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Macedonia: Its Races and Their Future
H. Brailsford
IV. The Races of Macedonia

8. History of Macedonian Races



Of the races which inhabit Macedonia to-day only the Albanians have any claim to be autochthonous. Their southern branch, the Tosks, are most likely the lineal descendants of the ancient Epirotes. Their northern branch, the Ghegs, are probably the people whom the ancients called Illyrians. Of the ancient Macedonians whose original seat lay between Monastir and Vodena, no heirs remain, unless indeed any remnants of them escaped civilisation and became confounded with the kindred Albanians. The Thracians may possibly survive in the modern Vlachs, at least in so far as they became absorbed by Roman colonies. All these original races, though doubtless near cousins of the Greeks, must have been very imperfectly Hellenised during the classical and Macedonian periods. The Greek colonies were never much more than trading centres along the coast, and what was Greek in ancient times is Greek to-day. There is no evidence that the interior was ever settled by a rural Greek population. With the Roman conquest came a long period in which the two languages and the two civilisations struggled for the mastery. Military colonies were scattered liberally, and this planting of Latin towns took place only after a ruthless destruction and uprooting of the older Greek cities, whose populations were sold into slavery. Round these colonies the aboriginal inhabitants may have clustered, and acquired the Latin speech which the modern Vlachs still retain. One Byzantine writer remarks significantly that the Thracians never took kindly to Greek, while they acquired Latin with ease (Prisci, "Historia," p. 190). By the sixth century Latin had become the language of a considerable part of Epirus, Macedonia, and Thrace. We have acquired a habit of talking of the Byzantine Empire as though it had been a Greek Empire. It hardly acquired a national character until its long, final agony began. It was the Crusades which emphasised its Hellenism, by teaching the Eastern world that the Latin West was still peopled by barbarian hordes. Then in the double struggle against Franks and Turks a Greek patriotism revived too late. But during the earlier centuries of the Empire the Greeks were not even a ruling caste. The Emperors themselves were cosmopolitans of any and every stock. Many of the best of them were Armenians; Justinian was actually a Slav; few were Greeks. Nor was the Eastern Church naturally or originally Greek. The Arians showed a marked preference for the Latin language, and the persecutions of the Catholic party in which they indulged had sometimes the character of an anti-Greek movement. It was indeed during this period of persecution, while Latin-speaking Arians dominated the court that the Orthodox Church became, what it has always remained, the rallying point of Greek patriotism and the only outward embodiment of the Greek national idea. Latin, moreover, even in Justinian's time, was still so far the official language that his great legal codes were composed in it.

Whatever Greek population there may ever have been in the interior of rural Macedonia must have been effectually uprooted by the barbarian invasions. Race succeeded race, conqueror trod on the heels of conqueror, and though few of the strangers effected a permanent settlement until the coming of the Slavs, they destroyed the earlier civilisation and ruined the wealthier classes who had adopted Greek culture. The invaders broke up the large estates, and the slaves who tilled them were appropriated by the barbarians, or else regained their freedom during this secular anarchy. The cultured minority, reduced to penury, and driven to seek refuge in walled towns, sank to the level of their own slaves. The impoverishment was general, and with the wealth of the old aristocracy its Hellenic culture disappeared.