["[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-01 00:00]\n<User>Let me update you with some new information:\nThe classical period of Greek civilization covers a time spanning from the early 5th century BC to the death of Alexander the Great, in 323 BC (some authors prefer to split this period into 'Classical', from the end of the Persian wars to the end of the Peloponnesian War, and 'Fourth Century', up to the death of Alexander). It is so named because it set the standards by which Greek civilization would be judged in later eras. The Classical period is also described as the \"Golden Age\" of Greek civilization, and its art, philosophy, architecture and literature would be instrumental in the formation and development of Western culture.\n\nIn any case, Alexander's toppling of the Achaemenid Empire, after his victories at the battles of the Granicus, Issus and Gaugamela, and his advance as far as modern-day Pakistan and Tajikistan, provided an important outlet for Greek culture, via the creation of colonies and trade routes along the way. While the Alexandrian empire did not survive its creator's death intact, the cultural implications of the spread of Hellenism across much of the Middle East and Asia were to prove long lived as Greek became the lingua franca, a position it retained even in Roman times. Many Greeks settled in Hellenistic cities like Alexandria, Antioch and Seleucia. Two thousand years later, there are still communities in Pakistan and Afghanistan, like the Kalash, who claim to be descended from Greek settlers.\n\nThis age saw the Greeks move towards larger cities and a reduction in the importance of the city-state. These larger cities were parts of the still larger Kingdoms of the Diadochi. Greeks, however, remained aware of their past, chiefly through the study of the works of Homer and the classical authors. An important factor in maintaining Greek identity was contact with barbarian (non-Greek) peoples, which was deepened in the new cosmopolitan environment of the multi-ethnic Hellenistic kingdoms. This led to a strong desire among Greeks to organize the transmission of the Hellenic paideia to the next generation. Greek science, technology and mathematics are generally considered to have reached their peak during the Hellenistic period.\n\nIn the religious sphere, this was a period of profound change. The spiritual revolution that took place, saw a waning of the old Greek religion, whose decline beginning in the 3rd century BC continued with the introduction of new religious movements from the East. The cults of deities like Isis and Mithra were introduced into the Greek world. Greek-speaking communities of the Hellenized East were instrumental in the spread of early Christianity in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, and Christianity's early leaders and writers (notably St Paul) were generally Greek-speaking, though none were from Greece. However, Greece itself had a tendency to cling to paganism and was not one of the influential centers of early Christianity: in fact, some ancient Greek religious practices remained in vogue until the end of the 4th century, with some areas such as the southeastern Peloponnese remaining pagan until well into the 10th century AD.\n\nOf the new eastern religions introduced into the Greek world, the most successful was Christianity. From the early centuries of the Common Era, the Greeks identified as Romaioi (\"Romans\"), by that time the name \u2018Hellenes\u2019 denoted pagans. While ethnic distinctions still existed in the Roman Empire, they became secondary to religious considerations and the renewed empire used Christianity as a tool to support its cohesion and promoted a robust Roman national identity. Concurrently the secular, urban civilization of late antiquity survived in the Eastern Mediterranean along with Greco-Roman educational system, although it was from Christianity that the culture's essential values were drawn.\n\nThe Eastern Roman Empire \u2013 today conventionally named the Byzantine Empire, a name not in use during its own time \u2013 became increasingly influenced by Greek culture after the 7th century, when Emperor Heraclius (AD 575 - 641) decided to make Greek the empire's official language. Certainly from then on, but likely earlier, the Roman and Greek cultures were virtually fused into a single Greco-Roman world. Although the Latin West recognized the Eastern Empire's claim to the Roman legacy for several centuries, after Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne, king of the Franks, as the \"Roman Emperor\" on 25 December 800, an act which eventually led to the formation of the Holy Roman Empire, the Latin West started to favour the Franks and began to refer to the Eastern Roman Empire largely as the Empire of the Greeks (Imperium Graecorum).\n<Assistant>Wonderful. I'll remember these key points.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-02 00:00]\n<User>I want to share some knowledge I just acquired:\nA distinct Greek political identity re-emerged in the 11th century in educated circles and became more forceful after the fall of Constantinople to the Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, so that when the empire was revived in 1261, it became in many ways a Greek national state. That new notion of nationhood engendered a deep interest in the classical past culminating in the ideas of the Neoplatonist philosopher Gemistus Pletho, who abandoned Christianity. However, it was the combination of Orthodox Christianity with a specifically Greek identity that shaped the Greeks' notion of themselves in the empire's twilight years. The interest in the Classical Greek heritage was complemented by a renewed emphasis on Greek Orthodox identity, which was reinforced in the late Medieval and Ottoman Greeks' links with their fellow Orthodox Christians in the Russian Empire. These were further strengthened following the fall of the Empire of Trebizond in 1461, after which and until the second Russo-Turkish War of 1828-29 hundreds of thousands of Pontic Greeks fled or migrated from the Pontic Alps and Armenian Highlands to southern Russia and the Russian South Caucasus (see also Greeks in Russia, Greeks in Armenia, Greeks in Georgia, and Caucasian Greeks).\n\nFollowing the Fall of Constantinople on 29 May 1453, many Greeks sought better employment and education opportunities by leaving for the West, particularly Italy, Central Europe, Germany and Russia. Greeks are greatly credited for the European cultural revolution, later called, the Renaissance. In Greek-inhabited territory itself, Greeks came to play a leading role in the Ottoman Empire, due in part to the fact that the central hub of the empire, politically, culturally, and socially, was based on Western Thrace and Greek Macedonia, both in Northern Greece, and of course was centred on the mainly Greek-populated, former Byzantine capital, Constantinople. As a direct consequence of this situation, Greek-speakers came to play a hugely important role in the Ottoman trading and diplomatic establishment, as well as in the church. Added to this, in the first half of the Ottoman period men of Greek origin made up a significant proportion of the Ottoman army, navy, and state bureaucracy, having been levied as adolescents (along with especially Albanians and Serbs) into Ottoman service through the devshirme. Many Ottomans of Greek (or Albanian or Serb) origin were therefore to be found within the Ottoman forces which governed the provinces, from Ottoman Egypt, to Ottomans occupied Yemen and Algeria, frequently as provincial governors.\n<Assistant>Understood. I'll keep these facts for future reference.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-03 00:00]\n<User>The following are some new knowledge:\nFor those that remained under the Ottoman Empire's millet system, religion was the defining characteristic of national groups (milletler), so the exonym \"Greeks\" (Rumlar from the name Rhomaioi) was applied by the Ottomans to all members of the Orthodox Church, regardless of their language or ethnic origin. The Greek speakers were the only ethnic group to actually call themselves Romioi, (as opposed to being so named by others) and, at least those educated, considered their ethnicity (genos) to be Hellenic. There were, however, many Greeks who escaped the second-class status of Christians inherent in the Ottoman millet system, according to which Muslims were explicitly awarded senior status and preferential treatment. These Greeks either emigrated, particularly to their fellow Greek Orthodox protector, the Russian Empire, or simply converted to Islam, often only very superficially and whilst remaining crypto-Christian. The most notable examples of large-scale conversion to Turkish Islam among those today defined as Greek Muslims - excluding those who had to convert as a matter of course on being recruited through the devshirme - were to be found in Crete (Cretan Turks), Greek Macedonia (for example among the Vallahades of western Macedonia), and among Pontic Greeks in the Pontic Alps and Armenian Highlands. Several Ottoman sultans and princes were also of part Greek origin, with mothers who were either Greek concubines or princesses from Byzantine noble families, one famous example being sultan Selim the Grim, whose mother G\u00fclbahar Hatun was a Pontic Greek.\n\nThe roots of Greek success in the Ottoman Empire can be traced to the Greek tradition of education and commerce. It was the wealth of the extensive merchant class that provided the material basis for the intellectual revival that was the prominent feature of Greek life in the half century and more leading to the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence in 1821. Not coincidentally, on the eve of 1821, the three most important centres of Greek learning were situated in Chios, Smyrna and Aivali, all three major centres of Greek commerce. Greek success was also favoured by Greek domination of the Christian Orthodox church.\n\nThe relationship between ethnic Greek identity and Greek Orthodox religion continued after the creation of the Modern Greek state in 1830. According to the second article of the first Greek constitution of 1822, a Greek was defined as any Christian resident of the Kingdom of Greece, a clause removed by 1840. A century later, when the Treaty of Lausanne was signed between Greece and Turkey in 1923, the two countries agreed to use religion as the determinant for ethnic identity for the purposes of population exchange, although most of the Greeks displaced (over a million of the total 1.5 million) had already been driven out by the time the agreement was signed.[note 1] The Greek genocide, in particular the harsh removal of Pontian Greeks from the southern shore area of the Black Sea, contemporaneous with and following the failed Greek Asia Minor Campaign, was part of this process of Turkification of the Ottoman Empire and the placement of its economy and trade, then largely in Greek hands under ethnic Turkish control.\n\nThe terms used to define Greekness have varied throughout history but were never limited or completely identified with membership to a Greek state. By Western standards, the term Greeks has traditionally referred to any native speakers of the Greek language, whether Mycenaean, Byzantine or modern Greek. Byzantine Greeks called themselves Romioi and considered themselves the political heirs of Rome, but at least by the 12th century a growing number of those educated, deemed themselves the heirs of ancient Greece as well, although for most of the Greek speakers, \"Hellene\" still meant pagan. On the eve of the Fall of Constantinople the Last Emperor urged his soldiers to remember that they were the descendants of Greeks and Romans.\n\nBefore the establishment of the Modern Greek state, the link between ancient and modern Greeks was emphasized by the scholars of Greek Enlightenment especially by Rigas Feraios. In his \"Political Constitution\", he addresses to the nation as \"the people descendant of the Greeks\". The modern Greek state was created in 1829, when the Greeks liberated a part of their historic homelands, Peloponnese, from the Ottoman Empire. The large Greek diaspora and merchant class were instrumental in transmitting the ideas of western romantic nationalism and philhellenism, which together with the conception of Hellenism, formulated during the last centuries of the Byzantine Empire, formed the basis of the Diafotismos and the current conception of Hellenism.\n<Assistant>I've successfully recorded all of this data.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-04 00:00]\n<User>The following are some more news I learnt:\nHomer refers to the \"Hellenes\" (/\u02c8h\u025bli\u02d0nz/) as a relatively small tribe settled in Thessalic Phthia, with its warriors under the command of Achilleus. The Parian Chronicle says that Phthia was the homeland of the Hellenes and that this name was given to those previously called Greeks (\u0393\u03c1\u03b1\u03b9\u03ba\u03bf\u03af). In Greek mythology, Hellen, the patriarch of Hellenes, was son of Pyrrha and Deucalion, who ruled around Phthia, the only survivors after the great deluge. It seems that the myth was invented when the Greek tribes started to separate from each other in certain areas of Greece and it indicates their common origin. Aristotle names ancient Hellas as an area in Epirus between Dodona and the Achelous river, the location of the great deluge of Deucalion, a land occupied by the Selloi and the \"Greeks\" who later came to be known as \"Hellenes\". Selloi were the priests of Dodonian Zeus and the word probably means \"sacrificers\" (compare Gothic saljan, \"present, sacrifice\"). There is currently no satisfactory etymology of the name Hellenes. Some scholars assert that the name Selloi changed to Sellanes and then to Hellanes-Hellenes. However this etymology connects the name Hellenes with the Dorians who occupied Epirus and the relation with the name Greeks given by the Romans becomes uncertain. The name Hellenes seems to be older and it was probably used by the Greeks with the establishment of the Great Amphictyonic League. This was an ancient association of Greek tribes with twelve founders which was organized to protect the great temples of Apollo in Delphi (Phocis) and of Demeter near Thermopylae (Locris). According to the legend it was founded after the Trojan War by the eponymous Amphictyon, brother of Hellen.\n\nIn the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, Graecus is presented as the son of Zeus and Pandora II, sister of Hellen the patriarch of Hellenes. Hellen was the son of Deucalion who ruled around Phthia in central Greece. The Parian Chronicle mentions that when Deucalion became king of Phthia, the previously called Graikoi were named Hellenes. Aristotle notes that the Hellenes were related with Grai/Greeks (Meteorologica I.xiv) a native name of a Dorian tribe in Epirus which was used by the Illyrians. He also claims that the great deluge must have occurred in the region around Dodona, where the Selloi dwelt. However, according to the Greek tradition it is more possible that the homeland of the Greeks was originally in central Greece. A modern theory derives the name Greek (Latin Graeci) from Graikos, \"inhabitant of Graia/Graea,\" a town on the coast of Boeotia. Greek colonists from Graia helped to found Cumae (900 BC) in Italy, where they were called Graeces. When the Romans encountered them they used this name for the colonists and then for all Greeks (Graeci.) The word \u03b3\u03c1\u03b1\u1fd6\u03b1 graia \"old woman\" comes from the PIE root *\u01f5erh2-/*\u01f5reh2-, \"to grow old\" via Proto-Greek *gera-/grau-iu; the same root later gave \u03b3\u03ad\u03c1\u03b1\u03c2 geras (/keras/), \"gift of honour\" in Mycenean Greek. The Germanic languages borrowed the word Greeks with an initial \"k\" sound which probably was their initial sound closest to the Latin \"g\" at the time (Goth. Kreks). The area out of ancient Attica including Boeotia was called Gra\u00efke and is connected with the older deluge of Ogyges, the mythological ruler of Boeotia. The region was originally occupied by the Minyans who were autochthonous or Proto-Greek speaking people. In ancient Greek the name Ogygios came to mean \"from earliest days\".\n<Assistant>Understood. I'll keep these facts for future reference.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-05 00:00]\n<User>I'd like to share some important information:\nHomer uses the terms Achaeans and Danaans (\u0394\u03b1\u03bd\u03b1\u03bf\u03af) as a generic term for Greeks in Iliad, and they were probably a part of the Mycenean civilization. The names Achaioi and Danaoi seem to be pre-Dorian belonging to the people who were overthrown. They were forced to the region that later bore the name Achaea after the Dorian invasion. In the 5th century BC, they were redefined as contemporary speakers of Aeolic Greek which was spoken mainly in Thessaly, Boeotia and Lesbos. There are many controversial theories on the origin of the Achaeans. According to one view, the Achaeans were one of the fair-headed tribes of upper Europe, who pressed down over the Alps during the early Iron age (1300 BC) to southern Europe. Another theory suggests that the Peloponnesian Dorians were the Achaeans. These theories are rejected by other scholars who, based on linguistic criteria, suggest that the Achaeans were mainland pre-Dorian Greeks. There is also the theory that there was an Achaean ethnos that migrated from Asia minor to lower Thessaly prior to 2000 BC. Some Hittite texts mention a nation lying to the west called Ahhiyava or Ahhiya. Egyptian documents refer to Ekwesh, one of the groups of sea peoples who attached Egypt during the reign of Merneptah (1213-1203 BCE), who may have been Achaeans.\n\nIn Homer's Iliad, the names Danaans (or Danaoi: \u0394\u03b1\u03bd\u03b1\u03bf\u03af) and Argives (Argives: \u0391\u03c1\u03b3\u03b5\u03af\u03bf\u03b9) are used to designate the Greek forces opposed to the Trojans. The myth of Danaus, whose origin is Egypt, is a foundation legend of Argos. His daughters Danaides, were forced in Tartarus to carry a jug to fill a bathtub without a bottom. This myth is connected with a task that can never be fulfilled (Sisyphos) and the name can be derived from the PIE root *danu: \"river\". There is not any satisfactory theory on their origin. Some scholars connect Danaans with the Denyen, one of the groups of the sea peoples who attacked Egypt during the reign of Ramesses III (1187-1156 BCE). The same inscription mentions the Weshesh who might have been the Achaeans. The Denyen seem to have been inhabitants of the city Adana in Cilicia. Pottery similar to that of Mycenae itself has been found in Tarsus of Cilicia and it seems that some refugees from the Aegean went there after the collapse of the Mycenean civilization. These Cilicians seem to have been called Dananiyim, the same word as Danaoi who attacked Egypt in 1191 BC along with the Quaouash (or Weshesh) who may be Achaeans. They were also called Danuna according to a Hittite inscription and the same name is mentioned in the Amarna letters. Julius Pokorny reconstructs the name from the PIE root da:-: \"flow, river\", da:-nu: \"any moving liquid, drops\", da: navo \"people living by the river, Skyth. nomadic people (in Rigveda water-demons, fem.Da:nu primordial goddess), in Greek Danaoi, Egypt. Danuna\". It is also possible that the name Danaans is pre-Greek. A country Danaja with a city Mukana (propaply: Mycenea) is mentioned in inscriptions from Egypt from Amenophis III (1390-1352 BC), Thutmosis III (1437 BC).\n\nThe most obvious link between modern and ancient Greeks is their language, which has a documented tradition from at least the 14th century BC to the present day, albeit with a break during the Greek Dark Ages (lasting from the 11th to the 8th century BC). Scholars compare its continuity of tradition to Chinese alone. Since its inception, Hellenism was primarily a matter of common culture and the national continuity of the Greek world is a lot more certain than its demographic. Yet, Hellenism also embodied an ancestral dimension through aspects of Athenian literature that developed and influenced ideas of descent based on autochthony. During the later years of the Eastern Roman Empire, areas such as Ionia and Constantinople experienced a Hellenic revival in language, philosophy, and literature and on classical models of thought and scholarship. This revival provided a powerful impetus to the sense of cultural affinity with ancient Greece and its classical heritage. The cultural changes undergone by the Greeks are, despite a surviving common sense of ethnicity, undeniable. At the same time, the Greeks have retained their language and alphabet, certain values and cultural traditions, customs, a sense of religious and cultural difference and exclusion, (the word barbarian was used by 12th-century historian Anna Komnene to describe non-Greek speakers), a sense of Greek identity and common sense of ethnicity despite the global political and social changes of the past two millennia.\n\nToday, Greeks are the majority ethnic group in the Hellenic Republic, where they constitute 93% of the country's population, and the Republic of Cyprus where they make up 78% of the island's population (excluding Turkish settlers in the occupied part of the country). Greek populations have not traditionally exhibited high rates of growth; nonetheless, the population of Greece has shown regular increase since the country's first census in 1828. A large percentage of the population growth since the state's foundation has resulted from annexation of new territories and the influx of 1.5 million Greek refugees after the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey. About 80% of the population of Greece is urban, with 28% concentrated in the city of Athens\n\nGreeks from Cyprus have a similar history of emigration, usually to the English-speaking world because of the island's colonization by the British Empire. Waves of emigration followed the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, while the population decreased between mid-1974 and 1977 as a result of emigration, war losses, and a temporary decline in fertility. After the ethnic cleansing of a third of the Greek population of the island in 1974, there was also an increase in the number of Greek Cypriots leaving, especially for the Middle East, which contributed to a decrease in population that tapered off in the 1990s. Today more than two-thirds of the Greek population in Cyprus is urban.\n\nThere is a sizeable Greek minority of about 105,000 (disputed, sources claim higher) people, in Albania. The Greek minority of Turkey, which numbered upwards of 200,000 people after the 1923 exchange, has now dwindled to a few thousand, after the 1955 Constantinople Pogrom and other state sponsored violence and discrimination. This effectively ended, though not entirely, the three-thousand-year-old presence of Hellenism in Asia Minor. There are smaller Greek minorities in the rest of the Balkan countries, the Levant and the Black Sea states, remnants of the Old Greek Diaspora (pre-19th century).\n<Assistant>Appreciated. I'll retain these important details.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-06 00:00]\n<User>I want to share some knowledge I just acquired:\nThe total number of Greeks living outside Greece and Cyprus today is a contentious issue. Where Census figures are available, they show around 3 million Greeks outside Greece and Cyprus. Estimates provided by the SAE - World Council of Hellenes Abroad put the figure at around 7 million worldwide. According to George Prevelakis of Sorbonne University, the number is closer to just below 5 million. Integration, intermarriage, and loss of the Greek language influence the self-identification of the Omogeneia. Important centres of the New Greek Diaspora today are London, New York, Melbourne and Toronto. In 2010, the Hellenic Parliament introduced a law that enables Diaspora Greeks in Greece to vote in the elections of the Greek state. This law was later repealed in early 2014.\n\nIn ancient times, the trading and colonizing activities of the Greek tribes and city states spread the Greek culture, religion and language around the Mediterranean and Black Sea basins, especially in Sicily and southern Italy (also known as Magna Grecia), Spain, the south of France and the Black sea coasts. Under Alexander the Great's empire and successor states, Greek and Hellenizing ruling classes were established in the Middle East, India and in Egypt. The Hellenistic period is characterized by a new wave of Greek colonization that established Greek cities and kingdoms in Asia and Africa. Under the Roman Empire, easier movement of people spread Greeks across the Empire and in the eastern territories, Greek became the lingua franca rather than Latin. The modern-day Griko community of southern Italy, numbering about 60,000, may represent a living remnant of the ancient Greek populations of Italy.\n\nDuring and after the Greek War of Independence, Greeks of the diaspora were important in establishing the fledgling state, raising funds and awareness abroad. Greek merchant families already had contacts in other countries and during the disturbances many set up home around the Mediterranean (notably Marseilles in France, Livorno in Italy, Alexandria in Egypt), Russia (Odessa and Saint Petersburg), and Britain (London and Liverpool) from where they traded, typically in textiles and grain. Businesses frequently comprised the extended family, and with them they brought schools teaching Greek and the Greek Orthodox Church.\n\nGreek culture has evolved over thousands of years, with its beginning in the Mycenaean civilization, continuing through the Classical period, the Roman and Eastern Roman periods and was profoundly affected by Christianity, which it in turn influenced and shaped. Ottoman Greeks had to endure through several centuries of adversity that culminated in genocide in the 20th century but nevertheless included cultural exchanges and enriched both cultures. The Diafotismos is credited with revitalizing Greek culture and giving birth to the synthesis of ancient and medieval elements that characterize it today.\n<Assistant>I've processed this information and will remember it.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-07 00:00]\n<User>Let me share some additional facts I found:\nGreek demonstrates several linguistic features that are shared with other Balkan languages, such as Albanian, Bulgarian and Eastern Romance languages (see Balkan sprachbund), and has absorbed many foreign words, primarily of Western European and Turkish origin. Because of the movements of Philhellenism and the Diafotismos in the 19th century, which emphasized the modern Greeks' ancient heritage, these foreign influences were excluded from official use via the creation of Katharevousa, a somewhat artificial form of Greek purged of all foreign influence and words, as the official language of the Greek state. In 1976, however, the Hellenic Parliament voted to make the spoken Dimotiki the official language, making Katharevousa obsolete.\n<Assistant>I've captured all of this valuable information.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-08 00:00]\n<User>Let me tell you about some new developments:\nModern Greek has, in addition to Standard Modern Greek or Dimotiki, a wide variety of dialects of varying levels of mutual intelligibility, including Cypriot, Pontic, Cappadocian, Griko and Tsakonian (the only surviving representative of ancient Doric Greek). Yevanic is the language of the Romaniotes, and survives in small communities in Greece, New York and Israel. In addition to Greek, many Greeks in Greece and the Diaspora are bilingual in other languages or dialects such as English, Arvanitika/Albanian, Aromanian, Macedonian Slavic, Russian and Turkish.\n\nMost Greeks are Christians, belonging to the Greek Orthodox Church. During the first centuries after Jesus Christ, the New Testament was originally written in Koine Greek, which remains the liturgical language of the Greek Orthodox Church, and most of the early Christians and Church Fathers were Greek-speaking. There are small groups of ethnic Greeks adhering to other Christian denominations like Greek Catholics, Greek Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and groups adhering to other religions including Romaniot and Sephardic Jews and Greek Muslims. About 2,000 Greeks are members of Hellenic Polytheistic Reconstructionism congregations.\n\nGreek art has a long and varied history. Greeks have contributed to the visual, literary and performing arts. In the West, ancient Greek art was influential in shaping the Roman and later the modern western artistic heritage. Following the Renaissance in Europe, the humanist aesthetic and the high technical standards of Greek art inspired generations of European artists. Well into the 19th century, the classical tradition derived from Greece played an important role in the art of the western world. In the East, Alexander the Great's conquests initiated several centuries of exchange between Greek, Central Asian and Indian cultures, resulting in Greco-Buddhist art, whose influence reached as far as Japan.\n\nNotable modern Greek artists include Renaissance painter Dominikos Theotokopoulos (El Greco), Panagiotis Doxaras, Nikolaos Gyzis, Nikiphoros Lytras, Yannis Tsarouchis, Nikos Engonopoulos, Constantine Andreou, Jannis Kounellis, sculptors such as Leonidas Drosis, Georgios Bonanos, Yannoulis Chalepas and Joannis Avramidis, conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos, soprano Maria Callas, composers such as Mikis Theodorakis, Nikos Skalkottas, Iannis Xenakis, Manos Hatzidakis, Eleni Karaindrou, Yanni and Vangelis, one of the best-selling singers worldwide Nana Mouskouri and poets such as Kostis Palamas, Dionysios Solomos, Angelos Sikelianos and Yannis Ritsos. Alexandrian Constantine P. Cavafy and Nobel laureates Giorgos Seferis and Odysseas Elytis are among the most important poets of the 20th century. Novel is also represented by Alexandros Papadiamantis and Nikos Kazantzakis.\n\nThe Greeks of the Classical era made several notable contributions to science and helped lay the foundations of several western scientific traditions, like philosophy, historiography and mathematics. The scholarly tradition of the Greek academies was maintained during Roman times with several academic institutions in Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria and other centres of Greek learning while Eastern Roman science was essentially a continuation of classical science. Greeks have a long tradition of valuing and investing in paideia (education). Paideia was one of the highest societal values in the Greek and Hellenistic world while the first European institution described as a university was founded in 5th century Constantinople and operated in various incarnations until the city's fall to the Ottomans in 1453. The University of Constantinople was Christian Europe's first secular institution of higher learning since no theological subjects were taught, and considering the original meaning of the world university as a corporation of students, the world\u2019s first university as well.\n\nAs of 2007, Greece had the eighth highest percentage of tertiary enrollment in the world (with the percentages for female students being higher than for male) while Greeks of the Diaspora are equally active in the field of education. Hundreds of thousands of Greek students attend western universities every year while the faculty lists of leading Western universities contain a striking number of Greek names. Notable modern Greek scientists of modern times include Dimitrios Galanos, Georgios Papanikolaou (inventor of the Pap test), Nicholas Negroponte, Constantin Carath\u00e9odory, Manolis Andronikos, Michael Dertouzos, John Argyris, Panagiotis Kondylis, John Iliopoulos (2007 Dirac Prize for his contributions on the physics of the charm quark, a major contribution to the birth of the Standard Model, the modern theory of Elementary Particles), Joseph Sifakis (2007 Turing Award, the \"Nobel Prize\" of Computer Science), Christos Papadimitriou (2002 Knuth Prize, 2012 G\u00f6del Prize), Mihalis Yannakakis (2005 Knuth Prize) and Dimitri Nanopoulos.\n\nThe most widely used symbol is the flag of Greece, which features nine equal horizontal stripes of blue alternating with white representing the nine syllables of the Greek national motto Eleftheria i thanatos (freedom or death), which was the motto of the Greek War of Independence. The blue square in the upper hoist-side corner bears a white cross, which represents Greek Orthodoxy. The Greek flag is widely used by the Greek Cypriots, although Cyprus has officially adopted a neutral flag to ease ethnic tensions with the Turkish Cypriot minority \u2013 see flag of Cyprus).\n\nGreek surnames were widely in use by the 9th century supplanting the ancient tradition of using the father\u2019s name, however Greek surnames are most commonly patronymics. Commonly, Greek male surnames end in -s, which is the common ending for Greek masculine proper nouns in the nominative case. Exceptionally, some end in -ou, indicating the genitive case of this proper noun for patronymic reasons. Although surnames in mainland Greece are static today, dynamic and changing patronymic usage survives in middle names where the genitive of father's first name is commonly the middle name (this usage having been passed on to the Russians). In Cyprus, by contrast, surnames follow the ancient tradition of being given according to the father\u2019s name. Finally, in addition to Greek-derived surnames many have Latin, Turkish and Italian origin.\n\nThe traditional Greek homelands have been the Greek peninsula and the Aegean Sea, the Southern Italy (Magna Graecia), the Black Sea, the Ionian coasts of Asia Minor and the islands of Cyprus and Sicily. In Plato's Phaidon, Socrates remarks, \"we (Greeks) live around a sea like frogs around a pond\" when describing to his friends the Greek cities of the Aegean. This image is attested by the map of the Old Greek Diaspora, which corresponded to the Greek world until the creation of the Greek state in 1832. The sea and trade were natural outlets for Greeks since the Greek peninsula is rocky and does not offer good prospects for agriculture.\n\nNotable Greek seafarers include people such as Pytheas of Marseilles, Scylax of Caryanda who sailed to Iberia and beyond, Nearchus, the 6th century merchant and later monk Cosmas Indicopleustes (Cosmas who sailed to India) and the explorer of the Northwestern passage Juan de Fuca. In later times, the Romioi plied the sea-lanes of the Mediterranean and controlled trade until an embargo imposed by the Roman Emperor on trade with the Caliphate opened the door for the later Italian pre-eminence in trade.\n\nThe Greek shipping tradition recovered during Ottoman rule when a substantial merchant middle class developed, which played an important part in the Greek War of Independence. Today, Greek shipping continues to prosper to the extent that Greece has the largest merchant fleet in the world, while many more ships under Greek ownership fly flags of convenience. The most notable shipping magnate of the 20th century was Aristotle Onassis, others being Yiannis Latsis, George Livanos, and Stavros Niarchos.\n\nAnother study from 2012 included 150 dental school students from University of Athens, the result showed that light hair colour (blonde/light ash brown) was predominant in 10.7% of the students. 36% had medium hair colour (Light brown/Medium darkest brown). 32% had darkest brown and 21% black (15.3 off black, 6% midnight black). In conclusion the hair colour of young Greeks are mostly brown, ranging from light to dark brown. with significant minorities having black and blonde hair. The same study also showed that the eye colour of the students was 14.6% blue/green, 28% medium (light brown) and 57.4% dark brown.\n<Assistant>I've successfully recorded all of this data.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-09 00:00]\n<User>The following are some more news I learnt:\nThe history of the Greek people is closely associated with the history of Greece, Cyprus, Constantinople, Asia Minor and the Black Sea. During the Ottoman rule of Greece, a number of Greek enclaves around the Mediterranean were cut off from the core, notably in Southern Italy, the Caucasus, Syria and Egypt. By the early 20th century, over half of the overall Greek-speaking population was settled in Asia Minor (now Turkey), while later that century a huge wave of migration to the United States, Australia, Canada and elsewhere created the modern Greek diaspora.\n\nMuslims believe the Quran was verbally revealed by God to Muhammad through the angel Gabriel (Jibril), gradually over a period of approximately 23 years, beginning on 22 December 609 CE, when Muhammad was 40, and concluding in 632, the year of his death. Muslims regard the Quran as the most important miracle of Muhammad, a proof of his prophethood, and the culmination of a series of divine messages that started with the messages revealed to Adam and ended with Muhammad. The word \"Quran\" occurs some 70 times in the text of the Quran, although different names and words are also said to be references to the Quran.\n\nAccording to the traditional narrative, several companions of Muhammad served as scribes and were responsible for writing down the revelations. Shortly after Muhammad's death, the Quran was compiled by his companions who wrote down and memorized parts of it. These codices had differences that motivated the Caliph Uthman to establish a standard version now known as Uthman's codex, which is generally considered the archetype of the Quran known today. There are, however, variant readings, with mostly minor differences in meaning.\n\nThe Quran assumes familiarity with major narratives recounted in the Biblical scriptures. It summarizes some, dwells at length on others and, in some cases, presents alternative accounts and interpretations of events. The Quran describes itself as a book of guidance. It sometimes offers detailed accounts of specific historical events, and it often emphasizes the moral significance of an event over its narrative sequence. The Quran is used along with the hadith to interpret sharia law. During prayers, the Quran is recited only in Arabic.\n\nThe word qur\u02bc\u0101n appears about 70 times in the Quran itself, assuming various meanings. It is a verbal noun (ma\u1e63dar) of the Arabic verb qara\u02bca (\u0642\u0631\u0623), meaning \"he read\" or \"he recited\". The Syriac equivalent is (\u0729\u072a\u071d\u0722\u0710) qery\u0101n\u0101, which refers to \"scripture reading\" or \"lesson\". While some Western scholars consider the word to be derived from the Syriac, the majority of Muslim authorities hold the origin of the word is qara\u02bca itself. Regardless, it had become an Arabic term by Muhammad's lifetime. An important meaning of the word is the \"act of reciting\", as reflected in an early Quranic passage: \"It is for Us to collect it and to recite it (qur\u02bc\u0101nahu).\"\n\nThe term also has closely related synonyms that are employed throughout the Quran. Each synonym possesses its own distinct meaning, but its use may converge with that of qur\u02bc\u0101n in certain contexts. Such terms include kit\u0101b (book); \u0101yah (sign); and s\u016brah (scripture). The latter two terms also denote units of revelation. In the large majority of contexts, usually with a definite article (al-), the word is referred to as the \"revelation\" (wa\u1e25y), that which has been \"sent down\" (tanz\u012bl) at intervals. Other related words are: dhikr (remembrance), used to refer to the Quran in the sense of a reminder and warning, and \u1e25ikmah (wisdom), sometimes referring to the revelation or part of it.\n\nThe Quran describes itself as \"the discernment\" (al-furq\u0101n), \"the mother book\" (umm al-kit\u0101b), \"the guide\" (huda), \"the wisdom\" (hikmah), \"the remembrance\" (dhikr) and \"the revelation\" (tanz\u012bl; something sent down, signifying the descent of an object from a higher place to lower place). Another term is al-kit\u0101b (The Book), though it is also used in the Arabic language for other scriptures, such as the Torah and the Gospels. The adjective of \"Quran\" has multiple transliterations including \"quranic\", \"koranic\", and \"qur'anic\", or capitalised as \"Qur'anic\", \"Koranic\", and \"Quranic\". The term mus'haf ('written work') is often used to refer to particular Quranic manuscripts but is also used in the Quran to identify earlier revealed books. Other transliterations of \"Quran\" include \"al-Coran\", \"Coran\", \"Kuran\", and \"al-Qur\u02bcan\".\n\nIslamic tradition relates that Muhammad received his first revelation in the Cave of Hira during one of his isolated retreats to the mountains. Thereafter, he received revelations over a period of 23 years. According to hadith and Muslim history, after Muhammad immigrated to Medina and formed an independent Muslim community, he ordered many of his companions to recite the Quran and to learn and teach the laws, which were revealed daily. It is related that some of the Quraysh who were taken prisoners at the battle of Badr regained their freedom after they had taught some of the Muslims the simple writing of the time. Thus a group of Muslims gradually became literate. As it was initially spoken, the Quran was recorded on tablets, bones, and the wide, flat ends of date palm fronds. Most suras were in use amongst early Muslims since they are mentioned in numerous sayings by both Sunni and Shia sources, relating Muhammad's use of the Quran as a call to Islam, the making of prayer and the manner of recitation. However, the Quran did not exist in book form at the time of Muhammad's death in 632. There is agreement among scholars that Muhammad himself did not write down the revelation.\n\nThe Quran describes Muhammad as \"ummi\", which is traditionally interpreted as \"illiterate,\" but the meaning is rather more complex. Medieval commentators such as Al-Tabari maintained that the term induced two meanings: first, the inability to read or write in general; second, the inexperience or ignorance of the previous books or scriptures (but they gave priority to the first meaning). Muhammad's illiteracy was taken as a sign of the genuineness of his prophethood. For example, according to Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, if Muhammad had mastered writing and reading he possibly would have been suspected of having studied the books of the ancestors. Some scholars such as Watt prefer the second meaning of \"ummi\" - they take it to indicate unfamiliarity with earlier sacred texts.\n\nBased on earlier transmitted reports, in the year 632, after the demise of Muhammad a number of his companions who knew the Quran by heart were killed in a battle by Musaylimah, the first caliph Abu Bakr (d. 634) decided to collect the book in one volume so that it could be preserved. Zayd ibn Thabit (d. 655) was the person to collect the Quran since \"he used to write the Divine Inspiration for Allah's Apostle\". Thus, a group of scribes, most importantly Zayd, collected the verses and produced a hand-written manuscript of the complete book. The manuscript according to Zayd remained with Abu Bakr until he died. Zayd's reaction to the task and the difficulties in collecting the Quranic material from parchments, palm-leaf stalks, thin stones and from men who knew it by heart is recorded in earlier narratives. After Abu Bakr, Hafsa bint Umar, Muhammad's widow, was entrusted with the manuscript. In about 650, the third Caliph Uthman ibn Affan (d. 656) began noticing slight differences in pronunciation of the Quran as Islam expanded beyond the Arabian Peninsula into Persia, the Levant, and North Africa. In order to preserve the sanctity of the text, he ordered a committee headed by Zayd to use Abu Bakr's copy and prepare a standard copy of the Quran. Thus, within 20 years of Muhammad's death, the Quran was committed to written form. That text became the model from which copies were made and promulgated throughout the urban centers of the Muslim world, and other versions are believed to have been destroyed. The present form of the Quran text is accepted by Muslim scholars to be the original version compiled by Abu Bakr.\n<Assistant>Thanks for sharing. I've committed this to memory.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-10 00:00]\n<User>Let me share some additional facts I found:\nIn 1972, in a mosque in the city of Sana'a, Yemen, manuscripts were discovered that were later proved to be the most ancient Quranic text known to exist at the time. The Sana'a manuscripts contain palimpsests, a manuscript page from which the text has been washed off to make the parchment reusable again\u2014a practice which was common in ancient times due to scarcity of writing material. However, the faint washed-off underlying text (scriptio inferior) is still barely visible and believed to be \"pre-Uthmanic\" Quranic content, while the text written on top (scriptio superior) is believed to belong to Uthmanic time. Studies using radiocarbon dating indicate that the parchments are dated to the period before 671 AD with a 99 percent probability.\n\nIn 2015, fragments of a very early Quran, dating back to 1370 years ago, were discovered in the library of the University of Birmingham, England. According to the tests carried out by Oxford University Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, \"with a probability of more than 95%, the parchment was from between 568 and 645\". The manuscript is written in Hijazi script, an early form of written Arabic. This is possibly the earliest extant exemplar of the Quran, but as the tests allow a range of possible dates, it cannot be said with certainty which of the existing versions is the oldest. Saudi scholar Saud al-Sarhan has expressed doubt over the age of the fragments as they contain dots and chapter separators that are believed to have originated later.\n\nRespect for the written text of the Quran is an important element of religious faith by many Muslims, and the Quran is treated with reverence. Based on tradition and a literal interpretation of Quran 56:79 (\"none shall touch but those who are clean\"), some Muslims believe that they must perform a ritual cleansing with water before touching a copy of the Quran, although this view is not universal. Worn-out copies of the Quran are wrapped in a cloth and stored indefinitely in a safe place, buried in a mosque or a Muslim cemetery, or burned and the ashes buried or scattered over water.\n\nInimitability of the Quran (or \"I'jaz\") is the belief that no human speech can match the Quran in its content and form. The Quran is considered an inimitable miracle by Muslims, effective until the Day of Resurrection\u2014and, thereby, the central proof granted to Muhammad in authentication of his prophetic status. The concept of inimitability originates in the Quran where in five different verses opponents are challenged to produce something like the Quran: \"If men and sprites banded together to produce the like of this Quran they would never produce its like not though they backed one another.\" So the suggestion is that if there are doubts concerning the divine authorship of the Quran, come forward and create something like it. From the ninth century, numerous works appeared which studied the Quran and examined its style and content. Medieval Muslim scholars including al-Jurjani (d. 1078) and al-Baqillani (d. 1013) have written treatises on the subject, discussed its various aspects, and used linguistic approaches to study the Quran. Others argue that the Quran contains noble ideas, has inner meanings, maintained its freshness through the ages and has caused great transformations in individual level and in the history. Some scholars state that the Quran contains scientific information that agrees with modern science. The doctrine of miraculousness of the Quran is further emphasized by Muhammad's illiteracy since the unlettered prophet could not have been suspected of composing the Quran.\n<Assistant>I've processed this information and will remember it."]
[{"question": "What types of cities did the expansion of the great ruler inspire ?", "answer": "Hellenistic cities"}, {"question": "Did the Roman world consider one ethnocentric lineage to be a great concern ?", "answer": "secondary to religious considerations"}, {"question": "From what era is the Rigas Feraios believed to be a part of ?", "answer": "Greek Enlightenment"}, {"question": "How many orginal founding patrons are there of the Great Amphictyonic League ?", "answer": "with twelve founders"}, {"question": "What is believed to be the derivative of these names ?", "answer": "pre-Dorian"}, {"question": "What was the age in 1300 BC named ?", "answer": "early Iron age"}, {"question": "From where did the basis of the Argos tales originate ?", "answer": "Egypt"}, {"question": "Which colonial enterprise for land was the Greek Isles a part of", "answer": "British Empire"}, {"question": "During the early seventies where did most Cyprus Greeks decide to go ?", "answer": "the Middle East"}, {"question": "At what university is this issue of accurate consensus for Greeks living elsewhere being debated an", "answer": "Sorbonne University"}, {"question": "The first European university was created in what city?", "answer": "Constantinople"}, {"question": "What is the religion of the Greek majority ?", "answer": "Christians"}, {"question": "What period in Europe was full of an appreciation for earlier cultures ?", "answer": "the Renaissance in Europe"}, {"question": "What is the Arabic variant of Gabriel?", "answer": "Jibril"}, {"question": "How many times is the word \"Quran\" used in the Quran?", "answer": "70"}, {"question": "Who first recorded Muhammad revelations?", "answer": "companions of Muhammad"}, {"question": "What accounts are form the basis of much of the accounts in the Quran?", "answer": "Biblical scriptures"}, {"question": "From which Arabic verb might \"Quran\" be derived?", "answer": "qara\u02bca"}, {"question": "What Syriac word might be related to \"Quran\"?", "answer": "qery\u0101n\u0101"}, {"question": "Which word do most Muslim scholars point to as the origin of the Quran's name?", "answer": "qara\u02bca"}, {"question": "Which term used in the Quran to indicate itself means \"book\"?", "answer": "kit\u0101b"}, {"question": "Which term does the Quran use to refer to itself as \"scripture\"?", "answer": "s\u016brah"}, {"question": "What name does the Quran use for itself that means \"revelation\"?", "answer": "wa\u1e25y"}, {"question": "What term is used in the Quran to indicate previous revelations?", "answer": "mus'haf"}, {"question": "What is an English translation of huda?", "answer": "the guide"}, {"question": "Prisoners from which battle are thought to have helped Muslims learn to write?", "answer": "Badr"}, {"question": "Because Mohammed was \"ummi,\" what would he not have known about that lent credence to his prophethood?", "answer": "earlier sacred texts"}, {"question": "What skills would have made others more suspicious that Mohammad was not getting his revelations in the way he said?", "answer": "writing and reading"}, {"question": "What is the term for recycled parchments used in ancient manuscripts?", "answer": "palimpsests"}, {"question": "Before which year were the Sana'a manuscripts produced?", "answer": "671 AD"}, {"question": "What version of the Quran was the scriptio superior of the Sana'a manuscripts?", "answer": "Uthmanic"}, {"question": "What script were the Birmingham Quran fragments written in?", "answer": "Hijazi"}, {"question": "What feature of the Birmingham Quran fragments' text make some doubt that it is older than other known versions of the Quran?", "answer": "dots and chapter separators"}, {"question": "How many years old were the Quran fragments discovered in Birmingham in 2015?", "answer": "1370"}, {"question": "Which section of the Quran inspires some Muslims to ritually wash themselves before touching their copy?", "answer": "56:79"}, {"question": "In what state are copies of the Quran sometime wrapped in cloth and buried?", "answer": "Worn-out"}, {"question": "What term indicates that the contents of the Quran cannot be reproduced in speech?", "answer": "I'jaz"}, {"question": "Until what day is the Quran believed to be in effect?", "answer": "Day of Resurrection"}]