From: alexmoeller@...
Message: 15834
Date: 2002-10-01
----- Original Message -----
From: "george knysh" <gknysh@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, October 01, 2002 5:28 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] for ignorants
> ******GK: That sounds about right. The massive
> north-south movements occurred in the 6th and 7th
> centuries.
[Moeller]
right . This is what we know about.
>There are no indications they continued
> thereafter.
[Moeller]
this is my oppinion too from the bit history I know.
> There may have been fairly undetectable
> smaller migrations to and fro. Since you're interested
> in the Southern Slavs: it is possible that there was a
> bit of a reflux northward from Greece after the
> beginning of the Byzantine reconquista in the 8th c.
[Moeller]
It souns plausible and normal to me.
> We know that the Slavs swamped Greece in the period
> ca. 600-650 (Vasmer and others compute a couple of
> thousand Slavic toponyms in Greece, more in the west
> than in the east). I suppose many "clans" preferred to
> move rather than to be enslaved or christianized as
> Byzantine pressure grew. But we are singularly ill
> informed about these processes. By the time of
> Constantine Porphyrogenitus very little remained of
> the Slavic multitudes of the 7th c. Those who had not
> been sold into slavery via the marts of Thessaloniki
> or Corinth became hellenized or left. Only a couple of
> hillbilly tribes seemed to have remained in the
> Pelopponesus.****
[Moeller]
Goerge, you have the Nestor's cronicle there somewhere on your
desk. I just try to remember well now about a statement of
Nestor about Panonia and slavs.
It seems there was not a continuum of slavic pover but there
was some big centres where the slavs put them together
becoming strong and a big power. But it seems in Panonia this
was not the case. So far I remeber Nestor says about the
Hungarians which are brought by ruthenian people to a "land
which once belonged to the slovenians (properly etonym of the
old slavs in their language) which were overruned by
valachs.Then the hungarian defeated the valahian and scattered
them up, settling themselves there and intermingling with the
slavs which remained ."
If I am not wrong from what I remember we have to see some big
points here:
- if the slavs were very strong in south, precisely in Upper
Moesia and Illiricum, in Panonia they werent, otherways we
cannot see how the valachians could overrun them.That shuld be
the first point.
- the second point is that the byzantine asked for magyars to
come to help in the war against bulgarians. The Tzar Samuil
(was this Samuil or Simeon?, am not pretty sure here, just
recall it from memory)was between two fronts ( byzantine and
hungarian) and he was not able to defeat himself anymore. At
this time he did a diplomaticaly master's piece, asking for
help from petchenges, and the petchenges were the people who
annoyed the hungarians letting the bulgarians take a break.
- from this point the magyars run to Kiev and they are later
brought by ruthenian to Panonia where they scatter the
valahian who are there .It seems to me the valahians from
Panonia afraid by the hungarian power, runed out of panonia in
every directions ( Moravia, Poonia, maybe Transylvania ,etc,
many of them comming into Byzantine Empire too.
Historicaly , it fits like a glow.
That was with Nestor but there are some more points of
reference as fallow:
-the appearance of the term "valah" in the bizantine sources
occurs within this time too (If we make abstraction from these
"blackorechynos" which we have discused before in the thread
with "Kimonastu".)
- the help which later the Assenian got from north of Donau
from "valahians and cummans"
- at last, from the linguistic point of view there are
supposed 2 periods of time for breaking off of the
proto-rumanians block. And they are once supposed to be in the
VII century and once in the X century.For the VII century is
no reliable arguments but for X century yes. The aromanians do
not have hungary loanwords in their languages and their
languages shows "north-west romanian" fonetic similarities( is
a long explanation here, I prefer to skip it now).
All these make me think that indeed the valachians where all
outside of the byzantine empire, north of Donau and they could
be recepted by byzantins as they came in the byzantin empire
under the preasure of hungarians.
The fact they were "pastores " ( ok, one will say that
"pastores romanus", but his is an another cup of tee) speak
for them to get the name "sheperds" ( vlasi, vlochi,
volochi" )from th slavs and indeed, this name was retained by
greeks too .
It seems to me strong enough this "understanding" of the
facts. What does speak againt my way to see the things?