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A collection of excerpts gathered from this forum, largely brought to our attention by Daskalot and TrueMacedonian, who have buried many a myth of the modern Greek on countless occasions.
Origins of the inhabitants of Modern Greece:
Albanian origins of the liberators and leaders of Modern Greece:
Reflections on the East Roman Empire:
Philhellenism; its aim and impact:
The foundations of Neo-Hellenic Culture:
Need I say more.
Origins of the inhabitants of Modern Greece:
But the revival was only for a time, and, in spite of Greek struggles, at the end of the tenth century Sclavonians formed almost the entire population of Macedonia, Epirus, continental Greece and the Peloponnese…….It was during these centuries, that what remained, if indeed anything remained, of even degenerate Hellenic blood absorbed or was absorbed into that of the Slav……Indeed, the Albanians appear to have done for Greece in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries something like that which that Sclavonians had done in the sixth and seventh….They number about 200,000 souls; and within a greater part of the districts occupied by Albanians at the present day the Greeks have been as completely expelled as the Celtic race in England by the Saxon. Unlike the Greek, for him the bonds of nationality are stronger than those of religion…..to assert that a Greek Christian is a Hellene is as reasonable as to call all Roman Catholics Italians; and to claim a Slav or Albanian as a Hellene because he speaks Greek, is much the same as calling an educated Russian French, or an Irishman English, because they prefer French or English to their own less developed languages. (A Monthly Review – Greece, Spoilt Child of Europe)
Albanian origins of the liberators and leaders of Modern Greece:
The chief authority was conceded to the Albanian shipowners; George Konduriottes of Hydra was elected president of Greece, and Botasses of Spetzas vice-president…..The Greeks are the most prejudived of all Europeans when there is a question of the purity of the Hellenic race, and no people regards education with more favour; yet with all this nationality and pedantry they intrusted their public affairs, in a period of great difficulty, to two men who could not address them in the Greek language. (George Finlay, History of the Greek Revolution)
The castle of Karytena, even in its ruins, has a proud feudal aspect, and was again, early in our century, the stronghold of one of the most famous and notorious of the revolutionary chiefs – Colocotroni. He ranks as a hero in that war……..He is described as of the Albanian type. (J. P Mahhafy, Greek Pictures)
……the liberators of Greece…..Nine or ten of them performed the Albanian national dance, to the sound of a bad fiddle and a little jingling guitar played with a quill, for the amusement of her Majesty, who did not seem enchanted with this exhibition….these men, who were exposing themselves in this absurd manner, were the far-famed Colocotroni, Nikitas, surnamed the Turkophagos, or Turk-eater, Makryani, Vasso of Montenegro, Kota Botzaris,, and others equally celebrated…….this was merely the dance of the Albanians, a totally distinct race of men from the Greeks. (Blackwood’s Magazine, XLIII)
Athens, twenty-five years ago, was only an Albanian village. The Albanians formed, and still form, almost the whole of the population of Attica; and within three leagues of the capital, villages are to be found where Greek is hardly understood. Athens has been rapidly peopled with men of all kinds and nations..........Albanians form about one-fourth of the population of the country; they are in majority in Attica, in Arcadia, and in Hydra..…..(Edmond About, Greece and the Greeks of the Present Day)
Reflections on the East Roman Empire:
Until 1821, Greeks knew that there had once been a Christian empire with its capital at Constantinople, but they did not think of it as a Greek empire, and they certainly didn’t call it the Byzantine Empire. (Katerina Zacharia, Hellenisms)
Philhellenism; its aim and impact:
Most Greeks did not share Byron’s views and would not have understood his allusions. They did not think of themselves as Greeks at all – and certainly not as Hellenes…but as Christians or Orthodox. (N. Hammond, Greece – Old and New)
…Philhellehism was a sort of social disease, caused by hallucinations and the by the illusion of finding in the present mongrel inhabitants of Morea and Attica the descendants of the ancient Hellenes. Subsequent contact of Greece with Europe has already considerably modified these ideas, as the modern Greek begins to pass for what he is: a semi-barbarian, a not yet cultivated citizen, and already a spoilt savage……Our classical recollections will have been proved a fallacy…only because they inhiabit a soil where the Parthenon was built. (Baron Augustus Jochmus, The Syrian War and the Decline of the Ottoman Empire)
It is certainly unlikely that before the infiltration of European Philhellenism the inhabitants of Kastri knew (or cared much, for that matter) that they were indeed the inhabitants of Delphi. (Stathis Gourgouris, Dream Nation)
The foundations of Neo-Hellenic Culture:
It is significant that many of the nineteenth-century alterations to the Acropolis were carried out at the instigation of Germans, whose contribution to the modern Greeks’ sense of their classical heritage was crucial………….. an attempt was made to Hellenize the Greek collective consciousness, and through katharevousa, to “purify” the modern Greek language. (Katerina Zacharia, Hellenisms)
University of Athens - This, was the first institution of higher learning in the independent kingdom of the Hellenes, was founded by King Otto on the German model. (John Koliopoulos, Greece – The Modern Sequel)
The new sate did not attach itself to the immediate past, as it had been preserved in the popular memory, but rather adapted itself to the convenient image of the ancient Greek past already created in the West. Otto’s father, King Ludwig I of Bavaria, was obsessed with ancient Greece and brought up his children with the aspiration that one day one of them would reign over this glorious land. (Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeast Europe, Texts and Commentaries)
In 1834 it was decided to create Athens the capital of the independent Kingdom of Greece. A German architect, Schaubert, was employed to plan the wide streets, the squares, the boulevards: and so Athens, which in 1834 was a village of five thousand inhabitants, has become in 1936 a city of over four hundred and fifty thousand people. (H. V. Morton, In the steps of St. Paul)
Ancient Sparta has entirely perished….New Sparta is a creation of King Otho, who has formed the useless project of resuscitating all the great names of Greece. It is a governmental and commercial town, composed entirely of shops, barracks, and public offices. (Edmond About, Greece and the Greeks of the Present Day)
Need I say more.
nice breakdown SoM. And welcome back Makedonche. Hope you post back more frequently.
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