436 AI^NUAL REPOET SMITHSONIAlSr INSTITUTION, 1915. 



as nuclei of original settlements. These facts are responsible for the 

 survival of the Teutonic groups in the midst of Rumanians and 

 Hungarians. To-day the so-called Saxon area does not constitute a 

 single group, but consists of separate agglomerations clustered in the 

 vicinity of the passes and defiles which their ancestors were called 

 upon to defend. The upper valley of the Oltu and its mountain 

 affluents in the rectangle enclosed between the towns of Hermann- 

 stadt, Fogaras, Mediasch, and Schassburg contain at present the bulk 

 of this Austrian colony of German ancestry. 



12. THE AREA OF RUMANIAN SPEECH. 



The Germans and Hungarians who founded settlements on the 

 Transylvanian plateau were unable to impose their language on the 

 inhabitants of the mountainous region. Rumanian, representing the 

 easternmost expansion of Latin speech, is in use to-day on the great- 

 est portion of this highland,^ as well as in the fertile valleys and 

 plains surrounding it between the Dniester and the Danube. A por- 

 tion of Hungary and the Russian Province of Bessarabia is therefore 

 included in this linguistic unit outside of the Kingdom of Rumania.^ 

 Beyond the limits of this continuous area the only important colony 

 of Rumanians is found around Metsovo in Greece, where, in the re- 

 cesses of the Pindus Mountains and surrounded by the Greeks, 

 Albanians, and Bulgarians of the plains, almost half a million 

 Rumanians ^ have managed to maintain the predominant Latin char- 

 acter of their language.* 



The survival of Latin in an eastern land and in a form which 

 presents closer analogies with the language of the Roman period than 

 with any of its western derivatives had its origin in the Roman con- 

 quest of Dacia in the first decade of the second century. Occupation 

 of the land by important bodies of legionaries and a host of civil 

 administrators, their intermarriage with the natives, the advantages 

 conferred by Roman citizenship, all combined to force Latin into 

 current use. When in 275 Aurelian recalled Roman troops from the 

 eastern Provinces of the Empire, the vernacular of Rome had taken 

 such solid root in Dacia that its extirpation had become an im- 

 possibility. 



1 N. Mazere, Harta etnografica a Transilvanei 1 : 340,000, Inst. Geogr. al Armatei, 

 lasi, 1909. 



2 G. Weigand, Llnguistischer Atlas des Dacorumanischen Sprachgebietes, Barth, Leipzig, 

 1909. 



3 Their number is given at 750,000 by G. Murgoce and P. Papahagi in " Turcia cu privire 

 speciala asupra Macedoniei," Bucarest, 1911. Greek computations, in contrast, rarely 

 exceed the 100.000 figure. 



* The total number of Rumanians in the Balkan peninsula is estimated at about 10,- 

 300,000 individuals, distributed as follows : Rumania, 5,489,296, or 92.5 per cent of the 

 population ; Russia, 1,121,669, of which 920.919 are in Bessarabia ; Austria-Hungary, 

 3,224,147, of which 2,949,032 are in Transylvania ; Greece, 373,520 ; Serbia, 90,000. 



