Hellenization (or Hellenisation) is a term used to describe the spread of Greek culture. Most typically, it is used to describe the spread of Hellenistic civilization during the Hellenistic period, following the conquest of the east by Alexander the Great of Macedon who spread Greek language, culture and religion to the lands he conquered. The result of Hellenization, elements of Greek origin combined in various forms and degrees with local elements, is known as Hellenism.

Historic usage

The term is used in a number of other ancient historical contexts, starting with the hellenization of the earliest inhabitants of the Greece mainland, the Pelasgians, the Leleges, the Lemnians, the Eteocypriots in Cyprus, Eteocretans and Minoans in Crete, prior to the Classical antiquity period, as well as the Sicels, Elymians, Sicani in Sicily and the Oenotrians, Brutii, Lucani, Messapii and many others in what was about to be known as Magna Graecia.

During the Hellenistic period, following the death of Alexander the Great, considerable numbers of Assyrians, Jews, Egyptians, Persians, Armenians and a number of other ethnic groups along the Middle East and Central Asia were Hellenized. The Bactrians, an Iranian ethnic group who lived in Bactria (northern Afghanistan), were hellenized during the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, and soon after various tribes in northwestern regions of the Indian subcontinent (modern Pakistan) during the Indo-Greek Kingdom. There also was hellenization of Thracians^[1], Dardanians, Paionians and Illyrians^[2] south of the Jire?ek Line.

Hellenization can also refer of the Byzantine Empire from Constantine's founding of Constantinople and the primacy of Greek culture and the Greek language after the emperor Heraclius in the seventh century.

Modern usage

A disputed modern use is in connection with policies pursuing 'cultural harmonization and education of the linguistic minorities resident within the modern Greek state' (the Hellenic Republic), i.e. the Hellenization of minority groups in modern Greece.

Notes

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