Page:Nicolae Iorga - My American lectures.djvu/171

 but never in the Roumanian capitals, where the cross remained unviolated and soaring above the pinnacle of the political structure.

But many writers of history — not to confound these with historians — continue to speak of the Christians of the Balkans, Roumanians and others who, at almost the same time, broke their fetters and became free, as if Roumanian freedom had been interrupted for a single hour during the five hundred years of vassalage under the Rome of the Sultans.

From the geographical point of view, Bulgaria is today the only Balkan state, Yugoslavia extending to the borders of Italy, Greece being Mediterranean and European Turkey the almost negligible extension of an Asiatic State.

From an ethnographical point of view, the differences are not so clearly visible. Strong similarities between the races are at first apparent. The same Thracian ancestors are present on both Danubian shores; the Illyrians only appertaining to the Adriatic side of the Peninsula. The same Greek influence in the vicinity of the Pontus, the same process of popular romanization, and the same occupation by the Roman Empire. Slavonic invasions too were common to all.

But, to the north of the great river, the Scythians did indeed exercise an unseen and enduring influence, especially in Moldavia, upon the Thracians; the Getae and the Dacians settlements of Western Transylvania, and in the highlands. Notwithstanding the tardy character of the Roman colonization, first of shepherds and agriculturists, then of colonists of Trajan, this new Latin nation was not so much exposed to the domination of the barbarians, who went further afield in their search of richer treasures and securer strongholds, quickly abandoning, for a richer prey,