Ꭶ 4. CHAP. I. exists in the geographical names which they imposed, and which have been adopted by the Greeks and Albanians, on their gaining possession of the countries once occupied by the Sclavonians. It is natural that every year should diminish the number of these names, were it only by the corruption of Sclavonian into Greek words of similar sound or import; and it is at present a subject of fierce contention, to decide what proportion of the modern geographical nomenclature of Greece is of Sclavonian origin. There is no doubt that for some centuries this proportion has been daily lessened; for we now find many Turkish and Albanian names in those districts which were the peculiar seats of the Sclavonian population. Many names, too, are triumphantly claimed by both parties, one party asserting that a word is unquestionably Sclavonian, and the other that it is undoubtedly Greek. None, however, can contest that there was a period when Sclavonian influence succeeded in changing the name of the peninsular citadel of the Hellenic race from Peloponnesus to Morea, and in effacing all memory of the ancient Hellenic names over the greater part of the country. Indeed, ancient Hellenic names are the exception, and have only been preserved in a few districts, about the immediate vicinity of the cities that preserved a Greek population. It may not be uninteresting, in this place, to notice the historical facts relating to the name Morea; leaving the whole of the philological questions concerning the modern Greek geographical nomenclature, and the surnames of many of the inhabitants, to the sagacity of the learned, when party zeal and national prejudice shall have cooled sufficiently to admit of the subject being investigated with calmness and impartiality. It would seem from the pilgrimage of St Willibald, which has been already quoted, that in the eighth century the Morea was not the name generally applied to the Peloponnesus, or the PELOPONNESUS BECOMES MOREA. 29 writer would probably have used it, instead of calling it the country of the Sclavonians. Among the Greeks certainly it could never have come into use until the country fell under a foreign domination, for the Peloponnesus continued to be the official designation of the province down to the time of the Turkish conquest. The Morea must, therefore, have come into general use, as the name of the peninsula among the Greeks, after the Latin conquest, even allowing that the term was used among foreigners before the arrival of the Franks. When the Crusaders had rendered themselves masters of Greece; when the whole of the East was filled with the fleets of the Italian republics, and the Sclavonian sailors of Venice and Ragusa covered the Grecian seas, it is not surprising that foreign names should become common on the coasts of the Levant. The name Morea was, however, at first applied only to the western coast of the Peloponnesus, or perhaps more particularly to Elis, which the epitome of Strabo points out as a district exclusively Sclavonian, and which, to this day, preserves a number of Sclavonian names. When the Crusaders first landed, the term Morea was the denomination used to indicate the whole western coast; for Villehardoin, in his Chronicle, makes his nephew speak of coming to Nauplia from the Morea, when he came from Modon and the Chronicles of the French Conquest repeatedly give the name a circumscribed sense, referring it to the plain of Elis, though at other times applying it to the whole peninsula.1 Originally the word appears to be the same geographical denomination which the Sclavonians of the north had given to a mountain district of Thrace in the chain of Mount 1 Villehardoin, Conquête de l'Empire de Constantinople par les Francs, p. 121, edit. Buchon-"Sire, je vieng d'une terre ki moult est riche que on apele la Mourée, (p. 122,) et entrerent en la terre de la Mourée." See the word Morée in the index of the French text of the Chronicle of the Conquest of the Morea, and the following passages in the Greek, p. 171, v. 3370; p. 207, v. 4377; p. 243, v. 5394; p. 291, v. 6729; and p. 296, v. 6861. CHAP. I. $ 4. L $ 4. CHAP. I. Rhodope. In the fourteenth century the name of this province is written by the Emperor Cantacuzenos, who must have been well acquainted with it personally, Morrha. Even as late as the fourteenth century, the Morea is mentioned in official documents relating to the Frank principality as a province of the Peloponnesus, though the name was then commonly applied to the whole peninsula.2 With regard to the proportion between the Greek and Sclavonian names scattered over the whole surface of the Peloponnesus at the present day, the authority of Colonel Leake may be quoted with some confidence, as one of the most competent judges on account of his philological and personal knowledge, and as by far the most impartial witness who has given an opinion on the subject. He thinks there are now ten names of Greek origin in the Morea for every one of Sclavonian.3 Still, the fact that a mighty revolution was effected in the population of Greece, during the period between the seventh and the tenth centuries, is unquestionable; and that the revolution swept away almost every trace of preceding ages from Greek society, and nearly every memory of Hellenic names from the geography of the country, is indubitable. The Jews of the present day hardly differ more from the Jews of the time of Solomon, and the Arabs of to-day certainly differ less from the cotemporaries of Mahomet, than the modern Greeks from the fellow-citizens of Perikles. When the Greek race began to increase in the ninth 1 Cantacuzeni Hist., 588, where Hyperpyrakion, a town in this district, is mentioned; also pages 592, 650, and 846. Ameilhon, in the continuation of Lebeau, Histoire du Bas-Empire, tom. xx. 135, makes Hyperpyrakion a considerable city in the Peloponnesus, and (p. 137) he mentions Asan, the brother-in-law of Cantacuzenos, as made governor of the Morea instead of Morrha. 2 The will of Angelo Acciaiuoli, dated 1391, enumerates lands in the Morea, in Sairita, and Calamata; and a letter of Robert, prince of Achaia, in 1358, contains the expression-" In dictâ provincia Calamatæ et provincia Amorreæ." -Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches sur la Principauté Française de Morée. Diplomes, p. 160, 213. Leake's Peloponnesiaca, p. 326. Servia, which is the name of a town of Macedonia founded by the Sclavonians, is mentioned in the Greek Chronicle § 5. century, and to recover possession of the country occupied CHAP. I. by the Sclavonians, they gave Greek names to many of the places they regained; but these names were modern, and not the old Hellenic denominations, for the people were too ignorant to make any attempt to revive the ancient geographical nomenclature of the country. Where the Albanians settled, a considerable number of Albanian names are found-a circumstance which would hardly have been the case had the Albanian colonists entered a country possessing fixed Greek names; for the Albanians certainly entered Greece gradually, and in comparatively small numbers at a time, and, moreover, their geographical nomenclature is so circumscribed that the same names reoccur wherever they settled. Even within the single province of Attica, we find the same name repeated in the case of several villages.1 So complete was the dislocation of the ancient inhabitants of the Peloponnesus that traces of the Sclavonian language are found among the Tzakones, a race which is supposed to have preserved more of the primeval Greeks than the other inhabitants of the peninsula.2 SECT. V.-COLONIES OF ASIATIC RACE SETTLED BY THE BYZANTINE The emperors of Constantinople attempted to remedy the depopulation of their empire, which was forced on as a place in the plain of Elis, v. 3532, 3877. The observations of Fallmerayer on the Sclavonian names in Greece deserve perusal, though they contain much that is fanciful-Geschichte des halbinsel Morea, i. 240. Entstehung der hautigen Griechen, 64. Modern Greek names, indicative of Sclavonian and other foreign influences, and proving the extinction of all Hellenic reminiscences, are not uncommon, like Sklavokhorion, Phrangokastron, Arnaoutli, and Turkovrysi. There is an amusing though ridiculous reply to Fallmerayer, entitled Die Abstammung der Griechen und die Irrthümer und Taüschungen des Dr Ph. Fallmerayer, von J. Bar Ow. Mr Ow tries to persuade his readers that Miliosi, Kalendgi, Suli, Vrana, Varibobi, Hassani, and Spata are Greek names. In short, the only Sclavonian name he finds in Greece is Divri. 1 There are two villages of the names of Liopesi, Spata, Liosia, and Buyati. 2 Leake's Peloponnesiaca, 326. § 5. CHAP. I. their attention by the spectacle of desolate provinces and uninhabited cities, by forming colonies on a scale that excites our wonder even in this age of colonisation. We have seen that the Emperor Justinian II. transported nearly two hundred thousand Sclavonians to Asia on one occasion. His removal of the Mardaite population of Mount Lebanon was on the same extensive scale. Future emperors encouraged emigration to as great an extent. A colony of Persians was established on the banks of the Vardar (Axios) as early as the reign of Theophilus, (A.D. 829-842,) and it long continued to flourish and supply recruits for a cohort of the imperial guard, which bore the name of the Vardariots.1 Various colonies of the different Asiatic nations who penetrated into Europe from the north of the Black Sea in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, were also established in Macedonia and Thrace. In the year 1065 a colony of Uzes was settled in Macedonia; and this settlement acquired so much importance that some of its chiefs rose to the rank of senators, and filled high official situations at Constantinople.2 Anna Comnena mentions colonies. of Turks established in the neighbourhood of Achrida before the reign of her father, (A.D. 1081:3) A colony of Patzinaks was settled in the western part of Macedonia by John II. in the year 1123;4 and colonies of Romans were also established both in Macedonia and Thrace, after the empire had been depopulated by the Crusaders and Bulgarians, by John III. (Vatatzes) in the year 1243.5 All these different nations were often included under the general name of Turks; and, indeed, most of them were descended from Turkish tribes. 1 Codinus, De Officiis Aula Constantinopolitana, 66, 75, note. Tafel, De Thessalonicâ, 70. 2 Skylitzes, Ad Cal. Cedreni, 816. Zonaras, ii. 273. Anna Comnena, 195. 5 Nicephorus Gregoras, 21. |
