Greece
- Thomas J. Mathiesen,
- Dimitri Conomos,
- George Leotsakos,
- Sotirios Chianis
- and Rudolph M. Brandl
Extract
Country in the eastern Mediterranean with a population of around 10·5 million and an area of 131,957 km². The modern nation state gained independence from the Ottoman Empire between 1821 and 1829. As a region, Greece has a long and varied history.
The modern (Demotic) language is remarkably similar to that of ancient Greece. However, there are important differences, and ancient and modern Greek are transliterated differently below. The transliteration of ancient Greek, also used here for bibliographic citations, follows the system commonly adopted by classical scholars, and marks the difference between the long and short ‘e’ and ‘o’ with a macron. Transliteration of modern Greek is more problematic as there is no one widely accepted system. That adopted here attempts to provide a guide to pronunciation while enabling the reader to discern the original Greek characters....
