Why the Ancient Greeks?

Question

I've been doing a lot of Renaissance reading (summer HW) and I was wondering why the term Ancient Greeks is used VS. just Greeks I mean the ancient Greeks and the Modern Greeks are Genetically the same.. why not just say Greeks. I've never heard someone say the Ancient Romans or the Ancient Italians nor have I ever heard someone say the Ancient Chinese referring to achievements made in the past... so enlighten me... why?!

Answer 1

This question reminds me of one time I told a Greek person I meet that I was fascinated with Greek history (I meant Ancient Greek). He asked me, 19th Century or 20th Century history? And it was my fault for not being specific enough, because Greece proper was only a country founded in the 19th Century.

More to the point of your question, during the Renaissance Western Europeans would talk about the ancient Greeks because many did not look too highly on their contemporary Greeks. At the time, Greece was the Byzantine Empire, which the Renaissance people called the Greek Empire (the term "Byzantine" was not invented until the 18th Century) And the Byzantine Empire was almost the opposite of the Ancient Greek ideals that the Renaissance humanists admired: the Byzantine Empire was a theocracy, home of the Orthodox Church which, during the Hesychast movement, rejected the view that God could be understood through reason in favor of religious mysticism. Many Greek humanists expatriated to Italy because they were persecuted in their country (and, in bringing their books with them, contributed to the fascination with Ancient Greece during the Renaissance).

Then, part way through the Renaissance, Greece was conquered my the equally theocratic, but this time Muslim, Ottoman Empire.

The term Ancient Greek is still used today to distinguish it from the modern country of Greece. You are right, there was indeed a sense of Greekness (called Hellenism) in ancient times, but it also existed in city states that were in places that are not in modern Greece: much of what would have been considered Greek in ancient times lies in the countries, besides Greece, of Macedonia (FYOM), Bulgaria, Turkey (the whole western coast of Turkey was Greek in ancient times), Albania, and Italy. Therefore, when one talks of Ancient Greece in a geographic sense, it is a far greater area than modern Greece.

Also, their culture back then was, obviously, very different from modern Greek culture. The biggest difference, at least to Greeks I've met, is that the ancients were pagans, while modern Greeks tend to see their country as an Orthodox Christian nation.  And it doesn't matter if modern Greeks are the same genetically as ancient Greeks (though that is not necessarily true); my family comes from Italy, but I don't consider myself an ancient Roman. (By the way, people say "Ancient Roman" all the time to distinguish them from modern inhabitants of the city of Rome. And "ancient Italians" is occasionally used to refer to ancient inhabitants of the Italian peninsula, though, as others have pointed out, it is not a very useful term).  

Answer 2

Ancient Greece was the pinnacle of philosphical, scientific, and religious beliefs that we still use today.  It was a very crucial part to developing the world as it is today.  Saying merely "the Greeks" implies you're talking about the Greeks as they are in your time period, which doesn't carry nearly the same weight.  When you say Ancient Greeks, everyone understands that you're referring to the past and the Greeks as they were then.  You never hear Ancient Italians because there is no such thing (that would, in fact, be the Ancient Romans, or more commonly said The Roman Empire).

Answer 3

In the renaissance, the Italians began to go back to the forms of the "Ancient" Greeks and Romans. The Ancient Greeks developed Philosophy and Democracy and soon there was a craving for that kind of development of though. Also, art and architecture became more like that of the Ancient Greeks, rather than the ugly Medieval art. They didn't say "Greeks" because they were ruled by the Ottomans at the time and they had no real knowledge of them.  

Answer 4

Because Greek civilisation is nothing like Ancient Greek Civilisation.

You don't call the Romans the Ancient Italians because Italy didn't exist until the 1800s. You do however hear it being called Ancient Rome and I often hear reference to Ancient Chinese culture.

Answer 5

That's a strange question. Primo, they lived in Ancient Times. Besides their country wasn't the same as modern Greece, it was made up of many little city-states.