1.1 The spread of Greek

The origins of Greek are unknown and probably unknowable. The language is first found on Mycenaean clay tablets dating to around the middle of the second millenium BCE. This makes it the oldest attested European language still in use today. But its history as a language of literature begins not with the written word but with music and performance in the shape of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey (eighth century BCE) and a great body of ‘lyric’ poetry performed at festivals and symposia (aristocratic drinking parties). At the same time it was also in daily use in Greek settlements across the Aegean sea, the coast of Turkey, Southern Italy, Sicily, North Africa and Asia Minor. But it was the great flowering of Greek literature in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE that established its prestige. This flowering took place chiefly in the theatres of Athens (in the work of the playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes), its agora (forum) and courtrooms (the orators Lysias and Demosthenes) and its philosophical schools (notably the Academy of Plato). We should also mention the Histories of Herodotus, Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War and its continuation by Xenophon in his Hellēnika (‘Greek events’).

The defeat of the Persian empire by Alexander the Great (356–323 BCE) pushed what was still largely a coastal language further inland, notably in Egypt, the Middle East and Turkey. Crucially for the development of the Greek language, these events also led to the establishment of numerous Greek cities, the most important being Alexandria at the mouth of the river Nile (331 BCE). It was here rather than in mainland Greece that the greatest library of Greek literature was established. Subsequently a more standardised form of Greek developed to take the place of the variety of dialects that had existed to this point. This ‘common dialect’ (koinē dialektos), was heavily influenced by the literature of Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, making it accessible to a modern reader with some experience of authors from this period, such as the orator Lysias or the philosopher Plato. The most influential works written in koinē Greek are the 27 books of the New Testament.

Figure 2 Map showing the spread of the Greek language: 350−1 BCE. (From Taplin, O. (ed.) (2000) Literature in the Greek World, Oxford, Oxford University Press, p. xxiii. By permission of Oxford University Press.)

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This is a horizontal, rectangular map in colour. An area of enclosed sea is shown in blue surrounded by land in green. The sea occupies the left-hand side of the map. No compass or scale is provided.

The legend indicates that red areas are core areas of literary culture. White areas show the general spread of literary culture. The date 350 – 1 bce can be seen in the bottom left-hand corner beneath the legend.

The core areas of red centre on the wide irregularly-shaped peninsular where Athens is located. It reaches up as far as Pella. Across the sea to the left, strips of red are shown along the lower edges of a boot-shaped section of land. It spreads in a narrow strip to the island where Syracuse is located below the toe of the boot. It does not reach up as far as Rome.

A wide coastal strip opposite the irregular peninsular to the right where Pergamon is located is also shown in red as is the pan-shaped island below it further right. On the coast below the island at the bottom of the map a small strip of land that follows the course of a river between Alexandria and Oxyrhynchus is also shown in red.

The general spread of literary culture is shown in white. All of the areas on the edge of the red sections are shown in white. Some are narrow strips but the area to the right beyond Pergamon is much wider. Below it on the right-hand coast opposite the red pan-handle island it extends from Antioch to almost the right-hand edge of the map. This large area is linked by a white coastal strip to the area below it between Alexandria and Oxyrhynchus.

No red or white areas are visible on the left from here to Carthage although there is a small pocket of white between them around Cyrene. This pocket is on the coast opposite the irregular peninsular where Athens is located.

Figure 2 Map showing the spread of the Greek language: 350−1 BCE. (From Taplin, O. (ed.) (2000) Literature in the Greek World, Oxford, ...