XPost: alt.usage.english
From: nospam@de-ster.demon.nl

Kerr-Mudd, John  wrote:

> On Thu, 19 Sep 2024 21:49:11 +0200
> nospam@de-ster.demon.nl (J. J. Lodder) wrote:
>
> > occam  wrote:
> >
> > > On 19/09/2024 06:59, Aidan Kehoe wrote:
> > > > Another one that stuck for me was "metic", "resident foreigner in a
> > > > Greek city state," apparently not related to meticulous.
> > >
> > > Try 'hermetic' as a related concept. A 'foreigner' in ancient Greek was
> > > someone from another city state, even if that was a city in Greece.
> > > 'Greece' did not become an entity until much later.
> >
> > Depends on what you want 'entity' to mean.
> > Those ancient Greeks certainly saw themselves as a cultural entity,
> > with a shared language and culture. This extended to 'Greater Greece'.
> > It was only the narrow sense of a political entity that was
> > inconceivable to them,
>
>
> In his travels (read killing spree) Alexander encountered some lost Greek
> settlement; unfortunately for them they hadn't kept up *all* the right
> procedures to appease the gods, so he had to slaughter them as well.

Only the men, I guess. There are still tribes in Afghanistan
that claim descent from Alexander's soldiers,

Jan

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