Dorian - Doric
The Dorians were one of the groups or tribes into which the ancient Greeks (Hellenes) divided themselves. They were said to have migrated from a region known as Doris north of the country into central Greece "80 years after the Trojan War": the central part of Greece is Doris. Their best-known state was Sparta: they also colonized many Aegean islands, notably Crete after the fall of the Minoan civilization in the catastrophic eruption of Santorini (or Thera) eruption in the fifteenth century BCE.
Yhe word dorian can be used as a noun, to label one of the people associated with Doris, or the tribe or its dialect, or as an adjective to describe the same, their perceived qualities or certain conventional relations (below). The adjective is more or less interchangeable with its form doric, but some usages are more usually linked with one form or the other.
- The Doric dialect of ancient Greece
Pastoral poetry, a genre created by Theocritus, is mostly written in an artificial Doric made up of a variety of forms, some in general use, some purely local, others made up by false analogies; it also has a sprinkling of Aeolic and epic features. The modern sense of Doric meaning ‘rustic’ derives from the use of this dialect in pastoral poetry. "'dialects' The Concise Oxford Companion to Classical Literature. Ed. M.C. Howatson and Ian Chilvers. Oxford University Press, 1996. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. University of Hull. 9 May 2010 <http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t9.e940>
