Hellenization
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hellenization (or Hellenisation) is a term used to describe the spread of Greek culture enriched with the influences from south-western Asia. Related to “Hellenism”, a term introduced in 19th century by German historian Johann Gustav Droysen (Geschichte Alexanders des Großen, 1833 and Geschichte des Hellenismus, 1836–1843). Most typically, it is used to describe the spread of the 'hellenistic' Greek culture during the Hellenistic period, following the conquest of the east by Alexander the Great of Macedon who spread Greek language, culture and religion to the lands he conquered. The result of Hellenization, elements of Greek origin combined in various forms and degrees with other local elements is known as Hellenism.
Contents |
[edit] Historic usage
The term is used in a number of other ancient historical contexts, starting with the hellenization of the earliest inhabitants of the Greece mainland, the Pelasgians, the Leleges, the Lemnians, the Eteocypriots in Cyprus, Eteocretans and Minoans in Crete, prior to the Classical antiquity period, as well as the Sicels, Elymians, Sicani in Sicily and the Oenotrians, Brutii, Lucani, Messapii and many others in what was about to be known as Magna Graecia.
During the classical period, there was the hellenization of the Thracians[1], Dardanians, Paionians and Illyrians[2], south of the Jireček Line.
In the Hellenistic period, the Macedonians, during the short reign (336-323 BC) and following the death of Alexander III the Great, hellenized the Assyrians, Jews, Egyptians, Persians, Armenians and a number of other smaller ethnic groups along the Middle East and Central Asia. The Bactrians, an Iranian ethnic group who lived in Bactria (northern Afghanistan), were hellenized during the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, and soon after various tribes in northwestern regions of the Indian subcontinent (modern Pakistan) during the Indo-Greek Kingdom. Even today there are several ethnic groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan that claim descent from the Greeks (see Kalasha).
Hellenization can also refer to the influences of the Eastern Roman Empire, then called Romania, which is much later to be refered to as Byzantine Empire, from Constantine's founding of Constantinople and the primacy of Greek culture and the Greek language, and particularly after the emperor Heraclius in the seventh century (see Byzantine Greeks), that was expressed almost exclusively through the eastern Christianity.
[edit] Modern usage
A disputed modern use is in connection with policies pursuing 'cultural harmonization and education of the linguistic minorities resident within the modern Greek state' (the Hellenic Republic), i.e. the Hellenization of minority groups in modern Greece.
[edit] De-Hellenization
De-Hellenization (or De-Hellenisation) is another complex and debated term used to describe a cultural change in which something Greek becomes non-Greek (non-Hellenic). The process can either be voluntary, or, commonly, applied with varying degrees of force.
Through history, the term has been used in connection with the Islamization and eventual Turkification of some Greek populations in the Ottoman Empire, beginning with inhabitants of eastern thrace, and also of the Romanisation and Slavicisation (slavicised) of the Greek speaking inhabitants, Greeks or previously Hellenized Macedonians, Poeonians, Dardanes, Ilirians and other numerous tribes in the Balkans.
[edit] Notes
- ^ A Grammar of Modern Indo-European by Carlos Quiles,ISBN 8461176391,2007,page 76,"Most of the Thracians were eventually Hellenised(in the province of Thrace)"
- ^ Stanley M Burstein, Walter Donlan, Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, Sarah B Pomeroy, "A Brief History of Ancient Greece: Politics, Society, and Culture", Oxford University Press, p. 255
