Ionian Colonization
 |
Magna Graecia at the foot of Itlay is the name of the area in the southern Italian peninsula that was colonised by Greek settlers in the 8th century BC, who brought with them the lasting imprint of their Hellenic (Milesian) civilization. After a thousand years, Greek colonies were established in places as widely separated as the eastern coast of the Black Sea and Massilia, France. They included settlements in Sicily and the southern part of the Italian peninsula. |  |
| Ancient Greek was also an export. The Ancient era of Greek history normally includes also the Hellenistic (post-Classic) age in which Milesian- Hellenic civilization is later interlacing with native Italic and Latin civilizations in which there is variety of the Greek alphabets. Before the creation of the alphabet, the dialects of Attic-Ionic Greek spread to the mainland across the Aegean at the time of the Dorian invasions and the central west coast of Asia Minor, along with the islands of Khios (Chios) and Samos, formed the heartland of Ionia proper. | ||
The dialects Old and New Ionic, Classical Attic was soon spread by Ionian colonization to areas in the northern Aegean, the Black Sea, and the western Mediterranean. The most famous New Ionic authors are Herodotus and Hippokrates from possible Old Slavonic cultures. To the next taking, however, that of the Nemedians; a version of the historical Bolgic invasion of the fifth or sixth century BCE and the Lebor Gabala Erren. The Egyptian ruler Tutankhamun died in 1323 B.C. and was buried with an iron dagger with a golden hilt. Dagda, the High King of the Tuatha Dé Danann [Annals of the Four Masters 1407-1337 BC] was preceded by Lug and succeeded by Delbaeth.
The Milesian invasion brought with it significantly different names as recorded in the Annals, names which do not seem to have Celtic derivations such as the druid Kimbay and the Founding of Emain Macha. These people are stated to be Spanish, and their king Milesius to be married to the daughter of Pharaoh. Milesians were Goideals who had lived for some generations in Miletus, an Ionian trading city on the coast of Asia Minor, where they adopted some of the culture and arts of this post-Minoan world, the connection with the daughter of the Pharoh.
The Ionians were one of the four main ancient Greek phyla or tribes, linked by their use of the Ionic dialect of the Greek language. The other three groups were the Achaeans, the Dorians and the Aeolians. They were known collectively as Hellenes. The Athenians, in the peninsula of Attica, were the only Ionians on the Greek mainland. In many cases Ionic turned Proto-Greek labiovelar sound /kw/ into /k/ rather than /p/ before back vowels. Similar divergent outcomes for /kw/ occurred also in Celtic and Italic branches of the Indo-European language family, for example between Latin and Oscan, as well as between P-Celtic (Welsh) and Q-Celtic (Irish). Ionic "ss" appears as "tt" in later Classical Attic. Koine Greek was unofficially a first or second language in the Roman Empire having other names Alexandrian, Hellenistic, Common, or New Testament Greek, marking the second stage as an ancient Greek dialect.
When the capital of the Roman Empire was transferred to Constantinople in the 4th century AD, the official language of the state continued to be Latin, yet the literary and spoken language of the entire Eastern part of the Empire continued to be Hellenic Greek. Greek was also the language of the church and education, while the university preserved a diglossia between the two. The cultural and linguistic center of the Greek World during the Byzantine era, as it had once been Athens, was Constantinople. The diglossia in Byzantium is defined by the medieval literary Koine, which has elements of archaism (equivalent to the Hellenistic Atticism), and the spoken or popular Koine which is the authentic successor of Koine Greek. The Romans introduced writing and therefore ended the prehistoric Dutch Iron Age around 50 A.D. Under Augustus, the district known as Sequania or Seine formed part of Belgica.