19. Romanism bilingual till today The Franks, as well as Europeans and Russians who followed were not able to understand how it was possible for Romans to become Hellenes and for Hellenes to become Romans with both being fused into one nation with Hellenic Civilization and with two language instead of one, as approximated in the case of Switzerland today.
It is known that Romanism had two official languages, Latin and Greek. Latin is called Romaika and Greek came to be known as Romaika[ 43 ]. The same with one iota means Latin and with two iota means Hellenic ; thus the same name signifies the two languages of Romanism.
But Romanism is still bilingual today. This is so because the Vlachic language spoken in Greece is Neo-Latin or Neo Romaïka and the Arvanitic (Albanian) language spoken in Greece is approximately 50% Latin and 25-30% Hellenic. Some years ago it was common for Romans in the Balkans to be bilingual and many times trilingual. The Romaiïk language was prevalent. The largest group of revolutionaries of 1821 were the Arvanite (Albanian) Romans of whom many did not even know Greek.
20. The Romans were Hellenized B.C.[ 44 ]
The bilinguality of the Romans appears on the stage of history in the first written documents of Roman history which witness that our Roman forefathers are in inseparable part of Hellenic Civilization long before Justinian the Great and long before Constantine the Great.
Already some 700 years before Constantine the Great moved Rome to the East, to wit already in the 4th century B.C., Plato's student Heracleides of Pontus calls Rome a "Hellenic city",.......
The first author in history to write in the Latin language was Hellene named Livius Andronikus. In the 3rd century B.C. he translated Homer in order to use him as a textbook to teach Latin and Greek to his Roman students. He also translated other works from Greek and wrote the first Roman theatrical works and poems. Thus from the very beginning the tradition was established whereby educated Romans learned Greek as the prototype of Roman letters. Thus rooted, bilinguality never ceased directing the evolution of the Hellenic Civilization of the Romans.
The first two historians of Rome, Fabius Pictor and Cincius Alimentus, were Romans who wrote their histories about 200 B.C. not in Latin but in Greek.
From about 150 B.C. all educated Romans knew the Greek language and literature well.
At about this time even the more rustic Roman elite, who as a group were at first hestitant vis-à-vis Greek, were compelled to learn Greek for commerce and for the administration of the Greek-speaking provinces.
From the first century on it became customary for Roman aristocrats to complete their education by studying in Greece
In 91 B.C. he last major war broke out between. Latins and Romans. About one year prior to this, in 92 B.C., the Romans closed the Latin schools of rhetoric and thus compelled the students in Rome to study at the Greek schools alone. In time the Latin schools reopened and the use of Latin was strengthened since the Latins faithful to Rome were used in the colonization of new Western provinces.
During this period the position of translator in the Roman Senate was abolished and the use of Greek without translation was permitted to visiting speakers, since all the Roman elite knew Greek fluently.
Almost all the emperors knew but among them Julius Caesar, Augustus Caesar, Tiberius, Nero, Vespasian, Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, and others had an exceptional knowledge of Greek.. Julius Caesar, Tiberius and Marcus Aurelius wrote Greek works.
The most prominent Roman writers who wrote also in Greek, are among others, Cicero, Germanicus and Souetonius.
Some sources report that the last words uttered by Julius Caesar while being stabbed to death were directed to Brutus in Greek, ....; "You too, my child?"[ 45 ]
21. The ordinary people of Rome also spoke Greek During the first and second centuries AD it became common for Romans in Rome to be mother-taught in the Greek language since it had become a household language.
St. Paul, himself a Roman, wrote his epistle to the Romans in Greek, a clear proof that the ordinary people of Rome spoke Greek.
The liturgy of the Church of Rome was performed in Greek till the 4th century, another clear proof that Greek was the language of the masses.
All the first Christian writers of the Western provinces and the bishops of Rome wrote in Greek.
The Greek language was so wide-spread that Juvenal, the satirist born a Latin outside Rome, was moved to write, "I cannot bear, Oh Citizens, the City Greek" (non possom ferre, Quiritos, Graecam Urbem).[ 46 ]
Greek was the prevalent language in the whole area of Rome until the middle of the fourth century when it weakened its hold because Rome was moved to the East and almost the whole City migrated. The void which was thus created was filled mostly by Latin-speaking Romans and for this reason, about fifty years later, Pope Damasus was compelled to introduce more Latin into the worship of Old Rome.
From all the above, but also from many other factors, it is clear that Old Rome was identified with the Hellenic world and civilization many centuries before Constantine the Great.
22. The same Roman since B.C. Costes Palamas would have heard with great joy from modern research into the Hellenic aspects of Old Rome that he was misled by Krumbacher's medieval European understanding of Rome's relation to Hellenism. Ephtaliotes also grasped, but not fully, the magnitude of the Hellenization of Old Rome, since the Romans had become something much more than Philhellenes as he represents them. What was said in the fourth century B.C. by Heracleides of Pontus and again in the first century AD by Juvenal is correct: that Rome is a "Greek city".
In other words the Roman is the same Roman and remained the same Roman not only since the time of Justinian, not only since the time of Constantine the Great, but at least since the time of the apostles Peter and Paul in Rome and perhaps since the time when the Roman children became students of the Greek Livius Andronicus, the first teacher of the Roman nation.
23. Never Latin, never Greek, always Roman Our national history and legislation prove that Rome as a city-state was never identified either with the Latins nor with the Latin language. It was for this reason that in 92 B.C. the Romans closed the Latin schools in order that the students study only in the Greek schools.
The Romans never had a Latin national consciousness. They were not Latins. They were and are Romans. They were not Latin-speaking, but bilingual-Latin-speaking and Greek-speaking, as the Romans are today Greek-speaking, Vlachic-speaking and Arvanitic-speaking.
Having this fact in mind we must characterize the Frankish claim, prevalent today also in Greece, that the Roman Empire was Latin and became Greek and therefore Byzantine, not only as a myth but also as a villainous fraud[ 47 ], since it was never Latin, it never became Greek, and since an already Hellenized Rome was moved to the East, and since the people of Romanism remain bilingual as they were always Besides, as we have seen, it is a delusion to think that the Roman Empire was Hellenized. The Roman Republic had already been fully Hellenized before the Roman Empire was born from it.
25. Palamas supports our real names By defending the duty of Ephtaliotes to use our true national names, Palamas does not accept Empire of Constantinople New Rome as non-Roman and thus he fully justifies Ephtaliotes.
And indeed never and nowhere in our national sources is there to be found the non-existent "Byzantine"Empire which is in actuality a Frankish forgery.[ 48 ] Our forefathers knew only that they citizens of the country named Romania, regardless of its size and regardless of where its capital was located.
25. Romania-Roumeli In the age of Constantine the Great, Romania included the whole Mediterranean area, which today covers England, where Constantine was crowned Caesar, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium, the Rhineland, Bavaria, Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, Italy, the Balkans, Turkey, the Russian shores of the Black Sea, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, and all of North Africa from Egypt to Morocco.
The Turkish rendition of our state name Romania is the name Roumeli. The historical rights of Romanism clearly appear in the use of this name by name by the Turks. Before the fall of New Rome the Turks called all the free territories of Asia Minor and Europe, which were administered from New Rome by the Emperor of the Romans, Roumeli But even till the beginning of this century the Turks used the name Roumeli for the entire European part of their Empire, in other words the Balkans During their entire history the Ottoman Turks also preserved the name Constantinople. Paradoxically, whereas the Turks kept the name Roumeli, the Neo-Greeks abolished it.
26. Alliance of Committeemen[ 49 ] and Neo-Greeks Under the leadership of Russian Panslavism the Slavs undertook a great campaign to stop the use of the name Roman among the population of this Magna Balkan Romania-Roumeli, in order to prove that the name Roumeli, which means the land of the Romans, did not correspond to the real composition of this Magna Roumeli. Especially active in this regard were the Committeemen of the new nation of Bulgarians created from Romans by the Russians.
Paradoxically, however, the enemies of Romanism cultivated in Greece a naive and stupid ally, the Neo-Greek Spirit which began prevailing in 1822 with its slavishness to Europe and Russia.
This Spirit, animated by the then prevalent Franco-European and Russian misinterpretation, preconception and disdain for Romanism and by a devotion to a European understanding of the ancient Greeks, and creating among the Romans a fanaticism of a teutonic type racism, with the idea that they are descendants only of the ancient Greeks, preached to the Romans of the province of Greece that they should no longer call themselves Hellenes and Romans, as supported by Palamas, but only Hellenes.
27. Dissolution of the Romanism of Regas Velestinli[ 50 ]
The result of this line was the splitting up of Romanism, the assimilation of the Romans outside of Greece by artificially created political, ethnic and ecclesiastical circumstances, the destruction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the Balkans and the disappearance of the Romaîk (Greek) language from the Middle East, Turkey, Southern Russia and the Balkans, since the Romans of this area, Southern Russia and the Balkans, since the Romans of this area gradually got used to the propaganda that in Greece there exists Hellenism and not Romanism, Greeks and not fellow Romans, who speak Greek and not Romaïka.
The completion if the destruction of Romanism outside of Greece came about by the establishment of the Frankish name "Byzantine" for everything Roman. The remaining Romans of the Middle East and the Balkans no longer know that those who are today incorrectly called Byzantines are the same as themselves. In other words they do not know that the non-existent Byzantines are called in Greek "Romaioi", in Latin "Romani" and in Arabic and Turkish "Roum".
Thus the Constitution of 1822 laid the foundations for the distortion of the song of the Romans of Regas of Velestino and pealed the beginning of the end of the work of Alexander the Great and of Constantine the Great, which thus entered the phase of its almost complete destruction. The Neo-Greek Spirit of the Great Powers, perhaps without its bearers in Greece knowing where it would end up, succeeded bringing down upon Romanism and its official language those death blows which Frankdom and Turkdom could never even imagine possible to accomplish, and indeed in such lightning swift time, within a mere 150 years.
28. The Neo-Greeks unpatriotic Thus it is not the "History of Romanism" of Ephtaliotes which shows lack of patriotism, but the betrayal of Romanism on the part of the Neo-Greeks.
I do not know whether one would be able to say today that the name Roman has the "derisive meaning" of "a worthless and vulgar person" and that Hellas is "under the rags of Romanism", without today's Romans beating him up.
29. Palamas foresaw Romanism victorious The fact that the people, the intellectuals, the clergy and the artists use the national names of Romanism till today with such pride and love proves not only that the Neo-Greeks do not know the real feelings of the people, but also that the attempt to wipe out Romanism has failed.
Palamas knew well that the song of Vlahavas[ 51 ], "I was born a Roman, I want to die a Roman", with which he began the present work[ 52 ], is an invincible power not only against the Turkish attempts to convert, but also against the Neo-Greeks who also have been trying to destroy Romanism, in a more treacherous way, behind the scenes by means of the official education.
Brought up in Mesolongi and therefore having the same feelings with Father Vlahavas and with Regas of Velestino and knowing that the Roman people will always preserve these feelings, Costes Palamas foresaw the final victory of Romanism, as is clear in the words with which he ends his work and with which we end this talk.
"However, a certain more pure and deeper linguistic sentiment cannot but still find in the word Romanism something poetically and musically colored, something winged, handsomely brave for us and light, which I think Hellenism does not have, in spite of all its weighty unshakable magnificence.[ 53 ]
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FOOTNOTES[ 1 ] For further details concerning this approach to European unity see my study Romanism, Romania, Roumeli, Thessaloniki (in Greek) 1975, pp. 55, 271-277. Translation of the word Graeculus used by the ancients, medieval and moder
[ 2 ] Translation of the word Graeculus used by the ancients, medieval and modern Romans (of Greece) in a pejorative sense for those who are slavish to foreigners
[ 3 ] See p22 footnote no. 31. The name Regas is a modern form of Rex
[ 4 ] Lecture delivered March 21, 1976 in the City Hall of Mesolongi on the North Eastern tip of the Gulf of Corinth commemorating the 150th anniversary of the attempted escape to the nearby mountains of the population and defenders on April 10-11, 1826 after a siege of one year brought to a crisis point by a successful blockade of the city by the Turkish navy which cut off access to the sea from which the city was receiving supplies and reinforcements. It was here that Lord Byron came and died and it was here that the family of Costes Palamas, the national poet of Romiosyne (the Greek form of Romanism) was established. In the attempted escape some 3000 were slaughtered by the Turks and only about 1400 reached the safety of the mountains. Some 2000 who remained behind blew themselves up and about 1000 were taken captive by the Turks. I have purposely used the term Romanism instead of Romiosyne 1) because they mean the same and 2) because what Europeans call Romanism is not Romanism at all, as far as the East Romans are concerned but is more accurately called Francosyne or Frankdom or Frankism, being a Germanized form of Romanism developed on the basis of feudalism and a papacy transformed by its German, Frankish, Lombard, and Norman captor after the Romans (East and West) lost it in 1009. The general historical positions of this paper are expounded in detail my book Romanism, Romania, Roumeli (in Greek), Thessaloniki 1975.
[ 5 ] See note [ 1 ]
[ 6 ] A man from Roumeli, Turkish rendition of Romania, meaning land of the Romans, used by the Turks and the Romans as the name of the Balkans till 1912 and today used unofficially for the area North of Peloponessus and for Thrace in Bulgaria and Greece.
[ 7 ] Costes Palamas, "Apanta", vol VI, pp.273-281
[ 8 ] Ibid., pp. 273-274
[ 9 ] Ibid., pp. 275-276
[ 10 ] A man from Morea in the Peloponessus. The name Morea is probably of the same origin as Morocco, both stemming from the Roman Maurus.
[ 11 ] An Albanian-speaking Roman.
[ 12 ] Revolutionary hero and leader from Mavromati, Thessaly.
[ 13 ] Revolutionary hero and leader of Arvanitic stock.
[ 14 ] Revolutionary hero and naval leader from the Island of Psara.
[ 15 ] Costes Palamas, Ibid., pp. 276-277.
[ 16 ] Ibid., p. 277.
[ 17 ] Ibid., p. 277.
[ 18 ] The theoretician for transforming a section of the Greek speaking Romans of the Southern part of the Balkans and the Western part of Turkish Anatolia into descendants of Ancient Greeks. He was Dutch and Paris-trained and translated Strabo's Geography, especially for Napoleon's use in his Nile campaign.
[ 19 ] P. CHRESTOU, The Adventures of the National Names of the Hellenes, Thessaloniki 1960, pp. 50-51. J. S. ROMANIDES, Romanism, Romania, Roumeli, Thessaloniki 1975, pp. 47, 56, 208, 209, 213, 217, 284, 331.
[ 20 ] J. S. ROMANIDES, Ibid., pp. 19-57, 128 ff., 205-249.
[ 21 ] P. CHRESTOU, Ibid., pp. 40-45,. J. S. ROMANIDES, Ibid., pp. 47 ff. and passim.
[ 22 ] By Neo-greeks we mean followers of A. Koraes. See note 15. Koraes began the campaign to convince the Greek-speaking Romans that they are pure Hellenes whose forefathers were enslaved to the Romans and "Byzantines."
[ 23 ] The Vlach are Latin-speaking Romans of the Balkans who were commonly bilingual, speaking Greek also, until the Russian and French inspired anti-"Greek" propaganda convinced the Vlach of modern day Romania that they are not one nation with the Greek-speaking Romans, now called Byzantines. The South Vlach, however, were not affected by such propaganda and are on the whole bilingual.
[ 24 ] The Phanariotes were the wealthy and educated society of Constantinople New Rome, grouped around the Ecumenical Patriarchate situated in the part of the City called Phanar, meaning lighthouse. The Ottoman Turks used these Romans in the administration of the Ottoman Empire.
[ 25 ] Humoristic writer who used historical themes and noted for his books on the Franks and Crusaders.
[ 26 ] Athens 1971, p. 15.
[ 27 ] The argument has been regularly appearing in Turkish newspapers for about two years, on since Greece pulled out of NATO. It has made its way into European and American papers and was publicly supported by an American general of NATO, meaning that it has probably found its way into the Pentagon, having come from the American State Department.
[ 28 ] Athens 1901, pp. 12 ff.
[ 29 ] Ibid., pp. 4-5.
[ 30 ] Ibid., pp. 18-19
[ 31 ] Ibid., pp. 20.
[ 32 ] C. PALAMAS, Ibid., p. 280.
[ 33 ] J. S. ROMANIDES, Romanism, Romania, Roumeli, pp. 194-200.
[ 34 ] Scholar, poet, and author who inspired pre-revolutionary Roman society in the Balkans and Asia Minor to a desire to overthrow Ottoman rule and replace it with a Hellenic-type democracy in which the Roman Orthodox Christians and Turkish and other Moslems would have equal status of citizens of a commonwealth with such things as state-supported free education. He was betrayed by Austria and executed by the Turks in 1798.
[ 35 ] Political leader of the new Hellenic State who headed the party under French patronage.
[ 36 ] J. S. ROMANIDES, Romanism, Romania, Roumeli, pp. 199-200.
[ 37 ] Political leader of the new Hellenic State who headed the party under English patronage. George Kallergis headed the Russian party.
[ 38 ] J. S. ROMANIDES, Ibid., p. 200. The final protocol referred to is that of London, January 30, 1836. In this series of protocols and other official documents the term Greek is not equivalent to Hellene, but rather Romaios (Roman) in Turkish. In Greek translations the term Greek in the protocols is usually rendered by Hellene thereby making it impossible for the Hellenes today to understand the Turkish and English positions on Cyprus and the Turkish position on the Aegean.
[ 39 ] C. PALAMAS, Ibid., pp. 278-279.
[ 40 ] ARGYRES EPHTALIOTES, History of Romanism, Athens 1901, vol. 1, pp. 37-38.
[ 41 ] C. PALAMAS, Ibid., p. 274.
[ 42 ] On this position concerning the origins of European feudalism see J. S. ROMANIDES, Romanism, Romania, Roumeli, pp. 21, 46, 55, 121-126, 135-145, 311-316.
[ 43 ] In Turkish and Arabic the Greek language was called Roman and is still called so in Turkish with survivals in Arabic.
[ 44 ] J. S. ROMANIDES, Romanism, Romania, Roumeli, pp. 39-46.
[ 45 ] DIO CASSIUS, Roman History, XLIV, 19: SUETONIUS, The Lives of the Caesars, I, LXXXII.
[ 46 ] SATIRICUM II, 60 ff. See P. Christou, Ibid., p. 20.
[ 47 ] J. S. ROMANIDES, Ibid., passim. especially, pp. 205-249.
[ 48 ] Ibid.
[ 49 ] Called Komitatzides and organized by the Russians in the middle of the 19th century in order to transform the Romans who had any kind of knowledge of any kind of Slavic into Slavs, in order that Russia may carve out pieces of the Balkans for her Panslavism.
[ 50 ] See note 31.
[ 51 ] A Roman Orthodox priest whom the Turks captured and tried to forcefully convert to Islam. Conversion meant that one ceased being Roman, having become a Turk.
[ 52 ] C. PALAMAS, Ibid., p. 273.
[ 53 ] Ibid., p. 279.
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