Page:Nicolae Iorga - My American lectures.djvu/202

 additions to the aboriginal stock effected by the slow, unnoticed penetration of the Roman invaders.

It is certain, however, that the element introduced by the Romans, the Latin influence, was a large one. Trajan was not the first to introduce this element among the villages of the conquered Dacians. Before his organised measures, and on a far larger scale, a popular immigration of shepherds and ploughmen had taken place, which transformed the etnographical character of the Balkan and Danubian countries. The immigrants re-cast the original inhabitants in a new mould. These too, became Romans; they acquired the habit, and the right to be called by that glorious name. The colonists of the victorious Emperor found the ground already prepared by their explorers and pioneers. The Roumanians, who, despite their partition into two principalities (Moldavia and Wallachia), bear the common name of Roman, constitute the most striking example in history of the Romanisation of a rural population through ethnical infiltration ignored by the official world.

In the course of time, the Empire was divided into an Eastern and a Western half — although the theoretical conception of unity did not, and could not, change. At this epoch, under the reigns of Constantine and Theodosius, the greater part of the Balkan peninsular could be considered as definitely Romanized. In some cases the funeral inscription employ Greek letters for Latin words ; the poor had no occasion to commemorate on their gravestones nationality to which they belonged. Only the sea-coasts were populated by Greeks. The flood of Slavonic invasion brought important changes. Out of this Roman unity of the East, the Roumanians alone survived. They are the only representatives to-day of the whole Eastern Latin world.