Page:EB1911 - Volume 12.djvu/447

ETHNOLOGY]

No trustworthy information is obtainable with regard to immigration and emigration, of which no statistics have ever been kept. Emigration, which was formerly in the main to Egypt and Rumania, is now almost exclusively to the United States of America. The principal exodus is from Arcadia, Laconia and Maina; the emigrants from these districts, estimated at about 14,000 annually, are for the most part young men approaching the age of military service. According to American statistics 12,431 Greeks arrived in the United States from Greece during the period 1869–1898 and 130,154 in 1899–1907; a considerable number, however, have returned to Greece, and those remaining in the United States at the end of 1907 were estimated at between 136,000 and 138,000; this number was considerably reduced in 1908 by remigration. Since 1896 the tendency to emigration has received a notable and somewhat alarming impulse. There is an increasing immigration into the towns from the rural districts, which are gradually becoming depopulated. Both movements are due in part to the preference of the Greeks for a town life and in part to distaste for military service, but in the main to the poverty of the peasant population, whose condition and interests have been neglected by the government.

Greece is inhabited by three races—the Greeks, the Albanians and the Vlachs. The Greeks who are by far the most numerous, have to a large extent absorbed the other races; the process of assimilation has been especially rapid since the foundation of the Greek kingdom. Like most

European nations, the modern Greeks are a mixed race. The question of their origin has been the subject of much learned controversy; their presumed descent from the Greeks of the classical epoch has proved a national asset of great value; during the period of their struggle for independence it won them the devoted zeal of the Philhellenes, it inspired the enthusiasm of Byron, Victor Hugo, and a host of minor poets, and it has furnished a pleasing illusion to generations of scholarly tourists who delight to discover in the present inhabitants of the country the mental and physical characteristics with which they have been familiarized by the literature and art of antiquity. This amiable tendency is encouraged by the modern Greeks, who possess an implicit faith in their illustrious ancestry. The discussion of the question entered a very acrimonious stage with the appearance in 1830 of Fallmerayer’s History of the Morea during the Middle Ages. Fallmerayer maintained that after the great Slavonic immigration at the close of the 8th century the original population of northern Greece and the Morea, which had already been much reduced during the Roman period, was practically supplanted by the Slavonic element and that the Greeks of modern times are in fact Byzantinized Slavs. This theory was subjected to exhaustive criticism by Ross, Hopf, Finlay and other scholars, and although many of Fallmerayer’s conclusions remain unshaken, the view is now generally held that the base of the population both in the mainland and the Morea is Hellenic, not Slavonic. During the 5th and 6th centuries Greece had been subjected to Slavonic incursions which resulted in no permanent settlements. After the great plague of 746–747, however, large tracts of depopulated country were colonized by Slavonic immigrants; the towns remained in the hands of the Greeks, many of whom emigrated to Constantinople. In the Morea the Slavs established themselves principally in Arcadia and the region of Taygetus, extending their settlements into Achaia, Elis, Laconia and the promontory of Taenaron; on the mainland they occupied portions of Acarnania, Aetolia, Doris and Phocis. Slavonic place-names occurring in all these districts confirm the evidence of history with regard to this immigration. The Slavs, who were not a maritime race, did not colonize the Aegean Islands, but a few Slavonic place-names in Crete seem to indicate that some of the invaders reached that island. The Slavonic settlements in the Morea proved more permanent than those in northern Greece, which were attacked by the armies of the Byzantine emperors. But even in the Morea the Greeks, or “Romans” as they called themselves ( ), who had been left undisturbed on the eastern side of the peninsula, eventually absorbed the alien element, which disappeared after the 15th century. In addition to the place-names the only remaining traces of the Slav immigration are the Slavonic type of features, which occasionally recurs, especially among the Arcadian peasants, and a few customs and traditions. Even when allowance is made for the remarkable power of assimilation which the Greeks possessed in virtue of their superior civilization, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that the Hellenic element must always have been the most numerous in order to effect so complete an absorption. This element has apparently undergone no essential change since the epoch of Roman domination. The destructive invasions of the Goths in 267 and 395 introduced no new ethnic feature; the various races which during the middle ages obtained partial or complete mastery in Greece—the Franks, the Venetians, the Turks—contributed no appreciable ingredient to the mass of the population. The modern Greeks may therefore be regarded as in the main the descendants of the population which inhabited Greece in the earlier centuries of Byzantine rule. Owing to the operation of various causes, historical, social and economic, that population was composed of many heterogeneous elements and represented in a very limited degree the race which repulsed the Persians and built the Parthenon. The internecine conflicts of the Greek communities, wars with foreign powers and the deadly struggles of factions in the various cities, had to a large extent obliterated the old race of free citizens by the beginning of the Roman period. The extermination of the Plataeans by the Spartans and of the Melians by the Athenians during the Peloponnesian war, the proscription of Athenian citizens after the war, the massacre of the Corcyraean oligarchs by the democratic party, the slaughter of the Thebans by Alexander and of the Corinthians by Mummius, are among the more familiar instances of the catastrophes which overtook the civic element in the Greek cities; the void can only have been filled from the ranks of the metics or resident aliens and of the descendants of the far more numerous slave population. Of the latter a portion was of Hellenic origin; when a city was taken the males of military age were frequently put to the sword, but the women and children were sold as slaves; in Laconia and Thessaly there was a serf population of indigenous descent. In the classical period four-fifths of the population of Attica were slaves and of the remainder half were metics. In the Roman period the number of slaves enormously increased, the supply being maintained from the regions on the borders of the empire; the same influences which in Italy extinguished the small landed proprietors and created the latifundia prevailed also in Greece. The purely Hellenic population, now greatly diminished, congregated in the towns; the large estates which replaced the small freeholds were cultivated by slaves and managed or farmed by slaves or freedmen, and wide tracts of country were wholly depopulated. How greatly the free citizen element had diminished by the close of the 1st century may be judged from the estimate of Plutarch that all Greece could not furnish more than 3000 hoplites. The composite population which replaced the ancient Hellenic stock became completely Hellenized. According to craniologists the modern Greeks are brachycephalous while the ancient race is stated to have been dolichocephalous, but it seems doubtful whether any such generalization with regard to the ancients can be conclusively established. The Aegean islanders are more brachycephalous than the inhabitants of the mainland, though apparently of purer Greek descent. No general conception of the facial type of the ancient race can be derived from the highly-idealized statues of deities, heroes and athletes; so far as can be judged from portrait statues it was very varied. Among the modern Greeks the same variety of features prevails; the face is usually oval, the nose generally