INFLUENCES IN THE GREEK ETHNIC MIX
Slavery in the ancient world. While it is difficult to gauge the intermixture that took place between the older established inhabitants and the infiltrating Greeks wherever they may have come from, the tradition of slavery in the ancient Mediterranean may have had an even greater impact on the physical nature of the people. It has been estimated that in classical times the number of slaves in Attica was roughly equal to the number of free inhabitants, or around 100,000." In Sparta there was an even greater proportion of slaves, and most of them, the helots, were Messenians. While the slaves of Athens were a wide racial mix and therefore less likely to unite on the basis of a common language, these Messenian helots of Sparta all spoke Greek, and had a kind of group self-consciousness. Thus they presented "special problems of security for their Spartan masters, whose numbers were constantly on the decline." Changes in the ethnic composition of Greek city-states are illustrated by the comments about the case of Piso. Piso, who had been the recipient of an unhelpful decision by a vote of the Athenian city assembly,
"made a violent speech in which he said that the latter-day Athenians had no right to identify themselves with the great Athenians of the days of Pericles, Demosthenes, Aeschylus, and Plato. The ancient Athenians had been extirpated by repeated wars and massacres and these were mere mongrels, degenerates, and the descendants of slaves. He said that any Roman who flattered them as if they were the legitimate heirs of those ancient heroes was lowering the dignity of the Roman name." Such historical ideas make it clear that even two thousand years ago the notion of ethnic purity amongst the Greeks was difficult to sustain. The ethnic mix continued over the next two thousand years. As Nicol has observed, "The ancient Greeks were, after all, of very mixed ancestry; and there can be no doubt that the Byzantine Greeks, both before and after the Slav occupation, were even more heterogenous.” Celtic Influence. In 282-280 B.C., a Celtic army of about 170,000 led by Brennos and Achicorius entered Macedonia and, with Bolgios, overwhelmed the country. The Celtic army swept into Greece, defeating the Greeks at Thermopylae, and went on to sack the temple of Delphi, the most sacred site of the Hellenic world, before withdrawing. The Celtic army eventually withdrew in an orderly manner, taking their loot with them. No Greek army was strong enough to attack them. The Celtic invasions had a lasting effect on Greek consciousness, being commemorated in Greek literature. Though some remained as mercenaries, the bulk of the Celtic armies moved north again, having found little room to settle in populated Greece and Macedonia. The Celts remained in Thrace, though they were Hellenized. The Scordisci had established a prosperous and strong kingdom around modern Belgrade, and one Celtic tribe settled on the slopes of Haemos. However, most went further north and east, some even settling in Asia Minor, in Galatia. Greeks as Slavs. In recent historical time other Europeans have held the view that the people of modern Greece have little ethnic connection with the ancient Greeks. Robert Browning, 32 a writer who is sympathetic to the Greeks, discusses the writings of the Bavarian Johann Philipp Fallmerayer, who in 1830 proposed that the Slav invasions and settlements of the late sixth and seventh centuries resulted in the "expulsion or extirpation of the original population of peninsula Greece. Consequently the medieval and modern Greeks ... are not the descendants of the Greeks of antiquity, and their Hellenism is artificial." Fallmerayer's view that not a drop of pure Greek blood is to be found in the modern Greek is often held to be extreme. A more moderate version of essentially the same idea was presented more recently by R.H. Jenkins. Browning concedes that the Slavic impact was considerable in the Balkan peninsula, and that there was great intermixture of races in Balkan Greek lands. He says Fallnierayer wits right in drawing attention to the extensive Slav invasion and settlement in continental Greece. Despite the great attention given by the Greek government to renaming towns, villages, rivers and other geographic locations, there remain large numbers of place names of Slavonic origin. Even so, Browning suggests, the majority of the Greek-speaking people lived in Constantinople and Asia Minor, and in these more distant locations were not so strongly affected by the Slavs. He says also that the original population was not extirpated or expelled, since many remained in coastal regions, cities, and inaccessible areas.
Nicholas Cheetham is uncompromising in the language he uses to describe the Slav influence. He says that between the fifth and seventh centuries "a sharp and brutal revolution altered the whole character of Hellas... It also involved a steep decline of civilized life and an almost total rejection of former values... The most striking change affected the ethnic composition of the people and resulted from the mass migration of Slavs into the Balkans which began in the sixth Century.” Cheetham explains that the eastern emperor held back the Slavs for decades. For instance, the emperor Constans Il (642-68) successfully forced back the "Macedonian Slavs" (as Cheetham calls them) who were threatening Thessalonika. Later Constans' grandson, Justinian II, undertook a major campaign against the Slavs and settled many in Asia. But in the end there was a continuous infiltration followed by settlement. It seems that earthquakes and the bubonic plague had thinned the population on the eve of the Slav invasion. After the great plague of 744-747, Constantinople was repopulated with Greeks from the Balkan peninsula and the islands, and this may have made even more room for the newcomers. The land was repeopled, Cheetham says. The Slavs occupied the fertile plains and river valleys, while the original peoples were forced into the numerous mountain ranges. The Slavs remained rural dwellers, so the cities may have suffered less from their arrival. The Slav settlements extended the length and breadth of the Balkan peninsula. They overran the "whole of Greece," and more, Cheetham says. Their influence extended across the Balkans from the Danube to Cape Tainaron. In the process, Roman authority was submerged, and the remnants of classical culture and the Christian religion were extinguished. There were few areas remaining where the Greeks predominated, though at least in those early times Thessalonika was one of them. In the eighth century Strabonos Epithomatus wrote, "And now, in that way almost all of Epirus, Hellada, the Peloponnese and Macedonia have also been settled by the Skiti-Slavs." In general, the lands that had been Greek in ancient times were commonly regarded by foreigners as a Slav preserve. In 805 the Slavs came under imperial control. They learned the ways of Roman citizens and were probably being attracted to Christianity. Eventually, peasant farmers from Asia minor were brought in to recolonize coastal plains and river valleys of "Hellas." Those Slavs who did not assimilate were gradually pushed back into the more rugged and inhospitable regions of the interior. The distinction between Romans and assimilated Slavs became blurred. As early as 766 Niketas, a (Macedonian) Slav, became patriarch of the Constantinople patriarchate. Nicholas Cheetham claims that the Orthodox church made intense efforts to convert the Slavs in Greece, and that this took effect more or less in the period from A.D. 800 to 1000, only when the Greek language had ousted Slavonic. Again, this effect was stronger in the southern part of the peninsula than further to the north, since the Christianization of the Slavs as a whole was made possible only when some Slav monks from Thessalonika created a suitable script in their own language as the vehicle for this task. Yet the central point, that the ethnic mix was profound, is quite clear. Another historian, Tom Winnifrith, says that the Slav conquest of the Balkans was rapid, eliminating the Latin heritage. He says the Slavs "spread throughout Greece." However, it was not just the Slavs who created ethnic change at this time. Winnifrith says there were many Latin-speaking refugees from cities in the thickly populated areas of the Danube frontier and Illyricum who are likely to have gravitated to Salonika and Constantinople and exchanged their Latin for Greek. These refugees added another element to the constantly changing ethnic equation in the Balkans. The extent of the Slavic inroad is evident on maps showing mediaeval population distribution. The map titled "Slavs in the Balkans" shows that by about the eighth century A.D., Slavs were settled along the whole length of the Balkan peninsula right to the tip of the Peloponnese and were especially strong along the western coast. Pockets of Greek inhabitants remained along the east coast. The Byzantine emperor Constantine Porphyrgenitus openly says that the whole of Hellas had been Slavicized. The Slavonic tribes of the Ezerites and the Milingi were independent in the Peloponnese in the seventh and eighth centuries and did not pay tribute to Byzantium. Even today in the Peloponnese, one cannot go three miles in any direction without encountering a Slavonic place-name." Arnold Toynbee compares the Slavic invasion with the early Greek invasions, noting that "on the mainland itself, the Slav occupation was more nearly complete than the North-West-Greek occupation had been." He explains that Attica was not occupied in either historical invasion, but in the Peloponnese, "Arcadia, which had escaped occupation in the twelfth century B.C. was now overrun." For more than two hundred years, till the reconquest of the Peloponnese by the East Roman government around A.D. 850, the Slavs controlled almost all of it. "As late as the year A.D. 1204, the French invaders of the Peloponnese found that, after more than three centuries of East Roman rule, there were still two independent Slav peoples, the Ezeritai and the Melingoi, in the fastness of Mount Taygetos." There is much agreement among historians about the dramatic and overpowering influx of Slavic peoples to Greece. These people often intermarried and were assimilated in the "Roman" culture. Some writers tend to downplay the importance of the racial intermixture for Hellenization, suggesting that being a Hellene does not require particular racial antecedents. This is a point that modern Greeks appear unwilling to believe. Their preference seems to be simply to deny that "ethnological adulteration" ever took place. For example, in Macedonia, History and Politics (a publication sponsored by the Greek government and distributed throughout the English-speaking world) it is acknowledged (p. 10) that after Basil 11 there was a "solid Slav element" in Yugoslav and Bulgarian Macedonia, but it claims there was no impact at all in Greek Macedonia, or in Greece itself. The analyses from other sources lead us inevitably to a rejection of these claims. The Slavic influence in what is now Greece is clear. However, there were other important influences also. Greeks as Albanians. Slavs were not the only groups to move into the southern part of the Balkan peninsula. Many Albanians came in also. Albanians settled in Athens, Corinth, Mani, Thessaly and even in the Aegean islands. In the early nineteenth century, the population of Athens was 24 percent Albanian, 32 percent Turkish, and only 44 percent Greek. The village of Marathon, scene of the great victory in 490 B.C., was, early in the nineteenth century, almost entirely Albanian." Nicholas Hammond a historian who is sympathetic to the Greek view that the ancient Macedonians were a Greek tribe and who has had several works published in Athens, is unable to support the Greek view on this matter. He says that by the middle of the fourteenth and early fifteenth century the majority of people in the Peloponnese were Albanian speakers. The fascinating point is that the people with whom they were competing for land were overwhelmingly not the original Greek-speaking Roman citizens, but the new breed of Greek-speaking Slavs. As Hammond says, many Greek-speaking people at that point in time were probably ethnic Slavs. The continuing impact of this new ethnic and cultural force is indicated in Hammond's comments that the Albanian incursions into Greece continued under the Turkish system and went on right into the eighteenth century, and that the descendants of these Albanian people were still speaking Albanian when he was in Greece in the 1930s. This is not a reflection on the national consciousness of these Greek citizens, for as Hammond explains, they thought of themselves as Greek. Indeed Hammond points out that the Albanian role in the resistance to the Turks, and in the formation of the Greek nation, was significant. Like the Slavs, the Albanians became attached to their new lands, learned the new language, and began to think of themselves as one with the other peoples living there. Greeks as Vlachs. Also quite numerous during the eighteenth century in Greek lands and in territories that were to become Greek were the Vlachs. Hammond says that the Vlachs came in with the Albanians and provided leadership. He suggests that the Vlach peoples probably originated in Dacia, an area that is now part of Romania. Hammond says that the Vlachs managed to acquire possession of the great Pindus area. In general, they stayed in northern Greece and were never assimilated in terms of language the way that other ethnic groups were, though some groups ended the nomadic life and settled in Macedonia and in Thessaly. According to Tom Winnifrith, some Greek writers have claimed the Vlachs as ethnic Greeks. He is skeptical about this idea, claiming that these Greek historians have "been at unfair pains to eliminate almost completely the Latin element in Vlach language and history." Winnifrith comments that one of these Greek writers, M. Chrysochoos, the first to suggest that the Vlachs living in the passes crossing the Pindus mountains were the linear descendants of Roman soldiers, is inspired by misplaced patriotism to insist that these Romans were really some kind of Greeks.
The Vlachs seem to have left Dacia as part of a wave of migration that spread throughout the Balkans from Greece, where they are known as Kutzo Vlachs, Tzintzars, or Aromani, through Bulgaria and Yugoslavia to the Trieste region . Many of them are still in these areas today. They all speak varieties of Romanian, but represent the remnants of originally Dacian-, Illyrian-, Thracian- and even Scythian- speaking tribes. Vlachs settled in Thessaly, Rourneli, the Ionian islands and the Aegean islands. The Romanian Balkan history professor Motiu has said that the Vlachs comprised 7 to 8 percent of the population of Greece, numbering seven to eight hundred thousand. There have been no population statistics regarding the Vlach minority since the Greek census of 1951. The census of 1935 and 1951 recorded 19,703 and 39,855 Vlachs respectively. Greece does not recognize the presence of a Vlach minority.
Greeks as Turks. A recent issue that has engaged the vigorous attention of Greek politicians is the position and status of Cyprus. It is an area of conflict with Turkey, and one in which Greece has attempted to influence world opinion in its direction by fostering the theory of Greek ethnic purity. In 1964 German archaeologist Franz Maier argued that the Turkish Cypriots were a "people" and not a minority, and that Greek Cypriots and Greeks were not really racially Greek but a mixture. Similarly the Cypriot sociologist Andreas Panayiotou has been quoted as saying that Cypriots were not Greek, but were a synthesis of Greek, Turkish and other elements. He advocated that the Cypriot dialect should become the island's official language. Some external observers (perhaps with their own case to make) have come to similar conclusions: "Greece, while denying the presence of ethnic and religious minorities within its borders, tries to convince the world that the Orthodox people living in its neighboring countries are ethnic Greeks. But this is not true. In Cyprus, the Southern Cypriot Orthodox whom Greece presents to the world as Greek Cypriots, are not ethnic Greeks.” This material demonstrates that the Greek attitude towards ethnic purity in Greece, and all that follows from it, can be seen in various spheres of political interest, not only in the case of the ethnic Macedonians of Aegean Macedonia and in behaviors towards the new Republic of Macedonia. It is a mainstay of the Greek nationalist position. The Cyprus position is something of a special case; nevertheless, it reminds us of the 400-year occupation of Greek lands by the Turks and the inevitable ethnic impact. It has already been noted that in the early part of the nineteenth century the population of Athens was about one-third Turk. "Auberon Waugh ... wrote in The Daily Telegraph that the Greeks of today, with hairy popos, flat noses and bushy eyebrows, are clearly a race of Turkish descent and have nothing to do with the Greeks of antiquity sculpted on the Elgin marbles."
Und auch da wurde kaum was geschrieben.Zeigt nur wie viel sie sich überhaupt mit dieser Sprache beschäftigen. Man muss wissen dass sich die meisten Unis mit der hellenischen und römischen Geschichte am meisten befassen und kaum jemand mit der illyrischen oder albanischen. Vielleicht gibt es Unis die sich auch damit befassen aber wenn ich ehrlich bin interessiert mich das nicht weil es einzelne Personen bzw Historiker, die spezialisiert sind für die Illyrologie/Albanologie, gibt und viele ihrer Werke die die illyrisch-albanische Kontinuität belegen. Es ist wahr dass es weniger Fakten gibt als bei den Hellenen aber trotzdem.Das Problem ist dass man die Sprache der Illyrer nicht kennt und es deswegen schwierig ist eine sprachliche Kontinuität darzustellen aber die Sprache ist nicht die einzige historische Quelle.Das scheint ihr Griechen hier nicht zu verstehen bzw wollt es nicht verstehen.
