Page:The nomads of the Balkans, an account of life and customs among the Vlachs of Northern Pindus (1914).djvu/31

22 in the valley. Immediately to the east a flat, open common by the river was the actual scene of the fair, thronged with people and dotted with booths. Being late arrivals—the fair had begun that morning—it took us some time to find a vacant space to pitch our tents. This accomplished we spent the last remains of daylight in wandering through the encampment, looking at the busy crowd on the far side of the river and enquiring after the prospects, sights and shows of the morrow.

Ghrevena (Plate IV 1), which the Vlachs call Grebene and the Turks Gerebina, is a long straggling town and of considerable strategic importance as it commands both the roads leading from Northwestern Thessaly into the upper basin of the Haliakmon, and those leading from Yannina and Konitsa towards Salonica through Southwestern Macedonia. For this reason at the beginning of the war of 1897 Greek irregular bands under Davelis with some Garibaldians under Cipriani made a fruitless raid over the frontier with the object of seizing Ghrevena and so cutting the Turkish communications between Epirus and Macedonia. The town is the seat of a Greek orthodox bishop and what we know of its history is principally due to its bishops. Pouqueville says that it is included by Constantine Porphyrogenitus in his list of the towns of Macedonia as, but the Bonn text reads. The bishopric was one of those subject to the independent Patriarchate of Achrida (the modern Okhridha). It was not one of the original dioceses mentioned in the golden bull of Basil II when he confirmed the privileges of this Bulgarian Patriarchate, but it occurs in two lists of the bishoprics in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Dositheos relates that Leo Archbishop of Achrida, one Saturday ordained a certain priest, and the next day, Sunday, consecrated him bishop of Ghrevena. Le Quien thought this referred to Leo II, who lived early in the twelfth century, but it is just possible that it might refer to Leo I who flourished in the eleventh century. Demetrios Chomatianos, Archbishop of Achrida in the first half of the thirteenth century, mentions in one of his letters the death