The inscription `Zeni su en ise ettu `sti kalimera` is found on an ancient stone in the community of Kalimera in Apulia. This Greek inscription, written in Latin characters, means `You are not a stranger here in Kalimera`. This inscription, along with other evidence, such as the Greek-speaking Muslims on the South-Eastern coasts of the Black Sea, sparked our curiosity to seek traces of Greek culture beyond Greece. In this way, seven trips were eventually made, guiding us from Calabria to Armenia.
Most German speakers cannot even imagine the multitude of Greek words that have entered the German language. We can just mention the words Philosophie (philosophy), Psyche (soul), Gynakologie (gynecology), and Kalligraphie (calligraphy), as well as Apotheke (pharmacy or otherwise store of medicines). However, if we delve deeper into the Greek language, we will discover other words that correspond to German: The word Mutter from `μητέρα`, Vater from `πατέρας`, Ture from `θύρα`, and many others, which strengthen the hypothesis of a common linguistic origin.
Science infers from the above the existence of a linguistic group of Indo-European origin in the distant past. This group includes not only the Romance and Germanic languages but also Sanskrit in India, Persian (Farsi), and Greek. The earliest written monuments that attest to the existence of the (Mycenaean) Greek language date from the 14th-12th century B.C.. The so-called Ancient Greek was subdivided into various, distinctly differentiated dialects, something we already knew from our school days in the classical gymnasium of Bregenz.
Because this very existence of clearly differentiated dialects did not make our learning of Ancient Greek easier, of course. Someone who could read Herodotus did not mean they were able to understand Homer. The individual Greek linguistic idioms were Achaean, Aeolic, Doric, Ionic, and Attic dialects. All of these together formed, from the 4th century onwards, the so-called `Koine` language, from which a new Greek language emerged, the language of the New Testament.
From the 18th century, the modern Greek language was distinguished into `katharevousa`, which followed the structures of the ancient Greek language more closely, and the colloquial language of the people, `demotiki`. Today, Greek is spoken by approximately 16-18 million people. Although a time has passed since Greek was the international language of communication in the Eastern Mediterranean region, we still encounter, even today and outside Greece, speakers of the Greek language, beyond the migrants of more recent times. The `arc` stretches from Lower Italy to the Caucasus.
Until the early 20th century, the territory of the Greek language essentially coincided with the areas of the Greek colonization in antiquity, with the exception of Italy. [...] This book does not make any scientific claims, nor does it aspire to be considered a systematic account of Greek migration. However, it aims to, in one way or another, provide an epitome of the significance of historical consciousness, always within the context of interpreting and understanding the present. For some, it might perhaps serve as a stimulus for a journey into the realm of the once Greek world.
[Excerpt from the introduction text of the edition]
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