Re: Word of the day: "ithyphallic"

Snidely <snidely.too@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thursday, J. J. Lodder pointed out that ...

occam <occam@nowhere.nix> wrote:
>

On 19/09/2024 06:59, Aidan Kehoe wrote:

Another one that stuck for me was "metic", "resident foreigner in a
Greek city state," apparently not related to meticulous.

 
Try 'hermetic' as a related concept. A 'foreigner' in ancient Greek was
someone from another city state, even if that was a city in Greece.
'Greece' did not become an entity until much later.

>
Depends on what you want 'entity' to mean.
Those ancient Greeks certainly saw themselves as a cultural entity,
with a shared language and culture. This extended to 'Greater Greece'.
It was only the narrow sense of a political entity that was
inconceivable to them,
>
Jan

 
I have a better sense of how Egypt came to be a cultural entity than I
do for Greece.  On the one hand, the political development of the
winning Pharoahs is easy to read about; on the other, my histories of
Greece generally begin with the last king of Athens and the rise of the
early democracy, which seems to be well after there were several
city-states that considered themselves to be Greek.

They had a common language and culture
well before Homer started writing it up.
The Mycenean Linear B script already contains archaic Greek.
(but unfortunately no literature)
Trade may be a better basis for a common culture than conquest,

Jan