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Category: Culture
How does the character of Nasreddin Hodja change across different Muslim countries?
Greeks got him from Turks; he’s much bigger, I noticed, in Cyprus than in Greece. I don’t know enough to compare with Nasreddin in Muslim countries, but in Greek accounts he’s a promulgator of often absurdist folk wisdom. “The argument over the mattress” is a journalistic cliché in Greece. The argument over the mattress? Glad […]
What do Greeks think of Aristidh Kola (Αριστείδης Κόλλιας)?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greeks I was not aware that he’d died. I was even less aware of the conspiracy theories about his death. I’d come across his books when I was looking at Arvanitika for my linguistics thesis. (My stuff on Balkan language contact ended up left out of the thesis, but I’m grateful for the opportunity to […]
What are the characteristics of Greek people?
Originally Answered: How can you describe the personality of the Greeks? Noone’s biting? InB4 “You can’t stereotype all Greeks”, &c &c Mercurial. Impulsive. There’s an apocryphal Turkish saying (which in fact, I’ve only found in Greek sources—but then again, I haven’t asked Quora): Gâvurun/Yunanın akili sonradan geliyor. Του Ρωμιού η γνώση ύστερα έρχεται. A Greek’s […]
Do the men of Crete still practice their archery for which they were so famous?
Like Vasilios Danias said, archery would have died out in Crete when rifles came to town; the point of archery, after all, was hunting. And Cretans sure love their rifles now, as Dimitra Triantafyllidou illustrates. But there’s ample evidence of archery used in hunting during Venetian rule, when guns were but new (and presumably not […]
What was the profession of 1st Greeks who arrived in Australia and became famous for that?
You’ve read something somewhere, OP, I can tell, but I’m at a loss about where. The answer, pace Romain Bouchard, is not in Wikipedia, but I don’t remember it. Let me try and reconstruct it. The big Greek migration wave into Australia was in the 1950s–70s. The stereotype was milk bar owner (= grocery story) […]
Do modern Greek people feel that Istanbul/Constantinople belongs to them?
27 followers. A lot of people are waiting for an answer to this question. I’ll bite. With the initial note that this is a different question from Do Greeks want to recover Constantinople? I’m not necessarily the best person to be answering this: I lived in Greece in the 80s, before the thawing in relations […]
What is the difference between Cretan, Cypriot, Asia Minor (mostly Lydian and Trojan), Mycenaean, Classical, Hellenic, Hellenistic, and Modern Greeks?
Different regions and/or time periods of Greek culture. Not all of them involving ethnic Greeks. Mycenaean: Greek culture of 1500–1200 BC. Associated with the site of Mycenae. Cretan: Culture of Crete. No timeframe. Initially non-Hellenic. Cypriot. Culture of Cyprus. No timeframe. Initially non-Hellenic. Rhodian. Culture of Rhodes. No timeframe. Asia Minor. Culture of Asia Minor. […]
Who is the other Hades and which are their family ties?
In this episode of Quora Jeopardy!, I find that the source OP is drawing on (Dimitris Sotiropoulos’ answer to Who is the other Hades and which are their family ties?, see comments) does not necessarily lead to the conclusion he is positing. The answer is drawn from the first successful Google hit I got on […]
Did people in the first century have last names?
Romans had nomen and cognomen, which were inherited names like surnames. Greeks and Jews, like contemporary Icelanders, just had patronymics: John son of Zebedee. (See also the list of high priests of Israel.) Less often, they had nicknames indicating jobs or characteristics: Simon the Zealot, Judas of Kerioth, Jesus the Nazarene. In narratives, those distinctions […]
Did the ancient Greeks have to or were commanded to love their gods?
I humbly thank Amy Dakin for her A2A, but I am a dunce as to Ancient Greek religion. I’ll note one odd thing though. I’m not sure of this one thing, and I’m happy to be shown to be wrong. In a few questions, I tackled the question of “what’s with the meaning of agape”, […]