[1] _Grammar of Greek Art._
[2] It may here be pointed out that it was found impossible, with any
regard for the appearance of the pages, to arrange the Plates for
this article so as to preserve a chronological order in the
individual figures; they are not arranged consecutively as regards
the history or the period, and are only grouped for convenience in
paging.--Ed.
[3] The date is given when the work cannot be considered new.
GREEK FIRE, the name applied to inflammable and destructive compositions
used in warfare during the middle ages and particularly by the Byzantine
Greeks at the sieges of Constantinople. The employment of liquid fire is
represented on Assyrian bas-reliefs. At the siege of Plataea (429 B.C.)
the Spartans attempted to burn the town by piling up against the walls
wood saturated with pitch and sulphur and setting it on fire (Thuc. ii.
77), and at the siege of Delium (424 B.C.) a cauldron containing pitch,
sulphur and burning charcoal, was placed against the walls and urged
into flame by the aid of a bellows, the blast from which was conveyed
through a hollow tree-trunk (Thuc. iv. 100). Aeneas Tacticus in the
following century mentions a mixture of sulphur, pitch, charcoal,
incense and tow, which was packed in wooden vessels and thrown lighted
upon the decks of the enemy's ships. Later, as in receipts given by
Vegetius (_c._ A.D. 350), naphtha or petroleum is added, and some nine
centuries afterwards the same substances are found forming part of
mixtures described in the later receipts (which probably date from the
beginning of the 13th century) of the collection known as the _Liber
ignium_ of Marcus Graecus. In subsequent receipts saltpetre and
turpentine make their appearance, and the modern "carcass composition,"
containing sulphur, tallow, rosin, turpentine, saltpetre and crude
antimony, is a representative of the same class of mixtures, which
became known to the Crusaders as Greek fire but were more usually called
wildfire. Greek fire, properly so-called, was, however, of a somewhat
different character. It is said that in the reign of Constantine
Pogonatus (648-685) an architect named Callinicus, who had fled from
Heliopolis in Syria to Constantinople, prepared a wet fire which was
thrown out from siphons ([Greek: to dia ton siphonon ekpheromenon pyr
hugron]), and that by its aid the ships of the Saracens were set on fire
at Cyzicus and their defeat assured. The art of compounding this
mixture, which is also referred to as [Greek: pyr thalassion], or sea
fire, was jealously guarded at Constantinople, and the possession of the
secret on several occasions proved of great advantage to the city. The
nature of the compound is somewhat obscure. It has been supposed that
the novelty introduced by Callinicus was saltpetre, but this view
involves the difficulty that that substance was apparently not known
till the 13th century, even if it were capable of accounting for the
properties attributed to the wet fire. Lieut.-Colonel H. W. L. Hime,
after a close examination of the available evidence, concludes that what
distinguished Greek fire from the other incendiaries of the period was
the presence of quicklime, which was well known to give rise to a large
development of heat when brought into contact with water. The mixture,
then, was composed of such materials as sulphur and naphtha with
quicklime, and took fire spontaneously when wetted--whence the name of
wet fire or sea fire; and portions of it were "projected and at the same
time ignited by applying the hose of a water engine to the breech" of
the siphon, which was a wooden tube, cased with bronze.
See Lieut.-Col. H. W. L. Hime, _Gunpowder and Ammunition, their Origin
and Progress_ (London, 1904).
GREEK INDEPENDENCE, WAR OF, the name given to the great rising of the
Greek subjects of the sultan against the Ottoman domination, which began
in 1821 and ended in 1833 with the establishment of the independent
kingdom of Greece. The circumstances that led to the insurrection and
the general diplomatic situation by which its fortunes were from time to
time affected are described elsewhere (see GREECE: _History_; TURKEY:
_History_). The present article is confined to a description of the
general character and main events of the war itself. If we exclude the
abortive invasion of the Danubian principalities by Prince Alexander
Ypsilanti (March 1821), which collapsed ignominiously as soon as it was
disavowed by the tsar, the theatre of the war was confined to
continental Greece, the Morea, and the adjacent narrow seas. Its history
may, broadly speaking, be divided into three periods: the first
(1821-1824), during which the Greeks, aided by numerous volunteers from
Europe, were successfully pitted against the sultan's forces alone; the
second, from 1824, when the disciplined troops of Mehemet Ali, pasha of
Egypt, turned the tide against the insurgents; the third, from the
intervention of the European powers in the autumn of 1827 to the end.
When, on the 2nd of April 1821, Archbishop Germanos, head of the
_Hetaeria_ in the Morea, raised the standard of the cross at Kalavryta
as the signal for a general rising of the Christian population, the
circumstances were highly favourable. In the Morea itself, in spite of
plentiful warning, the Turks were wholly unprepared; while the bulk of
the Ottoman army, under the _seraskier_ Khurshid Pasha, was engaged in
the long task of reducing the intrepid Ali, pasha of Iannina (see ALI,
pasha of Iannina).
Another factor, and that the determining one, soon came to the aid of
the Greeks. In warfare carried on in such a country as Greece, sea-girt
and with a coast deeply indented, inland without roads and intersected
with rugged mountains, victory--as Wellington was quick to observe--must
rest with the side that has command of the sea. This was assured to the
insurgents at the outset by the revolt of the maritime communities of
the Greek archipelago. The Greeks of the islands had been accustomed
from time immemorial to seafaring; their ships--some as large as
frigates--were well armed, to guard against the Barbary pirates and
rovers of their own kin; lastly, they had furnished the bulk of the
sailors to the Ottoman navy which, now that this recruiting ground was
closed, had to be manned hastily with impressed crews of dock-labourers
and peasants, many of whom had never seen the sea. The Turkish fleet,
"adrift in the Archipelago"--as the British seamen put it--though
greatly superior in tonnage and weight of metal, could never be a match
for the Greek brigs, manned as these were by trained, if not
disciplined, crews.
Outbreak of the insurrection.
The war was begun by the Greeks without definite plan and without any
generally recognized leadership. The force with which Germanos marched
from Kalavryta against Patras was composed of peasants armed with
scythes, clubs and slings, among whom the "primates" exercised a
somewhat honorary authority. The town itself was destroyed and those of
its Mussulman inhabitants who could not escape into the citadel were
massacred; but the citadel remained in the hands of the Turks till 1828.
Meanwhile, in the south, leaders of another stamp had appeared: Petros,
bey of the Maina (q.v.) chief of the Mavromichales, who at the head of
his clan attacked Kalamata and put the Mussulman inhabitants to the
sword; and Kolokotrones, a notable brigand once in the service of the
Ionian government, who--fortified by a vision of the Virgin--captured
Karytaena and slaughtered its infidel population. Encouraged by these
successes the revolt spread rapidly; within three weeks there was not a
Mussulman left in the open country, and the remnants of the once
dominant class were closely besieged in the fortified towns by hosts of
wild peasants and brigands. The flames of revolt now spread across the
Isthmus of Corinth: early in April the Christians of Dervenokhoria rose,
and the whole of Boeotia and Attica quickly followed suit; at the
beginning of May the Mussulman inhabitants of Athens were blockaded in
the Acropolis. In the Morea, meanwhile, a few Mussulman fortresses still
held out: Coron, Modon, Navarino, Patras, Nauplia, Monemvasia,
Tripolitsa. One by one they fell, and everywhere were repeated the same
scenes of butchery. The horrors culminated in the capture of Tripolitsa,
the capital of the vilayet. In September this was taken by storm;
Kolokotrones rode in triumph to the citadel over streets carpeted with
the dead; and the crowning triumph of the Cross was celebrated by a
cold-blooded massacre of 2000 prisoners of all ages and both sexes. This
completed the success of the insurrection in the Morea, where only
Patras, Nauplia, and one or two lesser fortresses remained to the Turks.
Meanwhile, north of the Isthmus, the fortunes of war had been less
one-sided. In the west Khurshid's lieutenant, Omar Vrioni (a Mussulman
Greek of the race of the Palaeologi), had inflicted a series of defeats
on the insurgents, recaptured Levadia, and on the 30th of June relieved
the Acropolis; but the rout of the troops which Mahommed Pasha was
bringing to his aid by the Greeks in the defile of Mount Oeta, and the
news of the fall of Tripolitsa, forced him to retreat, and the campaign
of 1821 ended with the retirement of the Turks into Thessaly.
The month of April had witnessed the revolt of the principal Greek
islands, Spetsae on the 7th, Psara on the 23rd, Hydra on the 28th and
Samos on the 30th. Their fleets were divided into squadrons, of which
one, under Tombazes, was deputed to watch for the entrance of the
Ottomans into the archipelago, while the other under Andreas Miaoulis
(_q.v._) sailed to blockade Patras and watch the coasts of Epirus. At
sea, as on land, the Greeks opened the campaign with hideous atrocities,
almost their first exploit being the capture of a vessel carrying to
Mecca the sheik-ul-Islam and his family, whom they murdered with every
aggravation of outrage.
General character of the war.
These inauspicious beginnings, indeed, set the whole tone of the war,
which was frankly one of mutual extermination. On both sides the
combatants were barbarians, without discipline or competent
organization. At sea the Greeks rapidly developed into mere pirates, and
even Miaoulis, for all his high character and courage, was often unable
to prevent his captains from sailing home at critical moments, when pay
or booty failed. On land the presence of a few educated Phanariots, such
as Demetrios Ypsilanti or Alexander Mavrocordato, was powerless to
inspire the rude hordes with any sense of order or of humanity in
warfare; while every lull in the fighting, due to a temporary check to
the Turks, was the signal for internecine conflicts due to the rivalry
of leaders who, with rare exceptions, thought more of their personal
power and profit than of the cause of Greece.
Turkish reprisals.
Europe and the rising Philhellenism.
This cause, indeed, was helped more by the impolitic reprisals of the
Turks than by the heroism of the insurgents. All Europe stood aghast at
the news of the execution of the Patriarch Gregorios of Constantinople
(April 22, 1821) and the wholesale massacres that followed, culminating
as these did in the extermination of the prosperous community of Scio
(Chios) in March 1822. The cause of Greece was now that of Christendom,
of the Catholic and Protestant West, as of the Orthodox East. European
Liberalism, too, gagged and fettered under Metternich's "system,"
recognized in the Greeks the champions of its own cause; while even
conservative statesmen, schooled in the memories of ancient Hellas, saw
in the struggle a fight of civilization against barbarism. This latter
belief, which was, moreover, flattering to their vanity, the Greek
leaders were astute enough to foster; the propaganda of Adamantios
Coraes (_q.v._) had done its work; and wily brigands, like Odysseus of
Ithaka, assuming the style and trappings of antiquity, posed as the
champions of classic culture against the barbarian. All Europe, then,
hailed with joy the exploit of Constantine Kanaris, who on the night of
June 18-19 succeeded in steering a fire-ship among the Turkish squadron
off Scio, and burned the flag-ship of the capudan-pasha with 3000 souls
on board.
Expedition of Dramali, 1822.
Meanwhile Sultan Mahmud, now wide awake to the danger, had been
preparing for a systematic effort to suppress the rising. The threatened
breach with Russia had been avoided by Metternich's influence on the
tsar Alexander; the death of Ali of Iannina had set free the army of
Khurshid Pasha, who now, as _seraskier_ of Rumelia, was charged with the
task of reducing the Morea. In the spring of 1822 two Turkish armies
advanced southwards: one, under Omar Vrioni, along the coast of Western
Hellas, the other, under Ali, pasha of Drama (Dramali), through Boeotia
and Attica. Omar was held in check by the mud ramparts of Missolonghi;
but Dramali, after exacting fearful vengeance for the massacre of the
Turkish garrison of the Acropolis at Athens, crossed the Isthmus and
with the over-confidence of a conquering barbarian advanced to the
relief of the hard-pressed garrison of Nauplia. He crossed the perilous
defile of Dervenaki unopposed; and at the news of his approach most of
the members of the Greek government assembled at Argos fled in panic
terror. Demetrios Ypsilanti, however, with a few hundred men joined the
Mainote Karayanni in the castle of Larissa, which crowns the acropolis
of ancient Argos. This held Dramali in check, and gave Kolokotrones time
to collect an army. The Turks, in the absence of the fleet which was to
have brought them supplies, were forced to retreat (August 6); the
Greeks, inspired with new courage, awaited them in the pass of
Dervenaki, where the undisciplined Ottoman host, thrown into confusion
by an avalanche of boulders hurled upon them, was annihilated. In
Western Greece the campaign had an outcome scarcely less disastrous for
the Turks. The death of Ali of Iannina had been followed by the
suppression of the insurgent Suliotes and the advance of Omar Vrioni
southwards to Missolonghi; but the town held out gallantly, a Turkish
surprise attack, on the 6th of January 1823, was beaten off, and Omar
Vrioni had to abandon the siege and retire northwards over the pass of
Makrynoros.
Civil war among the Greeks.
Campaign of 1823.
The victorious outcome of the year's fighting had a disastrous effect
upon the Greeks. Their victories had been due mainly to the guerilla
tactics of the leaders of the type of Kolokotrones; Mavrocordato, whose
character and antecedents had marked him out as the natural head of the
new Greek state, in spite of his successful defence of Missolonghi, had
been discredited by failures elsewhere; and the Greeks thus learned to
despise their civilized advisers and to underrate the importance of
discipline. The temporary removal of the common peril, moreover, let
loose all the sectional and personal jealousies, which even in face of
the enemy had been with difficulty restrained, and the year 1823
witnessed the first civil war between the Greek parties. These
internecine feuds might easily have proved fatal to the cause of Greece.
In the Archipelago Hydriotes and Spetsiotes were at daggers drawn; the
men of Psara were at open war with those of Samos; all semblance of
discipline and cohesion had vanished from the Greek fleet. Had Khosrev,
the new Ottoman admiral, been a man of enterprise, he might have
regained the command of the sea and, with it, that of the whole
situation. But the fate of his predecessor had filled him with a lively
terror of Kanaris and his fire-ships; he contented himself with a cruise
round the coasts of Greece, and was happy to return to safety under the
guns of the Dardanelles without having accomplished anything beyond
throwing supplies and troops into Coron, Modon and Patras. On land,
meanwhile, the events of the year before practically repeated
themselves. In the west an army of Mussulman and Catholic Albanians,
under Mustai Pasha, advanced southwards. On the night of the 21st of
August occurred the celebrated exploit of Marko Botzaris and his
Suliotes: a successful surprise attack on the camp of the Ottoman
vanguard, in which the Suliote leader fell. The jealousy of the Aetolian
militia for the Suliotes, however, prevented the victory being decisive;
and Mustai advanced to the siege of Anatoliko, a little town in the
lagoons near Missolonghi. Here he was detained until, on the 11th of
December, he was forced to raise the siege and retire northwards. His
colleague, Yussuf Pasha, in East Hellas fared no better; here, too, the
Turks gained some initial successes, but in the end the harassing
tactics of Kolokotrones and his guerilla bands forced them back into the
plain of the Kephissos. At the end of the year the Greeks were once more
free to renew their internecine feuds.
Just when these feuds were at their height, in the autumn of 1823, the
most famous of the Philhellenes who sacrificed themselves for the cause
of Greece, Lord Byron, arrived in Greece.
Second civil war, 1824.
Intervention of Mehemet Ali.
The year 1824 was destined to be a fateful one for the Greek cause. The
large loans raised in Europe, the first instalment of which Byron had
himself brought over, while providing the Greeks with the sinews of war,
provided them also with fresh material for strife. To the struggle for
power was added a struggle for a share of this booty, and a second civil
war broke out, Kolokotrones leading the attack on the forces of the
government. Early in 1825 the government was victorious; Kolokotrones
was in prison; and Odysseus, the hero of so many exploits and so many
crimes, who had ended by turning traitor and selling his services to the
Turks, had been captured, imprisoned in the Acropolis, and finally
assassinated by his former lieutenant Gouras (July 16, 1824). But a new
and more terrible danger now threatened Greece. Sultan Mahmud,
despairing of suppressing the insurrection by his own power, had
reluctantly summoned to his aid Mehemet Ali, pasha of Egypt, whose
well-equipped fleet and disciplined army were now thrown into the scale
against the Greeks. Already, in June 1823, the pasha's son-in-law
Hussein Bey had landed in Crete, and by April of the following year had
reduced the insurgent islanders to submission. Crete now became the base
of operations against the Greeks. On the 19th of June Hussein appeared
before Kasos, a nest of pirates of evil reputation, which he captured
and destroyed. The same day the Egyptian fleet, under Ibrahim Pasha,
sailed from Alexandria. Khosrev, too, emboldened by this new sense of
support, ventured to sea, surprised and destroyed Psara (July 2), and
planned an attack on Samos, which was defeated by Miaoulis and his
fire-ships (August 16, 17). On the 1st of September, however, Khosrev
succeeded in effecting a junction with Ibrahim off Budrun, and two
indecisive engagements followed with the united Greek fleet on the 5th
and 10th. The object of Ibrahim was to reach Suda Bay with his
transports, which the Greeks should at all costs have prevented. A first
attempt was defeated by Miaoulis on the 16th of November, and Ibrahim
was compelled to retire and anchor off Rhodes; but the Greek admiral was
unable to keep his fleet together, the season was far advanced, his
captains were clamouring for arrears of pay, and the Greek fleet sailed
for Nauplia, leaving the sea unguarded. On the 5th of December Ibrahim
again set sail, and reached Suda without striking a blow. Here he
completed his preparations, and, on the 24th of February 1825, landed at
Modon in the Morea with a force of 4000 regular infantry and 500
cavalry. The rest followed, without the Greeks making any effort to
intercept them.
Ibrahim in the Morea.
The conditions of the war were now completely changed. The Greeks, who
had been squandering the money provided by the loans in every sort of
senseless extravagance, affected to despise the Egyptian invaders, but
they were soon undeceived. On the 21st of March Ibrahim had laid siege
to Navarino, and after some delay a Greek force under Skourti, a
Hydriote sea-captain, was sent to its relief. The Greeks had in all some
7000 men, Suliotes, Albanians, _armatoli_ from Rumelia, and some
irregular Bulgarian and Vlach cavalry. On the 19th of April they were
met by Ibrahim at Krommydi with 2000 regular infantry, 400 cavalry and
four guns. The Greek entrenchments were stormed at the point of the
bayonet by Ibrahim's fellahin at the first onset; the defenders broke
and fled, leaving 600 dead on the field. The news of this disaster, and
of the fall of Pylos and Navarino that followed, struck terror into the
Greek government; and in answer to popular clamour Kolokotrones was
taken from prison and placed at the head of the army. But the guerilla
tactics of the wily klepht were powerless against Ibrahim, who marched
northward, and, avoiding Nauplia for the present, seized Tripolitsa, and
made this the base from which his columns marched to devastate the
country far and wide.
Reshid "Kutahia" besieges Missolonghi.
Meanwhile from the north the Ottomans were making another supreme
effort. The command of the army that was to operate in west Hellas had
been given to Reshid "Kutahia," pasha of Iannina, an able general and a
man of determined character. On the 6th of April, after bribing the
Albanian clansmen to neutrality, he passed the defile of Makrynoros,
which the Greeks had left undefended, and on the 7th of May opened the
second siege of Missolonghi. For twelve months the population held out,
repulsing the attacks of the enemy, refusing every offer of honourable
capitulation. This resistance was rendered possible by the Greek command
of the sea, Miaoulis from time to time entering the lagoons with
supplies; it came to an end when this command was lost. In September
1825 Ibrahim, at the order of the sultan, had joined Reshid before the
town; piecemeal the outlying forts and defences now fell, until the
garrison, reduced by starvation and disease, determined to hazard all on
a final sortie. This took place on the night of the 22nd of April 1826;
but a mistaken order threw the ranks of the Greeks into disorder, and
the Turks entered the town pell-mell with the retreating crowd. Only a
remnant of the defenders succeeded in gaining the forests of Mount
Zygos, where most of them perished.
Karaiskakis.
The fall of Missolonghi, followed as this was by the submission of many
of the more notable chiefs, left Reshid free to turn his attention to
East Hellas, where Gouras had been ruling as a practically independent
chief and in the spirit of a brigand. The peasants of the open country
welcomed the Turks as deliverers, and Reshid's conciliatory policy
facilitated his march to Athens, which fell at the first assault on the
25th of August, siege being at once laid to the Acropolis, where Gouras
and his troops had taken refuge. Round this the war now centred; for all
recognized that its fall would involve that of the cause of Greece. In
these straits the Greek government entrusted the supreme command of the
troops to Karaiskakis, an old retainer of Ali of Iannina, a master of
the art of guerilla war, and, above all, a man of dauntless courage and
devoted patriotism. A first attempt to relieve the Acropolis, with the
assistance of some disciplined troops under the French Colonel Fabvier,
was defeated at Chaidari by the Turks. The garrison of the Acropolis was
hard pressed, and the death of Gouras (October 13th) would have ended
all, had not his heroic wife taken over the command and inspired the
defenders with new courage. For months the siege dragged on, while
Karaiskakis fought with varying success in the mountains, a final
victory at Distomo (February 1827) over Omar Vrioni securing the
restoration to the Greek cause of all continental Greece, except the
towns actually held by the Turks.
Cochrane and Church.
Greek defeat at Athens.
It was at this juncture that the Greek government, reinforced by a fresh
loan from Europe, handed over the chief command at sea to Lord Cochrane
(earl of Dundonald, _q.v._), and that of the land forces to General
(afterwards Sir Richard) Church, both Miaoulis and Karaiskakis
consenting without demur to serve under them. Cochrane and Church at
once concentrated their energies on the task of relieving the Acropolis.
Already, on the 5th of February, General Gordon had landed and
entrenched himself on the hill of Munychia, near the ancient Piraeus,
and the efforts of the Turks to dislodge him had failed, mainly owing to
the fire of the steamer "Karteria" commanded by Captain Hastings. When
Church and Cochrane arrived, a general assault on the Ottoman camp was
decided on. This was preceded, on the 25th of April, by an attack,
headed by Cochrane, on the Turkish troops established near the monastery
of St Spiridion, the result of which was to establish communications
between the Greeks at Munychia and Phalerum and isolate Reshid's
vanguard on the promontory of the Piraeus. The monastery held out for
two days longer, when the Albanian garrison surrendered on terms, but
were massacred by the Greeks as they were marching away under escort.
For this miserable crime Church has, by some historians, been held
responsible by default; it is clear, however, from his own account that
no blame rests upon him (see his MS. _Narrative_, vol. i. chap. ii. p.
34). The assault on the Turkish main camp was fixed for the 6th of May;
but, unfortunately, a chance skirmish brought on an engagement the day
before, in the course of which Karaiskakis was killed, an irreparable
loss in view of his prestige with the wild _armatoli_. The assault on
the following day was a disastrous failure. The Greeks, advancing
prematurely over broken ground and in no sort of order, were fallen upon
in flank by Reshid's horsemen, and fled in panic terror. The English
officers, who in vain tried to rally them, themselves only just escaped
by scrambling into their boats and putting off to the war-vessels, whose
guns checked the pursuit and enabled a remnant of the fugitives to
escape. Church held Munychia till the 27th, when he sent instructions
for the garrison of the Acropolis to surrender. On the 5th of June the
remnant of the defenders marched out with the honours of war, and
continental Greece was once more in the power of the Turks. Had Reshid
at once advanced over the Isthmus, the Morea also must have been
subdued; but he was jealous of Ibrahim, and preferred to return to
Iannina to consolidate his conquests.
Renewed anarchy.
The fate of Greece was now in the hands of the Powers, who after years
of diplomatic wrangling had at last realized that intervention was
necessary if Greece was to be saved for European civilization. The worst
enemy of the Greeks was their own incurable spirit of faction; in the
very crisis of their fate, during the siege of Missolonghi, rival
presidents and rival assemblies struggled for supremacy, and a third
civil war had only been prevented by the arrival of Cochrane and Church.
Under their influence a new National Assembly met at Troezene in March
1827 and elected as president Count Capo d'Istria (_q.v._), formerly
Russian minister for foreign affairs; at the same time a new
constitution was promulgated which, when the very life of the
insurrection seemed on the point of flickering out, set forth the full
ideal of Pan-Hellenic dreams. Anarchy followed; war of Rumeliotes
against Moreotes, of chief against chief; rival factions bombarded each
other from the two forts at Nauplia over the stricken town, and in
derision of the impotent government. Finally, after months of inaction,
Ibrahim began once more his systematic devastation of the country. To
put a stop to this the Powers decided to intervene by means of a joint
demonstration of their fleets, in order to enforce an armistice and
compel Ibrahim to evacuate the Morea (Treaty of London, July 6, 1827).
The refusal of Ibrahim to obey, without special instruction from the
sultan, led to the entrance of the allied British, French and Russian
fleet into the harbour of Navarino and the battle of the 20th of October
1827 (see NAVARINO). This, and the two campaigns of the Russo-Turkish
war of 1828-29, decided the issue.
AUTHORITIES.--There is no trustworthy history of the war, based on all
the material now available, and all the existing works must be read
with caution, especially those by eye-witnesses, who were too often
prejudiced or the dupes of the Greek factions. The best-known works
are: G. Finlay, _Hist. of the Greek Revolution_ (2 vols., London,
1861); T. Gordon, _Hist. of the Greek Revolution_ (London, 1833); C.
W. P. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, _Geschichte Griechenlands_, &c.
(_Staatengeschichte der neuesten Zeit_) (2 vols., Leipzig, 1870-1874);
F. C. H. L. Pouqueville, _Histoire de la regeneration de la Grece,
&c._ (4 vols., Paris, 1824),--the author was French resident at the
court of Ali of Iannina and afterwards consul at Patras; Count A.
Prokesch-Osten, _Geschichte des Abfalls der Griechen vom turkischen
Reich, &c._ (6 vols., Vienna, 1867), the last four volumes consisting
of _pieces justificatives_ of much value. See also W. Alison Phillips,
_The War of Greek Independence_ (London and New York, 1897), a sketch
compiled mainly from the above-mentioned works: Spiridionos Tricoupi,
[Greek: Historia tes Hellenikes epanastaseos] (Athens, 1853); J.
Philemon, [Greek: Dokimion historikon peri tes Hellenikes
epanastaseos] (Athens, 1859), in four parts: (1) History of the
Hetaeria Philike, (2) The heralding of the war and the rising under
Ypsilanti, (3 and 4). The insurrection in Greece to 1822, with many
documents. Of great value also are the 29 volumes of Correspondence
and Papers of Sir Richard Church, now in the British Museum (Add MSS.
36,543-36,571). Among these is a Narrative by Church of the war in
Greece during his tenure of the command (vols. xxi.-xxiii., Nos.
36,563-36,565), which contains the material for correcting many errors
repeated in most works on the war, notably the strictures of Finlay
and others on Church's conduct before Athens. For further references
see the bibliography appended to W. Alison Phillips's chapter on
"Greece and the Balkan Peninsula" in the _Cambridge Modern History_,
x. 803. (W. A. P.)
GREEK LANGUAGE. Greek is one of the eight main branches into which the
Indo-European languages (q.v.) are divided. The area in which it is
spoken has been curiously constant throughout its recorded history.
These limits are, roughly speaking, the shores of the Aegean, on both
the European and the Asiatic side, and the intermediate islands (one of
the most archaic of Greek dialects being found on the eastern side in
the island of Cyprus), and the Greek peninsula generally from its
southern promontories as far as the mountains which shut in Thessaly on
the north. Beyond Mt. Olympus and the Cambunian mountains lay Macedonia,
in which a closely kindred dialect was spoken, so closely related,
indeed, that O. Hoffmann has argued (_Die Makedonen_, Gottingen, 1906)
that Macedonian is not only Greek, but a part of the great Aeolic
dialect which included Thessalian to the south and Lesbian to the east.
In the north-west, Greek included many rude dialects little known even
to the ancient Greeks themselves, and it extended northwards beyond
Aetolia and Ambracia to southern Epirus and Thesprotia. In the Homeric
age the great shrine of Pelasgian Zeus was at Dodona, but, by the time
of Thucydides, Aetolia and all north of it had come to be looked upon as
the most backward of Greek lands, where men lived a savage life,
speaking an almost unintelligible language, and eating raw flesh
([Greek: agnostotatoi de glossan kai omophagoi], Thuc. iii. 94, of the
Aetolian Eurytanes). The Greeks themselves had no memory of how they
came to occupy this land. Their earliest legends connected the origin of
their race with Thessaly and Mt. Pindus, but Athenians and Arcadians
also boasted themselves of autochthonous race, inhabiting a country
wherein no man had preceded their ancestors. The Greek language, at any
rate as it has come down to us, is remarkably perfect, in vowel sounds
being the most primitive of any of the Indo-European languages, while
its verb system has no rival in completeness except in the earliest
Sanskrit of the Vedic literature. Its noun system, on the other hand, is
much less complete, its cases being more broken down than those of the
Aryan, Armenian, Slavonic and Italic families.
The most remarkable characteristic of Greek is one conditioned by the
geographical aspect of the land. Few countries are so broken up with
mountains as Greece. Not only do mountain ranges as elsewhere on the
European continent run east and west, but other ranges cross them from
north to south, thus dividing the portions of Greece at some distance
from the sea into hollows without outlet, every valley being separated
for a considerable part of the year from contact with every other, and
inter-communication at all seasons being rendered difficult. Thus till
external coercion from Macedon came into play it was never possible to
establish a great central government controlling the Greek mainland.
The geographical situation of the islands in the Aegean equally led to
the isolation of one little territory from another. To these
geographical considerations may be added the inveterate desire of the
Greeks to make the [Greek: polis], the city state, everywhere and at
all times an independent unit, a desire which, originating in the
geographical conditions, even accentuated the isolating effect of the
natural features of the country. Thus at one time in the little island
of Amorgos there were no less than three separate and independent
political units. The inevitable result of geographical and political
division was the maintenance of a great number of local
characteristics in language, differentiating in this respect also each
political community from its nearest neighbours. It was only natural
that the inhabitants of a country so little adapted to maintain a
numerous population should have early sent off swarms to other lands.
The earliest stage of colonization lies in the borderland between myth
and history. The Greeks themselves knew that a population had preceded
them in the islands of the Cyclades which they identified with the
Carians of Asia Minor (Herodotus i. 171; Thucydides i. 4. 8). The same
population indeed appears to have preceded them on the mainland of
Greece, for there are similar place-names in Caria and in Greece which
have no etymology in Greek. Thus the endings of words like Parnassus
and Halicarnassus seem identical, and the common ending of place-names
in -[Greek: inthos, Korinthos, Probalinthos], &c., seems to be the
same in origin with the common ending of Asiatic names in -_nda_,
Alinda, Karyanda, &c. Probably the earliest portion of Asia Minor to
be colonized by the Greeks was the north-west, to which came settlers
from Thessaly, when the early inhabitants were driven out by the
Thesprotians, who later controlled Thessaly. The name Aeolis, which
after times gave to the N.W. of Asia Minor, was the old name for
Thessaly (Hdt. vii. 176). These Thesprotians were of the same stock as
the Dorians, to whose invasion of the Peloponnese the later migration,
which carried the Ionians to Asia and the Cypriot Greeks to Cyprus, in
all probability was due. From the north Aegean probably the Dorians
reached Crete, where alone their existence is recorded by Homer
(_Odyssey_, xix. 175 ff.; Diodorus Siculus v. 80. 2); cp. Fick,
_Vorgriechische Ortsnamen_ (1906).
Among the Greeks of the pre-Dorian period Herodotus distinguishes
various stocks. Though the name is not Homeric, both Herodotus and
Thucydides recognize an Aeolian stock which must have spread over
Thessaly and far to the west till it was suppressed and absorbed by
the Dorian stock which came in from the north-west. The name of Aeolis
still attached in Thucydides' time to the western area of Calydon
between the mountains and the N. side of the entrance to the
Corinthian gulf (iii. 102). In Boeotia the same stock survived (Thuc.
vii. 57. 5), overlaid by an influx of Dorians, and it came down to the
isthmus; for the Corinthians, though speaking in historical times a
Doric dialect, were originally Aeolians (Thuc. iv. 42). In the
Peloponnese Herodotus recognizes (viii. 73) three original stocks, the
Arcadians, the Ionians of Cynuria, and the Achaeans. In Arcadia there
is little doubt that the pre-Dorian population maintained itself and
its language, just as in the mountains of Wales, the Scottish
Highlands and Connemara the Celtic language has maintained itself
against the Saxon invaders. By Herodotus' time the Cynurians had been
doricized, while the Ionians, along the south side of the Corinthian
gulf, were expelled by the Achaeans (vii. 94, viii. 73), apparently
themselves driven from their own homes by the Dorian invasion (Strabo
viii. p. 333 _fin_.). However this may be, the Achaeans of historical
times spoke a dialect akin to that of northern Elis and of the Greeks
on the north side of the Corinthian gulf. How close the relation may
have been between the language of the Achaeans of the Peloponnese in
the Homeric age and their contemporaries in Thessaly we have no means
of ascertaining definitely, the documentary evidence for the history
of the dialects being all very much later than Homeric times. Even in
the Homeric catalogue Agamemnon has to lend the Arcadians ships to
take them to Troy (_Iliad_, ii. 612). But a population speaking the
same or a very similar dialect was probably seated on the eastern
coast, and migrated at the beginning of the Doric invasion to Cyprus.
As this population wrote not in the Greek alphabet but in a peculiar
syllabary and held little communication with the rest of the Greek
world, it succeeded in preserving in Cyprus a very archaic dialect
very closely akin to that of Arcadia, and also containing a
considerable number of words found in the Homeric vocabulary but lost
or modified in later Greek elsewhere.
On this historical foundation alone is it possible to understand
clearly the relation of the dialects in historical times. The
prehistoric movements of the Greek tribes can to some extent be
realized in their dialects, as recorded in their inscriptions, though
all existing inscriptions belong to a much later period. Thus from the
ancient Aeolis of northern Greece sprang the historical dialects of
Thessaly and Lesbos with the neighbouring coast of Asia Minor. At an
early period the Dorians had invaded and to some extent affected the
character of the southern Thessalian and to a much greater extent that
of the Boeotian dialect. The dialects of Locris, Phocis and Aetolia
were a somewhat uncouth and unliterary form of Doric. According to
accepted tradition, Elis had been colonized by Oxylus the Aetolian,
and the dialect of the more northerly part of Elis, as already pointed
out, is, along with the Achaean of the south side of the Corinthian
gulf, closely akin to those dialects north of the Isthmus. The most
southerly part of Elis--Triphylia--has a dialect akin to Arcadian.
Apart from Arcadian the other dialects of the Peloponnese in
historical times are all Doric, though in small details they differ
among themselves. Though we are unable to check the statements of the
historians as to the area occupied by Ionic in prehistoric times, it
is clear from the legends of the close connexion between Athens and
Troezen that the same dialect, had been spoken on both sides of the
Saronic gulf, and may well have extended, as Herodotus says, along the
eastern coast of the Peloponnese and the south side of the Corinthian
gulf. According to legend, the Ionians expelled from the Peloponnese
collected at Athens before they started on their migrations to the
coast of Asia Minor. Be that as it may, legend and language alike
connected the Athenians with the Ionians, though by the 5th century
B.C. the Athenians no longer cared to be known by the name (Hdt. i.
143). Lemnos, Imbros and Scyros, which had long belonged to Athens,
were Athenian also in language. The great island of Euboea and all the
islands of the central Aegean between Greece and Asia were Ionic.
Chios, the most northerly Ionic island on the Asiatic coast, seems to
have been originally Aeolic, and its Ionic retained some Aeolic
characteristics. The most southerly of the mainland towns which were
originally Aeolic was Smyrna, but this at an early date became Ionic
(Hdt. i. 149). The last important Ionic town to the south was Miletus,
but at an early period Ionic widened its area towards the south also
and took in Halicarnassus from the Dorians. According to Herodotus,
there were four kinds of Ionic ([Greek: charakteres glosses tesseres],
i. 142). Herodotus tells us the areas in which these dialects were
spoken, but nothing of the differences between them. They were (1)
Samos, (2) Chios and Erythrae, (3) the towns in Lydia, (4) the towns
in Caria. The language of the inscriptions unfortunately is a [Greek:
koine], a conventional literary language which reveals no differences
of importance. Only recently has the characteristic so well known in
Herodotus of [kappa] appearing in certain words where other dialects
have [pi] ([Greek: hokos] for [Greek: hopos, kou] for [Greek: pou],
&c.) been found in any inscription. It is, however, clear that this
was a popular characteristic not considered to be sufficiently
dignified for official documents. We may conjecture that the native
languages spoken on the Lydian and Carian coasts had affected the
character of the language spoken by the Greek immigrants, more
especially as the settlers from Athens married Carian women, while the
settlers in the other towns were a mixture of Greek tribes, many of
them not Ionic at all (Hdt. i. 146).
The more southerly islands of the Aegean and the most southerly
peninsula of Asia Minor were Doric. In the Homeric age Dorians were
only one of many peoples in Crete, but in historical times, though the
dialects of the eastern and the western ends of the island differ from
one another and from the middle whence our most valuable documents
come, all are Doric. By Melos and Thera Dorians carried their language
to Cos, Calymnus, Cnidus and Rhodes.
These settlements, Aeolic, Ionic and Doric, grew and prospered, and
like flourishing hives themselves sent out fresh swarms to other
lands. Most prosperous and energetic of all was Miletus, which
established its trading posts in the Black Sea to the north and in the
delta of the Nile (Naucratis) to the south. The islands also sent off
their colonies, carrying their dialects with them, Paros to Thasos,
Euboea to the peninsulas of Chalcidice; the Dorians of Megara guarded
the entrance to the Black Sea at Chalcedon and Byzantium. While
Achaean influence spread out to the more southerly Ionian islands,
Corinth carried her dialect with her colonies to the coast of
Acarnania, Leucas and Corcyra. But the greatest of all Corinthian
colonies was much farther to the west--at Syracuse in Sicily.
Unfortunately the continuous occupation of the same or adjacent sites
has led to the loss of almost all that is early from Corinth and from
Syracuse. Corcyra has bequeathed to us some interesting grave
inscriptions from the 6th century B.C. Southern Italy and Sicily were
early colonized by Greeks. According to tradition Cumae was founded
not long after the Trojan War; even if we bring the date nearer the
founding of Syracuse in 735 B.C., we have apparently no record earlier
than the first half of the 5th century B.C., though it is still the
earliest of Chalcidian inscriptions. Tarentum was a Laconian
foundation, but the longest and most important document from a
Laconian colony in Italy comes from Heraclea about the end of the 4th
century B.C.--the report of a commission upon and the lease of temple
lands with description and conditions almost of modern precision. To
Achaea belonged the south Italian towns of Croton, Metapontum and
Sybaris. The ancestry of the Greek towns of Sicily has been explained
by Thucydides (vi. 2-5). Selinus, a colony of Megara, betrays its
origin in its dialect. Gela and Agrigentum no less clearly show their
descent from Rhodes. According to tradition the great city of Cyrene
in Africa was founded from Thera, itself an offshoot from Sparta.