The Greeks have been identified by many ethnonyms. The most common native ethnonym is Hellen, pl. Hellenes (Ἕλληνες); the name Greeks was used by the ancient Romans and gradually entered the European languages through its use in Latin. The mythological patriarch Hellen is the named progenitor of the Greek peoples; his descendants the Aeolians, Dorians, Achaeans and Ionians correspond to the main Greek tribes and to the main dialects spoken in Greece and Asia Minor (Anatolia).
Soleto is one of the nine Greek-speaking towns in the province of Apulia, Italy. Their inhabitants are descendants of the first wave of Greek settlers in Italy and Sicily in the 8th century BC. The dialect they speak evolved separately from Hellenistic Greek. The people of these towns call themselves Griki, from the Latin Graecus.
Hieronymus Wolf was a 16th-century German historian. After coming into contact with the works of Laonicus Chalcondyles, he also went ahead with identifying Byzantine historiography for the purpose of distinguishing medieval Greek from ancient Roman history.
The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople, by Eugène Delacroix, 1840. The sack of Constantinople in 1204 by the Crusaders acerbated Greek nationalism and created disdain for the Latins which is well illustrated in the documents of the era. Niketas Choniates portrays an especially lively account of the sack and its aftermath.
The first printed Charter of the Greek Community of Trieste, Italy 1787 – Archives of the Community of Trieste.
In Greek mythology, Hellen is the eponymous progenitor of the Hellenes. He is the child of Deucalion and Pyrrha, and the father of three sons, Dorus, Xuthus, and Aeolus, by whom he is the ancestor of the Greek peoples.
Hellen (bottom, centre-right), being presented with the twins Aeolus and Boeotus by a shepherd, in a depiction of the story of Melanippe from Euripides' lost play Melanippe Wise, on an Apulian volute krater, dating from the late fourth century BC.
