LE SYMPOSIUM INTERNATIONAL LE LIVRE. LA ROUMANIE. L ...

The Social Being of the Aromâni... 247
Metsovion Polytechnic, the Panathenaic Stadium, the Military School of the
Evelpides, the National Archaeological Museum and the Greek Academy,
all of them endowed with gilding and statues and the lavish use of marble
for striking replications of buildings in the Classical style. other Aromân
foundations must include eg., the triantafyllidis Institute in Salonica.
Weigand expressed his reservations about all this generosity, saying it
was a pity the Aromâni had not provided the Academicians to go with the
buildings. In the event the Aromâni did also furnish Academicians ; as
well as politicians and government ministers. evangelos Averoff-tossitsa
of Metsovo held ministerial rank, and the family supplied the Greek navy
with its principal and indeed only battleship, the Averoff. George Stavrou
(1795–1869) a Vlach from Ioannina, founded the National Bank of Greece.
the Dumba family from Vlasti near Kozani endowed the National Library
of Athens, and the Musikverein in Vienna, supporting such composers as
Schubert and Strauss. the list is far too long to recapitulate here.
It was among the Vlah merchants of odessa that the Philike Hetairea
was founded, and revolutionary literature was produced on the Vlah printing
presses of the pului brothers in Vienna. this self-organisation gave the
initial impetus to the revolt against the ottoman occupation of the Greek
lands. As clear-headed internationalizing merchants, rather than infantile
nationalists or scheming communists, their motivation in this, and later in
resisting German occupation and Italian invasion in the pindus, was more
straightforward than some of the other elements in these scenarios. We must
be careful in any case how we understand the concept of the nation, even
in quite recent history. the sailors in the Greek struggle for Independence
were largely Albanian-speakers, often from hydra 19 . on the mainland of
Greece it was in large measure mountain men, such as the Arvanites and
Aromâni, fighting from the highland zone, who made the running. Vlahs
such as Kolokotronis [Byth-Gouras: as with costume, easy assumptions
about cultural identity should not be made from onomastics] and rigas
provided leadership in the struggle for independence from the turks. the
majority of the klephts, palikari, or armatoles [deriving from Aromân
armatulâ, “armed man”] who actually carried through the resistance to the
turks were either Aromân or Albanian. the discomforts of resistance in
19 Albanian foundations included the large school for girls, the Arsakion, and the
zappeion [= Ar. Zaba, Dzappa] exhibition palace. the area still known as Plaka close under
the Acropolis was the Albanian quarter of Athens, and Albanian speakers were so numerous
that there were law courts in the Albanian language. until recently there were two Albanianspeaking
villages in Attica, while the workmen at the archaeological excavations of perachora
near Corinth spoke only Albanian.