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Comment by dr_dshiv | Hacker News Reader

Fantastic. It makes me wonder what distinguishes Trojan culture from Greek culture when Trojans are living in Greece...

I am not an expert in ancient history, but if I am not wrong Greece was mostly composed of city states with different cultures, laws, family structures, sometimes temporary allied by militar leagues and temporary comercial agreements.... there never was a unified Greece or Greek culture until the greek population became the dominant ethnic in eastern Rome and became the new cultural elite at their own (even without Latins their identity was Christian Roman).

Even when fighting against Persians or being conquered under Alexander the Great where never truly unified, just common cultural traits.

The myth of a single unified Ancient Greek culture is a modern fabrication made during the rise of the nations in an effort of fabricate a common past for all folks living under modern states and give a legacy and an identity other than one of the provinces of Rome descendant of the ancient tribes who populated the peninsula. And my understanding is that the same happen with other European pre-romantic cultures like celts, Gauls, Britons, Germans and lots of other lost and forgotten mythological elements from Europe which were praised and recreated to differentiate modern states from their neighbors.

Greeks had unified culture. There was the same language, lifestyle, music, alphabet, commerce, art style, military style... They called people outside their culture "barbaros".

> language

dialects with regional substrate and vulgar varieties; koine written greek is a rather late standard, perhaps not byzantine, but koine literally means "written", in contrast to spoken.

> lifestyle

like what? Sedentary, sure.

> music

music-ians, who were not the same everywhere

> alphabet

again, regional variants exist, writing style wasn't fixed

> commerce

commerce is competition, so how could it be unified? associated towards outsiders, perhaps.

> military style

I wouldn't know about that, but Sparta vs Athens thousand years earlier would be a common counterexample

It's debatable how hellenized the Greeks on the anatolian cost were, the Lydiand, moesians and cetera. "barbaros" relates to speech first and foremost, though I am not buying the etymology. Speakers of other mother languages would have reasonable trouble getting the pronounciation right, so a Scythian, Tracian, Dalmation or otherwise "Celtic" Slave would appear hard to comprehend.

If you are generalizing a millenium of history, you are all history barbarians.

Your argument is "there were dialects and local variants". That was true everywhere until 1st WW and mass media.

Could we agree that Athens and Syracuse were more similar than Athens and Persepolis?

How about common myths and goods? Olympic games that paused wars? Delphi were in "center" of helenic world? And ancient debate if Macedonians are "true Greeks" or "barbarians"?

Innovations and technology were at the same level and culture was propagated and expanded easily among the different cities but they were by no means unified, look at the social and political structure of Athenas and compare it to the ones at Sparta, almost two different worlds, military technology, strategies and formation were different, heirs and inheritance had very different rules, arts were very different, even the view of life and understanding of the world was very different... they might have look similar as Phoenicians or other bronce age, early Iron Age tribes from the region, specially since through commerce and piracy there was a permanent exchange of products and ideas.

Myth about cities founded by Trojan people were common in Greek and Roman culture, and in derived cultures. Virgil's Aeneid is the most famous example. The Arvern tribe from Gaul also claimed a Troyan ascendance. There were legends that made King Arthur a descendant of Aeneas.

The Aeneid has the trojans fleeing the destruction of Troy travel all over Southern and Western Europe. According to pre-medieval legend, Britain is named after Brutus, a descendent of Aeneas.

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