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This chapter outlines the historical, geographical, social, cultural, and ideological background to the emergence of the controversy in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. First, it answers the questions: who thought of themselves as Greek at the time, what did they think it meant to be Greek, and what did they think was the geographical extent of the area in which the Greeks lived? It examines the three different names that the Greeks used for themselves (Romans, Greeks, and Hellenes) and the ideological connotations of each of them, and goes on to examine the way Greek-speakers perceived themselves in relation to the speakers of other languages (chiefly Albanian and Aromanian) among whom they lived. The prehistory of the Greek language question is outlined, together with its immediate historical and intellectual background. Lastly, Greeks' attitudes to language at the time are evaluated, and the relationship between language attitudes and social background is discussed.

The period 1830-1880 was one of comparative calm in the language controversy. Yet it was at this time that the controversy came to be seen as a contest between two varieties: katharevousa and demotic. The sections of this chapter alternate their focus between the development of written language use in Athens, and the literary production and the language debate in the British-protected Ionian Islands. Special emphasis is placed on the cultural and linguistic repercussions of the historically crucial decade of the 1850s. More is said about the relationship between Greek-speakers and the speakers of other languages at this time. Then attention turns to the continuing arguments in favour of the written use of the spoken language in the 1870s, and finally to the outburst of publications on national history, national folklore, and the history of Greek language and literature that paved the way for the demoticist movement.

This chapter focuses on the fragments of Greek city-histories. It explores the relationship between ‘great’ historiography and local historiography, before examining how the configuration of time can contribute to these discussions, not least through the use of local and Panhellenic chronological systems. Although much attention has focused on Athens — partly because of the survival of evidence and the existence of Jacoby's Atthis, which has been fundamental in the study of local historiography — by considering the fragments of local histories from elsewhere in the Greek world, it is possible to see Atthidography as being typical of the attempts of many cities to formulate and present their pasts. On the other hand, the extant fragments of historiography from Attica and Sicily do have a different quality from those concerning other parts of the Greek world, and their status as bridges between local and universal is considered.

The period 1897-1922 began and ended with catastrophic military defeats for Greece but also included military victories and successful political reforms. Two crucial developments took place in the language question at this time: the campaign by educationalists and linguists for the introduction of demotic into schools; and the political upheavals sparked off by the publication of a translation of the New Testament into demotic (1901) and the performance of ancient tragedy in modern translation (1903). An account is given of educational demoticism, which was dominated by the Educational Association's campaign to introduce a variety of demotic that was markedly different from Psycharis' version into primary education. The 1907 debate within the demoticist movement between socialism and nationalism is summarized, as well as disagreements between ‘orthodox’ followers of Psycharis and those who came to support the Educational Association. Lastly, the scholarly arguments against the written use of demotic formulated by the linguist G. N. Hatzidakis are assessed.

This period saw the intensification of political polarizations in Greece. It included the alternation between republican and monarchist regimes and between democratic and dictatorial governments, but also the occupation of Greece by the Axis powers in the Second World War and the period immediately following civil war. Yet this period ended with the establishment of the first truly stable democratic regime in Greece's history. This chapter charts the impact of politics on the language controversy and follows the practical progress of the demoticist movement during the inter-war period. After an interlude presenting the treatment of speakers of minority languages, the chapter goes on to narrate developments in the language debate during the Occupation, civil war, and Cold War periods. Finally, an account is given of developments that took place in the early years of the post-1974 democratic regime, when katharevousa was replaced by demotic for all official purposes.

This chapter takes a systematic look at one particular sub-discipline, Greek history, from their predecessors, who had created and adorned the heroic age of historical scholarship on the history of ancient Greece. It tries to describe different innovations in studying Greek history as lucidly and as dispassionately as possible. It largely eschews personalities in favour of formats and themes. The second section surveys the main genres of scholarship historically. The third section attempts to identify the main directions and problems which preoccupy scholars at present. The last section presents four case-studies of new material.

This chapter argues that neither the leisured class of aristocrats who vied for high social and political status within the polis nor the middling citizen soldiers who defended their farmland provides the origins of archaic Greek arms and tactics. Instead, the chapter suggests looking for the first hoplites fighting as mercenaries in the service of Eastern monarchs in areas such as Syria, Egypt, and Babylon. These soldiers of fortune fought in search of gain and glory, not to defend a civic ideology or ethos. Evidence for this thesis can be found in lyric poetry and in inscriptions, pottery, and the remains of hoplite armor discovered outside Greece. Here, the mercenary service is considered the “Main Event” of Greek military history in the seventh century, in contrast to the sporadic battles between poleis.

Thucydides' representation of Persia is inextricably linked to his response to Herodotus, who placed the Persians at the centre of his work. The younger historian was well aware that for the Greeks of his time, as they were embarking on the long mutual war he describes, the most vivid cultural memory concerned their earlier resistance against the Persians, from which they derived a wealth of still current paradigms. After Xerxes' defeat, moreover, Persia continued to exist as a neighbouring power, which mainland Greeks may initially have viewed as marginal, but which ended up as the arbiter in their own war. This chapter examines Thucydides' representation of Persia's role in the history of the Greeks, what information about Persian agents, culture, and events he knows about or considers important, and his ‘Persian’ interactions with Herodotus.

Xenophon, when he turned to writing history, harked back to his predecessors — and above all to the pair who form the subject of this collection — in ways that signal his adherence to the historiographical tradition, even as he underscored the distinctiveness of his own approach and philosophy of history. This chapter begins with a brief overview of what Xenophon's self-declared emphases in Hellenica reveal of how he conceives of his role in the historiographical tradition. It then contends that his conception of this role informs key moments in the work, through an examination of how the speeches of Procles of Phlius (in an episode whose significance Xenophon's narrative underscores) contribute to Xenophon's construction of his historiographical persona.

Pierre Sintès explores the study undertaken in Rhodes in 2006, considering the conditions to which memory can be expressed by the descendants of the Jewish population of Rhodes who come to the island in search of the places where their ancestors lived and how this challenges the version typically presented to tourists by tourist guides and most of the museums they have access to. Sintès shows the likeness in experience of memory and place between the Jewish community of Rhodes and Albanian immigrants and presents another case of a minority group, that despite having disappeared from the Greek context, particularly locally, can still successfully and publicly express its vigorous spatial and temporal memory.

This essay surveys the range of Greek maritime research studied over the last twenty years and explores the development of maritime history within the context of political, social and economic history in Greece. It also strives to examine the main vehicles of historical research, research institutes, historical journals and museums, and determines the main problems encountered by researchers.

This chapter is a guide to the maritime historiography of Greece from the 1970s onwards. It explores the beginnings of Greek maritime history, pinpointed by the publication of volume Greek merchant history, and moves through shipping, naval history, corsairing, piracy, and studies of the port cities of continental Greece. The major concern of Greek maritime historiography is the lack of shipping statistics and data, a gap which the establishment of the Pontoporeia historical register is currently attempting to fill.

The origin of medicine is apparent from other ancient texts such as from a document with the ambitious title “The Nature of Man”. One of the texts was dedicated to “falling sickness,” or epilepsy under the title “The Sacred Disease,” including the hitherto valid idea that, judging by the sometimes exceedingly strange course of this illness, it must be something divine, coming from the gods. Falling sickness is an illness whose causes, like those of all other illnesses, lie somewhere in nature. The renunciation of the idea that illness is caused by the numinous powers and of the need to treat illness with magic and invocation makes sense. The author of “The Divine Illness” thought no more or less rationally than those who saw falling sickness as something divine. The observation of the sick individual had not produced any evidence for the new view at any rate. For him, only the belief was lost that the gods, whose existence was responsible for the development of falling sickness. He lost this belief not because he had observed an epileptic, or several epileptics, or even a very large number of them. Something else must have caused the change in his view.

This chapter serves as an introduction to the book, mentioning the aftermath of the battle of Chaeronea and moving to Demosthenes' failed policy to resist Philip. This chapter outlines Demosthenes' youth, upbringing, rhetorical style, and anti-Macedonian policy and discusses the sources on him.

This chapter provides an overview of the themes of the volume and reflects on the approaches employed, their promise and their problems. It also makes suggestions about the way forward in the ongoing dialogue between Greek history and contemporary social science.

As sculpture is the classical art par excellence, statues abound in films set in Greek or Roman antiquity. Moreover, many of the mythological tropes involving sculptures that have persisted on the silver screen have their origins in classical antiquity: the Ovidian account of a Cypriot sculptor named Pygmalion who falls in love with his ivory creation and sees it bestowed with life by Venus, Hephaistos’s deadly automatons, the petrifying gaze of the Medusa, and divine sculptural manifestation, or agalmatophany, for instance. This chapter investigates the myths of the living statue as they originated in Greek and Roman literary art histories and found their way to the screen. It will do so by tracing the art-historical form and function of classical statuary to the cinematic representation of living statues in a broad conception of antiquity. The cinematic genre in which mythic sculptures thrive is that of the sword-and-sandal or peplum film, where a Greco-Roman or ersatz classical context provides the perfect backdrop for spectacular special effects, muscular heroes, and fantastic mythological creatures.