Category:Ancient Greek

The Greek culture is first defined by the Greek author Herodutus (5th century BCE) as “Greekness” (τὸ Ἑλλενικὸν) based upon common blood and common language, shared shrines and sacrifices, and similar ways of life. However, these own words of Herodotus were invented by him to narrate a story. he put them into the mouth of an Athenian addressed at a Spartian to seal their bond but the historicity of this episode is not given.

However, some common religious practices of the various peoples in Greek poleis may be concidered as a first common ground for this culture with earliest written sources by Homer and Hesiod in the 8th (possibly 9th) century BCE.

In the new world empire of Alexander the Great, the necessity for a new common identity emerged. As Alexander himself adopted some habits of the Egyptian and Persian cultures, this is considered by historians as the artificial creation of "a new Greekness" for the large empire. These cultural traditions and newly established rituals, of course, also developed over time. However, they were also adopted by the Romans in their subsequent large empires, leading to (then new) Greco-Roman variants of the culture.