From: PXP111@psuvm.psu.edu
Newsgroups: soc.culture.romanian
Subject: (no subject given)
Date: 13 Apr 92 03:28:10 GMT
Organization: Penn State University

Subject: Re:Romanians in Greece

If I may add some things:

I have also read the theory of the Thracians and some habitants  retain-
ing the latin language as did the isolated Greeks of Magna Grecia in Si-
cily,or remnants of the Venician period, or remnants from the crusaders...
How on earth Skartis did you remember the  funny story with the attempts
of Moussolini...And the poor shepherds!!!

The term "giaour" was used to denote christians and/or slaves all around
the Balkans.

It isn't strange to find Greeks coming from Romania.I am not referring to
the "Vlachs" but to the fact that Greeks used to live in Romania-Moldavia
from the ancient era (coastal towns of Turas and Olbia... to Odessus) to
the years of the Ottoman Empire (and there are records of Families...) No
surprise that the revolution of 1821 was organized by the Greeks of Mol-
davia and Russia and started there.The Greek-Romanian effort was crashed.

New waves of Greeks seeked refuge in Romania also a century later when
they were thrown from Asia Minor (coast of Black Sea) to avoid a fate as
that of the Armenians.  Gradually a lot of them went to mainland Greece
and they were some of the most educated.

I can suggest another theory if we want to assume that they are..Romani-
ans. The Slavs managing to invade even central  Greece in the mid-byzant-
ine era is not sufficient, for they were hellenized when the Byzantines
freed their hands from the Arabs and of course Christianized the newco-
mers and taught them the language etc. It would be to early for the slavs
to maintain latin characteristics linguistically? What could have happened
(IF we don't want to rule out movements of Romanians south and be safe hi-
storically) is the Turks forcing populations of whole villages to move
here and there in the Empire in order to make them crack, lose
connections, get assimilated or weaker among heterogeneous people or... a
bunch of other reasons... As they actually did.

If this is the case then...I think we could find Albano-Rumans even as
south as Macedonia and actually this must be correct for I distinctly
remember a text were the Greeks used to say that these populations were
tending to help the Turks or Bulgarians during the wars. After the
exchange of populations I think we should search for them in the very
heterogeneous Yugoslavia and South Serbia that was established between
Greece and Bulgaria. But with the propaganda and education efforts of
Tito-Dimitrov I don't think they maintained their identity.Greece has
some mountainous people using an idiom but the words according to some
research I read was homeric-based with slavic suffices. Could these be
the people. But everybody tries to claim them: Albanians, Yugoslavs,
Bulgarians, Italians of Moussolini...why not the Romanians? Actually,
despite the insignificant number of these group (if any)  I would prefer
the Rumanians to prove something like that... for Greece would get rid of
the others who are really frightening and want to baptize them
Macedonians and the use the name in the republic of Yugoslavia. At least
the Romanians do not claim this ancient Greek name.

But putting all these aside the most obvious reason for confusion and
the biggest trap of all would be the mixup with the "Romioi" or
Rumeliots the Greeks generally use for themselves as descendants of the
Roman-Byzantines and the Turks used extensively for the region.
Is it possible that this confuses us? For these are the the only using
the ROM-N syllables as their names (except me of course in my last name)
But these are all Greeks. I don't think this gets us anywhere then.

Back to the term "Valachos":I read this term in a relatively old poem
of the Island of Crete when the island was under Venetian occupation 13-
14ce and the title of the Prince (fighting a duel to win the princess)
was the "son of the king of Vlachs" and the term referred somewhere far
and North (to Thrace?  further?)

It makes some sense if we think that the Bolgars,Vlachs,Slabs merged and
became Bulgarians.

The name is Melina Merkouri and not Helena Merkouri.  Famous Actress and
Minister of Culture for some 8 years. Married to Jil Dassen.

                                            Andronikos Romanos