Thyrathen FAQ
On Greek Magic, Pagan Survival, and Orthodoxy in Late Antiquity, Byzantium, and Modern Greece
Introduction: How to Use This Page
Welcome to the Thyrathen FAQ, where you’ll find evidence-based answers to the most persistent questions I have received about Greek magic, ritual, Byzantium, Greek Orthodoxy, cultural survival, and the tangled legacies of Greece from antiquity to the present.
Questions are subdivided into core themes. If you’re on a desktop computer you can use the navigation “breadcrumb trail” on the left to jump to questions: click it and you will see the list of thematic sections and individual questions. You can click on them directly to jump to the section you want.
This FAQ is a work in progress; I will be adding references and supplementary notes over time. It does not aim to be comprehensive, but to give readers an easy point of reference to all things Graeco-Byzantine that I write about, plus a little more, as this is not mainstream knowldege. It’s not a “secret” history; everything below is very well documented in scholarship.
However, in mainstream “primers” and histories focusing on politics, the intellectual and religious histories are systematically sidelined for reasons that include disciplinary boundaries, but also indifference, bias, and ignorance.
If you have a question not addressed here, or if you want to challenge, clarify, or expand on any point, I invite you to get in touch or leave a comment. This FAQ is a living project, updated as new challenges and new research emerge.
Thyrathen is an ongoing outreach research project with no support apart from you, the readers. There’s no institution, no team, just Dr. Sasha with cats to feed. Please consider subscribing to support these efforts.
A Note on Evidence, Sources, and Debate
This FAQ and the wider Thyrathen project are grounded in verifiable sources (textual, ritual, and ethnographic), drawn from both primary materials and reputable scholarship.
If you’re seeking “pristine survivals,” polemical confirmation of an agenda (Orthodox, pagan, nationalist, or academic), or intend to debate by assertion, unsupported claims, or personal attacks, rather than by engaging with the sources provided, please note:
Evidence, not ideology: Every claim here is based on available sources; uncertainties or controversies are noted or left open for further debate.
Continuity is not stasis: “Survival” means functional adaptation and layered tradition, not a museum piece or unchanged relic. Please see my position statement on this here.
Hostile readings: Bad-faith arguments, selective citation, or rhetorical gamesmanship will not be entertained. If you wish to contest a claim, do so by engaging with the sources and arguments actually presented—not by recycling polemics or ideological talking points.
For full sources and deeper argumentation, see the essays and reading lists. If you feel a claim is insufficiently documented, raise it in good faith.
Note on Sources and Footnotes:
Many answers here may not yet include full footnoting or citations. In the meantime, most of the topics addressed here are explored in detail—with sources and footnotes—in my published essays. These are not simply self-referential, but offer a direct pathway into the primary and secondary literature for those who wish to dig deeper.
This is not a platform for ideological crusades. It’s for those willing to engage the material honestly—even (especially) when it complicates comfortable narratives.
FAQ: Greek Magic, Orthodoxy, and Tradition – For Pagans, Practitioners, and Scholars
1. Why have you written this FAQ?
Because the same errors and clichés about Greek tradition and history are repeated endlessly, even in academic settings. Greek sources and lived perspectives are regularly sidelined or overwritten by outside narratives. This FAQ sets out the evidence, so the record is clear for anyone prepared to engage with it.
2. What qualifies you to write it?
I am a cultural historian and experienced, published scholar, fluent in Greek and English, with decades of direct work in Greek language, ritual, and historical research. My work draws on primary sources, fieldwork, and international scholarship, most of which remains inaccessible or ignored by outsiders. This project is independent and grounded in documented evidence, not institutional politics.
3. Why should I read it?
Because most of what you’ve heard about Greek tradition and identity, whether in popular culture or mainstream scholarship, rests on inherited assumptions, not on evidence. There are a number of reasons for this, laid out below, with explanations and sources.
If you want answers tested against sources rather than second-hand opinion, start here.
Greek Tradition and Identity
4. Isn’t modern Greek identity a 19th-century invention, constructed by Western philhellenes? Weren’t Greeks previously just “Romioi,” “Ottoman Christians,” or even “southern Italians” or “Turks”?
Short answer:
This claim ignores over a thousand years of continuous Greek self-identification and external recognition—by Byzantine, Western, Arab, and Ottoman sources. The terms “Romios” (Ρωμιός) and “Hellene” (Ἕλλην) coexisted, reflecting both imperial continuity and a living awareness of Hellenic heritage. Modern nation-building codified older forms; it did not invent Greekness ex nihilo.
In depth:
While the name “Hellene” was used to identify ethnic Greeks in the 19th century, Greeks never lost their distinct language, ritual, or tradition. Throughout Byzantine and Ottoman periods, Greek-speaking Christians saw themselves as heirs to both the ancient and Christian past, maintaining a unique identity through liturgy, communal memory, and continuous use of Greek.
The term “Hellene” was periodically reclaimed from at least the 10th century, notably during the First Byzantine Renaissance, marked by a revival of classical education and literature, and systematic preservation of ancient texts.
After the 1054 schism (Q. 26), “Greeks” (“Graeci”) became a Western pejorative, used to strip Eastern Romans of their “Roman” identity and recast them as foreign. This is well documented in Latin polemic from the ninth century onward, especially after Charlemagne. (Also see Q. 30 & footnote 1).
After the 4th Crusade (1204) and the subsequent recapture of Constantinople in 1261, a cultural revival among Byzantine elites placed new emphasis on classical learning and Hellenic imagery. Intellectuals such as George Gemistos Plethon (“We are Hellenes by race and culture”) and John Argyropoulos actively promoted Greek identity. The term Ῥωμαῖοι remained a political self-designation, but Ἕλληνες became prominent in elite and diplomatic circles, explicitly linking classical heritage to Byzantine self-understanding.
External recognition:
Ottoman records (millet-i Rûm) defined Greek subjects by language and Orthodox tradition. Outsiders—Ottomans, Venetians, Western Europeans—consistently labelled Greek communities as distinct both linguistically and culturally. No credible Ottoman, Venetian, or Western source ever described Greeks as “Turks” or “Italians.” These communities spoke Greek, but also sometimes Turkish, Slavic, Albanian, or Aromanian, depending on region and context. Orthodox Christianity remained the norm except where forcibly converted, which was never systematic.
Modern era:
It is true that in the 19th and 20th centuries, the “Hellene” identity was sometimes mobilised for nationalist or political purposes, and at times shaped by Western philhellenism. However, the roots of “Hellene” as a self-designation after antiquity are firmly established in Byzantine history—not simply an invention of modern nationalism or a gift from the West. Modern nation-building, as elsewhere, involved the codification and reactivation of these older forms, it did not seize on the ancient legacy for political ends but because this was rooted in the pre-existing cultural identity as attested by Byzantine usage and linguistic continuity.
Supporting evidence:
Medieval sources—Byzantine, Western, Arab, and Ottoman—consistently refer to the language and culture of “the Greeks,” even as “Romios” is adopted for legal and imperial reasons.
Byzantine authors, from Anna Komnene to Michael Psellos, self-identify as Greek-speaking and explicitly claim the philosophical and cultural legacy of antiquity.
Genetic and linguistic continuity (Lazaridis et al., 2017; Browning et al., 2018) further supports demographic stability across centuries, with expected Mediterranean cultural exchange.
In sum: “Romios” and “Greek” co-existed; the shift back to “Hellene” as a primary term was a conscious restoration, not a modern fantasy.
Kaldellis, Romanland (2019).
5. What is “cultural continuity,” and how do scholars define it?
Cultural continuity is not a monolith; it is a field of study with distinct definitions and methodological tools across disciplines. Key definitions include:
Structural Continuity:The persistence of core institutions, ritual forms, or symbolic systems across time, even if meanings shift.
Functional Continuity: The survival of practices or beliefs that adapt to new historical circumstances but retain a recognisable role or function—sometimes even acquiring new meanings, yet preserving older significances in new guises.
Palimpsestic Continuity: The layering of old and new, where remnants of earlier forms persist within later cultural strata (cf. palimpsest in manuscript studies).
Genetic/Biological Continuity: The physical descent of populations (relevant, but not primary, for cultural questions).
Perceived/Claimed Continuity: The ways a community interprets and asserts its relationship to its own past, regardless of external validation.
Invented or Imagined Continuity: Constructed links to the past that serve present purposes (national, religious, or otherwise).
For our purposes here, functional continuity, syncretism, and palimpsestic continuity are especially relevant: a ritual or formula might be re-contextualised—from temple to church, from oracle to saint’s shrine—but its core function (healing, blessing, divination) endures.
The evidence for Greek continuity lies precisely in these adaptive, living forms. In no way am I claiming direct survivals in the sense of pristine ancient practices surviving unchanged for three millennia. But I am claiming that Greek culture must be understoood as a palimpsest, intelligible to living Greeks, with a strong functional character. Read my statement on this here.
6: Isn’t “cultural continuity” just a nationalist myth? Aren’t all nations “constructed”?
No serious scholar denies that nations are constructed—but not all constructions are arbitrary, rootless, or invented from whole cloth.
Clarifying terms: In academic usage, “cultural continuity” does not mean an unbroken essence or static identity, as peddled by nationalist myth-makers. Rather, it describes the adaptive survival of core elements—language, ritual, social forms, collective memory—across periods of rupture, crisis, and transformation. Greek tradition is a case study in such adaptive continuity: layered, self-conscious, and often openly debated by its own bearers.
Functional continuity: The point is not that nothing changes—but that certain functions, forms, and patterns persist, even as meanings shift. The moiroloi (lament) is just one among many: what matters is not an unbroken ritual text, but the persistence of its role in grief, community, and cosmology from Homer to the present.
Evidence, not ideology: The Greek case is unusually well-documented: we have unbroken chains of textual, ritual, and linguistic transmission, visible in archives, manuscripts, folk performance, and everyday speech. Few other cultures can produce a comparable record—and no honest scholar discards all this as mere fantasy or fabrication.
On the “constructedness” claim: If all nations are “imagined communities,” this is equally true of Irish, Jewish, Chinese, or Armenian continuity—yet no one insists their traditions are empty inventions simply because they adapted. To single out Greeks for this scepticism is to repeat a colonial double standard: adaptive continuity is the global norm, not the exception.
7. What about the argument that Greeks “lost” their language and culture under Ottoman or Venetian rule, and what survives is a 19th-century reinvention?
This is a modern, bad-faith myth, not a serious historical argument.
Documentation: Greek language, liturgy, and education did not “disappear” under Ottoman or Venetian rule; they persisted via the millet system and, crucially, through the Orthodox Church. Greek texts, liturgical calendars, and schools—monastic and urban—operated without interruption across the Balkans and Anatolia for centuries. Thousands of manuscripts, school records, and parish archives survive to prove it.
Continuity of practice: Ritual calendars, local dialects, agricultural festivals, healing rites, and household customs display clear, traceable lines of transmission from the Byzantine through the Ottoman and Venetian periods. Many so-called “folk” practices are simply continuations of earlier forms, adapted to new contexts but never broken.
Western sources: Contemporary travellers, missionaries, and diplomats—Venetian, French, British, and others—routinely identified the Greek-speaking communities of the Ottoman Empire as the direct cultural and religious heirs of Byzantium. They documented not only the language, but also the survival of Orthodox Christian practice, local self-government, and continuity of communal memory.
Material and demographic continuity: Archaeological evidence (inscriptions, churches, household objects), parish registers, and genetic studies (Lazaridis et al., 2017) all confirm the stability and persistence of Greek populations and traditions in their historic homelands.
The 19th-century “reinvention” thesis does not withstand scrutiny: It cannot explain the overwhelming continuity of language, practice, and identity documented in everyday documents, family histories, parish records, oral tradition, and surviving material culture. “Reinvention” can only apply to the codification of identity in the modern nation-state—not to the substance of language, ritual, and collective memory, which were never lost.
To deny this record is not critical, good-faith scholarship. It is an ideological gesture that ignores the weight of the evidence in favour of polemical convenience.
8. Aren’t “Greeks” just southern Slavs, Albanians, or Turks who adopted Greek identity?
This is a tired trope, rooted in 19th-century nationalist polemics (the Fallmerayer discontinuity thesis that has been exhaustively refuted). It has no basis in historical or scientific fact.
Linguistic evidence:
Modern Greek dialects across the mainland, islands, and Asia Minor, descend directly from Hellenistic Koine and Byzantine Greek, evolving in documented, internally consistent ways. Loanwords exist (as in all languages), but the underlying grammar, phonology, and lexicon remain unambiguously Greek. No Slavic, Albanian, or Turkish dialect forms the substrate of any Greek dialect; the fundamental grammar and phonology of Greek have remained intact, even in regions of prolonged contact or bilingualism. The Hellenic world has always been multilingual—loanwords and bilingual speakers are found throughout history—but the Greek language, wherever spoken, retains its core structure, evolution, and continuity. Where substrate influence is present in the region, it is among other ethnic groups and languages, not within Greek itself. (see Q. 9-12 on language).Genetic evidence:
Modern population genomics (Lazaridis et al., 2017; Browning et al., 2018, and others) confirm continuity between ancient, medieval, and modern Greek populations, with regional admixture entirely typical of the eastern Mediterranean—no more or less than in Italy, Turkey, or the Balkans. There is no evidence of a wholesale population replacement or mass ethnogenesis by Slavs, Albanians, or Turks. The core genetic profile is recognisably Greek and ties directly to the pre-Slavic and Byzantine periods.Historical and external recognition:
Throughout the Ottoman, Venetian, and Balkan periods, Greeks were consistently identified as a distinct community—by language, religion (Orthodoxy), customs, and self-understanding—by their own records and those of their neighbours, rulers, and rivals. No serious Ottoman, Venetian, or Balkan source confuses Greeks with Slavs, Albanians, or Turks; millet-i Rûm is always identified as Greek-speaking Orthodox Christians, and local records maintain this continuity.The point:
Ethnic “purity” is not a scholarly category; all populations are layered and adaptive. British and Irish identities, for example, have been shaped by centuries of migration and cultural exchange. Yet those with Celtic ancestry are free to claim and celebrate it without being required to justify their connection, and outsiders are expected to respect those boundaries. Greek identity deserves the same recognition—rooted in history, not in a myth of purity or in permission from outside observers.
Like all living cultures, Greek identity is complex and dynamic—but it is not a fiction, nor the accidental result of recent “adoption.” It is a documented continuity—linguistic, cultural, and, where measurable, biological. To reduce Greekness to a question of “race” or “purity” is to betray both the historical record and the realities of Mediterranean history. Such claims say more about the anxieties of their promoters than about the facts.Lazaridis, Iosif, et al. “Genetic Origins of the Minoans and Mycenaeans.” Nature, vol. 548, no. 7666, 2017, pp. 214–218.
Browning, Sharon R., et al. “Ancestry-Specific Recent Effective Population Size in the Americas.” PLOS Genetics, vol. 14, no. 5, 24 May 2018, e1007385, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1007385.
8a. Why are you always going on about Greeks being ‘sidelined’ or ‘erased’? Isn’t that just special pleading? I don’t see Greeks being marginalised anywhere. Most people admire Greek history and culture. Isn’t this just grievance-mongering, or nationalism in disguise?
There’s a persistent, rarely-discussed pattern in the way Greeks and Greek experience are treated in academic, activist, and public conversations. When Greeks speak of loss, trauma, or cultural theft, they are dismissed—not as a matter of debate, but as a structural feature of how modern Western identity has been constructed. Here’s how it works.
1. Greeks Are “Too Familiar, Yet Too Foreign.”
Evidence:
Modern Greeks are routinely presented in media as “European but backward” (e.g. coverage of the Greek economic crisis).
Academic debates over “continuity” routinely question whether modern Greeks are “real” Greeks (see Herzfeld, Cultural Intimacy, and Mackridge, Language and National Identity in Greece).
“Greekness” is often reduced to cuisine, tourism, or ancient ruins, never as a living identity.
2. The West Has Staked Its Identity on Ancient Greece—but Only on Its Own Terms.
Evidence:
American and British classical curricula end at 323 BC. Byzantine and modern Greek history are nearly absent from textbooks. (see Margaret Alexiou, After Antiquity; Antonis Kaldellis, Byzantine Readings).
Western art, politics, and architecture celebrate “ancient Greece” while disregarding anything post-classical (see Michael Herzfeld, “The Silence of the Academies”).
The Parthenon Marbles: retained as “universal heritage,” divorced from modern Greek claims.
3. Greeks Are Not Allowed “Victim” Status.
Evidence:
The Greek genocide (Asia Minor, Pontic, and Thracian) is almost invisible in major Western commemorations; rarely referenced in comparison to Armenian or Jewish traumas (see K.E. Fleming, Greece—A Jewish History).
International activism around genocide or occupation seldom mentions the population exchanges or persecutions that shaped modern Greece (see Bruce Clark, Twice a Stranger).
Even in refugee discourse, Greek suffering is often minimised as “ancient history.”
4. When Greeks Assert Their History or Trauma, It Is Framed as “Nationalism.”
Evidence:
Greek appeals for the return of cultural artefacts are labelled “nationalist demands” (see UK Parliamentary debates on the Elgin Marbles).
Academic articles scrutinise “Greek nationalism” for asserting continuity, but treat equivalent claims by other groups as “identity work” or “decolonial.”
International media routinely pathologise Greek protests or memorials as “chauvinist” or “irrational” (see reporting during the Macedonian name dispute).
5. The Result: Greeks Fall Through the Cracks of the Empathy Hierarchy.
Evidence:
Greeks are absent from major museum “diaspora” or “restitution” narratives (contrast with recent returns to Nigeria, Indigenous Australia).
In global conversations about marginalisation, Greeks are rarely at the table—too Western for sympathy, too Eastern for inclusion.
This is reflected in funding, research priorities, and public memory (see statistics on UNESCO, EU heritage projects, etc.).
Language Wars and Pronunciation
9: Is Modern Greek really related to ancient Greek, or is it just a “constructed” language for national pride?
Modern Greek is the direct, continuous descendant of ancient Greek, one of the world’s oldest continuously spoken and written languages. Its continuity is documented not only by linguists but also by a living, unbroken record of textual, oral, and liturgical use for over three millennia.
The language spoken by Greeks today evolved naturally from the Greek of Homer, Plato, through Hellenistic Koine, and Byzantine Greek into its modern forms. Core vocabulary, grammar, proverbs, and idioms remain recognisably Greek. While Greek, like all languages, has changed over time and exhibits dialectal diversity, its fundamental structure has never been supplanted by any other language.
Periods of diglossia and outside influence are well documented, but the underlying transmission line—oral, written, and ritual—remained unbroken, even during times of foreign rule or linguistic contact.
Several archaising and modernising waves are well attested through the post-Classical and Byzantine periods, along with distinct differences between vernacular and scholarly registers. Such patterns—including periods of deliberate archaism or language planning—are a normal feature of any language with a long literary history and do not indicate a break or artificial construction. The coexistence of formal and everyday registers, as seen in Greek diglossia, is paralleled in other world languages (such as Arabic or German) and reflects the natural evolution of a living tradition, not a rupture in continuity.
Modern Greek education continues to teach ancient authors in the original, sustaining a direct relationship with the language’s history, even if full fluency in ancient forms requires study. This is not a nationalist invention; it is the outcome of continuous, well-documented linguistic and cultural development.
Finally, the so-called “rediscovery” of Greek antiquity in the West relied overwhelmingly on manuscripts, teachers, and traditions preserved in Byzantium and by Greek speakers—not on outside mediation.
Geoffrey Horrocks, Greek: A History of the Language and its Speakers
Anthony Kaldellis, Hellenism in Byzantium.
10: Isn’t Modern Greek “corrupted,” “broken,” or “degenerate” compared to ancient Greek?
Short answer:
No. Modern Greek is not “degenerate” or “corrupted”—it is the direct, regular outcome of documented historical development. Linguists reject “degeneration” as a meaningful category. The myth persists due to 19th-century classicist prejudice, not scientific analysis.
For a full critique of the power dynamics behind this polemic, see below.
a. Is there any scientific basis for the claim that Modern Greek is “corrupted”?
No. The notion that Modern Greek is “corrupted” or “degenerate” is rooted in 19th-century classicist prejudice and has no basis in modern linguistic science. Every living language changes, and Greek’s documented evolution from antiquity to the present is both regular and continuous. Linguists recognise no category of “degeneration” in language change; this is a polemical, not a scientific, claim.
As R.A. Hudson (Sociolinguistics) and Brian Joseph (The Modern Greek Language) have shown, linguistics treats language change as value-neutral: there is no analytic category of ‘degeneration’ or ‘corruption.’ These are ideological, not scholarly, judgements.”
It is worth noting, as Foucault observed, that every polemic is itself an act of power: it constructs boundaries of legitimacy, placing its targets in a perpetual state of defence and apology. The classicist tradition has repeatedly deployed such strategies—defining “real” Greek as an object belonging to antiquity and to the Western canon, while dismissing or pathologising its living successors.
This is not an innocent error, but a systemic mechanism for maintaining scholarly authority and policing cultural legitimacy. In this sense, the debate over Greek “corruption” is not just academic; it is the product of a sustained campaign of gatekeeping, projection, and the selective rewriting of history. The result is that Greek speakers and scholars are forced, uniquely, to justify their own linguistic continuity—a burden rarely imposed on other cultures.
For a wider context, Edward Said’s critique of Orientalism further exposes how the power to define and exclude is woven into the fabric of Western scholarship, ensuring that living traditions are always on the defensive while the authorities of the canon remain unchallenged.
This dynamic, as Edward Said argued in Orientalism, is foundational to the way Western scholarship claims ownership of cultural heritage, all while requiring living traditions to pass endless tests of authenticity set by outsiders.
b. Does Modern Greek retain core vocabulary and syntax from ancient Greek?
A vast body of ancient Greek vocabulary, idioms, and syntax survives in Modern Greek—often with only regular phonetic change. Basic terms for family, the body, nature, number, and daily life are recognisable from Homeric Greek to today. Proverbs, formulaic expressions, and grammatical structures show deep continuity, sometimes more conservative than literary registers elsewhere in Europe.
c. Haven’t loanwords “corrupted” the language?
Like any long-lived language, Greek has absorbed loanwords (Latin, Italian, Turkish, French, English), mostly in regional or technical contexts. Core elements such as the inflectional system and native roots persist throughout all periods. Further, loanwords never displaced the basic grammar or core lexicon. In formal, literary, and ritual language, foreign elements are minimal. (Mackridge; Johnson).
d. Does Modern Greek still preserve older meanings and forms?
Modern Greek is highly polysemous—older meanings are retained even as new ones develop; understanding them depends on context but is taken for granted by native speakers.
Liturgical, legal, and ritual language remains especially close to Byzantine and even classical forms. In village Greek, archaisms and idioms from antiquity survive in oral use; urban and educated registers reinforce this via schooling. Alexiou (After Antiquity) and Stewart (Dreaming and Historical Consciousness in Island Greece) document specific ancient proverbs and ritual forms still recognisable and used in village contexts, far beyond what is typical in Western European languages.
e. Can modern Greeks actually understand ancient Greek?
Mutual intelligibility is highest with Koine and post-classical Greek, both of which are required elements in Greek secondary education (see Mackridge, Language and National Identity). Direct reading of Homer or Plato requires study, but foundational vocabulary and phraseology remain familiar. Ethnographic fieldwork confirms widespread recognition of ancient forms in both ritual and daily speech. There is extensive field evidence of non-academic Greeks reciting, recognising, and using ancient formulaic expressions, especially in ritual contexts.
f. Is Modern Greek a living language?
Modern Greek is a living, creative vehicle for literature, philosophy, science, and daily life. It produces Nobel laureates, internationally recognised novelists, and an ongoing oral tradition. By every measure—creative output, syntactic complexity, and lived utility—it is a productive and living, not fossilised, language.
g. Does the use of “Romaic” mean there is a rupture in continuity?
The notion that Modern Greek should be called “Romaic” rather than Greek ignores both continuous self-identification (manuscripts, public documents, folk song) and the linguistic reality: every generation, from the late Roman/Byzantine era to the present, has called the language “Greek” or “Romaic” without distinction or sense of rupture.
It is only non-Greek linguists who have raised questions about the labelling of Ancient and Modern Greek (and the forms in between). Linguist Lukas Tsitsipis notes:
What about the names of languages? Names are not just recognition labels, [they] should be viewed as rich metonymic depositories of socio-cultural histories, that is, their use evokes a whole series of images and events concerning human groups. A name is an index of some sort. It is part of a socio-semiotic process such that every instance of its use can construct and reconstruct features of a non-stable identity.”
(Tsitsipis 2018).
Alexiou, Margaret. The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition. Cambridge University Press, 1974; revised 2nd ed., edited by Dimitrios Yatromanolakis and Panagiotis Roilos, Rowman & Littlefield, 2002.
Hudson, R. A. Sociolinguistics. 2nd ed., Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Joseph, Brian D. Modern Greek. With Irene Philippaki‑Warburton, Croom Helm, 1987.
Stewart, Charles. Dreaming and Historical Consciousness in Island Greece. University of Chicago Press, 2012.
Tsitsipis, Lukas D. A Linguistic Anthropology of Praxis and Language Shift: Arvanítika (Albanian) and Greek in Contact. Oxford University Press, 1999.
11: Is only “Erasmian” (reconstructed) pronunciation academically valid? Is Modern Greek pronunciation a recent or inauthentic innovation?
This claim is a relic of 19th-century German philology and modern classroom convenience, not a reflection of historical or living Greek.
Erasmian pronunciation
The “Erasmian” system, introduced by Erasmus in 1518 and widely adopted in Western universities, is a scholarly reconstruction based on ancient texts and comparative linguistics. Erasmian pronunciation is not based on any attested historical or living tradition; it is a classroom convention, devised for pedagogical purposes, and does not reflect the way Greek was spoken at any period in Greece itself (cf. Allen; Horrocks).
What about “reconstructed” pronunciation?
Scholarly reconstructed pronunciations aim to approximate the sounds of ancient Greek in specific periods—such as Classical Attic or Hellenistic Koine—using evidence from ancient grammarians, spelling conventions, transliterations, and comparative linguistics.
Reconstruction is a valuable academic tool for research in linguistics, poetics, and historical phonology. However, reconstructed pronunciations are scholarly models based on fragmentary textual evidence, not the product of an unbroken spoken tradition. These reconstructions serve academic purposes—especially in teaching, linguistics, and performance—but do not reflect evidence of a living, historically continuous spoken tradition.
Actual evolution: Modern Greek accentuation, vowel mergers (iotacism), and consonant shifts are well documented from Hellenistic papyri, Roman inscriptions, and Byzantine grammarians’ notes.
By the Koine period (c. 300 BCE onward), pitch accent had shifted to stress accent, and monophthongisation was largely complete.
The modern system—loss of quantitative vowel length, full iotacism, stress-based accent—was essentially in place by the 2nd–4th centuries CE.
Recent scholarship has established that Modern Greek pronunciation is
Regional diversity: Cretan, Pontic, Cappadocian, Tsakonian, and Cypriot dialects all preserve features traceable to various ancient dialects. Tsakonian, for example, descends directly from Doric and is radically distinct yet recognisably Greek.
Liturgical and village Greek: The language of the Divine Liturgy, chanted weekly, is essentially unchanged since the 4th century and fully intelligible to Greek speakers today. In rural areas, speakers use archaisms and prosodic patterns older than standard Athenian Greek.
Romaic vs. Greek: “Romaic” (Ρωμαίικα) simply denotes the language of the “Romans” (Byzantine Greeks). See Q. 10g for more detail. Manuscripts, poetry, and public discourse demonstrate a direct line of descent. (Cf. Kaldellis, Mackridge).
Bottom line: Modern Greek pronunciation is the historically evolved product of natural phonological change, not a break from the past. “Erasmian” is a pedagogical fiction; real Greek, past and present, is spoken and sung in Greece. No serious linguist considers Modern Greek “inauthentic”—it is the living descendant of ancient Greek.
Allen, W. Sidney. Vox Graeca: The Pronunciation of Classical Greek. 3rd ed., Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Barnard, J. A. “The ‘Erasmian’ Pronunciation of Greek: Whose Error is It?” Erasmus Studies, vol. 37, no. 1, 2017, pp. 109–132.
Browning, Robert. Medieval and Modern Greek. Hutchinson, 1969.
Caragounis, Chrys C. Attic and Demotic. 2008.
Caragounis, Chrys C. The Development of Greek and the New Testament: Morphology, Syntax, Phonology, and Textual Transmission. WUNT 167, Mohr Siebeck, 2004.
Georgakopoulou, Alexandra, and Michael Silk, editors. Standard Languages and Language Standards: Greek, Past and Present. Ashgate, 2009.
Horrocks, Geoffrey. Greek: A History of the Language and Its Speakers. 2nd ed., Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
Zachariou, Philemon. Reading and Pronouncing Biblical Greek: Historical Pronunciation versus Erasmian. Wipf and Stock, 2020.
12: If all this is true, why do so many people—including academics—still get it wrong?
Short answer:
Institutional inertia, disciplinary bias and boundaries, and longstanding patterns of exclusion in Western scholarship have distorted how Greek history and language are presented.
In depth:
The narrative that Greek culture ended in antiquity and was only revived through Western “rediscovery” persists because it has been structurally embedded in the intellectual history of the West. The “separation” of classical antiquity from later Greek continuities is a product of how Hellenism has been constructed within Western scholarship. This narrative has served clear political and cultural interests since Roman times and during key historical moments since then, repeatedly reinforcing ideas of Greek “decline” and Western “superiority.” (See Q. 13, 14, 16, 38, 45).
Much of the actual evidence—living rituals, language, local practices, and even major Byzantine and post-Byzantine texts—was ignored, mistranslated, or dismissed as mere “superstition” or irrelevant folklore. Modern Greek voices, along with the testimony of local communities and Greek scholars, were systematically excluded or discounted. The study of Greek was often dominated by Classicists with little interest in (or sometimes open disdain for) anything post-classical. (Alexiou 2002; Kaldellis 2019).
Despite repeated calls from many scholars, these patterns persist. The overwhelming majority of university Classics curricula in the UK, US, and Europe focus exclusively on ancient (classical or Hellenistic) Greek, with Byzantine and Modern Greek either relegated to optional modules or placed in separate Modern Languages departments. Byzantine Greek is rarely required or given equal status in language tracks, and Modern Greek is almost never a core requirement for a degree in Classics, nor is it considered a language of scholarly exchange even when studying Greek topics; thus the breadth of Greek scholarship on such topics remains ignored. (See Oxford, Cambridge, and Harvard Classics and Modern Greek programmes for the evidence).
Greek scholars are expected to translate their work into English or another major European language. Where Byzantine or Modern Greek is taught, it is often marginal, treated as a “special interest,” and not as part of the continuous Greek tradition.
a. But don’t scholars study Byzantine and Modern Greek?
There are indeed outstanding specialists and important work in both fields—but this work is consistently siloed outside the mainstream of Classics, and rarely shapes the core narratives presented in textbooks or survey courses. In practice, the result is that most classicists and ancient historians are never exposed to Byzantine or Modern Greek scholarship, except in passing. Living Greek voices, local traditions, and the testimony of Greek scholars are still often excluded or discounted, either as “unscientific,” “nationalist,” or “parochial.”
b. Isn’t this a conspiracy theory or grievance-mongering?
On the contrary, the pattern is demonstrable: the structure of university syllabi, departmental boundaries, and textbook content show persistent neglect of Greek continuity after antiquity. Even in leading reference works and academic handbooks, post-classical Greek is typically a marginal footnote. The “rediscovery” narrative—where the West “rescues” Greek knowledge from supposed oblivion—remains pervasive because it is culturally convenient, not because it reflects the actual transmission or continuity of Greek tradition.
Much of the living evidence—rituals, language, local practices, and major Byzantine and post-Byzantine texts—continues to be overlooked, mistranslated, or dismissed as irrelevant folklore. Linguistic snobbery and the refusal to engage with Byzantine and Modern Greek as living, evolving languages further reinforce old biases (cf. Q. 9, 10, 11).
The point is not that all classicists are hostile, nor that Byzantine and Modern Greek are wholly neglected, but that the institutional framework and intellectual habits of Western scholarship have systematically shaped what is taught, what is valued, and whose voices count as “authoritative.” The result is a persistent distortion in how Greek history and identity are understood and presented, both within the academy and to the broader public.
Sources:
Anthony Kaldellis, Romanland: Ethnicity and Empire in Byzantium (2019)
Margaret Alexiou, After Antiquity (2002)
Averil Cameron, The Byzantines (2006)
Roderick Beaton, Byzantium and the Emergence of Modern Greece
Also see my article The Problem with Classics for further detail and footnotes.
Byzantium, Erasure, and Denial
13. Byzantium never existed. Isn’t it just a modern invention, or a Western name for a failed empire?
While the term ‘Byzantine’ was coined by later Western historians (notably Hieronymus Wolf in the 16th century), it refers to a political, religious, and cultural entity—the Eastern Roman Empire— in which Greek was continuously spoken (alongside Latin until the 6th-7th century), Orthodox Christianity the main religion after the 6th century, and that was recognised by itself and its neighbours as a continuous imperial polity.
Contemporary sources: Islamic sources called the empire ‘Rum’; Western Latin sources increasingly used ‘Graecia’ as a polemic term after the schism; internally, emperors and citizens called themselves ‘Romaioi’ (Romans) in both legal and everyday contexts, reclaiming the term “Hellenes” periodically from the 10th century especially. (see Q 4 & 30).
Literary output: The vast surviving corpus (legal codes, chronicles, poetry, theological treatises) is in Greek, with continuity from late antiquity. Some documents were in both Latin and Greek, but only Greek from roughly the 7th century. All religious texts for use within the Helladic space and Constantinople, major literary and legal texts such as the Basilika (Byzantine law code), the histories of Anna Komnene and Michael Psellos, the poetry of Romanos the Melodist, and the philosophical treatises of Plethon demonstrate this continuity.
Administrative continuity: Imperial offices, church structures, and legal frameworks survived from the Roman to the Ottoman period, simply evolving. While the empire faced crises, occupations (notably the Fourth Crusade, 1204–1261), and evolving territorial boundaries, the core institutions, religious tradition, and administrative structures adapted and survived through these ruptures, re-establishing continuity after even major disruptions.
Physical evidence: The built environment—Constantinople, Thessaloniki, Mystras—remains, with layers of adaptation, not abandonment.
The fact that ‘Byzantium’ is a modern scholarly label does not erase the reality of the Eastern Roman/Greek-speaking empire; the terminology reflects later academic categories, but the historical entity was always acknowledged by those within and outside it.
Kaldellis, Anthony. Hellenism in Byzantium: The Transformations of Greek Identity and the Reception of the Classical Tradition. Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Kaldellis, Anthony. The Byzantine Republic: People and Power in New Rome. Harvard University Press, 2015.
Kaldellis, Anthony. The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium. Oxford University Press, 2023.
Cameron, Averil. The Byzantines. Blackwell, 2006.
Cameron, Averil. Byzantine Matters. Princeton University Press, 2014.
Mango, Cyril. Byzantium and Its Image: History and Culture of the Byzantine Empire and Its Heritage. Variorum, 1984.
14. Did Byzantium really have a renaissance? Why haven’t I heard of it—and wasn’t it different from the Western Renaissance?”
Short Answer: Yes, Byzantium experienced several distinct periods of cultural renaissance—although these are often overshadowed by the better-known Italian Renaissance, for both political and historiographical reasons.
In depth:
a. What do we mean by “Byzantine renaissance”?
Byzantine Renaissances were distinct periods of renewal, recovery, and creative adaptation of the ancient heritage, most notably during the 9th–10th centuries after Iconoclasm, in the 11th century after the Schism, and again in the 13th–15th centuries in the face of profound Western intervention.
The term “renaissance” (meaning rebirth) is most often applied to the so-called “First Byzantine Renaissance,” a period of remarkable intellectual and artistic flourishing in the ninth and tenth centuries (c. 800–950 CE).
After the end of Iconoclasm in 843, Byzantine society saw a systematic revival of classical Greek learning: ancient texts were copied, edited, and studied with renewed vigour; education in grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, and the sciences was promoted at both court and ecclesiastical levels. Major figures such as Photios the Great and Leo the Mathematician played a key role in this revival. Photios’ Bibliotheca, in particular, preserved knowledge of many otherwise lost ancient works.
A second major wave of revival followed the aftermath of the Great Schism with Rome in 1054, during the Komnenian period, which produced significant intellectual output in philosophy, theology, and literature. This momentum was violently disrupted by the Fourth Crusade and the sack of Constantinople in 1204, when Western crusaders occupied the city and fragmented Byzantine territory.
Despite this catastrophe, Byzantine intellectual life was rekindled after the recapture of Constantinople in 1261. This third phase—often called the Palaiologan Renaissance—saw a striking return to classical forms in art, literature, and philosophy, and produced influential thinkers such as George Gemistos Plethon. Crucially, during this final phase, Greek scholars and manuscripts made their way to Italy, directly enabling the Western (Italian) Renaissance.
b. Why don’t we hear about it?
The idea of “Renaissance” is still heavily shaped by Western narratives, which have tended to minimise, overlook, or actively dismiss Byzantine contributions to the preservation and creative adaptation of ancient Greek heritage.
The lack of recognition is due not to absence of substance but to centuries of Western historiography—beginning with Gibbon—which privileged Western Europe and downplayed or denigrated Byzantine creativity as ‘stagnant’ or derivative.
For centuries, Western scholars promoted the myth that classical knowledge was “lost” until it was “rediscovered” in Italy—ignoring the role Byzantium played in maintaining, transmitting, and developing the Greek tradition. Both historical and Western polemic often portrayed Byzantium as stagnant, other, or decadent, in contrast to a supposedly “dynamic” West.
This erasure was institutionalised as Classics departments in the West drew an artificial line at late antiquity, delegitimising everything after as “Byzantine”—foreign, decadent, or irrelevant. Yet the sources, manuscript transmission, curriculum, and explicit testimony of Renaissance scholars themselves leave no doubt as to the centrality of Byzantine work.
c. How was it different from the Italian Renaissance?
The Byzantine renaissances were less about rupture or rediscovery, and more about continuity and renewal. Byzantine scholars never lost access to ancient texts or learning; their achievements involved systematic editing, commentary, and integration into Christian intellectual life. While the Italian Renaissance looked to the past for inspiration to break from the medieval, Byzantine culture always saw itself as both heir and steward of the ancient Greek world.
In summary:
Byzantium had multiple renaissances—defined by classical revival, intellectual creativity, and cultural adaptation. The reason you haven’t heard more about them is not due to a lack of substance, but to long-standing Western biases and academic blind spots.
Sources for further reading:
Paul Lemerle, Byzantine Humanism: The First Phase (English trans. 1986)
Kaldellis, Anthony. Hellenism in Byzantium: The Transformations of Greek Identity and the Reception of the Classical Tradition. Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Kaldellis, Anthony. The Christian Parthenon: Classicism and Pilgrimage in Byzantine Athens. Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Judith Herrin, Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire (2007)
Roderick Beaton, Byzantium and the Emergence of Modern Greece (Cambridge, 2019)
Kaldellis, Anthony, and Niketas Siniossoglou, eds. The Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium. Cambridge University Press, 2017.
15. Didn’t the Byzantines destroy all the ancient texts, especially pagan ones? Isn’t it just luck that anything survived?
Short answer:
No; the preservation of ancient literature is thanks to Byzantine scholars, not luck. Most catastrophic losses were due to Western and Ottoman destruction.
In depth:
This is a misreading of both the scale of loss and the facts of preservation. The vast majority of ancient Greek literature, science, and philosophy that survives today owes its preservation to the efforts of Byzantine scholars, scribes, and educators, not to luck, and not to outside “rescue.” While the shift from paganism to Christianity did change which texts were copied most actively, and certain emperors did target public paganism, especially in late antiquity, the overall pattern in Byzantium was one of preservation, adaptation, and transmission, not systematic destruction. There was never a systematic or total campaign to erase the literary legacy of the ancient world. Major philosophical, scientific, and literary works continued to be copied, commented, and integrated into Christian scholarship.
From the ninth century onward, Byzantine intellectuals—such as Photios, Arethas of Caesarea, and Michael Psellos—actively copied, catalogued, and commented on works by Homer, Plato, Aristotle, the tragedians, historians, physicians, and scientists. Major collections were maintained in monasteries, libraries, and private collections across the empire. Some pagan temples were indeed dismantled, and a minority of magical texts were neglected, but there was no organised campaign to eradicate the ancient legacy, and many of these were actively commentated too.
Most catastrophic losses to Greek manuscripts were the result of external forces, not Byzantine policy. The Fourth Crusade (1204) saw Western Europeans sack Constantinople, looting libraries and dispersing countless manuscripts. After the Ottoman conquest, Western “manuscript hunters” stripped monastic libraries of priceless works—many of which now reside in Western collections without attribution. The Ottoman period also brought repeated waves of destruction to monasteries and archives, especially in times of conflict.
Not every text survived—no civilisation preserves everything. But the reason so much Greek literature exists at all is due to the stewardship of the Byzantines. Far from waging a war on ancient knowledge, they were its chief guardians. There is still a wealth of Byzantine and ancient material unpublished or unstudied in Greek libraries and monasteries today. Much of this is neglected because of persistent scholarly biases: many Western scholars avoid Byzantine sources, wrongly dismissing them as derivative, and underestimate the complexity of Byzantine Greek, which requires strong knowledge of Modern Greek for proper interpretation.
The notion of a Christian “war on books” is a modern fantasy. The scholarly consensus is clear: without Byzantine care and transmission, nearly all of classical Greek literature, pagan or otherwise, would have been lost.
Sources:
Paul Lemerle, Byzantine Humanism: The First Phase
Anthony Kaldellis, Hellenism in Byzantium
Judith Herrin, Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire
Mango, Cyril, editor. The Oxford History of Byzantium. Oxford University Press, 2002.
Mango, Cyril. Byzantium and Its Image: History and Culture of the Byzantine Empire and Its Heritage. Variorum, 1984.
Also see reference lists above.
16. But ancient wisdom was transmitted to the West through Arab translations. The Greeks lost it and Islamicate cultures salvaged it.
This is a classic misunderstanding, rooted in Western historiography’s selective memory.
Transmission lines:
After the 7th century, the Latin West effectively lost Greek as a learned language and ceased to engage with Greek literature and philosophy directly. In contrast, Byzantine Greeks never lost touch with their own literary, philosophical, and scientific heritage. Greek texts—classical, Hellenistic, and Christian—were preserved, copied, studied, and commented on continuously in Byzantium, in the original language, by a trained scholarly class.Role of the Arab world:
It is true that many Greek philosophical and scientific works—especially Aristotle and Galen—reached medieval Western Europe via Arabic translation, often accompanied by original Arab commentaries and significant advances in mathematics, medicine, and science. This was indispensable for the Latin West, which no longer had access to the originals.
However, the Greek-speaking world never relied on Arabic mediation; Greek scholars, from Alexandria to Constantinople and Trebizond, always read and transmitted the texts in their native tongue.Renaissance “rediscovery”:
The great surge of Greek knowledge in Renaissance Italy came not from the Arab world but directly from Byzantium. After the fall of Constantinople, Greek émigré scholars—Chrysoloras, Bessarion, Argyropoulos, and others—brought original Greek manuscripts and direct teaching to Florence, Venice, and Rome. The majority of Greek classics in Western libraries are in Byzantine minuscule hands, not ancient papyrus or Arabic script.Mutual recognition:
Leading Arab translators and scholars such as Hunayn ibn Ishaq openly acknowledged their debt to Greek teachers and the direct transmission of texts from the Byzantine sphere. The cross-fertilisation was real, but it was a two-way street, and Greek continuity remained unbroken at its source.In sum:
Western Europe rediscovered Greek philosophy largely because it had lost it. The Greeks themselves never did. The “rediscovery” was not the return of lost heritage, but the re-acknowledgement of an unbroken tradition—mediated in the West first by Arab scholarship, and later by direct Greek teaching and original manuscripts from Byzantium.
Kaldellis, Anthony. Byzantine Readings of Ancient Historians: Texts in Translation, with Introductions and Notes. Routledge, 2022. Also see reference lists above.
17. Why should anyone bother with Byzantine sources—aren’t they just “dark ages,” or irrelevant to the study of Greek tradition?
This dismissal is a basic methodological error that has crippled much of Western classical and anthropological scholarship for centuries.
Textual transmission:
Nearly all surviving ancient Greek literature, philosophy, and science, including Homer, Sophocles, Aristotle, Galen, and Plotinos, owes its existence to the copying, editing, and preservation efforts of Byzantine scribes and scholars. Without Byzantine transmission, the “classical” tradition as the West knows it would barely exist. This manuscript tradition is rich with information that is currently neglected, and this distorts historiography. To overlook it raises questions of integrity.
Continuity of law, liturgy, and daily life:
Orthodox liturgical practices, church law, healing rituals, and even local customs all derive directly from Byzantine precedents. To ignore Byzantine sources while relying on Western received wisdom is to amputate a millennium of the Greek historical record, during which the foundations of modern Hellenism were established, debated, and transformed.
Ethnographic and ritual value:
Byzantine sources do not merely preserve texts; they document the transformation, adaptation, and at times direct persistence of pre-Christian rituals, magical practices, and folk beliefs. They provide granular evidence for how older forms survived, shifted, or were re-signified in Christian contexts.
Other scholars who have engaged with it have already highlighted this, but their work remains siloed within disciplinary boundaries. See Kaldellis and Cameron’s urgent calls for correction on such points.
Critical perspective:
The idea of a “Byzantine dark age” is itself a 19th-century Western myth, rooted in anti-Orthodox prejudice and the marginalisation of Greek sources in the formation of modern humanities. In reality, the so-called “dark ages” of Byzantium were periods of extraordinary intellectual, artistic, and spiritual creativity, as even a cursory look at recent scholarship reveals.
Neglecting Byzantine sources is not neutral:
To bypass the Byzantine record is not an innocent oversight, but a methodological flaw that leads to recycled errors, Eurocentric projections, and the distortion of Greek cultural history. The Western “rediscovery” of Greek antiquity was itself mediated almost entirely by Byzantine teachers, manuscripts, and tradition.
In sum:
No serious study of Greek tradition, magic, or cultural continuity is possible without systematic engagement with the breadth of Byzantine sources. To ignore them is not only unrigorous—it is a tacit endorsement of the very erasures this FAQ seeks to correct.
Christianity, Paganism, and Survival
18. Didn’t Christianity wipe out paganism and magic in Greece?
Short answer:
No. Greek ritual and magical practices survived by transforming and adapting, even in the face of official repression. Suppression was real, but continuity was more complex robust than the standard story suggests.
In depth:
It is true that late antique laws banned sacrifices, closed temples, and at times violently persecuted philosophers, magicians, and “pagans.” But this is not the whole story, nor did it erase the roots of Greek tradition.
What actually happened?
Public temples and overt “pagan” religion were targeted, but private ritual, household practices, and local festivals persisted. Many elements were absorbed into Christian rites: blessings, healing rituals, exorcisms, use of amulets, and even elements of liturgy.
The form changed, the underlying function often did not. The ancient logic of ritual efficacy—using words, gestures, objects to affect the world—survived in blessings, folk healing, and even church practice.
This is visible in the continuous use of protective charms (from the Greek Magical Papyri to Byzantine amulets and modern xematiasma), the endurance of lamentation rituals, seasonal festivals, and magical prayers (attested in both manuscripts and oral tradition), and the blending of saints with older divine or heroic figures, in both church calendars and local cults.
Suppression was real, but so was survival. No honest historian denies persecution, but equally, no honest account can ignore the depth of adaptation and cultural negotiation that kept core practices alive. “Magic” and “paganism” never simply vanished—they evolved.
Please see the following in-depth write-ups for full evidence and references:
Start here: Defining Greek Magic past and present
Curse tablets and binding spells in continuous use (part 1 of many, translation ongoing)
19. But wasn’t Orthodoxy just as oppressive as Western Christianity? Isn’t it all about stamping out folk religion?
Short answer:
Orthodoxy was never as centralised or systematically repressive as its Western counterparts. Suppression existed, but local adaptation, negotiation, and layered tradition were the rule, not the exception.
In depth:
Byzantine and later Orthodox authorities did issue canons and sermons condemning “superstition,” magical practices, and some folk rites. But unlike the West, there was no Inquisition, no mass witch hunts, and no attempt to police every village or family.
The Orthodox Church, especially in rural Greece, was deeply embedded in community life. Priests were often the mediators of tradition, blending official liturgy with local custom, sometimes using ancient formulas repurposed for Christian ends. The lines between “church” and “folk” practice were porous; ritual life was layered, not monolithic.
Yes, there are records of occasional prosecutions or attempts at reform. Some of the stricter applications of these were in the mid-20th century. But these were exceptions, not the norm. Orthodoxy’s decentralised, liturgical, and sensory approach made it far more receptive to adaptation than the doctrinal, legalistic models of the West.
If you look at what people actually did—not just what bishops said—what you see is negotiation, not eradication. The evidence is in the material culture. This is why so many ancient threads can still be traced in Greek ritual today.
Evidence: See above list.
Also: Haralambos Passalis, Clerics and Ambiguity: Social Control and Religious Identity Formation in Greek Traditional Culture
20. So are Greek magical practices just watered-down versions of ancient ones? Are they “real” survivals or just echoes?
Short answer:
Many are direct descendants with documented manuscript trails; some details changed, but core functions and structures remain.
In depth:
In Greece, numerous rituals, healing charms, blessing formulas, and magical practices can be traced from ancient texts (inscriptions, papyri), through Byzantine manuscripts, into modern oral and family tradition.
Not every detail remains, and adaptation is constant, but the structure, purpose, and even many of the words persist.`
This is clearest in:
Incantations: Many Christian prayers retain phrases or patterns from the magical papyri or earlier hymnography.
Protective magic: The ritual of xematiasma (removing the evil eye), and incantations/amulets to protect infants use formulas directly paralleling ancient “apotropaic” practices, documented across centuries. Sometimes the wording is the same or derivative of that found in the PGM and similar sources.
Lament and blessing: Village funerary laments (moiroloi) and seasonal rituals show continuous lines of function and form from Homeric times onward.
It is not “just an echo.” Living tradition is not about frozen replicas, but about continuity of purpose and the ability to adapt. Greek magical and ritual practices are among the best-documented cases of cultural resilience—not as nationalist fantasy, but as historical fact.
This is called functional continuity—the same ritual or magical role, but updated for new times.
Examples and full bibliographic support for these claims are found in the following articles:
Curse tablets and binding spells in continuous use (part 1 of many, translation ongoing)
21. If so much survived, why do Western historians say it was all lost?
Short answer:
Western historiography has traditionally prioritised the Latin West and classical antiquity, marginalising Greek, Orthodox, and Byzantine evidence.
In depth:
For much of modern academic history, Western historians tended to ignore or dismiss the rich body of Greek, Orthodox, and Byzantine material, instead focusing on developments within the Latin West. Significant evidence of survival and transformation—particularly in ritual, liturgy, and folk practices—remained untranslated or unstudied outside of Greece until relatively recently.
This neglect was not accidental: classical antiquity was artificially privileged over later periods, and post-classical materials were frequently excluded or undervalued on the basis of prevailing scholarly biases rather than objective historical criteria.
Additionally, the persistent tendency to view “magic” as inherently un-Christian meant that evidence for the survival and adaptation of ritual and magical practices was often disregarded as mere superstition or ignorance, rather than recognised as evidence of complex cultural continuity. In reality, the manuscript and ethnographic record demonstrates robust survival and adaptation across many domains.
For further detail and bibliography, see Q. 12, 13, 14 and the articles linked above.
Orthodoxy – What Makes It Different?
22. How is Greek Orthodoxy different from Catholicism or Protestantism when it comes to magic, ritual, and the sacred?
Short answer:
Greek Orthodoxy is fundamentally local, embodied, and sensory in its approach to the sacred. It is markedly less centralised than its Western counterparts and historically integrates ritual, blessing, and local tradition in ways that do not mirror the systematic persecution found in the West.
In depth:
Orthodox Christianity in Greece is distinguished by its localism and the embodied, sensory quality of its ritual life. The sacred is not understood as distant or abstract; instead, it is experienced through matter—water, oil, incense, icons, touch, chant, and movement all play central roles. This reflects the theological emphasis on the Incarnation: the material world is sanctified and becomes a vehicle for divine presence, rather than a mere symbol.
Authority within Orthodoxy is also notably decentralised. While formal doctrine and liturgy are maintained, local priests, monastic communities, and families have historically retained considerable autonomy over ritual and custom. As a result, there is significant regional variation and ongoing negotiation between official and local practices.
In practice, the boundary between “magic” and “blessing” is often fluid. Protective prayers, healing rituals, blessings of land, livestock, or homes, and the use of amulets or holy objects are embedded within church life, rather than suppressed as heretical or criminal. These practices are not only tolerated but are often performed or endorsed by clergy themselves.
Unlike the Western Christian tradition which, at various times, instituted inquisitions and engaged in mass witch-hunts, Orthodoxy has never developed an equivalent system of centralised repression. While ecclesiastical authorities have occasionally condemned specific practices as “superstition” or “magic,” actual persecution was sporadic, localised, and rarely systematic after late antiquity. The general pattern has been one of negotiation, adaptation, and layered tradition, not eradication.
Further exploration of this topic and full bibliographical support can be found in the linked articles and references.
Practical Magic in the Byzantine Empire Part 1 (ongoing translation)
23. Isn’t Orthodoxy obsessed with icons and relics? Isn’t that just idolatry by another name?
Short answer:
Orthodox veneration of icons and relics is not idolatry, but a complex theology of material mediation—an ancient tradition that treats matter as a legitimate means of encountering the divine, not as an object of worship in itself.
In depth:
Orthodox Christianity places significant emphasis on the veneration of icons (sacred images) and relics (physical remains of saints), but the underlying theology sharply distinguishes this from idolatry. Icons are not worshipped as gods or magical objects. Instead, they function as windows or conduits to the sacred, intended to make present the persons or events depicted—not to replace or confound them.
The formal theology, codified in the Seventh Ecumenical Council (Nicaea II, 787), asserts that honour given to the image passes to the prototype. The icon is venerated (proskynesis), not worshipped (latreia), which is reserved for God alone. The same logic applies to relics, which are revered not for their material composition but because they are understood to participate in the sanctity of the saints whose lives embodied the presence of the divine.
This approach builds on the older Mediterranean understanding that matter can mediate spiritual power: ancient Greeks, Romans, Jews, and Christians alike treated certain objects—shrines, bones, amulets, vessels—as carriers or transmitters of divine energy. Orthodox practice continues this tradition, but within an explicitly Christological framework: the Incarnation means matter can be transfigured, not worshipped.
Accusations of “idolatry” reflect misunderstandings or the imposition of Protestant or secular categories onto Orthodox practice. The real distinction lies in intent, function, and theology. Veneration is not blind obsession, nor is it a relic of “paganism”—it is a conscious, theologically developed practice with ancient roots, subject to ongoing reflection and critique within the tradition itself.
For fuller treatment, bibliographic support, and extensive discussion, see the linked articles following this answer.
24. Did the Orthodox Church ever accept magic outright?
Short answer:
The boundary between “miracle” and “magic” in Orthodoxy is complex. While harmful sorcery was condemned, many official and popular rituals: blessings, exorcisms, use of holy water, relics, and set formulas, function identically to what anthropologists would call “magicoreligious” acts.
In depth:
Orthodox tradition does not admit to practising “magic” in the negative, illicit sense, but the distinction between miracle and magic has always been blurred at the level of popular piety and even official ritual. The Church explicitly condemned sorcery, divination, and any attempt to manipulate spiritual powers for selfish or destructive ends—these were seen as sinful, dangerous, or even demonic. The precise distinctions are found here.
However, the same Church developed and preserves a vast repertoire of healing, protective, and exorcistic rituals: blessing water, invoking saints, using specific prayers and gestures, distributing relics and holy oil, that are functionally indistinguishable from what anthropologists would call “magicoreligious” practice. Many of these use set formulas, symbolic actions, and ritual objects to achieve tangible effects in the world: healing the sick, driving away evil, ensuring prosperity, or protecting the household.
Sacramental acts in Orthodoxy are most accurately described as ἱερουργία (ierourgia). The term θεουργία (theourgia, “divine act”) is reserved in Byzantine and Orthodox tradition for the consecration and preparation of the holy chrism, or for mystical acts that open a conduit for God’s action (θεός ενεργεί) in the world through matter.
In Orthodox theology, it is emphasised that only through the priest’s intercession and the invocation of the Holy Spirit can matter become a channel for divine grace—this is not magic, but a synergia (co-operation) between human prayer and divine energy. This dynamic marks a distinctive Orthodox synthesis: ritual acts and consecrated matter are neither mere symbols nor mechanically magical, but real vehicles through which divine energy is made present.
Numerous saints, both in the Byzantine era and in later Greek tradition, were (and are) venerated as “wonder-workers” (θαυματουργοί)—performers of feats that, in another context, would be classified as magical. Their acts (healing, protection, exorcism, even control of the elements) are celebrated as divine intervention, but the methods sometimes mirror those used by non-Christian healers or magicians.
Orthodoxy never “accepted magic” as doctrine, but its lived tradition is saturated with practices that blur the line. The Church often integrated, absorbed, or reframed popular ritual as part of Christian life.
For fuller discussion and scholarly references, see the linked articles above.
25. Why is Orthodoxy so different from Protestantism and Catholicism, and why isn’t this better known in the West?
Short answer:
Orthodoxy is decentralised, historically continuous, and rooted in late antique and Byzantine traditions. Its distinctiveness is often overlooked in the West due to historical isolation, academic bias, language barriers, and a tendency to view Christianity through Protestant and Catholic frameworks.
In depth:
Eastern Orthodoxy diverges from Western Christianity in several fundamental ways. It is non-centralised: authority is distributed among national churches (autocephalous), each preserving unique local customs and liturgical variations. This structure has enabled regional practices and ancient forms to persist, rather than being standardised or replaced by central decree.
Orthodox theology, worship, and art remain closely linked to the Greek, Syriac, and Slavic worlds of late antiquity and Byzantium. There is a marked continuity in liturgical language, ritual, music, iconography, and the annual cycle of feasts. The core of Orthodox spirituality centres on lived experience—embodiment, mystery, and participation in the sacred—rather than on legalistic definitions or confessional boundaries.
Western Christianity, by contrast, developed around centralised authority (papal or confessional), doctrinal precision, and juridical control. This led to a focus on uniformity and rationalisation, especially after the Reformation.
The distinctiveness of Orthodoxy has been obscured in Western discourse for several reasons. After the fall of Byzantium, Orthodox regions were politically and culturally isolated from Western Europe. When engagement resumed, it often occurred through polemic, misunderstanding, or the lens of Western religious categories. Western scholarship, shaped by Catholic and Protestant norms, frequently misrepresented Orthodoxy as exotic, archaic, or peripheral—rather than as a living and internally coherent Christian tradition.
For fuller discussion and scholarly references, see the linked articles above.
26. Why do you claim there were hostilities between the Orthodox and Western worlds?
Short answer:
East-West hostility was driven by rival claims to Roman heritage, theological controversies, failed unions, and Western aggression (especially the Fourth Crusade).
In depth:
The history of hostilities between the Orthodox (Greek-speaking) East and the Western (Latin-speaking) world is deep-rooted and shapes everything from theology to cultural memory.
The Roman Inheritance: After the fall of Rome, both East (Byzantine/Orthodox) and West (Catholic) claimed to be the true heirs of the Roman Empire. The Byzantines saw themselves as the “Romans” (Ρωμαῖοι, Romioi), while the papacy and later the Holy Roman Empire claimed succession in the West.1
Religious Controversy and Schism: The two branches clashed over key theological issues:
– The filioque clause (the addition of “and the Son” to the Nicene Creed) and the claims of papal infallibility and supremacy were rejected by the Orthodox, who insisted on conciliarity and the independence of each church.
– This resistance to centralisation is one reason local traditions—including some with ancient roots—could persist longer in the East.Failed Union and Protestant Encounters: Attempts at church union—whether by Popes or later by Protestant reformers—met consistent resistance from the Orthodox, who viewed these as attempts at domination, not true dialogue.
The Fourth Crusade (1204): Western crusaders, instead of liberating the Holy Land, sacked Constantinople—devastating the Byzantine Empire, deepening mistrust, and setting back East-West relations for centuries. Orthodox Christians remembered this as a betrayal.
Renaissance and Modernity: When Greek scholars fled to the West after the fall of Constantinople, their expertise was welcomed but their living tradition was not; Greeks were seen as “useful relics” but also as backward or conquered. Western triumphalism wrote Orthodox Byzantium out of the story, presenting itself as the sole heir to “Greek wisdom.”
This long arc of rivalry, suspicion, and exclusion—rooted as much in politics as in theology—is why the differences persist, and why so many aspects of Orthodoxy remain misunderstood or marginalised in Western narratives.
27. But the Orthodoxy I’m encountering in America [or elsewhere] is militant, masculine, and not at all what you describe.
Short answer:
What you’re seeing is a modern, highly visible subset—traditional Orthodoxy is communal, local, humble, and inclusive, not militant.
In depth:
What you’re seeing is not the core of Orthodox tradition. In some circles, especially online and in recent American converts, a vocal group has reimagined Orthodoxy in hyper-masculine, militant, and culture-war terms.
This is a recent development, shaped more by modern anxieties and post-Protestant religious politics than by the actual history or ethos of Eastern Christianity. Some might call it appropriation.
Traditional Orthodoxy is rooted in the Greek and Anatolian East, where spiritual life has always centred on mystery, ritual, communal prayer, and the embodied experience of faith—far more concerned with healing, beauty, and lived tradition than with performance or confrontation. The Church is autocephalous and locally governed; there is no single Orthodox authority, and each national church has its own traditions, history, and relationship to wider culture. This decentralisation has always allowed for local diversity, adaptation, and resilience—including space for women to serve as deaconesses, abbesses, teachers, saints, and spiritual leaders.
Women have played significant roles throughout Orthodox history, often shaping religious life from within families, monasteries, and communities, and being canonised as saints and teachers. Orthodox spirituality has never relied on rigid gender or power structures, but on the living experience of faith. When contemporary voices present Orthodoxy as a weapon or a brand of masculinity, they misrepresent both its past and its present.
If your encounter with “Orthodoxy” feels narrow, exclusionary, or aggressively politicised, you are not seeing the heart of the tradition. Real Orthodoxy remains local, layered, hospitable, and deeply resistant to any one group claiming exclusive ownership or interpretation.
28. But aren’t you misrepresenting Orthodoxy by downplaying its ‘masculine’ or militant tradition?
Short answer:
Militancy contradicts Orthodox theology, which upholds freedom of will and humility; judgmental behaviour is explicitly proscribed in tradition.
In depth:
Orthodox theology is explicit: spiritual militancy of the kind promoted by some modern groups is fundamentally at odds with core Orthodox principles. One of the highest values in Orthodox Christianity is the sacrality of freedom of will —the belief that every person is free before God, and that no one may force, berate, or coerce another in matters of faith. This principle is enshrined in both patristic and pastoral teaching (see, for example, St. John Chrysostom, On the Priesthood, Book VI; and Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way).
Orthodox pastoral guidance is clear: priests and spiritual guides are strictly warned against passing judgement on others. The words of Christ, “Judge not, lest ye be judged” (Matthew 7:1), are treated as a foundational rule. To presume to condemn or berate another—especially over matters of spiritual struggle or difference—is itself a grave spiritual error, and can even be a form of spiritual pride (πνευματική ὑπερηφάνεια).
The tradition of the epitimion (penance) in confession emphasises healing and humility, never public shaming or aggression. The Orthodox ethos is one of humility (ταπείνωσις), mutual respect, and reticence to judge, rooted in centuries of theological reflection.
Orthodox Christianity recognises the language of spiritual struggle and the veneration of warrior saints, but the tradition is clear: true militancy is inward, not directed against others. To use Orthodoxy as a weapon for shaming, dominance, or aggression is a distortion of its teachings, not their fulfilment. The faith’s highest values are humility, freedom of conscience, and respect for the other—values repeatedly affirmed across its history.
29. Isn’t Orthodox teaching just about judgement and condemnation, like in Western Christianity?
Short answer:
No; Orthodoxy sees sin as spiritual sickness, repentance as transformation, and emphasises mercy, humility, and hope rather than damnation.
In depth:
No. In Orthodox theology, the understanding of sin, repentance, and the afterlife differs profoundly from common Western (especially Protestant or Catholic) interpretations.
Sin as sickness: In Orthodoxy, sin (ἁμαρτία) is not primarily a legal crime deserving punishment, but a spiritual illness or wound—something that distorts one’s relationship with God and others, but is always capable of healing.
Metanoia (μετάνοια): Repentance is not a once-for-all act of guilt or legal acquittal; it is ongoing transformation, “change of mind,” and return to health. No one is ever considered beyond hope—μετάνοια is always possible, right up to the last breath.
No one irredeemable: There are even saints and theologians who teach that even the demons are not ultimately cut off from the possibility of redemption. Mercy and “humanism” is at the heart of the tradition. Hope for universal restoration (αποκατάστασις), including the possibility that no creature is finally cut off—is a recurring theme in Orthodox theology and liturgy, found in the works of St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Isaac the Syrian, and many others. The Orthodox tradition does not presume to define the limits of divine mercy..
Hell as absence, not torture: The Orthodox view of “hell” is not a place of physical fire or eternal torment. Following the theology of Pseudo-Dionysios the Areopagite, canonised in the Orthodox Church but not the West, hell is the experience of absence from God—chosen separation, not imposed punishment. God is seen as “a fire that purifies or burns, dependng on one’s openness.”
Judgement and humility: The overwhelming emphasis is on humility, healing, and restoration—not on condemnation. The “final judgement” in Orthodox icons and liturgy is portrayed as a moment of truth, not legal sentencing.
In short, the Orthodox tradition sees every person as capable of healing and return, and refuses to claim certainty about anyone’s ultimate fate. Its theology is marked by mystery, hope, and the refusal to draw hard lines between the lost and the saved—a stance rooted in both ancient patristic teaching and the lived life of the Church.
Evidence:
Magic, Modern Practice, and Living Traditions
30. Are there still magical or pagan practices in Greece today?
Short answer:
Yes—many rituals, festivals, and folk practices persist, often woven into officially sanctioned liturgy, sometimes as family tradition. These include:
Seasonal festivals, healing rituals, and blessings are still part of rural life and even some church ceremonies.
Folk healers (ξεματιάστρες), ritual lamenters, and charm-makers are found in many regions. So are initiates in local collective traditions such as the Agialeni and Anastenaria rituals.
Many practices have Christian names now, but the structure and purpose remain much as they always were.
Contemporary pagan revivalist movements also exist, but are distinct from the living inherited traditions found in Greek communities today.
Further detail, evidence, and sources can be found in the linked articles in Q. 20.
31. Is it disrespectful for modern pagans or practitioners to explore these Greek traditions?
Short answer:
It depends: respect the context, living voices, don’t commodify, and don’t claim authenticity for practices divorced from their community.
In depth:
It depends on how you engage.
Respect means context: Greek ritual and tradition are living and deeply rooted. Exploring or being inspired by them privately is one thing, but claiming “authenticity,” divorcing practices from their context, or teaching/commodifying them while dismissing or erasing actual Greek voices is disrespectful and, frankly, colonial.
Who decides legitimacy?
Cultural self-determination is a principle recognised in modern anthropology and international law: living communities—not outsiders—have the right to define, protect, and transmit their own traditions. This is standard for Irish, Celtic, Māori, and countless other communities, and no one objects when they assert the same boundaries.
On “gatekeeping”:
The charge of “gatekeeping” is only ever levelled at Greeks (or other marginalised groups) defending their own tradition; when Irish or Māori communities (among many others) draw similar lines, it is understood as basic respect. Greeks are not claiming exclusivity, but the right to be heard and recognised as the primary agents of their living heritage.
“Universal heritage” is not a free pass:
Greek tradition is not “universal property” for the taking. Inspiration is one thing, but authenticity and authority are not up for grabs. If you wouldn’t say it to an indigenous or minority culture elsewhere, don’t say it to a Greek. If you wouldn’t commodify (take and sell) a sacred object from another culture, don’t do it with Greek sacred objects. When in doubt as to whether something is sacred or simply a tourist replica, ask a Greek.
On continuity:
Living tradition means Greeks are not simply “revivers,” but inheritors and agents of their own heritage. Change and adaptation are part of every living tradition; no one expects “purity” from Irish, Celtic, or Māori practices—nor should they from Greeks.
And for those who claim “the Greeks gave up/renounced their gods”:
The Greek relationship with the divine has always been one of transformation, negotiation, and renewal. Hesiod replaced the Titans with the Olympians; Athenians tore down old gods for new heroes and even deified generals—change is part of the tradition.
What is uniquely Greek is not “giving up” but adapting, reframing, and arguing with the gods themselves. To accuse Greeks of betrayal for surviving, adapting, or evolving is to misunderstand Greek culture at its core—and, frankly, it’s a worse erasure than colonialism.
Best practice: Immerse yourself in the culture, talk to Greeks, be humble, and always credit your sources and inspirations honestly.
If you share your own “Greek-inspired” practice, make it clear it’s a personal path, not a genuine or authoritative form of Greek tradition.
All are welcome, provided the engagement is rooted in humility and respect for a living people and their gods, however they have chosen to remember them. Anything else simply repeats the patterns of erasure Greeks have survived for centuries.
32. Are you just an Orthodox apologist?
No; my work is about evidence, historiography, and documentation. It is not about defending institutions, dogma, or presenting Orthodoxy through rose-tinted glass.
Evidence first: My aim is to document what the sources actually show: the complex, sometimes uncomfortable, centuries-long entanglement between Orthodox Christianity and older Greek traditions—including pagan, magical, and folk elements.
Critical, not apologetic: Orthodoxy is neither blameless nor the villain of anti-Christian polemic. The historical record shows episodes of repression and violence, but also extraordinary resilience, adaptation, and openness at the local level.
Context matters: The Orthodox tradition is not monolithic. It is layered, diverse, and marked by negotiation with its past, its neighbours, and its own people. Many practices condemned in theory were tolerated—or even quietly sanctified—in practice.
No party line: I have no institutional backing, and I do not speak for the Church. My work aims to make Greek tradition, in all its messiness, visible and intelligible—warts and all.
Calling any Greek who insists on evidence and context an “Orthodox apologist” is just another way of shutting down uncomfortable truths. This project is about intellectual honesty, not special pleading.
33. But are you really Orthodox?
My work stands on evidence, not on claims to personal authority or identity.
This is a question often asked to police authenticity or shift the focus from evidence to personal biography. My answers are grounded in sources, critical research, and lived familiarity with Greek tradition—not in claims to religious authority or purity.
Whether or not someone practises, or how they relate to faith privately, is not a litmus test for knowledge or integrity. Greek tradition has always included debate, doubt, and diversity of practice—no single confessional stance can represent the whole.
In short: My work stands on its own evidence and engagement. Personal religious status is neither required nor up for inspection.
34. So are you pagan/a practitioner?
My role here is not to promote any particular belief system, but to clarify what the evidence actually shows and to advocate for respect toward living Greek culture—past and present, pagan AND Orthodox, intellectual AND lived experience. My entanglement with these traditions is all of those, but when I’m doing research, I’m a scholar.
What matters for this work is a commitment to rigorous research, cultural understanding, and honesty about sources and context.
Read the research. Let the work speak for itself.
35. But the pagan elements you highlight are just a shadow of their former selves, wrapped up in a Christian cloak. That’s no longer authentic paganism.
Short answer:
Traditions adapt and survive through transformation; living ritual is about continuity of meaning and function, not frozen forms.
In depth:
The “not authentic” argument is a common romantic view, but it doesn’t match how traditions really survive. There was never a single, pure version of Greek paganism—even in antiquity, practices changed, adapted, and were shaped by the times. What endures in Greece today isn’t a faded copy, but a living current: rituals, symbols, and beliefs carried forward, sometimes changed, sometimes boldly present under new names.
“Authenticity” isn’t about freezing the past in marble and robes, it’s about what people actually do, remember, and pass on. The so-called “Christian cloak” is not a disguise, but part of a centuries-long conversation, with old and new layered together. What matters is the continuity of function and meaning, not whether a ritual looks the same as it did two thousand years ago.
If you’re looking for living tradition, you’ll find it not in perfect replicas of the past, but in the way people still mark the seasons, honour the dead, or call on the sacred, however those forms may shift.
36. What’s the harm in re-enacting or reviving ancient Greek rituals on my own? I’m not trying to claim Greek heritage—I just want to visit places like Delphi and connect with the past in my own way.
Short answer:
Personal inspiration is fine, but don’t mistake it for living tradition; claiming authenticity erases the voices of those who carry real memory.
In depth:
There’s nothing wrong with personal imagination or private ritual—many people are drawn to the energy and history of places like Delphi, and creativity is part of human experience. But it’s important to recognise the difference between private inspiration and living tradition.
When you re-enact or revive rituals outside their cultural context, it becomes personal ritual, not cultural continuity. That’s not “authentic” in the sense of living heritage—it’s a modern creative act, valid as a private practice, but not the same as participating in an unbroken tradition.
Problems arise when personal revival is claimed as “authentic,” “historical,” or representative of Greek tradition—especially if it ignores, disrespects, or erases the living voices and memories of those for whom these places and practices still matter. Respect means knowing the difference, giving credit where it’s due, and not presenting inspiration as inheritance.
If it’s for your own experience and you’re honest about what you’re doing, there’s no issue. But call it what it is: a personal journey, not a restoration of something lost.
37. Why should I care about what modern Greeks or their traditions have to say? I’m interested in the ancient gods, not the modern culture or its people.
Short answer:
You can be inspired by the past, but true engagement requires recognising those who have preserved and lived that tradition.
In depth:
You don’t have to seek permission or adopt anyone else’s beliefs. But to claim connection to Greek tradition, while deliberately ignoring or erasing the people who have lived on that land, spoken its language, and kept memory alive, is not authentic engagement—it’s self-serving fantasy.
Imagine telling Native Americans, Māori, or any living community that their voices are “irrelevant” to their own ancestral sites or sacred stories. Imagine telling the Irish people you’re only interested in the Celtic deities but consider them irrelevant, and correct their Gaelic pronunciation on the basis of an internet video.
Most people recognise that as disrespectful and part of a colonial pattern of erasure—a pattern widely condemned in both scholarship and heritage ethics.
The “ancient” gods, places, and practices you value have always existed in relationship with real people. To pretend otherwise is to turn living culture into a backdrop for personal entertainment. That’s not how tradition, or respect, works.
You’re always free to be inspired by the past. But authenticity—cultural, ethical, or spiritual—requires recognising those who still carry, remember, and care for it. Anything else repeats the very patterns of silencing and appropriation Greeks have survived for centuries.
37a. What is Hellenismos?
The term Ἑλληνισμός (Hellenismos), encapsulates the entire sphere of Greek cultural, intellectual, and civic life—including language, education (paideia), philosophy, customary law, and public virtue.
In the modern usage, it is an ethnonym refering to the above as well as Greek citizenship and cultural identity, to include the Greek Diaspora. Citizens of the Hellenic republic are called Hellenes; Greece/Greek are exonyms.
The widely cited translation of Julian’s letter to Arsacius—rendering Ἑλληνισμός as “Hellenic religion”—is a product of 20th-century Western translation practices, shaped by Protestant-influenced conceptions of religion as a discrete, confessional system separable from culture. This approach constitutes what translation theorists call “domestication,” whereby foreign concepts are forcibly assimilated to familiar categories, often distorting the original.
Julian’s own usage is explicit: Ἑλληνισμός appears only once in his corpus, in a context that distinguishes it from “the things of the gods” (τὰ τῶν θεῶν), which is where Julian actually addresses matters of cult, ritual, and theurgy. For Julian, Hellenismos signifies the broader Greek civilisational ethos—an orientation towards reason (logos), ancestral tradition, philosophical cultivation, and civic virtue. It is the sum of what it means to be Greek in the fullest classical sense, not merely participation in religious rites.
The persistent mistranslation of Ἑλληνισμός as “Hellenic religion” has had significant ramifications, and has been used by modern Pagan groups to claim precedent for defining Hellenism as a religion. This is an anachronism, projecting modern categories onto a term that, for Julian, denoted a comprehensive cultural and ethical identity, and for modern Greeks, denotes their cultural and national identity.
Julian’s statement cannot be invoked as evidence of an ancient Hellenic religion in the modern sense. A historically and linguistically correct term for modern Pagans wishing to reflect their adopted beliefs would be Hellenic or Hellenist Paganism. A Hellenist is someone non-Greek who voluntarily adopts Greek culture, religion, and customs.
38. Isn’t myth universal? Doesn’t it belong to everyone?
Short answer:
Universalism often hides a colonial history of extraction; myth is global, but traditions represent the people who carry, remember, and enact them.
In depth:
The idea that Greek myth is “universal property” is rooted in Renaissance appropriation and the history of colonial extraction.
During the Renaissance, Western elites systematically took Greek texts and stories out of their living cultural contexts, recasting them as “universal heritage” while sidelining, patronising, or erasing the voices and practices of actual Greeks; the people who, through language, ritual, place, and memory, maintained those traditions across centuries. (See Q. 25-26)
This pattern is not unique to Greece. A well-known parallel is the Irish experience, where myths and music were globalised even as native language and cultural life were suppressed or trivialised by outsiders.
It’s often pointed out that Greeks themselves drew on the cultures of the Near East, Egypt, and others. This is true—and it’s no secret. Ancient Greeks openly acknowledged their debts (see Herodotos, Plato, Diodoros): cultural exchange was based on direct encounter and explicit recognition, not erasure or uncredited appropriation. Mutual influence, not extraction, defined the process.
Current debates in decolonisation and heritage ethics recognise that so-called “universal” claims often disguise a long history of taking while refusing to engage with or respect those most deeply connected to those traditions. Being inspired by Greek myth is not the issue. The problem arises when “universalism” is used as an excuse to ignore, overwrite, or bypass the people for whom these stories are still part of living memory and identity.
A striking example is the Ku Klux Klan, whose name was derived from the Cyclades archipelago, “phonetically… transformed into the words ‘Ku-Klux’… a circle of friends” (“The Name Ku Klux defined,” The Kourier Magazine, February 1925: 7; cited in Gerontakis, AHEPA vs. the KKK: Greek‑Americans on the Path to Whiteness, 2012). The Klan drew a sharp distinction between “‘heroic’ ancient Greeks” and “dissolute” modern Greeks, justifying riots and pogroms against Greek immigrants in the U.S. and Canada during the early twentieth century. While they did not invent the notion of rupture between ancient and modern Greeks, they built their ideology on it—arguing that modern Greeks were inferior “invaders,” unworthy of their ancestral legacy, and thus that the cultural fragments of ancient Greece were there for the taking. Greek Americans, in many states, were classified as neither white nor black but occupied a precarious “middleman” position, with all the attendant challenges (Roediger, Working Toward Whiteness, 53).
Although the roots of universalism reach back to the Renaissance, this episode in American history further entrenched the delegitimisation of Greeks. Even after such policies faded, the narrative persisted—and continues to resurface whenever Greek voices are marginalised in discussions of their own heritage.
You cannot claim real connection to a heritage while refusing to acknowledge the realities and perspectives of those who have carried it forward, sometimes at great cost. Respect means more than gestures of universality. It requires facing history and refusing to repeat the old patterns of extraction and erasure.
Scholarly Rationale
39. Why publish on Substack rather than in academic journals?
Because direct access, transparency, and dialogue matter. Academic journals, while valuable for specialist discourse, are slow, exclusive, and largely unread by the very people whose heritage is under discussion: Greeks, the diaspora, practitioners, and the wider public. Substack allows immediate conversation, a living FAQ, and a global readership not filtered by institutional priorities or financial barriers.
My academic credentials and peer-reviewed publications are extensive. The choice to publish here is strategic and intentional—not a fallback for rejected work. The aim is to place scholarship where it belongs: within reach of those whose questions and experiences drive it.
40. Doesn’t bypassing peer review risk lowering standards?
Not if you maintain rigour, documentation, and openness to serious critique. Every claim made here is linked to primary and secondary sources; debate is encouraged at a scholarly level. Peer review, in its ideal form, is a tool for quality, but it is not a monopoly on truth—especially when prevailing frameworks exclude, gatekeep, or silence Greek perspectives. Here, every reader is invited to interrogate sources and arguments directly. That is a higher standard, not a lower one.
41. Why is this research marginalised in mainstream venues?
Because it disrupts established narratives and exposes the limits of academic habits of exclusion. Topics such as Greek ritual continuity, syncretic Orthodoxy, and the agency of living Greek voices are too often dismissed as “parochial,” “nationalist,” or “controversial”—precisely because they demand a rethinking of received ideas and inherited boundaries.
Part of the problem is structural. In most universities, Greek studies are artificially divided: classical antiquity is the domain of Classics departments, while anything Byzantine or modern is often relegated to separate or marginal units, if it is addressed at all. This fragmentation has fostered institutional blind spots, discouraging the study of long-term cultural continuity or of modern Greek perspectives on their own tradition.
The lack of institutional funding for independent and local scholars, the inertia of academic publishing, and the discomfort with evidence that destabilises Western myths all play a role. The default framing privileges Western mediation and silences the living context.
This FAQ is part of the correction.
42. But you’re writing revisionist history.
This accusation says more about discomfort with challenged narratives than about any real problem with the evidence. I am not writing ideologically motivated distortions of history. I am highlighting distortions of fact, providing the evidence that they are distorted, and the evidence with which to correct them.
The sources I use are drawn from modern, peer-reviewed scholarship and from primary materials—textual, ritual, and material—all fully accessible for critical scrutiny. What’s called “revisionist” here is often just the overdue inclusion of Greek voices, perspectives, and evidence that have long been marginalised, misread, or siloed in Western academia. There is nothing particularly radical in most of these claims; the sense of dissonance arises only because entrenched habits of thought, disciplinary boundaries, or myths of “universal heritage” are finally being challenged.
My approach is grounded in cultural history, social anthropology, and ethnography—disciplines whose very purpose is to analyse continuity, adaptation, and identity in their real, lived complexity. The real “agenda” is transparency, scholarly rigour, and demanding an equal seat at the table for Greek sources and Greek scholarship.
If insisting that long-ignored evidence and voices be given their due is “revisionist,” then that’s what honest scholarship requires. I have no interest in polemics for their own sake, nor do I engage with bad-faith or professional insecurity masquerading as scholarly debate.
43. What qualifies you to opine on this? Why are you taking the lead? What’s your agenda?
The short answer: expertise, lived experience, and a commitment to intellectual honesty.
Qualifications: I am a trained cultural historian and editor, fluent in Greek and English, with decades of immersion in Greek tradition, language, and scholarly research. My work draws on primary sources, fieldwork, and international scholarship—much of which is inaccessible or ignored by outsiders.
Why take the lead? Because, too often, Greeks are expected to sit quietly while others commercialise, distort, or “explain” their own heritage for them. The Thyrathen project exists precisely because Greek voices and materials have been systematically marginalised, siloed, or rewritten in mainstream academic and popular narratives. I happen to have the skills, the will, and the ability. I have lost many years to these dynamics, having been dissuaded of studying this material formally earlier in my academic career, repeteadly silenced, sometimes far worse. I am not going to do that any more.
My agenda: Transparency, accuracy, and a demand for an equal seat at the table. I am not here to romanticise, gatekeep, or play to nationalist fantasies. Nor do I claim sole ownership. But when Greek sources, context, or living knowledge are ignored or rewritten, someone has to correct the record. My methods are open, my claims are evidence-based, and I welcome informed critique from anyone who engages at the same level.
This is independent, self-funded research—unattached to institutional politics or special pleading. If it unsettles those who are used to defining “Greekness” from a distance, that is both inevitable and overdue. I stand by the evidence, and by the right of Greeks to speak for themselves.
44. So you’re taking an emic approach to scholarship, when only etic or agnostic research is truly acceptable.
Every scholar has a standpoint. The claim to total neutrality is neither honest nor achievable; it only serves to protect the status quo. The idea that only an outsider’s (“etic”) or agnostic position guarantees objectivity has been critiqued and largely set aside in serious humanities research.
My approach is both critical and self-aware. I draw on the access, language, and context that insider knowledge brings, but all claims are grounded in evidence, thoroughly documented, and open to challenge.
Rigour means putting every argument—mine included—up for scrutiny, critique, and revision. It does not mean barring those who actually live a tradition from the conversation. Real scholarship is strongest when emic and etic perspectives are tested against the same standards of evidence.
The systematic exclusion of Greek voices from their own tradition is not objectivity; it is an artefact of academic gatekeeping. This project restores balance by insisting that evidence; not pedigree, distance, or performed neutrality, determines what counts.
45. All this is just ethnonationalist ravings.
Short answer:
Labelling every demand for accuracy or recognition of lived tradition as “ethnonationalist” is a lazy attempt to silence those who challenge the status quo.
In depth:
Identifying distortion, erasure, or exclusion in scholarship is not “ethnonationalism”; it is a basic expectation of intellectual honesty. Actual ethnonationalism—claiming exclusive superiority, purity, or the right to erase others—is both contrary to Greek history and to the arguments made here.
This project does not advocate cultural isolation or romanticisation. It calls for evidence, accuracy, and the equal, respectful treatment of those with the knowledge, language, and lived tradition to participate in telling their own story. This is standard in all serious scholarship, whether Irish, Māori, or any living culture.
It is worth noting that treating Greeks as invisible or lesser was a specific tactic promoted by the Ku Klux Klan and related groups in the American context (see Q 38). Greeks were explicitly classified as a marginal, “alien” group—neither white nor black—and subject to violence, exclusion, and delegitimisation.
Accusing Greeks of “ethnonationalism” when they insist on equal treatment and recognition is, therefore, not a neutral act; it is a continuation of a rhetoric with roots in white supremacist ideology. Dismissing calls for accuracy and participation as “nationalist” reveals more about the critics’ biases than about the evidence or arguments being advanced. (Gerontakis, AHEPA vs. the KKK; Roediger, Working Toward Whiteness 53; "The Name Ku Klux Defined" 7).
46. Why does this all matter? Isn’t it just academic squabbling?
It matters because exclusion, erasure, and distortion have real-world consequences: for cultural heritage protection, education policy, museum representation, and even international relations.
Who narrates a tradition shapes who benefits from it, whose voice is heard, and whose experience is validated or erased. The right to participate in the interpretation of so-called “universal” heritage, to narrate one’s own history, and to have a seat at the scholarly table are not parochial issues. They are foundational questions of intellectual honesty, justice, and cultural survival.
47. I want to read more, but some articles are paywalled.
Paywalling sustains the research; the main arguments and facts are always available, and summaries are freely given on request.
I make as much of my work freely accessible as possible, and the main facts and arguments are always available in the public FAQ and essays. However, in-depth research, translations, and new discoveries take significant time and resources.
Reader support through subscriptions makes this work sustainable and allows me to continue producing new material. If you have a specific question about a paywalled piece, feel free to ask for a summary—I’m always happy to clarify key points.
48. Isn’t it gatekeeping to put research behind a paywall?
Paywalls enable independent scholarship and deeper public access over time; the most important findings are always public.
Independent research, writing, and translation require time and funding, especially without institutional backing. I ensure that the most important information is available publicly and always welcome requests for clarification. Subscriber support allows for more—and deeper—public work over time. Some of this work represents exclusive previews of contracted books-in-progress.
49. Your subscription fees are too high.
The subscription fee reflects decades of study, original research, and the fact that this work is my sole livelihood. There’s no institutional funding or safety net—everything you read here exists because of reader support.
That said, I keep core material freely available, and everyone is welcome to participate and suggest topics. If you value the depth and effort, your support makes it possible for this project to continue.
50. I have more questions—can I email/DM you?
You’re welcome to leave a comment or send a brief question by email (if it can be answered in a short paragraph, I’m happy to reply).
If you have a question you think belongs in the FAQ, feel free to suggest it—this resource is updated as new issues arise.
For deeper discussion, teaching, or guidance, I’m exploring small-group and 1:1 consulting options—if you’re interested, please click here and fill in this no-obligation form.
Please understand I cannot provide ongoing informal mentoring or extended advice outside these channels.
Closing Note
This FAQ is written for those who value evidence, rigour, and genuine debate, not for those who prefer inherited prejudice or convenient fictions.
Every claim here stands open to challenge on the basis of sources, reasoned argument, and honest engagement with the material. This is a living project, revised and expanded as new questions and evidence arise.
If your response to this material is to demand an apology from Greeks for defending their own tradition, you might ask yourself why such a basic principle feels like an affront. Few other people today are still expected to apologise for saying: ‘We’re still here. We know our own story. And we'd appreciate it if you respected what is sacred to us, please, if you don’t mind.’
If you wish to contest a position, please begin by engaging directly with the work and the evidence it presents. Intellectual debate requires meeting arguments where they are actually made, not where habit or projection might place them.
Thoughtful questions and good-faith critique are always welcome. If you have a well-founded challenge, or if you believe a topic or misconception is missing from this list, I invite you to suggest it.
However, unexamined reactions and refusal to engage the sources serve no one and will not be entertained here.
Serious discussion begins with serious reading. If you’re unwilling to do that, there is no meaningful conversation to be had.
Throughout late antiquity and the Byzantine period, terms denoting Greek identity were highly contested and evolved in response to political and religious pressures. Historians such as Cassius Dio (ca. 155–ca. 235) and Procopius (ca. 490–ca. 565) record that the Romans employed the term Graecus pejoratively, as a means to degrade the Hellenes (Papadopoulou 2007, p. 219). From the ninth century onward, Latin-speaking Western elites increasingly referred to the Byzantines as "Greeks" rather than "Romans," in an attempt to undermine Byzantine imperial claims to the Roman legacy. By the twelfth century, Graecus was largely associated with adherence to the Orthodox faith rather than with ethnicity alone.
During the reign of the Comneni (1081–1204), the designation "Hellene" regained prominence, signifying not only Greek origin but also a shared classical education and cultural heritage (Kaldellis 2007, pp. 283–300). Byzantine intellectuals of the era, such as John Tzetzes (ca. 1110–ca. 1180), openly identified themselves as "pure Hellenes" (Tzetzes 1972, Ep. 6, 10.5). Anonymous texts of the same century describe the common people as native Hellenes, underscoring a widespread sense of autochthony (Romano 1974, l.117–118).
This emphasis on Hellenic identity was also evident in official correspondence. John III Ducas Vatatzes (ca. 1193–1254), Emperor of Nicaea, wrote to the Pope that "among our Hellenic genos wisdom prevails" (Krikones 1988, l.178–186). His successor, Theodorus II Ducas Lascaris (1222–1258), declared that philosophy belonged to the Hellenes, claiming that they were the progenitors of all sciences, united by common language and blood (Festa 1898, CIX, l. 48–49). Vatatzes's rhetorical turn toward Hellenism was in part a response to Latin pressures (Kaldellis 2007, p. 371).
Theodorus Metochites (1270–1332), a prominent statesman and philosopher, petitioned Emperor Andronicus III Palaeologus to "save the Hellenes," further attesting to the persistence and transformation of Hellenic identity in this period (Metochites 1996, p. 38–40; Metochites 2007, pp. 128–420). Even popular chronicles, such as the Chronicon Morae (14th century), report that the so-called "Romans" of the Eastern Empire tenaciously preserved the name Hellenes for centuries, sometimes with a sense of pride or even arrogance (Schmitt 1904, l. 794–797).
The term Greek (Γραικός) and its derivatives became markers of confessional boundaries, especially in the context of Orthodox-Catholic conflict (Papadopoulou 2014, pp. 172–73). The traumatic events of 1204 delivered a major blow to Byzantine Romanitas, prompting the ruling elites to increasingly emphasize Hellenic ethnocultural identity as an alternative (Stouraitis 2017, pp. 85–86).
As Kaldellis observes, after 1204, "Hellenitas" was no longer exclusively associated with high culture, but was "moving down the social scale." Now, "Hellenes" were not just those who had mastered Attic rhetoric but simply those whose language was Greek (Kaldellis 2007, p. 368).
References
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Festa, Nicola, editor. Thaddaei Metropolitae Caesariensis Orationes et Epistulae. Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1898.
Kaldellis, Anthony. Hellenism in Byzantium: The Transformations of Greek Identity and the Reception of the Classical Tradition. Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Krikones, Theodoros. “Epistulae Joannis III Ducae Vatacis.” Vizantiiski vremennik, vol. 49, 1988, pp. 178–186.
Metochites, Theodoros. Theodoros Metochites: Epistolai. Edited by I. Polemis, Athens: Centre for Byzantine Studies, 1996.
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Steiris, Georgios. “History and Religion as Sources of Hellenic Identity in Late Byzantium and the Post-Byzantine Era.” Genealogy, vol. 4, no. 1, 2020, article 16, https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy4010016.
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Tzetzes, John. Epistolae. Edited by Pietro Leone, Florence: Olschki, 1972.