iconoclastic controversy, did not favor the development of letters; but with the advent of the Macedonian dynasty, which inaugurated the most glorious period of Byzantine history, a great revival also occurred in literature. A distinguished representative is Photius (d. 897). Emperor Constantine VII (d. 959) is rather an erudite compiler to whom we owe the books De thematibus, De administrando imperio, valuable for the history of the Slavic peoples, the Life of the grandfather Basil I, De caeremoniis aulae Byzantinae. To the Suda (or Suidas) we owe an encyclopedic lexicon full of information of historical, geographical, and philological interest.

It was Constantine VII who ordered the great logothete Symeon to translate into Greek from various languages (hence the epithet Metaphrastes) the lives of the most notable saints; their often romantic content revives the religious and social environment of Constantinople. From the age of Emperor John Tzimisces (969–976) comes the Philopatris, an anti-Arab dialogue of nationalistic spirit, imitating Lucan.

Special mention must be made of the popular poem entitled Digenis Akritas. The protagonist of the anonymous poem is called Digenis because he was born of a Muslim emir and a Greek princess and bears the epithet Akritas because his task is to defend the frontier (akra) of the Empire to the east. According to the popular diffusion of the epic, he is exceedingly handsome, a valiant warrior, a lover beloved of a maiden whom he abducts and makes his wife, honored by a visit from the emperor, and dies at thirty-three in a glorious death. This epic is a mirror of the brilliant and eventful life led by Byzantine barons on the eastern borders of the Empire.

The 11th century was that of the Comnenian emperors, which began with Isaac I (d. 1059) and ended with Andronicus I (d. 1185). During the 126 years of their rule, thanks to temporarily improved political and military conditions, a literary movement occurred which, on the one hand, manifested the authenticated influence of Latin Christendom, whose cultural ideal King Manuel I espoused, and on the other, a return to the models of the past, a revival of the great figures of classical poets and philosophers, and the use in composition of a purer language than the usual (Atticism).

Anna Comnena (1083–d. date unknown), eldest daughter of Alexius I, wife of the Comnenian historian Nicephorus Bryennius (d. 1137; whose narrative stops at 1079), recounts in the Alexiad, a 15-book poem, the military exploits carried out by her father against external enemies from 1069 to 1118. The poem is rich in classical reminiscences, historically documented, Atticizing in style and language.

Special mention must be made of Michael Psellus (d. 1078; v.), a versatile polygraph, secretary to four emperors, steeped in Hellenic culture, whose literary output (exegetical works on Greek texts, philosophical, juridical, and historical questions, funeral orations, letters, and encomia of the living) is of considerable value, especially where it recalls Greek antiquity. His Chronographia, which spans from 976 to 1077, besides its historical merit, also possesses a literary quality of the first order.

In the 12th century, neither historians nor philologists were lacking. Among the historians should be recalled George Cedrenus (late 11th century), author of a Chronicle from the origins to Isaac Comnenus, and John Zonaras (v.), who wrote a Universal History from Adam to Alexius Comnenus. As philologists and scholars, Eustathius, bishop of Thessalonica, commentator on Pindar and the two Homeric poems—this last work being particularly valuable as it preserves more ancient scholia—should be mentioned, as well as John Tzetzes (d. after 1158), who composed in political verse (i.e., popular, plebeian verse based not on quantity but on the number of syllables and on final accent) a series of stories of various content that were later divided into twelve groups of a thousand lines each, whence the name Chiliades.

The 13th century, disastrous for Byzantium, opened with the foundation of the Latin Empire of Constantinople, an era certainly not conducive to the development of letters. Particular mention must be made, also because he came from Athens, of the poetic work of Michael Choniates, who was archbishop of that city from 1175 to 1204. He sings of its ancient glory and beauty, evokes the banks of the Ilissus, and expresses the joy of being able to contemplate the Acropolis. His brother Nicephorus, who lived at the court of Theodore Lascaris in Nicaea during the Latin Empire, wrote in 20 books a History from 1118 to 1206, covering the age of the Comneni up to Baldwin of Flanders.

At the same time, Nicephorus Blemmydes (d. 1272) wrote a Synoptic Geography, a work of autobiographical content based on his travels throughout the Eastern Empire as far as the Atlas Mountains. His pupils included George Acropolites, to whom we owe the History of the Empire of Nicaea (1203–61). A pupil of George was Theodore Metochites, a great scholar and author of a Philosophical and Historical Miscellany. Moreover, under the Empire of Nicaea, as a reaction to the political fragmentation following the catastrophe of 1204, there was a great intellectual development oriented toward the models of antiquity.

With the return of the Greeks to the throne of Byzantium under Michael VIII Palaeologus, the 14th–15th centuries saw a series of writers who devoted themselves especially to erudite philology or history, not from the origins as in the past but limiting themselves more or less to the period in which the authors themselves lived. Among them are Maximus Planudes (d. after 1310), author, among other works, of an Anthology of Epigrams in seven books; Demetrius Triclinius, a fine philologist and commentator on Hesiod, Pindar, and the tragedians; George Acropolites (d. 1282), who narrates the history of Constantinople during the Latin occupation; the emperor John VI Cantacuzenus (who, after occupying the throne by usurpation for 14 years from 1341 to 1355, became a monk), who under the pseudonym Joasaph wrote in his monastery, surrounded by a circle of literati, philosophers, and poets, a Byzantine History from Andronicus Palaeologus to himself, which is essentially an apologetic autobiography; George Pachymeres (d. c. 1310), author of a History of the Palaeologi from Michael VIII to Andronicus; Nicephorus Gregoras (d. c. 1359), to whom we owe a History of Constantinople in 37 books from 1204 to 1359. Also to be remembered is Demetrius Cydones, a theologian and rhetorician who translated St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa into Greek, took part in theological controversies, and left a voluminous correspondence.

Closing the series of Byzantine literati are George Phranza (d. c. 1477), who after the fall of Constantinople to the Turks went to Italy, later settling in Corfu and writing in four books a Chronicle spanning from 1258 to 1476; and Laonicus Chalcocondyles (d. after 1480), an Athenian who, unlike his brother Demetrius, did not go to Italy but remained in Greece, where he wrote a Chronicle in ten books from 1298 to 1463.

With these authors, the history of secular Greek-Byzantine literature comes to a close, of which historiography constitutes the most continuous and abundant subject matter, beginning with Zonaras, who narrates the life of Constantine, and ending with Laonicus Chalcocondyles at the fall of Byzantium. Philosophical thought, while respecting the strictly dogmatic side fixed by the long series of theologians, moralists, and sacred orators, felt in the decline of the present the need to revert to the past, exhuming Plato, commenting with loving care on the great classical poets, adopting the learned and pure language of the ancient authors, and avoiding the common speech used by the people, which was larded with foreign words derived from contacts with Slavs, Turks, Italians, and Franks, yet lively and effective. Thus arose and developed that dualism between written and living language which is still alive in the literature of modern Greece.

### III. NEO-HELLENIC LITERATURE
From 1453 until the beginning of the 19th century, every manifestation of Greek culture was stifled by the tyrannical oppression of the Turks, yet the linguistic and literary tradition did not die out. The spiritual island of the Phanar (the patriarchate of Constantinople) preserved the classical and humanistic tradition and was not without Western influences, but original artistic activity developed only on the islands—Cyprus, Rhodes, and Crete—in a climate of greater freedom (Venetian predominance). Here, and especially in Crete, the new popular language was forged and a literary heritage of great historical and poetic interest was established. Western chivalric models were re-elaborated and refashioned by a fresh and vigorous sensibility in the Cretan poem *Erotókritos*, comprising eleven thousand decapentasyllabic verses, by Vitsentzos Kornaros (16th century), which was extremely popular everywhere, while the anonymous *Sacrifice of Abraham* and Chortatzis’s *Erophíli* revived dramatic poetry. Throughout this period and across all of Greece, popular poetry flourished with exceptional quantitative and qualitative vigor (see the translations by Tommaseo), beloved and imitated in the West during the Romantic and post-Romantic eras. This poetry, evoking the entire life of the Greek people, reached peaks of naive lyricism, intimate dramatic pathos, and reflected, even in artistic transfiguration, the Greek soul in its perennial traits.

The heroic War of Independence (1821–1828) coincided with the awakening of great poetry, which was precocious in the Ionian Islands. The figure of the “Greek Dante,” Dionysios Solomós (Zakynthos 1798–Corfu 1857), emerged. Educated in Italy (with a vast output in Italian), he laboriously mastered the new expressive medium of the modern Greek language, into which he poured a world of lofty ideals (fatherland, faith, freedom) deeply felt. Having earned, particularly with the *Hymn to Liberty*, which was cherished by patriots of every land during the period of national revolutions, the dignity and fame of a seer, Solomós progressively freed himself from rhetorical residues and murky romanticism (*Lambros*, an unfinished poem), and in the verses of a poem on Missolonghi, *The Free Besieged*, inevitably fragmentary, he gave the highest measure of his tormented and thoughtful inspiration. The exaltation of *aretí* (virtue) inspired the patriotic lyre of the Zakynthian Andrea Calvos, a friend of Foscolo, with singular linguistic and metrical traits. On the margins of Solomós’s ideal circle and followers (Markoras), the exuberant and charged poetry of the Levantine Aristotelis Valaoritis flourished, influenced by Victor Hugo’s romanticism and steeped in patriotism.

An ideal offshoot of the Phanar was represented by the so-called “First Athenian School,” which combined low-grade romanticism with formal archaism and oscillated between often conventional pessimism and catchy, facile songwriting (the Soutsos brothers, Paraschos). These deteriorating traits, which distanced Greek poetry from both popular lyricism and the noble epic tradition, were not absent in Paparrigopoulos and Vasiladis, who died prematurely.

The harsh and bitter linguistic controversy between supporters of *katharevousa* (the “pure,” archaizing language) and *dimotikí* (the language of common use and major poetic works) seemed to find a solution in Giovanni Psicharis’s *My Journey* (1888; 1854–1929), an attempt to overcome diglossia of capital importance. The conflict instead intensified into bloody strife after the translations of the New Testament into the popular language, but Psicharis and Alexandros Pallis (translator of Homer) determined the affirmation of *dimotikí*, which, despite various temperaments and attitudes according to individual creative personalities, is today the uncontested instrument of literary expression. Yet to this affirmation Costis Palamas (1859–1943) contributed powerfully, in whose multifaceted work more than sixty years of Greek literary life are summarized. His poetry (*The Unalterable Life*, *The King’s Flute*, *The Gypsy’s Twelve Syllables*) is the fruit of a vast assimilation of every kind of voice, from Hesiod to the Parnassians, but it is also the expression of an authentic poetic soul.

Palamas exerted a preponderant influence over several poetic generations, even where (as in the “Rumelite” poetry of Malakasis and Athanasios, Porfiras, etc.) genuine artistic natures asserted their originality. The poets of the so-called “Generation of ’20” attempted to make a Greek experiment of some Western currents but did not rise above mediocrity. Opposed in a certain way to Palamas was the “minor,” pre-Papadiamantian poetry, imbued with bitter humor, of Kostas Kariotakis (who died by suicide in 1928), but the true “anti-Palamas” was the great Constantine Cavafy (Alexandria of Egypt 1868–1933), who, isolated in practice and literature from Hellenic poetic currents, in a shadowy solitude barricaded by sexual anomalies, gave voice, in little more than 150 poems, to a tragic world of morbid passion, exile, and “condemnation,” resurrected from the pages of Alexandrian, Byzantine, and Roman history, figures and events illuminated by ambiguous light, carved like epigrams worthy of the *Greek Anthology* in the severe clarity of marble, drew from personal memory evocations of ecstasies and torments, of anxieties or satiations, and intoned his singular lyric with movements that shunned the “song” yet were sustained by a restrained vibration of powerful originality.

Today, after Palamas’s death, the scepter of poet-seer is attributed to the Levantine Angelos Sikelianos (b. 1888), also of international renown, particularly for his conception of a Delphic center of spirituality and universal brotherhood inspired by the perennial ideals of humanity. In the vast lyrical and dramatic (in verse) work of Sikelianos, alongside enthusiastic accents of pagan pantheism, there are reworkings of ethical-religious motifs that lead the poet to syncretistic metaphysical visions (Orphism-Dionysianism and Christianity). Sikelianos’s poetic world is rich and interesting, and his poetry reveals an exceptionally gifted temperament, though often lacking the sovereign measure of great art. A complex and interesting figure, yet one without deep resonance and unaware of the heights despite great ambitions, is Nikos Kazantzakis. The field of poetry is now, however, firmly held by a group of young writers (“Generation of ’30”), who, with an intimate experience of European and world poetry (from Symbolism to Surrealism, Hermeticism, and Eliot), but with a Greek and Mediterranean soul, have renewed the tradition by freeing themselves from every residual moralism and descriptivism and from any facile catchiness, and in “contemporary” modes (analogical and evocative values arising from the rediscovery of a poetic language) have expressed a “contemporary” sensibility. The greatest living Greek poet is Giorgos Seferis (b. Smyrna 1900).

Neo-Hellenic prose, which flourished later than poetry, had in the past its major representatives in Alexandros Papadiamantis (1851–1911; serene realism) and Gregorios Xenopoulos (b. 1867 and still living), a “worldly” writer of great popularity and fecundity, creator of the regional novel and at times a fine delineator of characters, rich in varied tones. A subtle and elegant wit animated the *chronographimata* (“elzeviri”) of Pavlos Nirvanas. After the First World War, prose experienced a flowering of extraordinary intensity and richness. The best contemporary narrators are Stratis Myrivilis (*Life in the Tomb*) and Elias Venezis (*Number 31328*), both highly prolific, especially Venezis, who has been exceptionally widely read in recent years. Many excellent writers of novels and short stories (Kosmas Politis, Theotokas, Petsalis, etc.) are actively engaged in creative work.

The modern Greek theatre is extremely poor. After the Cretan mystery plays and dramas, mention should be made of Vasiliadis’s *Galatea* and Palamàs’s *Triséviemi*. Xenòpulos also achieved brilliant successes as a playwright; but the most significant Greek dramatist is perhaps Spiro Melàs (b. 1881), who, despite Ibsenian and Russian influences and social “theses,” attained powerful effects in some of his works. Pantelis Chorn and the younger Demetrio Borgis should also be cited. The copious boulevard theatre production, vaudevilles, etc., is not worth considering.

In criticism, which is still young, after Palamàs—who was almost its founder—G. Apostolakis (1886–1947) should be noted. Among living critics, I. M. Panaiotópulos, E. Churmusios, and C. Paraschos have distinguished themselves for their learning and taste, while Papanutzos is notable for the seriousness of his philosophical culture. Journalistic activity has always been enormous.

IX. Archaeology and Art

16. Archaeology

The ancient Christian places of worship in Greece were for the most part destroyed between the 7th and 8th centuries by the invasions of the Slavic peoples. The flourishing of basilicas and Christian churches in all the places where Christianity had soon taken root is such that in the western regions of Greece remains of Christian basilicas have been discovered at Corcia, Dodona, Nicopolis (two), and Paramythia. In the Peloponnese they have been found at Argos, Corinth (v.), Epidaurus, Geraki, Mantineia, Nemea, Olympia, and Tegea; nine have been identified in Athens (v.), five in Attica, three in central Greece, six in Thessaly, seven in Macedonia, two of which are particularly noteworthy at Philippi (v.). In the Aegean islands they have been found at Chios, Cos, Crete (v.), Aegina, Euboea (two), Cythera, Lemnos (two), Lesbos (four), Melos, Rhodes, Samos, Scarpanto, and Thera.

A characteristic feature of the ancient Christian basilicas of Greece is the *bema* (v.), which extends from the apse to a quadrangular enclosure in the central nave; it is bounded on three sides by screens or railings known generically as *τῆλῳ*.

Another characteristic feature in the sacred buildings of Greece is the use of *vela* or veils that concealed the altar, fixed around the bema or between the columns, as seen, for example, in the ivory casket from Samagher.

G. Sotiriou, together with A. Orlandos, has made meritorious contributions to the discovery of the ancient Christian basilicas of Greece. He has divided these into three main groups:

1) Basilicas with a transept, such as those at Corinth (v.), Daphni (v.), Dodona, Epidaurus, Ilissos, Nicopolis (where there is also a five-aisled basilica), Paramythia (with a triconch), Thebes (v.), Thasos, and Thessalonica (St Demetrios, in the form of a cross).

2) Basilicas of Hellenistic type, i.e., with a semicircular apse, an interior divided into three aisled separated by columns, and a narthex preceded by an atrium. Examples include the basilicas found at Argallaste, Chios (two), Demetrias, Dion, Aegina, Eleusis, Glyphada, Halimous, Hypate, Kalyria, Lauretiakos, Lemnos (two), Lesbos (four), Olympia, Paleopoli, Scarpanto, Sepia, Stobi, Thebes (v.), Thessalonica (St Paraskevi), and Touba.

3) Christian places of worship adapted from earlier buildings, such as in Athens at the Parthenon, the Erechtheion, the Theseion, and at Olympia.

The church of St Paraskevi at Chalkis, built in the 4th century, was converted in the 14th century by the Crusaders into a Gothic cathedral.

For Christian epigraphy, see the publications of C. Bayet, *De titulis Atticae christianis antiquissimis* (Paris, 1871), in the *Corpus inscriptionum Atticarum* (Berlin, 1882); G. Dittenberger published the *Tituli sepulcrales Christianorum et Iudaeorum* (pp. 240–253; nos. 3435–3547); later, Christian inscriptions from Thessalonica were published by P. Perdrizet: *Inscriptions de Thessalonique*, in *Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire*, 20 (1900), pp. 229 ff.; recently other Christian inscriptions from Greece were published by R. D. Meritt, *Greek Inscriptions 1896–1927* (Corinth Excavations, VIII, i), Cambridge, 1931, no. 136 ff.; others were edited by N. Giannopoulos, in A. Sotiriou, *Ai Xpıotıavıxal Θ̄̄ßаı x*

In the Morea there are three 12th-century churches at Argolis, Merbaca, Areia, and Chonica, structurally similar. Far more famous in the area, however, are the sacred buildings of Mistrà, a typical dead city that during the Principality of Achaea rose to the rank of capital, enriched by important and sumptuous constructions, including the Imperial Palace. The church of the Evangelistria, dating from the early 14th century, St Sophia (c. 1350), and the Peribleptos belong to the type with a Greek cross plan. In all of them the western arm is slightly elongated. The Evangelistria must have been a funerary chapel, St Sophia was a court church, modelled on the great Constantinopolitan constructions. In the Peribleptos, above all, there are notable Western influences, with rosette and fleur-de-lis decorations and a Gothic arch in the bell tower.

Other numerous churches, particularly of the Greek cross type, are scattered in various villages of the Morea. In Phocis, near the monastery of St Luke, there are two 11th-century churches, the smaller of which, dedicated to the Panaghia, has a dome supported by four columns of Constantinopolitan type; the hexagonal drum, with double windows, is enriched with carved marble in its lower part. Under the influence of Mount Athos, the building has a double narthex and an exonarthex. The larger building is dedicated to St Luke, whose central part is surrounded by twelve piers with arcades and is transformed into an octagon by means of corner squinches; higher up, other squinches transform the resulting parallelepiped into a circle to support the dome. The arms of the building are covered with vaults and enriched with galleries. Only the central apse projects, and is adorned with niches.

Like other buildings, the well-known church of Daphni (v.), on the Sacred Way leading from Athens to Eleusis, is similar to St Luke’s, but it has the bema covered with ribbed vaults and three projecting apses instead of one.

The church of St Theodore at Mistrà (1295), of the same structural type, has barrel-vaulted arms. At Monemvasia, St Sophia, which rises beside military towers, has a narthex preceded by a Venetian-style loggia. The type of St Luke’s served as a model for the church of St Nicodemus (c. 1044) in Athens. Thus the Parigoritissa of Arta, the royal church of the despot of Epirus, is formed of a massive cube crowned by five domes on drums. It has a triple sanctuary, and the central dome rises to a great height, under the influence of Gothic verticalism.

Characteristic are the monasteries of Meteora, perched on the summits of isolated rocky cones. Their churches generally have a Greek cross plan and show traces of Arab influence. These are very picturesque constructions, closely linked to the adjacent monastic buildings.

At the Athos, as throughout Greece, the Byzantine architectural style has persisted to the present day, with only occasional interruptions due to the spread there of rationalistic Neoclassicism in the mid-19th century, followed by traces of other European movements, even the neo-Gothic revival.

17. Painting

a) Mosaics. – Even Greece in the second half of the 4th century shared in that Christian pictorial language which, with very few variations, during the Justinianic period was widespread from Ravenna to Nicaea and Thessalonica as well as Constantinople. Despite the almost total loss of monuments, it can be assumed that

Some artistic centers, almost autonomous: one of them was precisely Salonica, which would thus have effectively contributed to the formation of Byzantine art, as it manifests itself from the 6th century onward.

The oldest remaining decoration is the apse conch of the church of St. David, katholikón of the Latomou monastery. Despite gaps, the mosaic is still legible and includes at its center the Apollinean Christ holding a *rotulus* in His left hand and raising His right hand as if in address. Beside Him are the symbols of the Evangelists and the Prophets. The composition, executed with a still summary technique, is linked to the Roman milieu, though with traces of surviving Hellenism. A comparison with the mosaics of St. Mary Major in Rome allows one to note the common paleo-Christian features. The round church of St. George must have possessed in its dome a decoration analogous to that of St. Costanza in Rome; of this only the outer ring remains, subdivided into eight richly decorated panels (birds, vases, flowers, foliage, architectural elements). In each of these, against a backdrop of almost theatrical architecture, a saint is presented in the traditional orans posture, arms outstretched. The admirable coloristic and decorative refinement of the vault of St. George is found again in a few scattered fragments preserved in the arches of the naves and narthex of the rebuilt church of Eski Giunta. In these last two pictorial monuments is expressed another artistic current, more oriented toward the East. Of Roman derivation, like the mosaic of St. David, were the votive panels, always from the 5th and 6th centuries, which decorated the church of St. Demetrius and were completely destroyed in the fire that devastated the church in 1917. Three panels, representing SS. Sergius and Demetrius between bearded figures and St. Demetrius with two youths, seem to date from the rebuilding of the church after the fire of 634 and thus belong to the art of the first Golden Age, to which they are also linked by the particular refinement of their technical execution, with minute and regularly arranged tesserae. They are an extremely important document of this art and, though a century later, must be compared with the panels in the decoration of St. Vitalis in Ravenna, which represent the Emperor Justinian and Empress Theodora with their retinue. Their coloristic splendor is remarkable; the figures are absorbed into the surrounding two-dimensional, abstract space. With these, Byzantine art appears constituted in its fundamental characteristics. The fourth preserved panel, with two male figures sometimes identified as the Prefect Leontius and Bishop John, is even more closely linked to the mosaics of St. Vitalis.

Few Greek mosaics survive from the period of Iconoclasm: that of the apse of St. Sophia in Salonica, with the Virgin and Child, seems to date from the 8th century. It is a work of uncertain and rough technique, with strange provincial additions. The accentuation of movement and linearism is also present in a vast mosaic of the vault with the Pantocrator, the Virgin, angels, and Apostles arranged in a circular disposition (perhaps from different periods [8th–9th centuries]). After the cessation of the Iconoclastic movement and the resumption of image representation, the provincialisms that had spontaneously emerged in Greek art, isolated from the artistic center now definitively established in Constantinople, did not entirely disappear, as they are found again in the mosaic decoration of the church of the monastery of St. Luke in Phocis (998–1050), which presents iconographically one of the most complete systems of Byzantine art. The Pantocrator occupied the center of the dome; in the calotte remains the Pentecost, in the apse the Madonna, while in the tribunes and narthex feasts, saints, martyrs, and prophets cover every wall of the building. Notable are the echoes of the mosaics of St. Sophia in Salonica, due to the common presence of those provincial additions that give almost a pre-monastic character to these images. However, the special character of the mosaic decoration of St. Luke is given by its relations with the painting of icons, from which it derived an accentuated coloristic energy. The influence exerted by this art was vast: close ties bind it to the later mosaic revetment of St. Sophia in Kiev, of 1073.

The mosaics of the church of Daphni, of 1108, belong to the aulic current of Byzantine painting of the Second Golden Age and are related to those in the lunettes of St. Sophia in Constantinople, and to those of the churches of Nicaea and Chios.

From the second half of the 12th century, despite devastation caused by fires, the apse of the church of Serres in Macedonia is preserved, with the representation of the Communion of the Apostles: provincial characteristics are again accentuated, and even an attempt at plastic illusionism is made, with notable sobriety in the linear play. Contemporary with these are numerous portable mosaics, some of which are still preserved in the monasteries of Meteora and Athos. The revival of Byzantine art in the Third Golden Age finds Greek mosaic art almost completely extinguished: perhaps only in Salonica did workshops of mosaic masters still survive. One of the last monuments of their art is constituted by the decoration of the Church of the Holy Apostles in Salonica, with the Story of the Virgin and figures of saints (1312–15), in which dependence on Constantinopolitan models is joined by traces of Macedonian art.

b) Wall painting. — Very few documents survive relating to wall painting: the oldest remains, in St. Demetrius in Salonica, date from the 7th century. From the 11th century are preserved in the crypt of the church of SS. Anargyri in Kastoria, of St. Luke in Phocis, and in the diaconicon of the basilica of Kabakli in Thessaly, some frescoes of provincial and Eastern tradition. Recently, the decoration of the church of the Madonna dei Fabbri in Salonica was discovered and restored; it is of intellectualist taste, with study of the antique and with late Hellenistic effects close to the mosaics of Daphni. This exceptional find, providing a rare document of the aulic mural painting of Salonica—where intense pictorial activity is attested from the end of the 9th century—also allows inferences to be drawn about what the wall painting of the capital itself must have been. Contemporary with it are a fragment from the church of Keravlidena in Chios and remains of paintings in the Parthenon, transformed into a church in the 6th century, also of refined elegance.

From the 14th century onward, the influence of Cretan wall painting and icons becomes predominant in Greece. This spreads into the Morea, Attica, and reaches even Salonica and Kastoria. The major monuments of it are preserved at Mistra, near Sparta, in the church of St. Demetrius (14th century), in the church of the Madonna del Vrontochion (c. 1350), and above all in the two churches of the Peribleptos and the Pantánassa, respectively of the 14th century and 1428. Another series of securely datable paintings is possessed by the monasteries of Meteora, in southern Morea. Similar paintings are found in the monasteries of Mount Athos, where, however, the Macedonian artistic current comes to greater prominence and achieves a remarkable affirmation with the painter Emmanuel Panselinos of Salonica, deeply imbued with Italian artistic culture and widely imitated despite the prevalence of Cretan art.

With the foundation of the Academy of Fine Arts in Athens, what was called the rebirth of national art took place, and after the experiences of Neoclassical and Romantic movements, artistic groups were formed in the major European capitals, especially in Paris.

### Sculpture

Although of the greatest importance, the works of sculpture of Greek origin from the Paleochristian and Byzantine eras do not yet allow us to determine the significance of the Greek contribution to the formation and development of Byzantine art in the Eastern Empire. One can observe in them numerous influences and considerable stylistic variations, but they remain absorbed within the common development of medieval plastic art. From the Arch of Galerius in Thessaloniki (295) to the ambo from the same city (now in the Museum of Constantinople), the plastic quality diminishes, becoming more pictorial and adorned with fantastic, immaterial decorations poured over the plastic elements without regard for their structure. A masterpiece of this taste is the marvelous portal of the basilica of St. Demetrios in Thessaloniki, now in the Byzantine Museum of Athens, where decorative lacework cuts into the pillars and archivolt as if in lace or bobbin lace. Similarly, as seen in the interiors of Hagia Sophia and St. Sergius in Constantinople, traces of architectural decoration are almost everywhere abandoned; St. Demetrios in Thessaloniki, among other things, preserves magnificent vine and acanthus capitals.

Sculpture in the round is also present in the museums of Sparta and Athens, where statuettes of the Good Shepherd can be stylistically linked to the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus in Rome. From the 4th–5th centuries comes a fragmentary relief with the Nativity and the Flight into Egypt, from the Athens Museum, and a depiction of Christ under the guise of Orpheus taming wild beasts. While church decoration (capitals, chancel screens, etc., especially with floral motifs) spreads widely, inlaid metalwork sculpture becomes common, allowing for extensive decorative possibilities and corresponding to the lack of a plastic sensibility. At the same time, in the 8th and 9th centuries, decorative designs of barbarian themes and zoomorphic compositions appear in inscribed slabs set into the walls of the small cathedral of Athens, in the churches of Mount Athos, and in the churches of Skiipou and Thebes, introduced from the East.

During periods of decline in Constantinople, Greek sculpture seems to absorb more Western elements, even Lombard ones. In the second golden age, inlaid metalwork sculpture achieves monumental effects with a distinctly courtly character (e.g., Hosios Loukas in Phocis, Daphne). In decline, borrowings from the West increase, and for the decoration of religious buildings and devotional images, wood sculpture—also yielding authentic masterpieces of a decorative nature—replaces precious materials.

As with painting, the foundation of the Academy in 1837 fostered renewed contact with the Western world: the tradition of classical and Hellenistic sculpture, especially in funerary monuments, was revived with traces of Neoclassical taste, while new generations participated in the formation of the international or European taste that is current in modern art.

**

School System

Modern Greek education, born with the Treaty of Adrianople after the Turkish defeat at Navarino in 1827, understood that only a strong generation of intellectuals could preserve the independence—or at least the aspirations for independence—of the Greek people. With the founding of the Archaeological Society of Athens in 1837, an attempt was made to turn minds toward the glorious past of ancient Greece, and for the same reason, the foundation of the German Archaeological Institute in Athens (1872), the American School of Classical Studies in Athens (1882), the Athens School of Archaeology (1909), and other archaeological schools was encouraged. It soon became clear that in the education of an independent Greek people, it was impossible to disregard its Greek Orthodox religion. Over the years, two pillars of education were established: moral instruction, which can be defined as civic education that should not contrast with the ancient ideal of ancient Greece and the Greek Orthodox religion but rather serve as a kind of practical application of both. Greek education is free and compulsory from ages six to fourteen and is divided into public and private. Instruction in gymnastics, Greek history, morals, and religion is compulsory in all types of schools. The entire school system includes kindergartens, primary schools, secondary schools, and higher schools.

Kindergartens (γηπιαγωγεῖα) last two years. Primary schools (ἀπωτικὰ) last six years and are divided into sections if the number of pupils exceeds forty. These schools are divided into daytime and evening schools. The establishment of evening primary schools is provided for pupils who have been unable to complete daytime primary education. A minimum of five pupils is sufficient for the establishment of such a school.

Secondary education is provided in gymnasia (Γυμνάσια), lyceums (Διπλάσια Λύκεια), commercial schools (Ἐμπορικαὶ Σχολαὶ), and civic schools (Ἀστικὰ Σχολεῖα). Gymnasia are divided into classical and modern types. Commercial schools include: public schools (Σχολαὶ Δημοσιεύθησαν), autonomous schools (Ἀστόμιοι πρὸς Δημόσιας), and state-recognized schools (Ὀμοταγείες πρὸς Δημόσιας), which are divided into intermediate and practical, and finally technical commercial institutes (Πράκτιαι Ἐμπορικαὶ Σχολαὶ). Civic schools last three years and follow these tracks: agricultural, industrial, commercial, and domestic economics.

Higher education includes: the National Academy of Physical Education, the Higher School of Agriculture, and the