What is the Greek word or expression for ‘social class’ as the ancient Greeks would have expressed it? I haven’t been able to find it online. The categories themselves but not the actual word for ‘social class’.
I studied Classics; part of this was study of Ancient Greek, but I found it to be a difficult language and never learned it well. I’m no expert but I’ll pitch in my two cents.
My first thought was that it could be the word “ethnos”, from which we get the words “ethnicity” and “ethnic”. I looked up “Class” in an online Greek-English dictionary, and under “social division”, it gives two words: “ethnos” and “meris”. A few related expressions follow: Woodhouse's English-Greek Dictionary Page Image
I don’t know if these are the exact terms that would have been used e.g. in Ancient Athens to give a blanket term for their very differentiated social classes, but there you go.
Some ideas from ChatGPT:
In ancient Greece, the concept of social class was referred to as “demoi” or “demes,” which referred to a group of citizens who shared a common origin and lived in a specific area. The term could also be used more broadly to refer to social or economic groups within society, such as the wealthy “pentakosiomedimnoi” (500-bushel men) or the working-class “thetes.” The Greeks did not have a single word that directly corresponds to our modern concept of “social class,” but these terms provide insight into their understanding of social and economic stratification.
One term that was used was “genos,” which referred to a group of people who shared a common ancestry or lineage. Another term was “deme,” which referred to a political unit that was often based on geographical or tribal affiliations.
I realize now it’s almost a necessity to learn how to read the Greek script. . It’s the first time I’ve seen a response from Chatgpt to any of my questions. Am I right in assuming that just like any query in a search engine Chatgpt will respond based on the complexity of the query? Is that right?
I literally just pasted your OP directly in as the prompt. It has two models to choose from; those were the outputs from each. You can continue after its response asking for more details, follow-up questions, challenging it if you think it’s wrong, etc.
Some more on ChatCPT here in this thread: The next page in the book of AI evolution is here, powered by GPT 3.5, and I am very, nay, extremely impressed
Thanks Arjuna34.Personally, I’d want sources with any result. I presume Chatgpt can give them as per request.
Actually it’s not very good at giving sources. In fact, it will often make up plausible sounding answers and references that aren’t real, a problem known as hallucination. Anything factual it produces needs to be checked independently.
That confirms what I’ve read as well. Thanks again.