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Category: Culture
What religion are Greek people?
Religion in Greece Which leads to the uncomfortable question, who counts as Greek people. Well, if we leave out migrants from the past couple of generations, and talk about religions of long standing in Greece (using counts from the Wikipedia article linked, which also skip immigrants). The overwhelming majority is Greek Orthodox. 88% of 11 […]
Greeks, which do you identify most with: Ancient Greece or the Byzantine Empire?
(Nice question, Aphrodisia Xanthopoulos! You and Aziz Dida should get together and plot more questions; the Greece feed has been getting boring lately.) OP’s question touches on the old dichotomy in Greek identity between Hellene and Romios (Roman); see for example Romios or Hellene? It’s a dichotomy that may be dying down now, as the […]
In which countries are Greeks not well liked?
Καλώς ήρθες, Αφροδισία! Not many countries now. If you dig into other questions, such as the perennial favourite What do the Balkan nations think of each other? What are the stereotypes? or What do Albanians think of Greeks?, you’ll see there’s some animus in (FYRO) Macedonia and Albania, and a lot less than there used […]
Why do I experience a profound feeling when I read and understand old writings of my mother language?
Oh. This is a fascinating question, Kelvin. And Faleminderit to you, shoku! I don’t get that feeling with Ancient Greek. I don’t get that feeling with Old, Middle, or Early Modern English. I do get a slight feeling of something with Early Modern Greek. Allow me to speculate. A lot of it is missing what […]
Why is Greece the 6th most important contributor in Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF)?
I wish I knew. This is what I get from the Googles. Francophone Balkans? ‘Outsider’ Membership in La Francophonie and Other Language-Based International Organisations speculates that it’s because French is such a prominent foreign language in Greek education. Which explains why Romania is in the Francophonie. And French was indeed the default foreign language in […]
Why are all Harpies female?
Looked up the Pauly at Wikisource (Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft); alas, that page has not been digitised. Looked up the Roscher dictionary (Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie – Wikipedia), 1884. After noting the frequent conflation of sirens and harpies, it mentions “The meaning of harpies in nature is clear enough: they are […]
What was the status of black people in the Roman Empire?
I would like to take the opportunity afforded by this question, to translate the epigraph to Ptolemy’s Geography, which is included in the new edition. It might be Byzantine rather than Roman, but for these purposes, Byzantine can serve for Roman. And it illustrates that Romans looked down on all foreigners, not just ones with […]
What do you know about Greek speaking Muslims (e.g. those in Hamidiyah, Syria)?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Hamidiyah Hello, Aziz, and thank you for A2A. I found out about Al-Hamidiyah a few years ago, and posted about my emotional reactions on my blog: opɯdʒɯlɯklɑr: Al-Hamidiyah. I know that the settlers of Al-Hamidiyah fled Crete after Crete gained autonomy, and Christian Cretans started reprisals against Muslim Cretans. (In fact, as I found on […]
What do you know about ethnically or linguistically Greek Muslims?
Well, I’ve already answered the related question What do you know about Greek speaking Muslims (e.g. those in Hamidiyah, Syria)? I was tempted to merge the two questions, but the focus on Al-Hamidiyah is useful, because they’ve been so prominent in Greek media. Outside of Al-Hamidiyah: I know that some Muslims in Greece that were […]
Are Middle Easterners considered to be White by Greeks?
Everyone here has spoken well on the topic. Greeks have a keen sense of Other, and skin colour can factor into that. As Dimitra Triantafyllidou says, we have a history of dismissing Gypsies (like much of Europe); and there’s a lot of anti-Pakistani feeling in downtown Athens. But then again, there was a lot of […]