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If so many Greeks live in Anatolia (modern Turkey), then should we consider Greeks as Asians and not Europeans?
It’s an interesting question—more interesting than people are giving it credit for.
The question I’m going to write on is, how did the balance between Anatolian Greeks and Balkan Greeks change over time, and should that change in geography influence whether we call them European or Asian?
(You might say, it’s only interesting because I’m expanding the question way beyond what OP wrote. No matter.)
Classical Greeks were in both Anatolia and the Balkans. But the Anatolian settlements were regarded as colonies of city-states in the Balkans, so they had less cultural prestige. Moreover, from the perspective of Classical Athens (which is the perspective we all care about the most), Anatolian Greeks were much more overtly under the influence of the Persian Empire (if not ruled by them outright), than Balkan Greeks: another point against their prestige. So, Greeks in the Balkans regarded themselves as “real” Greeks; and “Asiatics” was not a complement.
OTOH, Classical Greeks didn’t call themselves Europeans. They regarded the non-Greeks of Asia as barbarians, and the Greeks of Asia as suspect. But they also regarded the non-Greeks of Europe as barbarians. They’d have no reason to identify with them more.
For Greeks in the Roman Empire, Greekdom was everywhere: Greek was the lingua franca of the Eastern half of the Empire, from Illyria to Arabia. Splitting Europe and Asia as chunks of identity just made no sense back then.
In the middle Byzantine Empire, Anatolia was the heartland, and Hellas, southern Greece, was a hardscrabble province with a bunch of non-Hellenes hanging around, that noone paid any attention too. That’s the time when Anatolian Greekdom had the most cultural prestige among Greek-speakers, and Balkans Greekdom the least. But then too Greeks were no more eager to identify themselves with the Catholic heretics of Western Europe than the Muslim infidels of the Middle East.
Notoriously, Loukas Notaras said in the 1440s, “I would rather see a Turkish turban in the midst of Constantinople than the Latin mitre.” He was talking about his rejection of church union (subjugation by the Vatican) as the price to pay for preventing the Ottoman conquest. It was a very popular opinion. It was also Greeks saying, if our only choices really are European and Asiatic (they regarded themselves as neither), we’ll pick Asiatic.
Constantinople remained the cultural centre of Greekdom until the establishment of the new Greek state. It’s only then that Greeks start to pay attention to the notion of Greeks being European—although there was a lot of pushback to the notion, which lasted for a century.
When do Greeks become proud to identify themselves as European? After the Enlightenment, when the West started looking more attractive than the East; Greek could plausibly say in the 19th century “I would rather be a scissor-arse than wear a turban.” (Scissor-arse, ψαλιδόκωλος, was how Greeks described the Tailcoat.) The precondition to them doing so was that they no longer had the luxury of regarding themselves as neither: they lost that in 1453. And while they were the Rum Millet under the Ottomans, the facts on the ground identified them with Asia, whether they were in Smyrna or Patras.
So the official discourse of the Greek state has been to choose Europe—the West—over Asia. It’s a choice that the remaining intelligentsia in Constantinople did not necessarily approve of: the Greek Orthodox church certainly remained suspicious of the West.
Whether Greeks are Europeans or Asians is a cultural rather than a geographical choice. Every time I walk into a Dewey Decimal System library, I’m reminded that Cyprus is geographically in Asia, not Europe. Greek Cypriots have always been less uptight about being a cross-roads of peoples than Greece Greeks; but you still won’t hear them say “of course we’re in Asia.”
I just wanted to emphasise that, at the time in history when the cultural weight of Greekdom really was in Asia Minor, the choice between Asia and Europe was either irrelevant (we are the Roman Empire, we are neither) or forced on them (we are the Rum Millet of the Ottoman Empire, we are certainly not a bunch of beef-eating Catholics). It wasn’t about which side of the Bosphorus most Greeks lived. And that when they chose Europe after all, it wasn’t a straightforward choice either.
All that debate played out in Balkan Greece, though, decades before the Christian Greek population was extirpated from Anatolia.
How did the Greek name Konstantinos (for short, Kostas) become Gus? It appears that “Dean” is much closer, especially to the Greek Ntinos.
The Greek diaspora often had to translate its unfamiliar names into names the locals found more familiar and/or pronouncable. Hence the long line of people called Athanasios who ended up as Arthur, or Dimitrios who ended up as Jim.
Constantine was a peculiar case. As a Latin name, it should have translated into English readily, but it didn’t. There is no Western cult around St Constantine = Constantine I, so no local was called Constantine, and Constantine is a long name by English standards.
Answering a question here (Nick Nicholas’ answer to Is Kokakarsas a Greek last name?), I discovered that Constance had been used as a rendering in the 1870s in Australia. Constance is not the same name (Constantius was Constantine I’s father); but at least Constance had some usage in English in the 19th century. It fell out of fashion by the 20th century.
In Australia, the rendering of Constantine has been Con, a very Australian-like truncation of the name, which has prospered despite the fact that it doesn’t particularly hide the bearer being Greek (unlike Arthur or Jim). It’s a truncation without being a nativisation. But that strategy still requires you to be prepared to mark your name as worth preserving; I don’t believe that strategy was available in the US in the 1910s.
The choice made in the US in the 1910s was Gus. Gus is little-heard now, but it was a popular truncation of names like Angus, Gustav, or August (which were more popular then than they are now). Greeks in America grabbed on to Gus, because it was the closest they could hear to the first syllable of Kostas: /kʰɑstəs/ (in American pronunciation) ~ /ɡʌs/ (in American pronunciation), and /ɑ, ʌ/ are actually phonetically close.
This makes no sense if you have either a Greek or a Commonwealth accent of course: /kostas, ɡas/, /kʰɔstəs, ɡɐs/.
Gust Avrakotos, the CIA brains behind Charlie Wilson’s War, appears to represent the next stage of assimilation. Gustav Lascaris “Gust” Avrakotos is an odd combination of names. His father was Greek (and spare us the jokes about the surname meaning “pants-less”: it is a genuine surname in use in Lemnos). If it wasn’t his mother’s choice, I’m assuming Gustav was an elaboration of Gus, making it a distant reflection rather than a cover for Constantine.
EDIT: OP points out that Dean was available, as an English name closer to Dinos, another Greek truncation of Konstantinos (pronounced Konstandinos). It is indeed used for Constantines, and I have a second cousin in Dayton, OH called Dean. (Unlike Gus, it also is used in Australia, though nowhere near as much as Con.)
But Greeks likely weren’t thinking “I’m a Kostas, what other truncations of Konstantinos might I use that will go easier in English.” They likely stopped at “I’m a Kostas.” My impression is that the vernacular counterparts to Greek proper names were highly regionalised at the time: it just wouldn’t have occurred to the immigrants back then to switch Kostas to Dinos.
Why is Greek music being exported so successfully to outside markets like the Balkans, Turkey and the Middle East?
It’s kinda guess work, but this is my thinking on the topic.
Musics of adjoining regions have a family resemblance. German music and Greek music don’t have a lot in common. But German music has things in common with Czech music, which has things in common with Hungarian, which has things in common with Romanian, which has things in common with Serbian, which things in common with Greek music. (I don’t actually know this for a fact, I’m just arguing it.)
Greek music isn’t being exported to China, Thailand, and Kenya. It’s being exported to areas where there is cultural affinity for the music, where it sounds familiar, because those are neighbouring areas which have had cultural interaction.
And the music being exported successfully isn’t Greek Euro-pop. It’s music from the Greek Laïko tradition: what I usually call on Quora “bouzouki pop”. Laiko ultimately derives from Rebetiko, which ultimately derives from Smyrneiko—as Wikipedia describes it, “Ottoman café music”. The Peiraeus sound of Markos Vamvakaris in the 1930s was Smyrneiko with subtle Western influences, both in the jaunty beat and in the selection of modes. Government censorship after 1936 encouraged less oriental-sounding modes; and Laiko itself is Rebetiko with much more overt Western influence.
In other words, the Greek pop music being successfully exported is a fusion: it’s identifiably Levantine, but it also sounds much more Western than its antecedents. Fusions, I surmise, are more approachable to external audiences, so they travel better.
The big story that Evangelos Lolos’ formulation of the question misses (I asked it, but he asked it first as a comment) is Israel. Greek music is huge in Israel.
Members of the Anglosphere might be puzzled to hear this, because their understanding of Jewish culture is mainly Ashkenazi, and Ashkenazi music is supposed to be Klezmer, it’s not supposed to sound Middle Eastern or Turkish. Or Greek.
To which, two retorts. First, Israel is not just Ashkenazi. It’s also Sephardi and Mizrahi. And both are Levantine, and as a result have significant cultural affinity with Greek music.
The second retort is a thought experiment. What happens if you take a Greek modal, quick, whirling folk dance tune—and you put a Germanic oom-pah bass underneath it?
Nikos Skalkottas. 36 Greek Dances. #11: Syrtos.
Tell me if that doesn’t sound Yiddishe to you.
If that doesn’t work, see here:
Why didn’t the Greeks convert to Catholicism under the Latin Empire?
InB4 Dimitris Almyrantis
The good news for you, OP, is that not only have I read up a fair bit on conversions of Greeks to Catholicism or Islam, I’ve even published academically on the subject.
The bad news is, I’m familiar with a number of circumstances where Greeks did or didn’t convert, but 13th century Greece is not one of them.
What I’m going to do though is answer the more general question: Why did Greeks convert or not convert, to Catholicism or Islam, between the 13th and the 18th century. I will build a framework which I will apply to the dozen cases I know. And then I’ll flippantly say, “oh, Greeks under the Latin Empire must have been like X.”
The framework:
There are four scenarios, I believe, for Greeks converting or not. The following wording is for conversion to Catholicism; you can change it to conversion to Islam, by replacing “heretic” with “infidel”.
- The Homeland Scenario. “There shall be no damned heretics on our home turf! It is an insult to God! (Or: to our geopolitics.) Convert them immediately, and don’t be gentle about it!”
- Outcome: Conversion.
- The Colonial Scenario. “There are too goddamn many heretics in this god-forsaken outpost, for us to convert. And besides, keeping a bunch of heretics around is useful. Someone has to do the work around here. We’ll just clip their wings to make sure their leadership don’t get too uppity.”
- Outcome: No Conversion, but Restriction in power of Orthodox Clergy. Potentially, Only Nominal Conversion, to Byzantine Rite Catholicism. (Yes, the doctrine and the ecclesiastical authority are Catholic. But only priests know the difference. The Mass still looks Greek Orthodox.)
- The Imperial Scenario. “We’re running an empire here: we have better things to do than act as missionaries. Having their leadership be uppity is a feature, not a bug. They can run the heretics’ affairs on our behalf.”
- Outcome: No Conversion, a measure of autonomy granted.
- The Grassroots Scenario. “We’ve seen no help from our clergy, and we’ve seen plenty of help from their clergy. You know what? Defending our creed is not worth the effort. We’ll go with them.”
- Outcome: Conversion.
Now to apply the framework.
- Turkey, 12th century. Imperial Scenario. I don’t know much about the Seljuk empire, but I know they didn’t run around converting Greeks to Islam.
- Turkey, 13th century. Mixed Homeland/Colonial Scenario. The emirates that succeeded the Seljuks were not running an empire, but individual small states, so they did not feel like taking the relaxed big picture. There was fervent missionary work undertaken by them, as I’ve documented elsewhere, although the presence of Christianity in Western Anatolia did not collapse until the 15th century. And in the meantime, the capital tax on Christians was in fact their major source of income. So initially more of a colonial scenario, then later more of a homeland scenario.
- Crete, 14th century. Colonial Scenario. Crete is a colony of Venice, and a rebellious one at that. Conversion is too hard work. But the local Orthodox population is denied senior clergy (there were no Orthodox bishops permitted on the island, the nearest bishop was in Modon on the Peloponnese). They are the underclass, working class, and lower middle class that keep things running and generating income for Venice and its feudal landholders.
I’ve written elsewhere about the poet Stephanos Sahlikis (Ooh! He Said ‘Fuck’! He must be a revolutionary! by Nick Nicholas on Opɯdʒɯlɯklɑr In Exile). Sahlikis belonged to one of the three indigenous Cretan clans that had converted to Catholicism, and were allowed to own fiefs as well. Venice accepted the necessity of coopting locals to Catholicism: it ran out of Italians to run their fiefs, and it needed to reward locals who helped them suppress the constant local revolts. But it didn’t want too many turncoats; they weren’t about to enfranchise the entire serf population that made Crete profitable.
The division between Catholic and Orthodox had eased off somewhat by the 16th century, when Crete was less a colony and more a province of Venice; so the scenario would have crept towards Imperial. It didn’t creep far: the local peasantry resented their forced labour (Corvée) to the end, and welcomed the Ottomans as liberators.
- Greece and Northern Turkey, 15th century. Imperial Scenario. The Ottoman Empire pretty much wrote the book on this, with its Millet system. Not only was the senior Orthodox clergy retained in the newly conquered Orthodox territory of Greece and the Pontus, it administered Christians’ affairs on behalf of the Empire. As long as the Empire got what it needed (tax, troops through Devshirme), the infidels were rarely pressured to convert to Islam. Of course (Grassroots Scenario) some Greeks sought conversion as advantageous to them, but it did not become the norm.
- Northeastern Turkey, 17th century. Homeland Scenario?. There were a few exceptions of deliberate Islamisation. The Islamisation of Albania and Bosnia was in order to subdue a particularly rebellious population; that’s not quite a “home turf” scenario, but it is a scenario in which Orthodoxy had been identified as an administrative liability. The Of Valley was also Islamised, in the 17th century: Greek is still spoken there, but the population is renowned as devoutly Muslim. I don’t know why Islamisation was pursued there, but securing the region would make sense, particularly if neighbouring Georgia and Russia was a concern.
- Central Italy, 17th century. Homeland Scenario. A number of colonies of Greeks from Mani were established in Italy in the 17th century. Conversion to Latin Rite Catholicism was a precondition on settlement. Some colonists resisted it, but they were not able to resist it long. The Homeland Scenario was how Europe worked in the 17th century: Cuius regio, eius religio was how the warfare between Protestants and Catholics was resolved. The ruler got to decide which religion was allowed. And anyone who deviated from what the ruler decided, didn’t get to deviate for long.
- Southern Italy, 17th century. Mixed Colonial/Homeland Scenario. This description I’m somewhat less comfortable with, but: the Orthodox population of Southern Italy (ethnic Greek and Albanian) were pressured into adopting Byzantine Rite, and eventually Latin Rite. The same degree of coercion that was applied in Central Italy couldn’t be applied in the south, because of the far greater number of Orthodox; and (speculating) because of the political situation: the Spanish rulers of Naples could not coopt the local Catholic population as effectively to apply peer pressure.
Eventually, a critical mass point was reached, and the Homeland scenario switched in. In fact, it’s the Albanians in Southern Italy, not the Greeks, who have held out and retained Byzantine Rite.
- Corsica, 17th–18th century. Colonial Scenario. The Greek settlers were another bunch of colonists from Mani, but they held off from real assimilation for two to three centuries. They had a number of factors that made that possible. The initial factor was that, while Rome considered Corsica its home turf, and pressed heavily for conversion, Genoa was running Corsica as an outpost, and it needed the Greeks on side to help control the rebellious locals. So Genoa consistently tried to work around the pressure coming from Rome.
The Greeks, for that matter, were too damn many: they had their own monastery of monks preaching anti-Catholic rhetoric, and they were well armed (forming later on the armed elite of Ajaccio—a Greek sponsored Napoleon to go to military school). And assimilation was off the table for a very long time; when Corsicans asked them to join their revolt against Genoa in 1729, the Greeks laughed them off as goats and Vlachs. (Proper meaning: Aromanian-speakers. Secondary meaning: highlander hillbillies. Maniot meaning: lowlander peasants.)
- Crete, 17th century. Grassroots Scenario. A massive proportion of Cretans converted to Islam; by 1800, it was half the island. I’m sure there’s research now about why, and I’m sure there wasn’t research a generation ago, when I was reading history. The initial impetus must have been the peasantry’s relief at being freed from forced labour—something that the Orthodox low-ranking clergy had been powerless to help them with.
- Florida, 18th century. Grassroots Scenario. The New Smyrna colony was meant to be yet another Maniot colony, with Maniots from Corsica joining in. The boats took off for Florida from Minorca (British-ruled at the time), and every Minorcan who could jumped on board. The Maniots mostly died of malaria, and there was no Orthodox clergy on board; the maladministered colony was thus Greco-Corsican and Minorcan. On Corsica, the Greeks loathed Catholics. In Florida, they gained succour from Catholic clergy. When Florida went back to Spanish rule and conducted a census of New Smyrna, only one colonist (from Crete, I believe) said he considered himself Orthodox.
That was a lot of fun, even though I’m embarrassed I don’t know what happened in the Of valley.
So. The Latin Empire of the 13th century.
- Not Homeland Scenario. The Crusaders were a long, long way from France, and didn’t have the critical mass of local Catholics, or the means, to convert the locals by force or forceful encouragement.
- Not Grassroots Scenario. There was some intermarriage, and the Greek version of the Chronicle of the Morea was written by a gasmule, a product of such intermarriage: he clearly identifies with French interests, and attacks Orthodox Greeks consistently. But the Latin Empire and its successor statelets likely couldn’t have even offered the locals the incentives Venice grudgingly did, to encourage conversion. They were not rich, and not well-defended; they were hanging on for dear life in the Levant.
That leaves the Imperial Scenario (we’ll benignly leave the Greeks to their own affairs) and Colonial Scenario (we’re happy to leave the Greeks as an underclass).
I’m sure the Latin Empire would have liked to exploit the Greek peasantry, and curtail their heretic clergy, just like Venice did in Crete. I just don’t think they had the wherewithal or the nous to do it. Too inexperienced in colonialism and imperialism, too far from home, too embattled. I think they ended up in the Imperial Scenario—where you don’t bother converting the locals: not as a gesture of magnanimity born of strength, the way Mehmed II devised it, but as a gesture of pragmatism born of weakness.
What should I do and not do when visiting and praying at the Greek Acropolis?
Do bring a drink with you. Don’t expect to find cheap drinks in the vicinity.
On my latest visit to the Sacred Rock, I said to a vendor at the foot of the hill:
—As our ancient ancestors used to say: I’ll have a coke please.
The vendor replied.
—As our ancient ancestors used to say: that’ll be €5, buddy.
Don’t run eager to see the Marvels Of The Holy Rock, like I did when I was 8. It’s a 100m climb: you want to pace yourself.
Do look out for the Anafiotika. It’s a Greek Island village perched right on the Acropolis hillside. Which makes sense, because it was settled from a Greek island: “The first houses were built in the era of Otto of Greece, when workers from the island of Anafi came to Athens in order to work as construction workers in the refurbishment of King Otto’s Palace.”
Don’t expect the Parthenon frieze. There’s only tiny bits of it left on site: the frieze is scattered among museums throughout the world, though I was grateful that the British Museum sold a book which put photos of them all together.
Do expect scaffolding: the Acropolis has been a building site for restoration since 1975.
Don’t expect that you’re seeing all the history of the Acropolis. You’re seeing Bavarians’ impression of what the history of the Acropolis should be like. The Acropolis had 2500 years of history after Pericles, as a citadel and a cathedral. All of it was stripped away after Athens became the capital of the Modern Greek state.
Frankish Tower (Acropolis of Athens) – Wikipedia
Photo from 1872.
The tower was dismantled in 1874, as part of a wider cleaning-up of the Acropolis from post-Classical buildings, a project initiated and financed by Heinrich Schliemann. The demolition of such an “integral part of the Athenian horizon” (Théophile Gautier) drew considerable criticism at the time, while the eminent historian of Frankish Greece William Miller later called it “an act of vandalism unworthy of any people imbued with a sense of the continuity of history”.
Do expect to find the Caryatids, the “maidens of the rock”, and do expect people to tell you the story that the five maidens wept when their sister was stolen away by Lord Elgin.
Don’t expect the same people to say that the Caryatids you’re looking at are replicas: the real remaining five sisters are shielded from Athens smog in the Acropolis Museum.
And, hate to say it, do expect odd looks if you do a Hellenic Pagan prayer. Hellenic pagans exist, but they’re not widely known.
What did short monophthongal epsilon and omicron sound like in 5th Century BC Attic Greek?
One extrapolation is Modern Greek, which (as Rich Alderson’s answer says) has them as short mid-high tense: [e̞ o̞].
Sidney Allen’s Vox Graeca is the authoritative work in English on Ancient Greek pronunciation and the evidence we have for it, and it treats short mid-high tense as the default assumption. It rejects the notion that they were close mid [e o], because that would have likely clashed with the newly monophthongised <ei> <ou>, which were pronounced [eː oː]. He concedes that <ei> [eː], which historically reflected Homeric <ee>, was the long version of /e/;
But phonetically Attic ε probably lies midway between classical η [ɛː] and ει [eː], and there seems nothing to be gained by setting it in a special relationship with either.
I must say that I don’t find this argument convincing, but I do agree that mid-high is the null hypothesis.
Allen thinks the fact that Latin ĭ was often transliterated as Greek ε indicates not that Greek ε sounded like an “i”, but that Latin ĭ sounded like an “e” (“peculiarly open”—which I’ll translate into IPA as [ɪ]—”and so as near to Greek ε as to ι”. Ditto Greek ο used for Latin ŭ (presumably closer to [ʊ]).
The fact that Greek o transliterated the ŭ of other languages, e.g. Persian and Sanskrit (Mardonius, Greek <Mardonios>, was Old Persian Marduniya), indicates to him that the alternative υ was not by then [u] at all but [y]. Greeks at this point are likely asking “then why didn’t they use ου?! <Mardounios>” Because ου was a long vowel (Mardūnios); and back in Classical times, the difference between short and long vowels was extremely important.
What are some English/British given names that can survive intact against (cypriot-) Greek vernacular?
Approach 1. You need a name that can straightforwardly inflect in Greek, or that looks like something that straightforwardly inflects. That means a male name ending in -os, -is, -as, or a female name ending in -a, -i, -o.
Not a lot of English names do, but you’d be surprised. My uncle Andreas (Andrew) is rendered by my aunt in Greek as Andros. I believe Andros is a Cypriot variant of Andreas already, but it’s also how such grammatical assimilation can happen.
If an English male name ends in -a, -i, -o, stick an s on and you’re done. As in fact occurs for English names bused by Greeks already. Jimmy > Dzimis.
If an English female name ends in -a, -i, -o, you’re already done. Jenny > Dzeni.
If you’re not in that category, you can get creative, as Andros shows.
Approach 2. A name that can be translated into a Greek equivalent straightforwardly, because they’re cognate. There’s no shortage of names that show up in both English and Greek, because they are either Greek or Latin in origin (Philip, Nick, George, Luke, Mark, Lucy: Filipos, Nikos, Yorgos, Loukas, Markos, Loukia), or because they are common Christian patrimony as originally Jewish names (John, Elizabeth, James, Mary: Yannis, Elisavet, Iakovos, Maria).
Approach 3. A sound-alike name, which I don’t think really counts. The Greek diaspora is full of Athanasios that have renamed themselves Arthur, and Dimitrios that have renamed themselves Jim, and Kostas that have renamed themselves Gus (that was always a US thing, and didn’t happen in Australia: they stuck to Constantine > Con there). You could flip that, and turn Arthur into Thanasis, and James into Dimitris.
How much of casually spoken Cypriot Greek conversations can a Greek from Greece understand?
Mutual intelligibility is very, very hard to quantify.
There is an exceedingly crude measure, Lexicostatistics, that gets used in underdocumented languages, and that noone would dare used among familiar European languages. For what it’s worth (and it’s not that much), if two lects (= dialect or language, being agnostic about it) diverge in 20 out of the 100 words in the Swadesh 100 list of core vocabulary, they are considered different languages. It’s what you get for Ukrainian vs Russian.
Either Swadesh or myself (I honestly don’t remember!) ran the Swadesh list for Cretan and Cypriot against Standard Greek once. The result was 81% similarity for both. I did do Tsakonian vs Standard Greek, and came up with 70%.
Again: that number isn’t worth much. Cretan may have been subject to more assimilatory pressure than Cypriot, but I do think the combination of more phonetic change and intonation make Cypriot harder to understand than Cretan. Then again, I identify as Cretan rather than Cypriot, so I would say that.
I know I have been genuine difficulty in understanding heavier forms of the dialect, such as that spoken by my grandmother or my cousin’s husband Fotis. Be aware that there is a diglossic continuum in Cypriot, with people speaking on a spectrum between Standard Greek with a Cypriot accent, and what the locals call horkatika.
Are there any Standard Greek speakers who don’t understand what horkatika means? Good. Cypriot fortitions [j] to [k] after /r, ð, p/. In Standard Greek, that’s horjatika: “villager-talk”.
Are the Trojans in the Homeric Epics portrayed to speak Greek differently than the Achaeans?
There’s no dialectal difference, although I wouldn’t expect one from an epic poem: Homer is not Aristophanes. Of course, the Iliad is not a documentary, and while the poem concedes that the Trojans’ allies did not speak Greek, it’s doubtful that the actual Trojans of 1200 BC spoke Greek either.
Trojan language – Wikipedia mentions that Hilary Mackie has observed in her monograph Talking Trojan Speech and Community in the Iliad that the style of the Trojans’ speech in the Iliad is different from the Achaeans’:
in simplest terms, Trojans speak poetically, with the aim of avoiding conflict, whereas Achaeans repeatedly engage in public, ritualized abuse that linguists term (from another source) flyting: “Achaeans are proficient at blame, while Trojans perform praise poetry”
So no “Khello Komrade Priamsky, please to drink kykeon wit me” or “Zis is Troy! Ve do not drag ze korpses behint uns!” But something subtler, yes.
Hiotis vs Hendrix
This is not high Greek culture. This is not even low Greek culture. This is stoopid Greek culture. But I got a laugh out of it, and I’m translating the YouTube comments about it.
In the left corner: Jimi Hendrix. This audience, I assume, needs no introduction to him.
In the right corner, Manolis Chiotis. How do I describe Manolis Hiotis? Well, if Vamvakaris was the Bach of Bouzouki music, Tsitsanis the Beethoven, and Zambetas the Offenbach, then I guess Hiotis was the Paganini. He was a virtuoso, he pioneered the electric bouzouki in guitar tuning, and he was wildly popular in Greek film. But his songs, I dare say, are not the greats of the genre. A few have nostalgic appeal (Περασμένες μου αγάπες, Θεσσαλονίκη μου μεγάλη φτωχομάνα, Ηλιοβασιλέματα), but they’re way too European, and way too light. I love “My Thessalonica, Great Mother Of The Poor”, but on reflection, I think I love it most for that verse. The tune is on the frivolous side, and the intro is actually quite awkward.
The vid says that he was the man who dragged the bouzouki out of the mud, perfumed it, and made it fit for the salon. I don’t think that counts as praise, and I think you’ll find Tsitsanis did that first. Tsitsanis might have been bourgeois, and had no idea what getting stoned was, but at least he had a soul.
That’s not a universal opinion on Hiotis; in fact, it’s bound to be a controversial one. But it’s mine.
Anyway. Here’s a YouTube vid, made by Greek government TV no less, about the urban legend that Hendrix ran into a show by Hiotis in New York (supposedly in ’65, which would have been before anyone cared what Hendrix had to say; user Voodoochile79 offers it was supposed to be ’69), and stated that he may have been the best stringed-instrument player he’d ever heard. Mary Linda, Hiotis’ wife and musical partner, is interviewed to corroborate it. I think the vid hints that Hendrix even learned his technique from Hiotis; I dare not play it in full to find out.
“Hendrix says X is a better guitarist than he is” is an exorbitantly widespread urban legend (Phil Keaggy Greatest Guitarist?); this, I guess, is the Greek variant. The origin of the urban legend is the alleged exchange from 1969 “How does it feel to be the greatest guitarist?” “I don’t know, go ask Rory Gallagher.”
If there ever was a kernel of truth to this, which is extremely doubtful, it may be in what user SUNBLESSED ATHENS reports in comments there:
Ο Χεντριξ το ειπε οπως εκανε και αλλα παρ ομοια σχολια για πολλους ανα τα χρονια.Απλα δεν υπαρχει καταγεγραμμενο ντοκουμεντο για την δηλωση του οσον αφορα τον Χιωτη.Όσον αφορα την ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑ…διαβαστε να σας την πω εγω, Λοιπον.. αδελφος του παππου μου που ζουσε εκει χρονια αναμμεσα σε πολλους καλεσμενους σε εκδηλωση ηταν εκει..στο Αμερικα..και το ακουσε ο ιδιος..απο τον πιτσιρικα νεαρο κιθαριστα ο οποιος σε μπλα μπλα..με δημοσιογραφους και μουσικοφιλους ειπε κατι σαν.. ”That Greek guy from the other night..(ειχε παιξει ο Χιωτης 2 μερες πριν)..was really good..i think he is the prob the best.!!Ισως μεταξυ σοβαρου και αστειου
Hendrix did say it, and he made similar comments about a lot of people over the years. There’s just no documentary evidence of him saying so about Hiotis. As for the truth: read on. So, my grandfather’s brother, who lived over there in “The Amerika” for years, was invited to a reception, and he heard it himself from the kid guitarist, who in the middle of some yadda yadda with journalists and music fans said something like, “That Greek guy from the other night” (Hiotis had played two days before) “was really good… I think he is probably the best.” Possibly as a half-way joke.
Maybe.
At any rate, there’s such concentrated win in the comments, that I think I should be relaying some of it in English.
Not the stuff by people who actually believed the video. That’s depressing. Or people who actually say that Hendrix wasn’t all that, because he wasn’t a virtuoso shredder like Hiotis or Malmsteen. That’s even more depressing. And expressing incredulity about the video is shooting fish in a barrel. But after the week I’ve had on Quora, I’ll take it. Even if most of the commenters are Hiotis fans.
Chronological order. The mockery only starts a year after the initial post.
- alucardae86: This show is in the same style as the 8 pm news: misinformation at its peak. The four-string bouzouki was not invented by Hiotis, it existed since 1912. Hendrix was never known for his speed or his crisp tone, but for his technique and his pioneering sound (corresponding to our Vamvakaris). As for his statement, that’s an urban legend that has circulated about various artists of the time. PS: Hiotis belongs to the pantheon of bouzouki players.
- markos aggelos: Hi guys this is my comment. Hiotis is a master musician and I don’t want to take anything away from him a master musician. But Hendrix at that time was in the military from what I know. So the hypotheticals of Greek TV are as always a bunch of crap. Don’t watch TV guys they’ve stuffed us full of bullshit what a great scene they’re painting, two giants sitting back having a little glass of wine and playing Voodoo Chile haha. What next he taught him how to use a wah wah pedal too.
- Nick Parastratidis: “He took the instrument out of the mud of the suburbs and placed it in the salons of the aristocracy.” Repulsive. He praises Hiotis, but insults his origins and the origins of all rebetiko. Historical inaccuracy coupled with vile snobbery against generations of people who grew up in the “mud of the suburbs.” Shitty little journalists.
- John Maronidis: You do know it is possible to listen to more than 1 kind of music right?
- GreekMoonraker008: SO IS AN ARTIST ONLY ANY GOOD IF AN AMERICAN APPROVES YOU RIIIIIGHT? YOU DICKHEADS FUCK YOUR SOUL! SO BECAUSE HENDRICKS SAID HE IS GOOD THATS WHY EVERYONE ADMIRES HIM RIIIIIGHT? THATS HOW LITTLE FAITH ALL GREEKS HAVE RIIIIIGHT!
- Vlad Count: Mine used to play the accordion with Metallica for many years
- Greek Bouzouki: I am sad to say that the things that impress people are the things that shouldn’t. Hiotis is not great because he impressed Hendrix, or because he played the guitar upside down, or because he played fast.
- Dimitris Skazas: The observation made by many that this is an urban legend is accurate, and if I may say so, obvious. It regularly involves many virtuoso soloists, usually with little thought. Moreover, I do not admit the need of such comparisons between artists belonging to distinct cultures. It is true that once, in a much later interview, Mrs Linda reprised the legend, pretty much trapped into doing so by a journalist who mentioned it to her as a given, but also with some naiveté that I do not begrudge her. This confusion (not comparison) between Hiotis and Hendrix, if I may say so, is somewhat pathetic.
- ΣΤΑΥΡΙΔΗΣ ΙΩΑΝΝΗΣ: A wonderful documentary. Only Greek State TV does such quality work BRAVO. [Poe’s law applies here]
- mpelefroni: Hiotis at the time was known by the nickname “Rory”
- Παναγιώτης Μήτσου: Neither Gallagher nor Hiotis. (Haha, you found a video with Gallagher, you say.) [In response to someone who claims to have seen a video of Hendrix saying it about Gallagher.]
[…]
There is a version [of the urban legend] circulating with Hiotis (Linda must have circulated it), a version which fits our national collective fantasising perfectly. And of course plenty of Greeks rush to reproduce it with wondrous ease and satisfaction. They even claim that the interview had been recorded and that they have seen it. And they’re proud of it, as if, had Hendrix actually said that Hiotis was a better guitarist than him in some parallel universe, that would be reason enough for them to feel proud themselves. Hullo barefoot family. - kostasaliver: And even if that is true, buddy, why ruin it? Myths are there to be preserved.