History Of Macedonia – 1818 – The Greekness of Macedonians testified by Dionysios Pyrros in his “Methodic Geography..”

1818 – The Greekness of Macedonians testified by Dionysios Pyrros in his “Methodic Geography..”

in documents, Modern Historians, Modern Macedonian History / by D-Mak / on September 6, 2011 at 1:30 am /

Dionysios Pyrros the Thessalian, 1818 and “Methodic Geography of the whole universe,on behalf of his friends and pupils and the Hellenic genus“

“She (Hellas) is today subjugated to the despotic rule of the Turk emperor,the so-called Sultan,who descends from the interior of great Asia,which was once utterly defeated by the Macedonian Alexander the Great”
“Hellas was called in older times only Thessaly.Therefore,divine Homer calls Hellenes only the Thessalians and especially the Pthiotians,and Herodotus too calls Hellenes them and the Pelasgians.After that,various other regions were called Hellas too,namely Attica, Peloponnesus, Epirus, Macedonia, Thrace, Ionia and the whole Aegean e.t.c.”

“As far as the sciences,the arts and Philosophy were thriving in Hellas,the bright Hellenes shined with their virtues among all other nations.As far as there were living those great minds of the world, Alexander the Great, Pyrrhus, Leonidas, Themistocles, Pericles, Miltiades, Aristotle, divine Socrates, the Hellenes were triumphant against all other nations of the world. But since the sciences and the Muses are absent from Hellas,all lights of philosophy and virtue have been totally extinguished,all good things in Greece have been immediately vanished.Unhappy Hellas!What you were once,what you are now and how you’ll end up!”

“The Hellenes,says Mr.Gasparis,the descendands of those ancient Hellenes who due to their noble ethics,a privilege which is a result of the sciences and the arts,and their extreme activity,bravery,patriotism,became the first of all races,which became the teachers of all other European races.These present day Hellenes are identical with their great ancestors in regards to the beliefs,that is they are hospitable too,patriotic,studious,devoted to God and confident in their faith,which is peculiar only to proper Hellenes….All Hellenes,especially the Macedonians and the Thessalians are hospitable…”

We can read a lot of names of Macedonian kings in this list above of “those of the Hellenes that reigned gloriously”.

This is a very good account of the languages that were spoken in Greece of early 19th century. We have seen Fyrom’s propagandists claiming that when Greece was liberated the majority of the inhabitants didn’t speak Greek,however this first hand testimony set things straight:Of course there were spoken non-Greek languages such as Vlach and Albanian,however the languages that were dominant were Greek and Turkish (the later as the language of the conquerors and rulers of course).And, btw, what was that “Bulgarian language”, where and by whom was it spoken?

“Dialects.Because Hellas is inhabited by so many nations,consequently there are spoken various languages,that is there is spoken modern Hellenic, Turkish, Bulgarian, Graeco-Latin (he means most probably the Vlach language) ,Albanian, corrupted Hebrew and Armenian. Turkish and modern Greek are dominant out of all these languages.The Turkish language is composed of Arabian,Persian and Tartaric.The language of the Christian Hellenes is the same with that of their ancestors in both phonology and the meaning,only a little bit corrupted and with very few innovations.The most correct Neohellenic dialect is today spoken in Constantinople, Jannina and Thessaly. In Attica,where in ancient time the laws of the dialects were regulated and corrected,today is mostly Albanian spoken.However,the Athenians speak like the rest of the Hellenes,except that there is very commonly used the Present Perfect and the Past Perfect ending –ka1 and the word tse2.”

1 the –ka endings of Present Perfect is a quite archaic feature,like the ancient Present Perfect,f.i. εὕρηκα,λέλυκα,δέδωκα,and so on.
2 the word “tse” is most probably a variant of “και ”, since we know from other sources that tsitakism was one of the features of 19th century Athenian dialect,like in Cretan and some other dialects of southern Aegean islands.

by KapetanDoukas