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

248 John nandriŞ
the mountains, along with the necessary survival techniques, were for the
most part not to lowland Greek taste.
even a romantically-driven hellenophile like Byron was ultimately
exasperated by his squabbling collaborators: “For Greeks a sigh, for
Greece a tear”. the latinised aboriginals of Greece were tough shepherds
who thought little of sleeping out in the rain, and could survive on the
most sparse resources. they may indeed have contributed soldiers to the
roman legions among their other professions. however this does nothing
to support the theory which explains their distribution in the highland zone
as “Roman legionaries set to guard the passes”. that is nothing more than
a literalist and unrealistic formula derived from too much reading of books
and not enough fieldwork. to the literalist the mountains are a barrier and
an impediment. to the Aromani they are a habitat full of connectivity. It is
much more likely that the Vlahs are the close relatives of those soldiers of
native thracian or Illyrian stock sensu lato, from the epirus and Macedonia,
whom Alexander the Great addressed “in their own language” [which was
that of his mother olympias].
these were the aboriginal occupants of the highland zone. Among them
in pre-roman times, groups such as the triballi were very mobile having,
like the Sarakatsani until recently, no fixed settlements, and were much
favoured in Classical Athens as slaves 20 . herodotus praised the thracians
as potentially the greatest nation on earth “if only they could agree among
themselves”. It was from among this widespread aboriginal population
that in the mid 6 th century AD Justinian [himself a latin-speaker from
somewhere around niš] selected men “from a land called Vlah” to protect
the newly-founded monastery of St Katherine on Mount Sinai 21 . For much
the same reasons the Aromâni went on to supply tough paratroops for the
Greek army: “We always put them in the paratroopers, because they are
inured to the life of the shepherd in the mountains and of the muleteer on
the road. they will sleep on the ground, in the rain, and eat anything”. 22
20 pApAzoGlu, Fanoula, The Central Balkan tribes in pre-Roman times (1978);
triballi, Autariatae, Dardanians, Scordisci and Moesians (Amsterdam).
21 Nandriş, j.G., The Jebeliyeh of Mount Sinai and the Land of Vlah (1990). Quaderni
di Studi Arabi, 8 : 45-80 & Figs 1-16. (Venezia, Universita degli Studi).
22 Personal verbal communication from the General commanding northern Greece
1977.