About the year 1830 the theory was started by Fallmerayer, a Tyrolese writer, that the modern Greeks were the descendants of Slavonic invaders, with scarcely a drop of Greek blood in their veins. Fallmerayer was believed by some good scholars to have proved that the old Greek race had utterly perished. More recent inquiries have discredited both Fallmerayer and his authorities, and tend to establish the conclusion that, except in certain limited districts, the Greeks left were always numerous enough to absorb the foreign incomers. (Hopf, Griechenland; in Etsch and Gruber's Encyklopädie, vol. 85, p. 100.) The Albanian population of Greece in 1820 is reckoned at about one-sixth.
Maurer, Das Griechische Volk, i. 64.
The Greek songs illustrate the conversion of the Armatole into the Klepht in the age preceding the Greek revolution. Thus, in the fine ballad called "The Tomb of Demos," which Goethe has translated, the dying man says-
[Transcriber's Note: The following has been transliterated from the Greek]
Kai pherte ton pneumatikon na m' exomologaisae
na tun eipo ta krimata osa cho kamomena
trianta chroni armatolos, c'eicosi echo klephtaes.
"Bring the priest that he may shrive me; that I may tell him the sins that I have committed, thirty years an Armatole and twenty years a Klepht." -Fauriel, Chants Populaires, i. 56.
Finlay, Greece under Ottoman Domination, p. 284.
Kanitz, Donau-Bulgarien, i. 123.
Literally, Interpreter; the old theory of the Turks being that in their dealings with foreign nations they had only to receive petitions, which required to be translated into Turkish.
Zallonos, (Transliterated Greek) Pragmateia peri ton phanarioton, p. 71. Kagalnitchau, La Walachie, i. 371.
A French translation of the Autobiography of Koraes, along with his portrait, will be found in the Lettres Inédites de Coray, Paris, 1877. The vehicle of expression usually chosen by Koraes for addressing his countrymen was the Preface (written in modern Greek) to the edition of an ancient author. The second half of the Preface to the Politics of Aristotle, 1822, is a good specimen of his political spirit and manner. It was separately edited by the Swiss scholar, Orelh, with a translation, for the benefit of the German Philhellenes. Among the principal linguistic prefaces are those to Heliodorus 1804, and the Prodromos, or introduction, to the series of editions called Bibliotheca Græca, begun in 1805, and published at the expense of the brothers Zosimas of Odessa Most of the editions published by Koraes bear on their title page a statement of the patriotic purpose of the work, and indicate the persons who bore the expense. The edition of the Ethics, published immediately after the massacre of Chios, bears the affecting words 'At the expense of those who have so cruelly suffered in Chios.' The costly form of these editions, some of which contain fine engravings, seems somewhat inappropriate for works intended for national instruction. Koraes, however, was not in a hurry. He thought, at least towards the close of his life, that the Greeks ought to have gone through thirty years more of commercial and intellectual development before they drew the sword. They would in that case, he believed, have crushed Turkey by themselves and have prevented the Greek kingdom from becoming the sport of European diplomacy. Much miscellaneous information on Greek affairs before 1820 (rather from the Phanariot point of view) will be found, combined with literary history in the Cours de Littérature Grecque of Rhizos Neroulos, 1827. The more recent treatise of R Rhankabes on the same subject (also in French, Paris, 1877) exhibits what appears to be characteristic of the modern Greeks, the inability to distinguish between mere passable performances and really great work.
Zinkeisen, Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches, v. 959.
Koraes, Mémoire sur l'état actual de la civilization de la Grèce: republished in the Lettres Inédites, p. 464. This memoir, read by Koraes to a learned society in Paris, in January, 1803, is one of the most luminous and interesting historical sketches ever penned.