Greek refugees the spread of the Hellenistic civilization in the 3rd century BC, Greek became the lingua franca of Asia Minor, and by the fifth century AD, when the last of the Indo-European native languages of Anatolia ceased to be spoken, Greek became the sole spoken language of the natives of Asia Minor. After the founding of Constantinople by the first Christian Roman Emperor Constantine the Great in 330, Asia Minor, the major part of the Greek East, became the most important region of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire. For the centuries to follow, the area was the main manpower and wheat
Ancient Greek phonology and this cluster underwent metathesis early in the Ancient Greek period. Metathesis is likely in this case; clusters of a voiced stop and , like , do not occur in Ancient Greek, since they change to by assimilation (see below), while clusters with the opposite order, like , pronounced , do occur. Ancient grammarians, such as Aristotle in his "Poetics" and Dionysius Thrax in his Art of Grammar, categorized letters () according to what speech sounds ( 'elements') they represented. They called the letters for vowels ('pronounceable', singular ); the letters for the nasals, liquids, and , and the letters