TURKISH wome;n at salonica : turke:y 



Photo by Felix J. Koch 



of the Romans, who were the first civil- 

 ized people with whom they had come in 

 contact, and Greek influence survived on 

 the coast alone. During the early days 

 of the eastern Roman Empire, with its 

 mixed Grseco-Latin civilization, the two 

 languages continued to coexist, as well 

 as some of the local dialects. 



THE BUIvGARIANS ARE) SLAVICIZED FINNS 



The first barbarians to settle perma- 

 nently in the Balkan Peninsula coming 

 from the northeast were the Bulgars, a 

 Finnish people whose home was the mid- 

 dle Volga districts ; they now occupied 

 the southern banks of the Danube. The 

 Slavs are said to have begun to pour into 

 this region as early as the third century, 

 but they were not established until after 

 the Bulgarian invasion. 



Their position in the east of Europe 

 bears certain analogies to that of the 

 Teutons in the west. They soon amal- 

 gamated with the Bulgars and gave them 

 their language ; the result of this union 

 is the modern Bulgarian people, who may 

 be described as Slavicized Finns. 



No traces of the original Bulgars re- 

 main, although some of the Macedonians 

 have Finnish features, and the Bul- 

 garians of today speak a purely Slavonic 

 language. The Slavs and Bulgarians 

 drove other races of the interior before 

 them, and Slavonic displaced all the 

 others, save the Latin spoken by isolated 

 settlements of Vlachs who retired into 

 the mountains, and the dialect of the 

 Illyrians, who were confined in the west 

 region known as Albania. 



Thus, as early as the ninth century we 

 have in Macedonia most of the elements 

 which now make up the population of 

 that country — Greeks on the coast and 

 in the large towns ; Slavs in the interior ; 

 Illyrians or Albanians in the west, and 

 isolated settlements of Latinized Thra- 

 cians or Vlachs in the mountains ; the 

 Slavs themselves soon divide into two 

 groups — the Slavicized Bulgars and the 

 Serbs. 



These various elements were partly 

 under the dominion of the Eastern Em- 

 pire, which was not, however, strong 

 enough to Hellenize them, and partly 



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