Hellas

Hellas, Hellenesnames used by the Greeks in classical times to denote Greece and the Greeks. Homer (who did not have a comprehensive name for the Greeks, calling them Achaeans, Argives, or Danaans) used these names to denote a small region of south Thessaly and its inhabitants; by ‘Panhellenes’ he seems to mean the northern, as opposed to the southern, Greeks. Hesiod, however, uses Hellas in the general sense of Greece, and from about the seventh century onwards the Greeks called themselves and their country by these names, deriving them from a mythical ancestor Hellen. In classical times the name Hellas embraced all lands inhabited by Hellenes, including not only the mainland of Greece, the Peloponnese, and the Greek islands, but also the colonies and the Greek cities on the coast of Asia Minor. From the fourth century AD onwards the Greeks of the eastern Roman empire called themselves Rhōmaioi (‘Romans’); by that time the name ‘Hellenes’ denoted pagans. (See also GREECE.)