Graiki
Encyclopedia
Attica
Attica is a historical region of Greece, containing Athens, the current capital of Greece. The historical region is centered on the Attic peninsula, which projects into the Aegean Sea...
including ancient Boeotia
Boeotia
Boeotia, also spelled Beotia and Bœotia , is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the region of Central Greece. It was also a region of ancient Greece. Its capital is Livadeia, the second largest city being Thebes.-Geography:...
. The word seems to be derived from the Greek word "graia" (γραία) meaning "old lady" (masculine: geron, "old man"), and the region is related with the Ogygian deluge, the first mentioned worldwide deluge in Greek mythology.
On the coast of Boeotia
Boeotia
Boeotia, also spelled Beotia and Bœotia , is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the region of Central Greece. It was also a region of ancient Greece. Its capital is Livadeia, the second largest city being Thebes.-Geography:...
existed the ancient city Graia, which is mentioned by Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
, in The Iliad's catalogue of ships, and was regarded as the oldest city in Greece. According to Pausanias
Pausanias (geographer)
Pausanias was a Greek traveler and geographer of the 2nd century AD, who lived in the times of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. He is famous for his Description of Greece , a lengthy work that describes ancient Greece from firsthand observations, and is a crucial link between classical...
, nobody knew its exact location, which could have been near Tanagra
Tanagra
Tanagra is a town and a municipality north of Athens in Boeotia, Greece. The seat of the municipality is the town Schimatari. It is not far from Thebes, and it was noted in antiquity for the figurines named after it...
. Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
believed that the city was located near Oropos
Oropos
Oropos is a small town and a municipality in East Attica, Greece.-Geography:It is situated on the southern Euboean Gulf, opposite Eretria. Oropos is located N of Avlona and Athens, E of Thebes and SE of Chalcis. Oropos is linked with the road linking Nea Palatia and Sikamino...
and was built before the great deluge
Deluge
Deluge can refer to:* A large downpour of rain* A floodMythical and prehistoric floods* Deluge myth, mythic floods in general, involving Gilgamesh, and others* Deluge , prehistoric great floods, some of which may have inspired deluge myths...
. Something similar is mentioned in the Parian Chronicle
Parian Chronicle
The Parian Marble or Parian Chronicle is a Greek chronological table, covering the years from 1581 BC to 264 BC, inscribed on a stele...
.
Etymologically, both names "Graia" and "Graiki" are derived from the PIE
Pie
A pie is a baked dish which is usually made of a pastry dough casing that covers or completely contains a filling of various sweet or savoury ingredients....
root "*gere" ("to grow old" or from gray), Proto-Greek
Proto-Greek language
The Proto-Greek language is the assumed last common ancestor of all known varieties of Greek, including Mycenaean, the classical Greek dialects , and ultimately Koine, Byzantine and modern Greek...
"*grau-j" ("old age"), and later "geras" or "keras" ("gift of honour") in Mycenean Greek. A large part of this area around the city Orchomenus
Orchomenus
-Greek mythology:*Orchomenus, a king, the father of Elara*Orchomenus, one of the twenty sons of Lycaon*Orchomenus, son of Zeus and Isonoe, father of Minyas and Kyparissos*Orchomenus, a son of Athamas and Themisto-Ancient Greek geography:...
was occupied by the Minyans
Minyans
According to Greek mythology and legendary prehistory of the Aegean region, the Minyans were an autochthonous group inhabiting the Aegean region...
. It is possible that they were a Proto-Greek
Proto-Greek language
The Proto-Greek language is the assumed last common ancestor of all known varieties of Greek, including Mycenaean, the classical Greek dialects , and ultimately Koine, Byzantine and modern Greek...
-speaking population; however, although most scholars accept that they were direct ancestors of the Mycenean Greeks, they believe that the progenitors of the Minyan
Minyan
A minyan in Judaism refers to the quorum of ten Jewish adults required for certain religious obligations. According to many non-Orthodox streams of Judaism adult females count in the minyan....
culture were an autochthonous
Indigenous peoples
Indigenous peoples are ethnic groups that are defined as indigenous according to one of the various definitions of the term, there is no universally accepted definition but most of which carry connotations of being the "original inhabitants" of a territory....
group. A particular style of gray Aegean pottery of Middle Helladic period (2100-1550 BCE) is called Minyan ware
Minyans
According to Greek mythology and legendary prehistory of the Aegean region, the Minyans were an autochthonous group inhabiting the Aegean region...
.
The name "Greeks
Greeks
The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....
" ("Graikoi", Γραικοί), given by the ancient Romans
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
to all the inhabitants of ancient Hellas, is probably derived from the name "Graekhos" (for "inhabitant of Graia"). George Bussolt suggested that the name was given, by the Romans initially, to the colonists from the city Graia, who helped the Euboea
Euboea
Euboea is the second largest Greek island in area and population, after Crete. The narrow Euripus Strait separates it from Boeotia in mainland Greece. In general outline it is a long and narrow, seahorse-shaped island; it is about long, and varies in breadth from to...
ns to establish Cumae
Cumae
Cumae is an ancient Greek settlement lying to the northwest of Naples in the Italian region of Campania. Cumae was the first Greek colony on the mainland of Italy , and the seat of the Cumaean Sibyl...
in southern Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
. Later, the name was used for all Greeks. According to the Parian chronicle and an earlier mention of Alcman
Alcman
Alcman was an Ancient Greek choral lyric poet from Sparta. He is the earliest representative of the Alexandrinian canon of the nine lyric poets.- Family :...
, the previously called Graeces
Graecus
Graecus or Græcus was, according to Hesiod's "Eoiae" or Catalogue of Women on the origin of the Greeks, the son of Pandora II and Zeus...
were named "Hellenes". Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
claimed that the name "Graekhes" was given by the Illyrians
Illyrians
The Illyrians were a group of tribes who inhabited part of the western Balkans in antiquity and the south-eastern coasts of the Italian peninsula...
to the inhabitants of Epirus
Epirus
The name Epirus, from the Greek "Ήπειρος" meaning continent may refer to:-Geographical:* Epirus - a historical and geographical region of the southwestern Balkans, straddling modern Greece and Albania...
around Dodona
Dodona
Dodona in Epirus in northwestern Greece, was an oracle devoted to a Mother Goddess identified at other sites with Rhea or Gaia, but here called Dione, who was joined and partly supplanted in historical times by the Greek god Zeus.The shrine of Dodona was regarded as the oldest Hellenic oracle,...
, and is derived from "Graii" as the native name of a Dorian
Dorian
The Dorians were one of the four major ethnē into which the Ancient Greeks, or Hellenes, of the Classical period considered themselves divided. Ethnos has the sense of ethnic group. Herodotus uses the word with regard to them...
tribe in Epirus. In the same region lived the Selloi
Selloi
Selloi were inhabitants of Epirus of ancient Greece, in a region between Dodona - where existed the oldest reported oracle - and Achelous river. Aristotle names this area ancient Hellas. There the Selloi dwelt and those who were formerly called Graeci and later Hellenes. According to Homer, they...
, the prophets of Zeus
Zeus
In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the "Father of Gods and men" who ruled the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father ruled the family. He was the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and his Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.Zeus was the child of Cronus...
, lord of Dodona, god of Pelasgi
Pelasgians
The name Pelasgians was used by some ancient Greek writers to refer to populations that were either the ancestors of the Greeks or who preceded the Greeks in Greece, "a hold-all term for any ancient, primitive and presumably indigenous people in the Greek world." In general, "Pelasgian" has come...
. However the name "Greek" seems to be Pre-Dorian, and the toponyms indicate that it is more possible that the homeland of the Greeks
Greeks
The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....
was originally in central Greece, in the region of the ancient Lake Kopais, where the first agricultural populations appear during the 6th-5th milennium BC. The Greeks did not clearly distinguish the Pelasgian (pre-Greek) from the Minyan
Minyans
According to Greek mythology and legendary prehistory of the Aegean region, the Minyans were an autochthonous group inhabiting the Aegean region...
culture.
The area Graiki is connected with the deluge of Ogyges
Ogyges
Ogyges, Ogygus or Ogygos is a primeval mythological ruler in ancient Greece, generally of Boeotia, but an alternative tradition makes him the first king of Attica.-Etymology:...
, the mythological ruler of Boeotia. The name "Ogyges" is related with the Greek word "Okeanos" (Ogenos, ωκεανός, "ocean"), the great river which was believed to surround the earth, and is probably derived from a Phoenecian root meaning "to encircle". Later the word "Ogygios" came to mean "from earliest days". In some sources, the great deluge occurred in ancient Attica
Attica
Attica is a historical region of Greece, containing Athens, the current capital of Greece. The historical region is centered on the Attic peninsula, which projects into the Aegean Sea...
. It seems that the name of this region was originally "Actica" (Ακτική) which is derived from the Greek word akti (ακτή, "coast"), indicating that the area was probably bordered by Lake Kopais in ancient times.