Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study in Survivals

by J. C. Lawson

§ 3. The survival of Hellenic Tradition.

There may however be some who, while admitting that mere lapse of time need not have extinguished ancient Hellenic ideas, will be disposed to question the likelihood, even the possibility, of their transmission on racial grounds. The belief in the evil eye and the practice of sympathetic magic were once, they may say, the common property of the whole uncivilised world; and though the inhabitants of modern Greece have inherited these old superstitions and usages, there is nothing to show from what ancestry they have received the inheritance. The population, it may be urged, has changed; the Greeks of to-day are not Hellenes; their blood has been contaminated by foreign admixture, and with this admixture may have come external, non-Hellenic traditions; has not Fallmerayer stoutly maintained that the modern inhabitants of Greece have practically no claim to the name of Hellenes, but come of a stock Slavonic in the main, though cross-bred with the offscourings of many peoples?

The historical facts from which Fallmerayer argued are not to be slighted. It is well established[37] that, from the middle of the sixth century onwards, successive hordes of Slavonic invaders swept over Greece, driving such of the native population as escaped destruction into the more mountainous or remote districts; that in the middle of the eighth century, when the numbers of the Greek population had been further reduced by the great pestilence of 746, ‘the whole country,’ to use the exact phrase of Constantine Porphyrogenitus[38], ‘became Slavonic and was occupied by foreigners’; that the Slavonic supremacy lasted at least until the end of the tenth century; that thereafter a gradual fusion of the remnants of the Greek population with their conquerors began, but proceeded so slowly that at the beginning of the thirteenth century the ‘Franks,’ as the warriors of Western Christendom were popularly called, found Slavonic tribes in Elis and Laconia quite detached from the rest of the population, acknowledging indeed the supremacy of the Byzantine government, but still employing their own language and their own laws; and finally that the amalgamation of the two races was not complete even by the middle of the fifteenth century, for the Turks at their conquest of Greece found several tribes of the Peloponnese, especially in the neighbourhood of Mount Taygetus, still speaking a Slavonic tongue.

If then, as is now generally admitted, Fallmerayer’s conclusions were somewhat exaggerated, it remains none the less an historical fact that there is a very large admixture of Slavonic blood in the veins of the present inhabitants of Greece. The truth of this is moreover enforced by the physical characteristics of the people as a whole. Travellers conversant alike with Slavs and with modern Greeks have affirmed to me their impression that there is a close physical resemblance between the two races; and while I have not the experience of Slavonic races which would permit me to judge of this resemblance for myself, it certainly offers the best explanation of my own observations with regard to the variations of physical type in different parts of the Greek world. In the islands of the Aegean and in the promontory of Maina, to which the Slavs never penetrated, the ancient Hellenic types are far commoner than in the rest of the Peloponnese or in Northern Greece. Not a little of the charm of Tenos or Myconos or Scyros lies in the fact that the grand and impassive beauty of the earlier Greek sculpture may still be seen in the living figures and faces of men and women: and if anyone would see in the flesh the burly, black-bearded type idealised in a Heracles, he need but go to the south of the Peloponnese, and among the Maniotes he will soon be satisfied: for there he will find not merely an occasional example, as of reversion to an ancestral type, but a whole tribe of swarthy, stalwart warriors, whose aspect seems to justify their claim that in proud, though poverty-stricken, isolation they have kept their native peninsula free from alien aggression, and the old Laconian blood still pure in their veins. The ordinary Greek of the mainland, on the other hand, is usually of a mongrel and unattractive appearance; and in view of the marked difference of the type in regions untouched by the Slavs, I cannot but impute his lack of beauty to his largely Slavonic ancestry.

Yet even in the centre of the Peloponnese where the Slavonic influence has probably been strongest, the pure Greek type is not wholly extinct. I remember a young man who acted as ostler and waiter and in all other capacities at a small khan on the road from Tripolitza to Sparta, who would not have been despised as a model by Praxiteles; and elsewhere too, now and again, I have seen statuesque forms and classic features, less perfect indeed than his, but yet proclaiming beyond question an Hellenic lineage; so that I should hesitate to say that in any part of Greece the population is as purely Slavonic as in Maina or many of the islands it is purely Greek.

But, as I think, the exact proportion of Slavonic and of Hellenic blood in the veins of the modern Greeks is not a matter of supreme importance. Even if their outward appearance were universally and completely Slavonic, I would still maintain that they deserve the name of Greeks. Though their lineage were wholly Slavonic, their nationality, I claim, would still be Hellenic. For the nationality of a people, like the personality of an individual, is something which eludes definition but which embraces the mental and the moral as well as the physical. A man’s personality is not to be determined by knowledge of his family and his physiognomy alone; and similarly racial descent and physical type are not the sole indices of nationality. Even if a purely Slavonic ancestry had dowered the inhabitants of Greece with a purely Slavonic appearance, yet, if their thoughts and speech and acts were, as they are, Greek, I would still venture to call them Greek in nationality. Ce n’est que la peau dont l’Ethiope ne change pas.

But the people of modern Greece do not actually present so extreme a case of acquired nationality. They are partly Greek in race: and if it should appear that they are wholly Greek in nationality, the explanation must simply be that the character, no less than the language, of their Hellenic ancestors was superior in vitality to that of the Slavs who intermarried with them, and alone has been transmitted to the modern Greek people.

What, then, is the national character at the present day?

The first feature of it which casual conversation with any Greek will soon bring into view is that narrow patriotism which was so remarkable a trait in the Greeks of old time. If he be asked what is his native land (πατρίδα), his answer will be, not Greece nor any of the larger divisions of it, but the particular town or hamlet in which he happened to be born: and if in later life he change his place of abode, though he live in his new home ten or twenty years, he will regard himself and be regarded by the native-born inhabitants as a foreigner (ξένος). Or again if a man obtain work for a short time in another part of the country, or if a girl marry an inhabitant of a village half a dozen miles from her own, the departure is mourned with some of those plaintive songs of exile in which the popular muse delights. Nor are there lacking historical cases in which this narrow love of country has produced something more than fond lamentations; the boast of the Maniotes that they have never acknowledged alien masters is in the main a true boast, and it was pure patriotism which nerved them in their long struggle with the Turks for the possession of their rugged, barren, storm-lashed home. It was patriotism too, narrow and proud, that both sustained the heroic outlaws of Souli in their defiance of Ottoman armies, and also,—because they disdained alliance with their Greek neighbours,—contributed to their final downfall.

But so tenacious and indomitable a courage is in modern, as it was in ancient, Greece the exception rather than the rule. The men of Maina and of Souli are comparable to the Spartans: but in no period of Greek history has steadfast bravery been commonly displayed. Yet, in spite of the humiliating experiences of the late Graeco-Turkish war, the Greek people should not be judged devoid of courage. But theirs is a courage which comes of impulse rather than of self-command; a courage which might prompt a charge as brilliant as that of Marathon, but could not cheerfully face the hardships of a campaign; a courage which might turn a slight success into a victory, but could not save a retreat from becoming a rout.