Talk: Greeks

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Wrong category for Odyssey characters?

I just realized that the Greeks in Odyssey maybe don't belong in this category since this category was created specifically to refer to Greek nationals (as opposed to ethnic Greeks whose "nationality" may actually have belonged to the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt instead). In the 5th century BCE, Greece was not yet unified. Although, I protested that the Greece article was still appropriate because the Greeks then did have a concept of the Greek civilization, there wasn't a unified Greek state. People's "nationality"—we are using that term loosely since some political theorists believe it is anachronistic for antiquity but I disagree—would best have been approximated to their polis not Greece, at least not until Macedon unified Greece. I'm not sure about this though. What do you guys think? Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 20:57, June 8, 2020 (UTC)

I'm for only using the term Greek nationals for after the formation of a Greek nation state. I think I’ve brought up this topic in regards to Italians and Spanish nationals as well. I’ve been braining storming of ways to better delineate between ethnic and national category pages. I know you like conciseness but I was mulling over the idea of "Citizens of the Macedonian Empire" as way to deal with this instead of "Macedonian nationals". Lacrossedeamon (talk) 21:32, June 8, 2020 (UTC)

The problem we're contending with is that mainstream political science tends to see terms like nationality, sovereignty, nation-state, and probably even citizen as anachronistic for antiquity. Often, it is said that there were no such concept as sovereignty under the Peace of Westphalia which ended the Thirty Years' War and no concept such as nation-state in the entire world until European feudal kingdoms transitioned into consolidated states with clearly defined borders. I wholeheartedly disagree with this because I think this method of defining the nation, or the nation-state, or nationality is Eurocentric. It also tends to rest on flawed assumptions of every pre-modern country as being feudal, such as China, Iran, and Egypt. In any case, mainstream scholars hold that Ancient Egypt was never a nation or a nation-state, and the same goes for Ancient Rome or Greece and China prior to the 19th or 20th centuries. By this same reasoning, there were no such thing as a Greek nationality, an Egyptian nationality, or a Chinese nationality before the modern age. A minority of scholars do dispute that, in fact, Egypt and China qualified as nation-states from their inception, with the unification of Egypt under the Menes for example, but I have never met a professor who agrees with this or me.

In any case, I just wanted to bring this to everyone's attention. I personally have always thought that words are what we make them and terminology develops when there is a need for them, and if terms like nation-state, nationality, and nation have to be defined so narrowly as fitting the modern European model of the state, then we lack a word to describe how ancient Egyptians or ancient Chinese or ancient Greeks conceptualized their country apart from mere ethnicity. Because contrary to popular misconception, these three peoples did have a concept of having unified civilizations in those days, even if the unified country at times fell apart. These people also accepted that there were foreigners of other countries who became part of their countries.

A further problem is that nationality is sometimes or often treated as synonymous with citizenship, and sometimes both these terms are seen as misleading if the state in question didn't technically have strict citizenship laws. Hence, I am also not sure if "Citizens of Macedonian Empire" would work. For one thing, I find it unnecessarily wordy and for another, I'm not sure how citizenship laws functioned in the Macedonian Empire. Then again, even if someone from an ancient state didn't have the codified rights in that state as a Roman citizen did, it doesn't mean that they didn't have some other official status, especially when censuses were involved. So perhaps citizen doesn't have to be defined so strictly.

Yet here's another thing. I have recently discovered that national and citizen are not always interchangeable because I only just learned last week that even though I am not a British citizen (I cannot live and vote in the UK), I am legally a British national via having been born in Hong Kong during British rule (which comes with a few privileges non-British nationals do not have). In a similar vein, American Samoans are legally US nationals but not US citizens while all US citizens are US nationals. In other words, national is broader and more general than citizen, and I would prefer it as the safer option.

All this might give you a headache, and I'm really just sharing all the complications involved with the terminology here which I wish to get out of the way. My position is that we should feel free to use national, nation and nationality loosely regardless of what political scientists say. Citizen might also work, but I think national is broader and the safer option. Hence, to continue using the Egyptian and Chinese categories for nationals only, even if disputably anachronistic, is fine to me.

For this Greek category, I think it is more complicated since whereas the first unified Egyptian and Chinese states began with their first dynasties, Greek history did not begin with one unified state. When you suggest that this page should only be used for Greeks after the Greek nation-state was founded, we still have to talk about when that is. Many political scientists probably don't think that Greece was ever a nation-state until it won its independence from the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century. However, I would argue that the moment that the Greeks first had a unified state, it was a nation, a nation-state, and that was the Macedonian Empire—assuming that the Minoans and Mycenaeans never had one unified state. So I think that a category specific to "Macedonian nationals" or "Citizens of the Macedonian Empire" might be unnecessary. In my mind, we can take Greek "nationality" as beginning with the Macedonian Empire even if it Greece experienced periods where it was subsumed into other foreign powers.

Mainstream political scientists often carve a binary between nation-state and empire, arguing that nation-states are not multi-ethnic whereas empires by definition are, and therefore a country like the Macedonian Empire could not have been a nation-state. Notwithstanding this, my professors used to tell me that what distinguish a nation-state like those of modernity with ancient states is that nowadays, there is a concept of borders whereas ancient states didn't have a concept of borders, e.g. the Macedonian Empire could expand as much as it wanted to. I have always taken issue with these points since there are many modern nation-states which are both multi-ethnic and have waged imperialistic wars of expansion, bringing foreign peoples into their fold. Just because a country embarks on a military campaign to annex territory, doesn't mean it doesn't have a concept of borders; just because a country has a concept of clearly defined borders, doesn't mean it can't seek to change those borders by waging wars of expansion. My professors never did answer these questions of mine to satisfaction, so I am forced to conclude that the Greek nation didn't begin only in 1822 but that it actually began in antiquity, with the Macedonian Empire.

So going off of that, I have heard the common argument that Italy didn't have a nation-state until its unification in the 19th century either, but I am also skeptical of that because before its fragmentation into city-states, there was a transitional period where Italy was a single kingdom under the Lombards, and Italy was one of its names. Notwithstanding this, the Italians, like the Egyptians and Chinese, also had one unified nation when it was the Roman Republic and then the Roman Empire, and I've also always been skeptical about seeing Romans and Italians as two distinct people since there is a continuum between them.

Germany and Spain I can actually see the "nation-state" argument making sense since in medieval Europe, ideas about where one country began and where one ended was chaotic. Boundaries overlapped due to the feudal geopolitical make-up, so the consolidation of feudal territories into what eventually became Spain and Germany (as well as England and France) fit that mainstream narrative of the rise of nation-states by political scientists. But this goes back to my point; this was not the geopolitical development in other parts of the world, like China, Egypt, Persia, and Greece, and even in Italy, the story is not quite the same.

I really did not know how to organize my thoughts here or if everything I said here was necessary... xD Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 23:51, June 8, 2020 (UTC)

You bring up a good point about citizenship. While I'd argue its concept existed long before nationality I didn't take into account slave and non-citizen castes. I know conciseness/brevity is a point of contention with you but I'd also propose for example "Subject of Macedonian Empire" but I can see how even beyond wordiness that could have some issues. One, is a ruler of a monarchy still considered a subject and two terminology as Macedon wasn't always a empire. But I see this as an option to deconflict with your example about the Lombards. Lacrossedeamon (talk) 01:47, June 13, 2020 (UTC)

My actual point is that I think just this category page, Greeks, can encompass people of the Macedonian Empire. I don't think we need a separate category for that. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 02:08, June 13, 2020 (UTC)

I feel that misses out on a bigger picture such as all the non Greeks that were still subjects of Macedon. Lacrossedeamon (talk) 06:10, June 13, 2020 (UTC)

Hm, well this category, remember, is not about ethnicity, but if you think it can be confusing, for non-Greek subjects of the Macedonian Empire, we can just refrain from including them in this category and only in whatever ethnic category applies to them. But I think another question is... do we even have a substantial number of characters from the Macedonian Empire? Apart from this, I'm not sure how well you understood my long response above. I understand it's not really well-organized. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 06:18, June 13, 2020 (UTC)

I know its not about ethnicity which is why I bring it up here. I think non-greek subjects of Macedon (which I don't think their numbers matter because I've just been using it as an example that could be applied to any multiethnic state) should still get a category for their "nationality" or whatever term we decide but I don't think "Greek" is really applicable for that. I'd go as far to argue that (and switching the examples up) someone from Ptolemaic Egypt and someone from Mamluk Egypt should not be considered the same nationality hence why I've proposed trying to delineate it down to ruling state but I realize that can also get messy (such as would all dynasties be their own category). From my understanding your long response was arguing that we shouldn't treat the category as actually describing the individuals nationality per se but more cultural identity. In response to that I'd say we don't really know what someone might have identified as. Did Ezio as a Florentine consider his "nationality" or "identity" to be the same as Barbarigo a Venetian? I worry this could be akin to misgendering. I think there is less wiggle room for misunderstanding and subjectivity if we can figure a way to get "subject of ______" to work. 07:58, June 13, 2020 (UTC)

I didn't catch at all that you meant to propose that we should instead have categories specific to a regime rather than a broad, general category for "nationality". I was wondering why you kept going back to the idea of having a page on people of the Macedonian Empire. Simultaneously, no, the point of my long response was not that the category page should "not be describing nationality per se, so much as cultural identity". Rather, I was making a case that the category should remain about nationality, but I wanted you to clarify what you think constitutes the beginning of the Italian and Greek nation-states. Because, especially if you are bringing it up that Ezio might not have identified himself as the same people as Venetians, then I think that implies you think Italy wasn't a nation until its unification in 1861. Am I correct?

Also, the number of characters that are people of the Macedonian Empire matter because if we have only one individual from the Macedonian Empire, then a category for individuals belonging to the Macedonian Empire is not really warranted. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 08:32, June 13, 2020 (UTC)

I want to avoid making categories based on what we believe constitutes the beginning of the nation-states because I think there's too much leeway in that distinction hence using regimes which have a better defined start and end date. You offered in your long response the Macedonian Empire as the beginning of Greek nationality but would that mean that we don't consider any Heroic Age Greeks to be Greek nationals or have any nationality at all?

Yes the number matters in a practical sense on whether a category page is warranted but I've only been using it in this discussion as a theoretical place holder for any regime which might have the requisite number of individuals for this to actually apply to. Which is why for discussion purposes I don't think the numbers matter.

Personally in my uneducated point of view I'd say Italy has been a nation multiple separate times but wouldn't necessarily say that a subject of the Kingdom of the Lombards shares the same nationality as a subject of the Republic of Italy but I'd also be forced to conclude by the same logic that a subject of the Republic of Italy possibly doesn't share their nationality with a subject of the Kingdom of Italy. Lacrossedeamon (talk) 10:30, June 13, 2020 (UTC)

We could categorized them as Hellens to distinct the Greek nationality and "Greek ethnicity" and culture. Greek for the nationality, so the individuals born in Greece after 1821, and Hellens for the individuals who are from Greek cultural society.Francesco75 (talk) 10:52, June 13, 2020 (UTC)

Yes, Greece was not unified by then and Greece was divided into city-states, but it is Greece / later became Greece and makes it easier for us to gather them into one category, so we know that they are Greek for those that have not played Odyssey and/or are new to the Assassin’s Creed game series. It may not be historically accurate, but we know the area as Greece even if they weren’t Greek at the time. Andrewh7 (talk) 00:45, June 22, 2020 (UTC) Andrewh7

Change category’s description?

I know that the current description for the category is only for those of Greek nationality, but what if it include those of Greek ethnicity too? This way it would limit the usually long length of the category list and make it easier to remember who lives in Greece / has Greek ethnicity and who doesn’t. It would also make the Ethnic Greek category list less long and lengthy. The way I picture it, it would only have those that both live in Greece and have Greek ethnicity, but those that are only of Greek descent and aren’t live in Greece such as Elpidios, Amunet and Khemu would go on the Ethnic Greeks category. 00:45, June 22, 2020 (UTC) Andrewh7