R. G. Latham

WALLACHIA AND MOLDAVIA.—RUMANYOS.—PHYSICAL APPEARANCE.—DESCENT FROM THE DACI.—SARMATIAN ORIGIN.—SERVIA.—MONTENEGRO.

Wallachia and Moldavia.—The Wallachians and Moldavians are in the same relations to the Romans and ancient Daci as the French are to the Romans and Kelts, or the Spaniards to the Romans and Iberians. Like the degenerate Greeks of the Byzantine empire, they call themselves Roman; and their language, like the Rumonsch of the Grisons and the Romaic of modern Hellas, is Romane.

As the two principalities represent only a portion of the ancient Dacia, the ethnological and political divisions differ; for, though all Wallachians and all Moldavians are Rumanyos the whole of the Rumanyos are not Wallachian and Moldavian. They are also indigenous to Transylvania and Bukhovinia. In Bulgaria, Thrace, and Macedonia, there are, probably, intruders. Light made, with dark skins, black eyes, and prominent features, they stand in strong contrast to both the Russians and the Slovaks, with which they are in geographical contact. Nor is it safe to refer this to Roman blood, since, according to Mr. Paget, the Dacians of Trajan’s column have similar features—at least as far as the profile goes, and as far as the description of a Transylvanian Rumanyo applies to those of Wallachia and Moldavia.

Of all the districts on the Danube, Wallachia and Moldavia have been the least disturbed during the last sixteen centuries. This, though it is saying but little for a country in the most afflicted part of Europe, is the inference from the continued existence of their language. Displaced in all the other Danubian provinces it is still the native tongue to upwards of 200,000 protected and half independent Rumanyi.

In detail, the ancient inhabitants of Wallachia were the Potulatensii, the Sensii, the Salrensii, the Kiageisi, and the Piephagi of Strabo.

In Moldavia, there had been a displacement as early as the time of Herodotus.

The Skoloti of Russia reached the Carpathians, inasmuch as they were conterminous with the Agathyrsi, and the Agathyrsi were on the Maros, i.e., in Transylvania.

Whether the Skoloti extended thus far westward, when Trajan conquered Decebalus is uncertain. I think that during the interval between the time of Herodotus and the Dacian war, the Skoloti had either retired or become amalgamated; so that the Dacian population lay in one large uniform mass from the Vallum Romanum in Hungary to the Solitude of the GetÆ in Bessarabia. The reasons for this are drawn from the language.

1. This is uniform throughout, and uniformity of speech in the case of exotic languages, is prim facie evidence of the uniformity in both the tongue which is introduced and the original tongue of the country. For identical fruits we must have like stocks as well as like grafts. The Roman in a Keltic country becomes French; in an Iberic, Spanish.

2. The terminations -ensii and -dava are common to the whole Dacian area—Predan-ensii, Rhatac-ensii, Alboc-ensii, Burid-ensii, Potulat-ensii, Satr-ensii, S-ensii, Cot-ensii, Cauco-ensii—Comi-dava, Perobori-dava, Rhami-dava, Neter-dava, Burri-dava, Argi-dava, &c.

Of the uniformity of language no country, of which the early history is equally obscure, shows stronger proofs than ancient Dacia.

The reasons for believing this to have been Sarmatian will be given in the sequel.

Tolerably pure, for a Danubian population, the Rumanyos of Wallachia are Romano-Slavonic. In Moldavia there is a trace of Turk (Skolotic) blood.

Servia.—Our divisions are political; so Servia, as an independent principality, must be dealt with by itself; and as, from their complexity, the Austrian and Ottoman empires are reserved for the last, it will be separated from the areas with which it is most immediately connected—Southern Hungary and Bosnia.

Bounded by the rivers Drin and Timoc, the present principality coincides nearly, though not quite, with the Roman Province of Moesia Superior.

The valley of the Margus is the famous Plain of the Triballi (???a?????? p?d???; the mountains, those of the Macedonian, Illyrian, and Bulgarian frontiers.

There is the special evidence of Strabo that the Triballi and Moesi were Thracians, and that the Thracians and Dacians spoke the same language. On the other hand, we learn from the same writer, that immediately to the west of the Triballi, the Thracian type ended and the Illyrian began. Without at present asking what this class may be, it is important to know that three such large groups are reducible to any single class at all. Neither is internal evidence wholly wanting for Upper Moesia, the only portion of the Lower Danube now under notice. There is but a short list of geographical names: it contains, however, a Thermi-dava and a Pic-ensii.

We know almost as much of the wars of the Macedonians against the Triballi, as of those of the Romans against the Moesi. Philip and Alexander each imperfectly reduced them. The reign of Augustus is signalized by the Dalmatian and Pannonian triumphs. Upper Moesia was reduced at the same time.

Montenegro.—In the small Republic of Montenegro, of which the southern side is bounded by Albania, the population is Slavonic, differing from that of Bosnia and Hertzegovna only in being independent of the Porte, and Christian instead of Mahometan. The impracticable character of the country, and the martial spirit of its occupants, have preserved this single spot free from Turkish conquest. How far the blood is pure is doubtful: since the influence of the Roman conquest of Dalmatia, as well as that of the Greek settlements about Epidaurus is undetermined, neither is there any clear line of demarcation between the earliest ancestors of the Skipetar and the early ancestors of Slavonians in regard to their respective frontiers, north and south. It is probable, indeed, that the very earliest occupants of the Montenegro (Czernogora, or, Black Mountain) may have belonged to the former population; at present, however, the antipathy between the two nations is extreme; and in no part of the whole Slavonic area are the Slavonic characteristics more marked than in Montenegro.