Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the Hellenic language of Homer, the Athenian philosophers and the New Testament, attested across several regional dialects, Attic, Ionic, Doric and Aeolic among them, before Attic-based Koine Greek spread as a common tongue across the eastern Mediterranean following Alexander the Great's conquests. It is written in the Greek alphabet, itself adapted from a Phoenician abjad by adding dedicated vowel letters, a change usually credited as the first true alphabet in the modern technical sense. Ancient Greek gave way to Koine and eventually to Medieval and Modern Greek, an unbroken linguistic lineage even though the classical language itself has no native speakers today.