Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek
Ἑλληνική Hellēnikḗ
Inscription about the construction of the statue of Athena Parthenos in the Parthenon, 440/439 BC
Region	eastern Mediterranean
Era	9th century BC to the 4th century AD
Language family	Indo-European Hellenic Ancient Greek
Writing system	Greek alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-2	grc
ISO 639-3	grc (includes all pre-modern stages)
Glottolog	anci1242
Map of Ancient (Homeric) Greece

Ancient Greek was an Indo-European language spoken in Ancient Greece from about 1500 BC to about 300 BC. Ancient Greek and Latin are very important languages. Although they are no longer spoken, they influenced almost all modern European languages.

Greek had many different dialects.^[1] Attic Greek was spoken in Athens, the largest city, and the rest of the region of Attica. It was thought to be the purest form of Greek. Later, in the educated Roman world, children were taught Greek as a second language, just as many people now learn English as their second language. Koine Greek was the common language of Greeks. It was Attic Greek mixed with several other dialects.

Homer spoke and wrote in an old dialect that was somewhat different from Attic Greek. The Iliad and the Odyssey are long poems that tell exciting stories about warfare, travel and the Greek gods. In the 5th century BC, some great plays were written by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. The Golden Age of Ancient Greece inspired literature that has been read for centuries.

1. ↑ Woodard, Roger D. 2008. Greek dialects, in: The Ancient Languages of Europe. R.D. Woodard (ed) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 51.