Early Greece c. 1600 BCE

In the early history of Greece there were three main dialects, Aeolic, Doric and Ionic, which corresponded to the three main tribes of the Greeks. The Aeolians lived chiefly in the eastern Aegean and on the west coast of Asia, north of Smyrna. The Ionic tribes were to be found in Attica and western Asia Minor, south of Smyrna. The Dorians were based in the Peloponenese and Crete, where their dialect supplanted the earlier language of Arcadian The early epic poetry of Homer, the Iliad and Odyssey, was written in literary Ionic, which became the primary literary language of ancient Greece