Χαίρετε!
Did the Ancient Greeks know they were Greek? I know there were terms such as Hellene and Achaean, but at least in Classical Greece, their first loyalty was to the Polis.
Hi Lukas.
I don’t know that I would venture an answer to your question. But I would suggest Kitto’s The Greeks.
So, I think this question is in itself a product of two modern pathologies (not in a pejorative sense!).
- National states. We take these as read, and so its hard for us to imagine national identities that don’t quite match up with our modern perceptions.
- Identity seems to be the be all and end all nowadays, so people are obsessed without doing any of the underlying reading
So this is a fairly common misconception. First, even if it were the case, that doesn’t preclude having other senses of identity. The Polis as we understand it wasn’t exactly ubiquitous. There were some genuine monarchies on the periphery (Libya, Cyprus, Macedon) and large areas of the Greek world, including Sparta and Thessaly, were organised in something more akin to a state than the classical polis + hinterland. Even in poleis, there were large varieties in governmental organisations and some (Athens, Megapolis) grew out of what were essential federations.
Then you have to take colonisation into account. Something like Corinth looks like a textbook polis, yet it was involved in an incredibly complicated web of relationships with its colonies.
There were yet other types of identities too (tribal, linguistic) which could be overlaid on the polis.
So, its complicated.
Some literary sources like Herodotus and Isocrates talk in terms of common identities (the former famously on descent, language, custom, cults) and this may have been the case for some elite individuals.
Short answer? No, because our sense of “Greeks” is a modern heuristic. Slightly longer answer? Sort of, its quite complicated due to the diversity of the Greek world on the ground.
Well,
If they were Greek then what are they now? (haha)
FWIW, the Greeks certainly seemed to know who a “Persian,” an “Egyptian,” or a “Roman” was.
So I tend to think this idea that they never thought of themselves as Greek was a bit of a stretch.
To me, it was kind of a cultural conceit that they flattered themselves with despite what everybody
else thought of them. I think when Philip II and his son more or less overran “Greece” they pretty well
demonstrated the irrelevance of it.
Cathexis
And of course the Greek speaking Byzantines referred to themselves as Ῥωμαῖοι.
I don’t understand how anyone reading the first section of Herodotus could think that the Greeks had no sense of particular Greek identity.
They were slightly more pluralistic than the Japanese or Jews, perhaps, and perhaps not quite as nationalistic about their city-states as 20th century Europeans about their countries. But neither statement is saying that much.
Well, that in itself is quite interesting, no? The whole story of the recreation of a Hellenic identity in the 19th century is really very complicated. For most of the past two thousand years, your average Hellenophone has thought of himself as Roman. This is all covered very well by writers like Kaldellis and Liakos.
Sure, which is why I always bring up Herodotus (and Isocrates). On the other hand, highly reified identities do seem to be the products of the elite who would be reading these texts, and even then there was a lot of contesting. There were different identities at play (like I said above) and even an epichoric resurgence (or a creation, if you think it all pseudo-archaism) of highly regional identities as seen in the epigraphic record.
I think also non-Classicists tend to heavily, heavily, misunderstand to what a great degree ‘Greek’ as a singular entity was a creation of the Romans.
I don’t think it all an open and shut case. But I do find many of these differences to be, essentially, academic and therefore uninteresting.
To complement Herodotus, read chapters 12-24 of Airs, Waters, Places in the Hippocratic Corpus for a “scientific” explanation of the difference between Europe and the races of Asia (including Thrace, Egypt, and Libya).
The evidence from Hebrew יְוָנִי (Yĕvaniy) and Sanskrit यवन (Yavana)suggest that the Ionians at least self identified by their tribal grouping.
Within the “Greek” speaking area - as we call it, the term Ἴωνες only meant “Greeks” from a particular (Eastern) tribal grouping.
Assuming that the name for Greeks was borrowed at first contact from the east. At that time, at least, the “Greek” tribes that were encountered self-identified as Ionians, rather than using a name that referred to all tribes. Coming from the East, of course, they would have been the first encountered.
I think that’s a safe and sensible assumption, it’s also what happened in the West (hence ‘Greeks’). Broader tribal affiliation makes sense, given that many of these colonial settlements (whether apoikia or emporia) were either a) built when the polis was really establishing itself and these broader ethnic markers made sense and/or b) were actually founded by people from multiple states, so “Ionian” would be a sensible compromise.
Don’t forget these terms also had religious and cultic significance, as well as the more obvious political connotations. Athens, after all, was quick to exploit her alleged Ionian connections when she needed to.
You can add the Achaemenid Persians to your list too. Greek settled lands = Yunan. Greeks = Yauna (note dipthong in the middle). Macedonians = Yauna takabara (“Greeks with hats”).
εὐχαριστῶ!
I am starting to read the book when I have time.
I don’t want to weigh in heavily on this one. As others have suggested it is a can of worms layered complicated question. But I would argue Kitto is a little dated. Edith Hall’s PhD thesis argued that although there was an understanding of Barbarian and Greek to do with language culture etc the major distinction of Greek and Barbarian kicked in after the Persian Wars. She summarised this in one of her books inventing the Barbarian.
There is also a lecturer I think at Birmingham who has written a weighty tome attacking the idea of the Polis as a consistent meaningful greek symbol. It’s really too complicated a question for anyone to answer. If you can get more interesting questions out of this one you’re doing well.
Anything by Edith hall is worth reading.
Kostas Vlassopoulos, Unthinking The Greek Polis Ancient Greek History Beyond Eurocentrism, 2009, Cambridge is I think what you are referring too.
There is a rather plodding and unsympathetic review here: https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2009/2009.01.16/ by someone who doesn’t seem to have read Gadamer. (it’s a while since I mentioned him 
).
Kitto has some good things to say but is as you say a bit dated.
More recent and less polemical(?) is
Mogens Herman Hansen, Polis : an introduction to the ancient Greek city-state. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
A review in German is here https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2008/2008.01.41/