Wikipedia:Today's featured article/October 27, 2005



The names of the Greeks have shifted throughout history. The soldiers that fell at Thermopylae did so as Hellenes, while centuries later when Jesus preached his beliefs any person of non-Jewish faith was a Hellene. By the time Constantine the Great became Emperor they were known as Romans, and all the while their neighbours in the Western Roman Empire would call them Greeks, while those in the Persian Empire would call them Yunans. The onset of every historical era was accompanied by a new name, either completely new or old and forgotten, extracted from tradition or borrowed from foreigners. Every single one of them was significant in its own time and all can be used interchangeably, which is perhaps why the Greeks are such a polyonymous people.

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