20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

864 Apostolos PATELAkiswith the work The Kutso-Vlachs, the topograph Mihail Hrisohoos with hisvery interesting work The Vlachs and the Kutsovlachs published in 1909 10 ,the professor Konstantinos Nikolaidis who draws up the first etymologicaldictionary of the Macedo-Romanian language in 1909 11 and TheodorosKotsios, in 1909, with the work The Vlachs Greeks or the Kutso-Vlachs 12 .The Balkanic wars and the World War I put an end to this first period,which was characterised by the fact that it outlined the two differentdirections existing in the theories about the etnogenesis of the Vlachs. Theworks which had a greater influence on the public opinion as well as amongthe intellectuals were those of Georgiades in one of the directions and ofHrisohoos in the other one.After World War I two works appeared, namely that of EpaminondasFarmakidis in 1926 13 and of Nikolaos Spiropoulos in 1932 14 , both of themsustaining the immigrationist theory, but without bringing anything new inthis direction.In the opposite camp, the first who concerns himself with the Vlachs’origin is the historian Konstantinos Amantos, who after some hesitationsat the beginning, publishes a study in the periodical Makedonika, followedby the article-title "The Vlachs" in The Great Enciclopedy Pirsos in 1934,affirming that the Vlachs in the Hellenic space are Romanised Greeks. 15The most prominent personality in the field of the Greek historiographyin the interwar period was surely the historian Antonios Keramopoulos(1870-1961), professor at the University of Athens, who in 1939 publishesthe work What are the Kutso-Vlachs. From the very beginning the authorasks himself: "Why did not more scientists occupied themselves withthis theme, because it concerns our national history and the origin of agreat part of a population which lives together with us from immemorialtimes".(...) Keramopoulos sustains, based on previous Greek and foreignresearches, that during the long Roman domination an ethnic mixage ofthe Greeks with the Romans took place, from which the Vlachs resulted,who speak a language of Latin origin. 16 This language was born mainly inthe SE of Macedonia, in Western Tessalia and in Epir. This scientific work10An. Koltsidas. the quoted work, 37.11Ibidem, 38.12Collective, op.cit., 34.13Ibidem, 34.14Ibidem.15An. Koltsidas. op.cit., 36.16An. Keramopoulos 1939, What are the Kutso-Vlachs. Athens; 2000 republished,Thessaloniki.