148 Aster History; DioscoripDEs 
of the Danube, established their new homes in a part of Moesia, 
which now became called Moesio-Dacia, and its people the 
Mocorodaxs¢ ; or by the Romans called Dacia Ripensis or Aurelia, 
officially so constituted as a province under Diocletian ; but itself 
at length overrun by the barbarians ; its inhabitants taking to the 
mountains, finally migrating north, toward 1200 A. D., and south 
also but in smallernumbers. These inhabitants of Thracian origin, 
now for centuries assimilated to Rome and partly descended from 
the Roman colonists, now called themselves Roumans (later giving 
name to Roumania), and at some time later than Trajan, a few of 
their plant-names gathered by some unknown collector, found their 
way among the Dioscoridean synonyms before the copying in 492 
of the MS. now existing. So we may explain resemblances to 
Latin as well as to Greek; rather than to adopt the theory cher- 
ished at one time by Sprengel that these and other synonyms were 
personally collected by Dioscorides Anazarbeus himself during his 
travels ; which would date them probably as early as 60 A. D., 
before the beginning of the blending of Latin and Thracian by 
Trajan’s colony of 106 A. D., from which the Roumans claim to be 
descended. To those remnants who did not pass northward in the 
12th century but moved southward, persisting in the mountains of 
Macedonia, Thessaly and Epirus, the name Vlach, Bid yos, 2. é., 
Wallachian, became attached, and the region Megalovlachia in the 
Thessalian mountains has received their name. Those of M egalov- 
lachia claim descent from Pompey’s army defeated at Pharsalia in 
Thessaly, 48 B. C. Prominent settlements of the Vlach race re- 
main in Greece proper only on Pindus and Olympus. Transient 
abiding places are numerous among the other mountains, as in At- 
tica itself, where they lead the life of shepherds. The name Vlach 
has from this fact passed into a second significance, merely shep- 
herd (see p 37), among many Greeks and among recent writers, 
and “ so applied to the Greek and Albanian herdsmen of the Morea,” 
Rodd, though other Greeks say ‘we would not think ourselves of 
using it for any but only of the race of the Bidyor”’ (Attica). 
Conclusion.—Perhaps the name Rathibida for Aster was native, 
we may infer, to the old Thracian speech ; was in use among the 
Dacian branch, while the name As¢er held current among the Greek 
branches proper. Perhaps the plant-names called Daci sm in Dios- 
