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 also called 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 the volcano on the island of Thera (Santorini) in the fifteenth century BCE.

The 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 was dominant in southern and western Greece and much of the archipelago in historic times, although it is supposed to have originated in the north-west of the country.

• Doric is one of the three orders of classical architecture, the other two being Ionic and Corinthian. It is characterized by comparative simplicity, the columns being thick and resting directly on the floor below, rather than a separate base; the capital is simple, formed of rings under a cushion-like 'echinus' and a flat square plain 'abacus'. (For more technical information, try 'Doric Order' in Curl, 2006.)

• The Dorian mode was one of the modes, or scales, used by Greek musicians. It was felt to be a mode particularly suited to the expression of firm resolve and noble feelings, as can be seen from the remarks of the Greek philosopher Plato (427-347 BCE) in his discussion of the kinds of music which would be permitted in the education of the future rulers of his Ideal State (Republic, 398c-400c). The Dorian mode is the scale produced by playing an octave on the white notes of the piano beginning with D (i.e., there is an interval of a tone between the notes of the scale, except between the second and third notes and between the sixth and seventh notes, where there is an interval of a semitone). Along with the other modes the Dorian mode continued to be used by European musicians until the sixteenth century, when the modal system began to be less used in Europe. (The Toccata and Fugue in D minor by J.S. Bach (1685-1750) (BWV 538) is known as 'the Dorian' because the original copy of the work had no key signature, and so the opening bars of the Fugue seemed to be in the Dorian mode.)

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. See 'dialects' in 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>