DORIAN HELLENIC

The Dorian Origin

There is still a great controversy about the origin of the Dorian people.
One theory widely believed in ancient times, but never proven beyond doubt, is that they originated in the north, north-eastern mountainous regions of Greece, ancient Macedonia and Epirus, whence obscure circumstances brought them south into the Peloponnese, to certain Aegean islands, Magna Graecia and Crete.
Another theory is that they originated from Asia Minor (Greek colonies) and that they either emigrated through the northeast of Greece and settled in southern Greece or immigrated from the coast of western Asian Minor into the Aegean islands and into southern Greece.
Either way, mythology gave them a Greek origin and eponymous founder, Dorus son of Hellen, the mythological patriarch of the Hellenes.

The Dorian Language

Dorians were distinguished by the Doric Greek dialect and by characteristic social and historical traditions. People who spoke the Doric dialect lived along the coast of the Peloponnese, in Crete, southwest Asia Minor (Greek Colonies), various cities of Southern Italy and Sicily (Magna Grecia), all of which adds weight to the theory of Asia Minor (Greek Colonies) as the origin of the Dorians.
Numerous historians link Doric, North-Western Greek and Ancient Macedonian. In later periods other dialects predominated, most notably the Attic, upon which the Koine or common Greek language of the Hellenistic period was based.
The main characteristic of Doric was the preservation of Indo-European [aː], long <α>, which in Attic-Ionic became [ɛː], <η>. Tsakonian Greek, a descendant of Doric Greek and source of great interest to linguists, is extraordinarily still spoken in some regions of the Southern Argolis coast of the Peloponnese, on the coast of the modern prefecture of Arcadia.

Julius Pokorny derives Dorian from dōris, "woodland" (which can also mean upland). The dōri- segment is from the o-grade (either ō or o) of Proto-Indo-European *deru-, "tree". Dorian might be translated as "the country people", "the mountain people", "the uplanders", "the people of the woods" or some such appellation.

A popular derivation was given by the French linguist, Émile Boisacq, from the same root, but from Greek doru, "spear" (which was wood); i.e., "the people of the spear" or "spearmen", emphasizing the warrior ferocity of the Dorians.

Cultural Distinctions

Culturally, in addition to their Doric dialect of Greek, Doric colonies retained their characteristic Doric calendar revolving round a cycle of festivals of which the Hyacinthia and the Carneia were especially important..

The Dorian mode in music also was attributed to Doric societies and was associated by classical writers with martial qualities.

The Doric order of architecture in the tradition inherited by Vitruvius included the Doric column, noted for its simplicity and strength.

In the 5th century BC, Dorians and Ionians were the two most politically important Greek nationalities.

The Dorians Tribes

Crete

Homer
At first sight, the Homeric reference to Dorians has been regarded as an anachronism between the supposed 8th century BC writer of the poems and the supposed Dorian Invasion, two generations after the end of the Trojan War (1150 or 1100 BC), widely accepted chronologization in antiquity. The trichaikes Dorians are mentioned in Odyssey. The epithet trichaikes, an hapax legomenon, has been translated either as of threefold race (e.g. denoting the three Dorian sub-tribes Hylleis, Dymanes, Pamphyloi) or long-haired from the noun θρίξ (see Spartan hairstyle).

“There is a land called Crete, in the midst of the wine-dark sea, a fair, rich land, begirt with water, and therein are many men, past counting, and ninety cities. They have not all the same speech, but their tongues are mixed. There dwell Achaeans, there great-hearted native Cretans, there Cydonians, and Dorians of waving plumes, and goodly Pelasgians”

Strabo, who depends of course on the books available to him, goes on to elaborate:

“ Of these peoples, according to Staphylus, the Dorians occupy the part toward the east, the Cydonians the western part, the Eteo-Cretans the southern; and to these last belongs the town Praisos, where is the temple of the Dictaean Zeus; whereas the other peoples, since they were more powerful, dwelt in the plains. Now it is reasonable to suppose that the Eteo-Cretans and the Cydonians were autochthonous, and that the others were foreigners ...”

Beside this sole reference to Dorians in Crete, the mention of the Iliad] on the Heraclid Tlepolemus, a warrior on the side of Achaeans and colonist of three important Dorian cities in Rhodes has been also regarded as a later interpolation

South Greece

Laconian, Heraclean

Laconian was spoken by the population of Laconia in the southern Peloponnesus and also by its colonies, Tarentum and Heraclea, in southern Italy. Sparta was the seat of ancient Laconia.

Laconian is attested in inscriptions on pottery and stone from the 7th century BC. A dedication to Helen dates from the 2nd quarter of the 7th. Tarentum was founded in 706 BC. The founders must already have spoken Laconic.

Many documents from the state of Sparta survive, whose citizens called themselves Lacedaemonians after the name of the valley in which they lived. Homer calls it "hollow Lacedaemon", though he refers to a pre-Dorian period. The 7th century BC, Spartan poet, Alcman, used a dialect that some consider to be predominantly Laconian. Philoxenus of Alexandria wrote a treatise On the Laconian dialect.

Argolic

Argolic was spoken in the thickly settled northeast Peloponnesus at, for example, Argos, Mycenae, Hermione, Troezen, Epidaurus, and as close to Athens as the island of Aegina. As Mycenaean Greek had been spoken in this dialect region in the Bronze Age, it is clear that the Dorians overran it but were unable to take Attica. The Dorians went on from Argos to Crete and Rhodes.

Ample inscriptional material of a legal, political and religious content exists from at least the 6th century BC.

Corinthian

Corinthian was spoken first in the isthmus region between the Peloponnesus and mainland Greece; that is, the Isthmus of Corinth. The cities and states of the Corinthian dialect region were Corinth, Sicyon, Cleonae, Phlius, the colonies of Corinth in western Greece: Corcyra, Leucas, Anactorium, Ambracia and others, the colonies in and around Italy: Syracuse and Ancona, and the colonies of Corcyra: Dyrrachium, Apollonia. The earliest inscriptions at Corinth date from the early 6th century BC. They use a Corinthian epichoric alphabet.

Corinth contradicts the prejudice that Dorians were rustic militarists, as some consider the speakers of Laconian to be. Positioned on an international trade route, Corinth played a leading part in the re-civilizing of Greece after the centuries of disorder and isolation following the collapse of Mycenaean Greece.

Northwest Greece

The Northwest Greek group is closely related to the Doric Group, while sometimes there is no distinction between the Doric and the Northwest Greek. Whether it is to be considered a part of the Doric Group or the latter a part of it or the two subgroups of West Greek: the dialects and their grouping remain the same. West Thessaly and Boeotia had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence. The Northwest Greek dialects differ from the Doric Group dialects in the below features:

Dative plural of the Third declension in -οις (-ois) (instead of -σι (-si)) (Ἀκαρνάνοις The language being spoken by the Macedonian people was for a long time a fervent topic of multiple discussions & of different approaches. Few scientists like the American professor Borza and his students suggested that all Greek epigraphs found in the great area of Touba belonged to the loyal family relatives, since these tombs are royal-style and hence the language used is naturally Greek since only the royal family and the upper class were Hellenized.
But was this the reality? It is obvious that this argument would fail if we had found Greek scripts originated from common daily people of that time, chronologically dated before the era of Great Alexander (i.e. before the mid of 4th century bc)

The Pella Curse Tablet

The Pella curse tablet is a text written in a distinct Doric Greek idiom, found in Pella, the ancient capital of Macedon in 1986. Ιt contain a curse or magic spell (Greek: κατάδεσμος, katadesmos) inscribed on a lead scroll, dating to first half of the 4th century BC (ca 375 - 350 BC). It was published in the Hellenic Dialectology Journal in 1993. It is one of four texts found until today that may represent a local dialectal form of ancient Greek of Macedonia, all of them identifiable as Doric (the oldest is the The Phiale of Megara c. 500 BC. These confirm that a Doric Greek dialect was spoken in Macedonia, as was previously expected from the West Greek forms of names found in Macedonia

With the Dorian invasion between 1100 and 950 BC, which is referred to as "the return of the sons of Heracles" in mythology, ended the bronze age and the dark ages of Hellas. The invaders spoke just like the Acheans Greek, but in a different dialect. In the middle and late Helladic period they probably lived in the north and northwest, at the edge of Mycenaean civilisation. The invaders were from several different tribes, but we will call this invasion the Dorian invasion as the Dorian tribes were the most important in the course of history.

The Dorian invasion was not an organised attack from one nation on the other one. Both sides had some form of organisation, but mostly only in a very loose form. What made the Dorians decide to move downwards is impossible to say. This whole immigration of nations is covered in a thick fog. Archaeological nothing was found, we only know of it because we could trace it in a linguistic way.

The Hellas of the 11th and 12th century BC had gone very much downhill. The script, one of the cornerstones of civilisation was lost, and all once mighty cities were destroyed. The "second coming of the Greeks" gave a new impulse to culture in Hellas: people learned the art of iron-working, cremation started to replace burial, pottery was decorated with geometrical figures, and iron started to replace bronze as the main raw material for the construction of tools and weaponry.


Relocation of the tribes.
With the coming of the Dorians the pattern for the future was set in Hellas. For the rest of the classic history the Greeks were divided into four groups, not only by the dialect which they spoke, but also by the area in which they were living. While several tribes were driven through Hellas they, and with them a part of the invading Dorian tribes, realised that Hellas was not big enough for all of them, so they moved overseas.

The "return of the sons of Heracles" completly changed Greece in a cultural and geographic manner.

Immigrating Greeks met on Cyprus the Phoenician tradesmen who attempted to control the whole Mediterranean with their trade. From them the Greek learned something invaluable: the alphabet. The Phoenician alphabet, which resembled the Hebrew alphabet of the old Scripture, was changed by the Greeks until it fitted their needs.

The Dorians, together with the north-western Greeks settled down mostly in the areas at the Corinthian gulf and in the northwest of the Peloponesse. Furthermore the Dorians moved to the south and east of the Peloponesse, in the area of Megara at the Sardonic gulf, on the island Aegina in that same gulf, on the southern islands of the Aegean sea (Crete, Rhodes, and Kos), and in the southwest corner of Asia Minor.

The central mountains of the Peloponesse, Arcadia, did not get any new inhabitants. That is why the Arcadian dialect, together with the Greek dialect of Cyprus, is the closest to the original Mycenaean dialect.

Ionic Greek was spoken in Attica and Euboea, both areas where no invasion took place. However, because of the increasing population in Hellas because of the Dorian invasion many Ionic Greeks decided to move overseas nevertheless. They settled down on the islands in the centre of the Aegean sea, and on the central coasts of Asia Minor, which is known as Ionia since then. This process is known as the Ionic migration of nations, but this is not really correct as they did leave a motherland behind unlike the Dorians.

In Thessaly the original inhabitants, the Aeolians, became subjected to the invaders and many fled to northern Asia Minor (Smyrna, Cyme and Lesbos). The northern coast of Asia Minor is since then known as Aeolia. In Beotia on the other hand the invaders melted together with the original inhabitants.

Around 950 every tribe had settled down in its own territory. They co-existed besides eachother, but never formed a nation... they even almost never felt as one nation. There would always be a strong contrast between the different groups, especially between the Ionians and the Dorians. The Ionians arrived in Hellas around 1600 and mixed with the original inhabitants while the Dorians arrived 500 years later and enslaved them, without learning anything from their culture. The Dorians valued their system of tribes and remained isolated as Sparta would show later on, while the Ionians valued art, science and individualism which were the cornerstones of Athens.