In the beginning (more or less) was Proto Indo European, which divided up into the Indo European family of languages. Some of the branches of the family are the Germanic languages (English, German, Scandinavian languages, Dutch etc.), Slavonic languages (Russian, Polish, etc.), Italic languages (including Latin and some other languages spoken in would you believe Italy), Hellenic (Greek) languages, Hittite, Tocharian, Sanskrit and its descendants in India, Iranian languages, and some Afghan languages.
The earliest written form of Greek we have dates from the 2nd millennium BC, and was written in the Linear B syllabary. The earliest works we have using more or less the same alphabet as is used for modern Greek probably date back to about the eighth century BC (a lot of controversy about when Homer actually lived but 8th century is probably a good estimate for when his works were first written down). The alphabet they used was derived from those used for Semitic languges such as Hebrew and Phoenician, which ultimately derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics. Somewhat arbitrarily, the death of Alexander the Great (323 BC) is taken as the dividing point between Classical Greek and Koine (common)Greek (the language of amongst others, the New Testament). Further developments were Byzantine Greek (say 4th century AD onwards) and then modern Greek (say 1453 onwards). In the Koine period all educated people would have been familiar with Classical authors and would have probably found them as easy or difficult as we do Shakespeare or the Authorised Version. One scene in the book of Captain Correlli's Mandolin which was left out of the film was where an English pilot parachuted down on the island and tried to speak to the locals in Classical Greek, which they could with some difficulty understand. I'm told that this was based on an actual incident.
Latin is an Italic language. There are inscriptions in Latin from the 6th century BC, and literature from the 3rd century BC onwards. From the 2nd century BC onwards educated Romans would also have known Greek. Many people were bilingual in Greek and Latin, and so the two languages were continually rubbing up against each other. Latin speakers often borrowed words from Greek, especially in the fields of philosophy and science. Don't forget that the Romans granted citizenship more and more freely after the time of Julius Caesar (first half of the first century BC), and so many Greeks were Romans as well.
Even after the fall of the Western Roman empire Latin was still widely used by the educated in Western Europe and with the rediscovery of Greek culture from the fourteenth century on they also borrowed from Greek. It's often uncertain whether a Greek word was borrowed directly into English or whether it came through Latin (and maybe French) first.
Bingley
