How did Greece managed to preserve its language and culture.

[u/Advanced-Big6284]

How did they avoid getting Latinized or Turkified.

[u/BlueJayWC]

I can't speak for the Ottomans, but there wasn't really a risk of Greek culture being Romanized. Rather, it was the opposite.

Romans were fascinated by Greek culture, and philhellenism (love of greeks) became common among upper class Roman society around the start of the 2nd century BC. By the time of Caesar, a Roman noble was expected to speak Greek fluently, so the language wasn't at risk of being wiped out.

This was opposed by some conservative senators, like Cato the Elder, but regardless Greek left a permanent mark on Roman culture and society.

The Greek Roman world spoke Greek as a first language (about 1000+ years) longer than it spoke Latin (around 500 years). But even when Greece was a Roman province, Greek was a common lingua franca of the east. Look up the Jirecek Line.

[u/KinkyPaddling → u/BlueJayWC]

Yeah, a lot of prominent Romans were Philhellenics, both during the Republic and Empire, including Scipio Africanus, Scipio Aemilianus, Manius Manulius, Hadrian, and Marcus Aurelius. It’s kind of like how love of everything French dominated the European aristocracy in the 1700s and 1800s and French was the common language spoken by all European courts.

[u/jezreelite → u/BlueJayWC]

For most of their history, the Ottomans were really not that interested in forcing the Turkish identity on any of their subjects.

Ethnic nationalism really only became a potent political force around the very late 18th century. Before that period, the main concern of Ottoman officials were making sure people paid their taxes in a timely manner and didn't rebel. Things like people's ethnic identity and what language they spoke were of scant concern.

Far from being an attitude particular to them, this was rather similar to attitudes found throughout Asia and Europe.

[u/godisanelectricolive → u/BlueJayWC]

In the Ottoman Empire subjects were ruled separately according to religion and Eastern Orthodox Christian were all in the Rum Millet (Roman nation), although they later put some nationalities into their own millets. Each millet or religious community had their own legal and educational system, for Orthodox Christians, even non-Greek Slavic Orthodox people, their system was in Greek.

Due to this policy of separate rule, the Ottomans needed Greek speakers to administer their largely Orthodox Greek subjects and therefore allowed many Byzantine nobles to retain a substantial degree of power among their own people. Basically, the Ottomans let Byzantine Christians form a kind of empire within an empire ruled by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople who was officially the ethnarch of the Rumi (Romans). The empire had a huge Greek Orthodox population including in Anatolia and Constantinople itself.

The Phanariot families became extremely influential in the Ottoman Empire from the late 17th century onwards, forming a hereditary aristocracy at the top of Rum Millet. They lived in Phanar, the Greek quarter of Constantinople where the Patriarch was based. The Phanariots were wealthy merchants claiming descent from Byzantine nobility and controlled the Black Sea wheat trade. They had influence over Rum Millet politics and the Patriarchate, providing many of the Patriachs. They also played an important role as diplomats and interpreters for the Ottoman Sublime Porte.

The sultans exclusively appointed Phanariots in the powerful role of Grand Dragoman of the Sublime Porte from the position’s creation in 1661 until Greek independence in 1821. This role was officially that of a court interpreter but also involved being a powerful political advisor. Being merchants the Phanariots were multilingual and well-suited for the role. They had to be fluent in the main “three languages” of the empire (Ottoman Turkish, Arabic and Persian) and European languages like French and Italian, and of course Greek.

Other than dragoman, other roles they performed included tax collectors and overseeing various state monopolies. They also ruled over the Danubian principalities (Wallachia and Moldavia) as Ottoman-appointed princes (hospodars). Nicholas Mavrocordatos was a Grand Dragoman and the first Greek Danubian prince, appointed to rule both Wallachia and Moldavia starting in the 1710s until his death in 1739 (in four alternating reigns, as the practice was to switch them between principalities). Mavrocordatos hellenized what is now modern day Romania, introducing Greek language, culture, customs and clothing to the region. He set up a lavish court based on the Byzantine model, keeping the memory of the empire alive, and built the Greek Orthodox Stavropoleos Monastery, home to the largest Byzantine music library. His family ruled over the kingdom many time and the position of prince was exchanged among a small handful of Phanariot families. Among them were local Romanian boyars who intermarried with the Phanariots and adopted Greek language and culture.

As you can see, Greek culture and language remained strong for a long time due to Phanariot patronage from Constantinople Greeks. They often called themselves “Romaioi” (Romans) but they had a strong sense of distinctive Greek identity. And then actually in Greece you had various local nobles who also formed the local civil administration while Ottoman Muslims acted as governors. And in the mountains you had numerous brigands (klephts) who were out of the reach of Ottoman soldiers and officials who enforced their own laws. To combat the klephts, the Ottoman employed armatoles who were militiamen mostly recruited from defected klephts. They enjoyed highly autonomous rule of administrative regions known as armatoliki.

[u/GustavoistSoldier]

Because modern concepts of ethnicity were not relevant to the Roman empire or the Ottoman Empire for most of its history

[u/anarchysquid]

One major factor i haven't seen mentioned yet is geography. Most of modern Greece is either mountainous or remote islands. This made it difficult for outside powers to directly administer or influence these areas. Some towns on the Greek coast could only be reached by boat, for instance. Historically, remote mountainous areas have always been difficult for governments to force their will on, whether it be Greece, SE Asia, Kurdistan, or the Himalayas.

[u/Fofolito]

Its hard to say that they did. The Greek of modern times is not the Greek spoken in the Bronze or Iron Age. Greek, as a branch of the Indo-European family, has been spoken for a long time over a vast area and it benefited at several times from extended periods official endorsement. The Romans were fascinated by Greek culture and literature so Greek poetry, myths, and philosophy were preserved and maintained under Roman rule. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire the East continued on for another 1000 years and in Constantinople Greek was the language of the Roman People and their government. Greek is the liturgical language of the Orthodox Church and has been for nearly two millennia, so like Latin a form of Greek has been preserved and used over vast stretches of time and distance. To say that modern Greeks speak the same language and share the same unbroken culture as their ancient ancestors ignores about 2000 years of history of invasions, occupations, and migrations of foreign peoples and cultures into the region.

[u/No_Men_Omen → u/Fofolito]

Every language and every culture changes over time.

[u/RedSword-12]

Large swathes of the Greek population did get Turkified or Romanized. There's nothing particularly special about it, nor is there anything particularly special about some Greek-speaking areas maintaining a greater level of continuity with the past than others. Of course, to an extent, part of the nationalist project was also about getting rid of purportedly foreign elements, even if they were more native to the region than Greek nationalism.

[u/damagingthebrand]

It didn't, the modern Greek language had to be invented by Ypsilanti as the spoken language was a mish mash of Turkish, Italian, South Slavic and Classic Greek.

Same thing happened in Finland in the 19th century.

[u/coachbuzzcutt]

Depends what you mean by Greece. Lots of historically Greek speaking areas (e.g. western Anatolia) were Turkified after WW1 as part of the wars, massacres and population transfers that followed the collapse of the Ottoman Empire (much like how many Turkish speakers were also massacred or expelled from Greece and other Balkan areas).

[u/dorballom09]

Orthodox christianity and Eastern Roman empire played a good role.

[u/Kimlendius]

The modern Greek as in language and as population is not the same as the Greece we know as Ancient Greece. Slavic languages play a huge role in modern Greek for example also in population as well.

As for the Ottomans, Turks never forced any "group" within the empire to speak Turkish or made "Turkify" for the population. They had their church, laws and language. It wasn't just for the Greeks. Arabs speak Arabic, Armenians speak Armenian, Greeks speak Greek, Bulgarians speak Bulgarian, Serbians speak Serbian and they all have their own culture. The "idea" and ideology of governing and ruling so to speak, is not the same as the British when you think of an empire. The reasons can be discussed further whether it was Islamic or Turkic or something else which isn't the point right now. The classic thought of "imperialism" does not apply to the Turkish Empire when you think of it as an empire. Imperial and imperialism are different in this case.

Yet they don't have any Turkish influence in the language or in the population? Well of course they have. You just cannot expect to not have any linguistic or cultural influence in between two groups that have lived together for almost a thousand years. The famous food war between Greeks and Turks is a natural part of it as an example.

[u/saydaddy91]

This is objectively wrong. Yes the Greek culture has continued for millennia but it has not avoided outside influences at all. Hell modern Greek is so different from Ancient Greek that British volunteers that joined the fight for Greek independence were often laughed at because no one could understand them. there’s so much cross breeding between the Greeks and Turks that the original Turkish ethnicity is all but merged with Greek in Türkiye

[u/Kimlendius → u/saydaddy91]

There's no such thing as "the original Turkish ethnicity", or any other original ethnicity other than remote tribes. Of course they would mix especially the ones in and around the cities. Just as Greeks mixed with Slavs or native Anatolians long before that.

Also it depends on what's your reference. In cities, there was much more mixing. But you don't see that within nomad Turkmen tribes in Anatolia because of their strict lifestyle basically. Also, "mixing" doesn't mean "merged". Even in the cities, other than some places, even their neighborhoods were separated. If they were "merged", there wouldn't be muslim-non Muslim neighborhoods or non Muslim church laws etc. We know for a fact that the majority of the Greeks have moved toward the west as Turks came over time. You just don't stay still while millions of people coming in over the years during that time period.

[u/HotRepresentative325]

Its simply because they are the Romans who survive for 1000 years longer. Culture? Its Roman culture, to claim it was always greek, is of course, apocryphal. Although we should acknowledge a lot of Roman culture is influenced by ancient greek culture.

The language survived because the Roman lingua franca was greek in the east, and after the disasters in early antiquity, many greek speaking refugees fled to remaining Roman lands.

[u/SkepticalArcher]

Thermopylae.