William St. Clair on 19th century Greece and the Modern Greeks - Part 9
Risto Stefov
December 12, 2008
Modern Greeks for the last century or so have been spreading untruths about themselves and now generations later have forgotten who they really are.
This series of articles is a means of letting the Greeks know who they are. And for those who ask, "Why am I doing this?" I am doing this because nowadays Greeks have forgotten who they are and where they come from and have become so brazen that they dare to attack others like the Macedonians and question their identity without giving it a second thought as to the damage they are doing.
When people deny other peoples´ ethnic identity they deny their right to exist and as such those people have no choice but to fight back. But unlike the Greeks who fight with half-truths and untruths Macedonians have the truth on their side.
What follows are excerpts from William St. Clair´s book "That Greece Might Still be Free, The Philhellenes in the War of Independence" who speaks the truth about 19th century Greece and the Modern Greeks.
"In the uncertain military situation of 1822 numerous chieftains in Roumeli had succeeded in keeping their options open, joining first the Greeks then the Turks, then the Greeks again. A broad band of Central Greece south of Thermopylae remained determinedly undecided whether it was Greece or Turkey. These chieftains were often called traitors and obviously, in a sense, so they were. But few of them felt any sense of shame or betrayal. The concept of loyalty to a ´nation´ was alien, or at best novel, to most Greeks." (p. 238)
"Government had as yet little idea of nationality they were content to do business with local leaders on their terms–to build up their loyalties on a solid basis of self-interest reinforced, if possible, by fear. (p. 239)
"The great Odysseus who ruled eastern Greece with a firm hand had made a pact with the Turks in 1822. Now that the Greek cause was again in danger, he once more decided to bend with the wind. He opened negotiations with his old friends, the neighbouring Turkish authorities, but his power was slipping away from him." (p. 239)
"Since the Greek Government had apparently unlimited gold at its disposal and was prepared to dispense it to anyone who could claim to be the leader of a military force, many of the armed Greeks who had previously looked to Odysseus for their leadership and support were moving to other masters. Odysseus now began to make overtures to the Turks, on the basis that he would recognize Ottoman sovereignty in exchange for a promise to be confirmed in his position of local leadership. The Turks were prepared to accept his offer, although they had already sufficient experience of the man to insist that he should openly join their army before the deal was confirmed." (p. 239)
"The attempt of Odysseus to defect resulted in a curious episode which illustrated the difficulties with which the Philhellenes were struggling in attempting to understand the Greek political scene. Odysseus never had any higher ambition than to be an Eastern chieftain and certainly cared nothing for any notion of Hellas or regeneration or the usual Greek and philhellenic myths. In this respect he was a typical Greek of the time, but his outlook was totally incomprehensible to many Philhellenes." (p. 239)
"To them [philhellenes] Odysseus was a colourful and powerful figure with an eminently Greek sounding name. He had to be fitted into some philhellenic preconception. To Stanhope Odysseus represented the hope of turning Greece into a constitutional republic with free and representative institutions–perhaps the most misconceived of all views of his character. But Odysseus was also the cynosure of the type of Philhellenes whom I have called the romantic Byronists, the men who, unlike Byron himself, came to Greece in search of the exoticism of Byron´s Grecian and Turkish tales. Odysseus, to such men, was a true Greek, a Greek who lived among mountains and wore colourful clothes." (p. 239)
"The most extreme of the romantic Byronists was Edward John Trelawny, who had come to Greece with Byron in 1823. To the historian or biographer, Trelawny is an intensely irritating figure because of his uncomfortable habit of telling lies about everything he did. But Trelawny´s fault was simply to exaggerate for the sake of effect, to stretch truth at the edges to make a better story. As a Philhellene he had no ideas of his own. He parted from Byron because Byron was not Byronic enough for him, Byron was too cautious, too balanced, too interested in discovering the facts of the situation." (p. 239)
"Trelawny´s aim was mainly to swagger about Greece in exotic dress and to enjoy the sensation of being a Byronic hero, a Lara or a Conrad. He hated the Europeanized Greeks like Mavrocordato who interfered with his image of the situation. As a rationalization of his preconceptions he seized eagerly on Colonel Stanhope´s belief that Odysseus could become the Washington of Greece." (p. 240)
"After Byron´s death for a time he had hopes that he might be regarded as his spiritual heir. He was surrounded by a group of volunteers, mostly British, of the same cast of mind as himself, all proclaiming how they alone had found a Greek worthy of the name. Trelawny seemed a useful ally." (p. 240)
"Odysseus charmed Trelawny as he had charmed Stanhope by appealing to his preconceptions of himself. He installed him in a huge cavern in Mount Parnassus which he had fortified as a retreat safe from Greek or Turk. The cavern could only be approached by long ladders let down from above. It was guarded by the cannon which Gordon had given to the London Greek Committee and Stanhope had foolishly transferred to Odysseus. It was capacious enough to hold a military force of some hundreds and was provisioned for a long siege. It had every comfort, even a set of Waverley novels on which the Byronists could feed their romantic imaginations." (p. 240)
"Odysseus and Trelawny became warm friends and in true Eastern style the friendship was cemented by marriage. Trelawny was married to a half-sister of Odysseus, Tersitsa, a girl with whom he had no language in common and who was then aged about thirteen or fourteen. Trelawny was immensely flattered." (p 240)
"The attachment to the unreliable Odysseus of Trelawny and other apparently influential Philhellenes was seen as an intolerable threat by the Greeks who realized what was really happening. It was decided to kill Odysseus as had been planned in 1822 in similar circumstances. As a first step Trelawny too was to be killed and the cave seized from Odysseus´ power. The details of the scheme are not fully known but it is certain that Mavrocordato was one of the instigators along with several Philhellenes." (p. 240)
"Two of Trelawny´s companions, Fenton and Whitcombe, were bribed by money and promises to try to assassinate him in the cave. The attempt was made in June 1825. Fenton fired a shot which severely wounded Trelawny, but he was at once himself shot dead by another of Trelawny´s companions. Whitcombe was allowed to survive." (p. 240)
"Trelawny, after recovering from his wounds, was eventually taken down from the cave and left Greece in a British warship, apparently unaware to the end that he had chosen the least philhellenic of all Greeks as his hero. Odysseus himself had not long to live. Various attempts were made by the Greek Government to kill him and at last he was persuaded to surrender. One day in October 1825 his body was found suspended from the walls of the Acropolis of Athens, murdered by Greeks as he had himself murdered so many. And so Greece was saved the humiliation…" (p 240)
"Fabvier himself appeared with all his medals in the uniform of an officer of France. In his speech he declared his readiness to die for his new country. Today, he said, he was a Frenchman but tomorrow they would see that he was a Greek. The next day he appeared wearing the magnificent dress of a Greek palikar and thereafter he never wore anything else. It was more than a colourful philhellenic gesture. The Greeks could see that he meant it. Fabvier and his little band of followers, for whom life since Waterloo had been a series of retreats and defeats, were now at the end of the road. Their fate was inextricably tied to Greece. They had no other home." (p. 250)
"Declared that they were ready for all sorts of difficulties but they had no idea of what conditions were really like. They naively imagined that the Greeks would want to make use of their experience. Santa Rosa thought, for example, that he might make his contribution by commanding a battalion or by reorganizing the finances. Porro talked hopefully about becoming a Privy Councilor. Others suggested that they had experience of this or that branch of administration or law which could be made use of." (p. 256)
"The reality of Greek conditions came as a shock. Count Pecchio declared honestly that ´as soon as the stranger puts his foot on shore, his enthusiasm ceases, the enchantment disappears´. It was the fetid smell of Nauplia which disgusted him, especially as he realized at once that it was the ´nuisances´ littering the narrow streets which were mainly responsible for the endemic killing fevers which were sweeping the country. Then came the realization that there were no battalions to be commanded, no ministries in need of permanent secretaries; that men, however experienced, with no knowledge of Greek and no money, were unlikely to be able to contribute much to the Greek political scene. The Carbonari Counts forgot that, because a country is backward and its people poor, its politics are not necessarily simple." (p. 256)
"Most of the Counts gulped down their disappointment and adjusted their ideas to the situation. Porro took on the thankless task of trying to organize the commissariat for Fabvier´s little force–a job lacking in glamour but one of the most important and difficult in Greece. Collegno offered his skill as an artillery officer. But for Santa Rosa the shock was too severe. Far from welcoming the leader of the Piedmontese Revolution as a trusted adviser–as Santa Rosa had been led to expect in London–the Greek Government were frankly horrified at the arrival of this most famous carbonaro. He was asked to change his name, and Count Derossi hung around Nauplia waiting for the Government to decide what to do with him. He bitterly regretted his decision to come to Greece which he saw as a terrible mistake and talked about returning to England. To look at the miniature of his wife and children which he carried sent him into floods of tears." (p. 256)
"In April 1825, when the future of Greece seemed to depend upon the outcome of the siege of Navarino, Santa Rosa bought an Albanian dress and set off with the Greek forces to play his part in the wars as a simple soldier. It was a gesture only. The palikars themselves were incapable of resisting the bayonets of the Arab regulars. What hope had a middle-aged Italian who differed from the Greeks in every respect except their dress? Santa Rosa was duly killed on 8 May when he was caught in a cave on the island of Sphacteria and refused to surrender. It was a needless sacrifice." (p. 256)
"The Americans described the Modern Greeks as they found them, with sympathy but without sentimentality. Gone are the presuppositions of earlier philhellenic ventures. The captains in Nauplia, whom in earlier days Howe might have fashionably described as the ´true Greeks´, are now ´two brigand chiefs (God´s curse light on both of them)´. At last foreigners were looking at the Modern Greeks unhampered by the accumulated weight of centuries of misleading allusion." (p. 341)
"Not until five years after the battle of Navarino was the independence of Greece formally recognized and the international situation regularized. The three allied powers, after failing to negotiate terms with the more suitable candidates such as Leopold of Saxe Coburg, installed a son of King Ludwig of Bavaria, as Otho King of Greece. For the first years of its independence Greece was virtually a Bavarian colony." (p. 348)
"The seventeen hundred years or so between the Emperor Hadrian and the outbreak of the Revolution in 1821 came to be looked upon as a regrettable, even shameful interlude in the country´s history. If in any respect Greece did not appear to be a fully mature Western European state with all the appurtenances of national culture and identity, the blame could always be put on the past and especially on the Turks." (p. 351)
"In 1830 the German historian Fallmerayer published a theory that the Ancient Greek population had been ousted by Slavic immigrants in the in the early middle ages, and that the Modern Greeks were mainly of Slavic race.1 Fallmerayer´s ideas were looked upon as a deadly heresy, and the supposed identity of the Ancient and Modern Greeks became a question of intense political feeling." (p. 351)
"Innumerable measures were introduced to emphasize the link with the remote past. Ancient names were resurrected or devised for the coinage, for offices of state, for ranks in the army and navy, for the law. The streets of Athens were names after the famous and obscure men of antiquity whose names have been handed down. It became customary to call Greek children after ancient heroes in preference to saints." (p. 351)
"Few signs were allowed to remain in Greece to show that the country once contained a large Turkish minority. The minarets and mosques were destroyed. The Acropolis of Athens was stripped of everything but its ancient remains and rendered a lifeless desert. The marvelously impressive Frankish tower which had stood at the entrance to the Acropolis for hundreds of years was knocked down without regret. An interesting structure on the top of the pillars of the temple of Olympian Zeus, apparently the hermitage of some Byzantine stylite, was removed as being non-ancient and therefore not respectable. Only shortage of money prevented the Parthenon from being ´restored´ and rebuilt as part of the campaign to emphasize the alleged continuity of the Hellenic race." (p. 351)
"The Modern Greeks must learn to speak the language of Pericles, or if that seemed too difficult, at least a language purged of foreign accretions, with the ancient words replacing the modern and a simplified ancient grammar. Generations of hapless school children were unsuccessfully inculcated with different versions of ´purified´ Greek." (p. 351)
"It was the intention of the Greeks who assembled at Argos in July 1829 to confer the Order of the Saviour of Greece upon all the Philhellenes who had taken part in the war. They also intended to record their names in a book of remembrance and to erect a monument to the dead in a church at Missolonghi. But even in providing memorials to express their eternal gratitude–a theme which had featured in innumerable philhellenic poems and addresses–the Greeks did not come up to expectations. The promised lists were not drawn up and soon the names of many of the Philhellenes were forgotten." (p. 352)
In spite of Greece´s artificiality today one can proudly call him or herself a "Hellene" with a 4,000 year old heritage, with roots extending back to the classical Greeks of 2,000 years ago but a real and genuine Macedonian cannot call him or herself a Macedonian because according to modern Greek logic "Macedonia is Greek" and "there is no such thing as a Macedonian"!
Many thanks to TrueMacedonian for his contribution to this article.
Source:
St. Clair, William. That Greece Might Still be Free, The Philhellenes in the War of Independence. London: Oxford University Press, 1972.
The End
You can contact the author at rstefov@hotmail.com
This series of articles is a means of letting the Greeks know who they are. And for those who ask, "Why am I doing this?" I am doing this because nowadays Greeks have forgotten who they are and where they come from and have become so brazen that they dare to attack others like the Macedonians and question their identity without giving it a second thought as to the damage they are doing.
When people deny other peoples´ ethnic identity they deny their right to exist and as such those people have no choice but to fight back. But unlike the Greeks who fight with half-truths and untruths Macedonians have the truth on their side.
What follows are excerpts from William St. Clair´s book "That Greece Might Still be Free, The Philhellenes in the War of Independence" who speaks the truth about 19th century Greece and the Modern Greeks.
"In the uncertain military situation of 1822 numerous chieftains in Roumeli had succeeded in keeping their options open, joining first the Greeks then the Turks, then the Greeks again. A broad band of Central Greece south of Thermopylae remained determinedly undecided whether it was Greece or Turkey. These chieftains were often called traitors and obviously, in a sense, so they were. But few of them felt any sense of shame or betrayal. The concept of loyalty to a ´nation´ was alien, or at best novel, to most Greeks." (p. 238)
"Government had as yet little idea of nationality they were content to do business with local leaders on their terms–to build up their loyalties on a solid basis of self-interest reinforced, if possible, by fear. (p. 239)
"The great Odysseus who ruled eastern Greece with a firm hand had made a pact with the Turks in 1822. Now that the Greek cause was again in danger, he once more decided to bend with the wind. He opened negotiations with his old friends, the neighbouring Turkish authorities, but his power was slipping away from him." (p. 239)
"Since the Greek Government had apparently unlimited gold at its disposal and was prepared to dispense it to anyone who could claim to be the leader of a military force, many of the armed Greeks who had previously looked to Odysseus for their leadership and support were moving to other masters. Odysseus now began to make overtures to the Turks, on the basis that he would recognize Ottoman sovereignty in exchange for a promise to be confirmed in his position of local leadership. The Turks were prepared to accept his offer, although they had already sufficient experience of the man to insist that he should openly join their army before the deal was confirmed." (p. 239)
"The attempt of Odysseus to defect resulted in a curious episode which illustrated the difficulties with which the Philhellenes were struggling in attempting to understand the Greek political scene. Odysseus never had any higher ambition than to be an Eastern chieftain and certainly cared nothing for any notion of Hellas or regeneration or the usual Greek and philhellenic myths. In this respect he was a typical Greek of the time, but his outlook was totally incomprehensible to many Philhellenes." (p. 239)
"To them [philhellenes] Odysseus was a colourful and powerful figure with an eminently Greek sounding name. He had to be fitted into some philhellenic preconception. To Stanhope Odysseus represented the hope of turning Greece into a constitutional republic with free and representative institutions–perhaps the most misconceived of all views of his character. But Odysseus was also the cynosure of the type of Philhellenes whom I have called the romantic Byronists, the men who, unlike Byron himself, came to Greece in search of the exoticism of Byron´s Grecian and Turkish tales. Odysseus, to such men, was a true Greek, a Greek who lived among mountains and wore colourful clothes." (p. 239)
"The most extreme of the romantic Byronists was Edward John Trelawny, who had come to Greece with Byron in 1823. To the historian or biographer, Trelawny is an intensely irritating figure because of his uncomfortable habit of telling lies about everything he did. But Trelawny´s fault was simply to exaggerate for the sake of effect, to stretch truth at the edges to make a better story. As a Philhellene he had no ideas of his own. He parted from Byron because Byron was not Byronic enough for him, Byron was too cautious, too balanced, too interested in discovering the facts of the situation." (p. 239)
"Trelawny´s aim was mainly to swagger about Greece in exotic dress and to enjoy the sensation of being a Byronic hero, a Lara or a Conrad. He hated the Europeanized Greeks like Mavrocordato who interfered with his image of the situation. As a rationalization of his preconceptions he seized eagerly on Colonel Stanhope´s belief that Odysseus could become the Washington of Greece." (p. 240)
"After Byron´s death for a time he had hopes that he might be regarded as his spiritual heir. He was surrounded by a group of volunteers, mostly British, of the same cast of mind as himself, all proclaiming how they alone had found a Greek worthy of the name. Trelawny seemed a useful ally." (p. 240)
"Odysseus charmed Trelawny as he had charmed Stanhope by appealing to his preconceptions of himself. He installed him in a huge cavern in Mount Parnassus which he had fortified as a retreat safe from Greek or Turk. The cavern could only be approached by long ladders let down from above. It was guarded by the cannon which Gordon had given to the London Greek Committee and Stanhope had foolishly transferred to Odysseus. It was capacious enough to hold a military force of some hundreds and was provisioned for a long siege. It had every comfort, even a set of Waverley novels on which the Byronists could feed their romantic imaginations." (p. 240)
"Odysseus and Trelawny became warm friends and in true Eastern style the friendship was cemented by marriage. Trelawny was married to a half-sister of Odysseus, Tersitsa, a girl with whom he had no language in common and who was then aged about thirteen or fourteen. Trelawny was immensely flattered." (p 240)
"The attachment to the unreliable Odysseus of Trelawny and other apparently influential Philhellenes was seen as an intolerable threat by the Greeks who realized what was really happening. It was decided to kill Odysseus as had been planned in 1822 in similar circumstances. As a first step Trelawny too was to be killed and the cave seized from Odysseus´ power. The details of the scheme are not fully known but it is certain that Mavrocordato was one of the instigators along with several Philhellenes." (p. 240)
"Two of Trelawny´s companions, Fenton and Whitcombe, were bribed by money and promises to try to assassinate him in the cave. The attempt was made in June 1825. Fenton fired a shot which severely wounded Trelawny, but he was at once himself shot dead by another of Trelawny´s companions. Whitcombe was allowed to survive." (p. 240)
"Trelawny, after recovering from his wounds, was eventually taken down from the cave and left Greece in a British warship, apparently unaware to the end that he had chosen the least philhellenic of all Greeks as his hero. Odysseus himself had not long to live. Various attempts were made by the Greek Government to kill him and at last he was persuaded to surrender. One day in October 1825 his body was found suspended from the walls of the Acropolis of Athens, murdered by Greeks as he had himself murdered so many. And so Greece was saved the humiliation…" (p 240)
"Fabvier himself appeared with all his medals in the uniform of an officer of France. In his speech he declared his readiness to die for his new country. Today, he said, he was a Frenchman but tomorrow they would see that he was a Greek. The next day he appeared wearing the magnificent dress of a Greek palikar and thereafter he never wore anything else. It was more than a colourful philhellenic gesture. The Greeks could see that he meant it. Fabvier and his little band of followers, for whom life since Waterloo had been a series of retreats and defeats, were now at the end of the road. Their fate was inextricably tied to Greece. They had no other home." (p. 250)
"Declared that they were ready for all sorts of difficulties but they had no idea of what conditions were really like. They naively imagined that the Greeks would want to make use of their experience. Santa Rosa thought, for example, that he might make his contribution by commanding a battalion or by reorganizing the finances. Porro talked hopefully about becoming a Privy Councilor. Others suggested that they had experience of this or that branch of administration or law which could be made use of." (p. 256)
"The reality of Greek conditions came as a shock. Count Pecchio declared honestly that ´as soon as the stranger puts his foot on shore, his enthusiasm ceases, the enchantment disappears´. It was the fetid smell of Nauplia which disgusted him, especially as he realized at once that it was the ´nuisances´ littering the narrow streets which were mainly responsible for the endemic killing fevers which were sweeping the country. Then came the realization that there were no battalions to be commanded, no ministries in need of permanent secretaries; that men, however experienced, with no knowledge of Greek and no money, were unlikely to be able to contribute much to the Greek political scene. The Carbonari Counts forgot that, because a country is backward and its people poor, its politics are not necessarily simple." (p. 256)
"Most of the Counts gulped down their disappointment and adjusted their ideas to the situation. Porro took on the thankless task of trying to organize the commissariat for Fabvier´s little force–a job lacking in glamour but one of the most important and difficult in Greece. Collegno offered his skill as an artillery officer. But for Santa Rosa the shock was too severe. Far from welcoming the leader of the Piedmontese Revolution as a trusted adviser–as Santa Rosa had been led to expect in London–the Greek Government were frankly horrified at the arrival of this most famous carbonaro. He was asked to change his name, and Count Derossi hung around Nauplia waiting for the Government to decide what to do with him. He bitterly regretted his decision to come to Greece which he saw as a terrible mistake and talked about returning to England. To look at the miniature of his wife and children which he carried sent him into floods of tears." (p. 256)
"In April 1825, when the future of Greece seemed to depend upon the outcome of the siege of Navarino, Santa Rosa bought an Albanian dress and set off with the Greek forces to play his part in the wars as a simple soldier. It was a gesture only. The palikars themselves were incapable of resisting the bayonets of the Arab regulars. What hope had a middle-aged Italian who differed from the Greeks in every respect except their dress? Santa Rosa was duly killed on 8 May when he was caught in a cave on the island of Sphacteria and refused to surrender. It was a needless sacrifice." (p. 256)
"The Americans described the Modern Greeks as they found them, with sympathy but without sentimentality. Gone are the presuppositions of earlier philhellenic ventures. The captains in Nauplia, whom in earlier days Howe might have fashionably described as the ´true Greeks´, are now ´two brigand chiefs (God´s curse light on both of them)´. At last foreigners were looking at the Modern Greeks unhampered by the accumulated weight of centuries of misleading allusion." (p. 341)
"Not until five years after the battle of Navarino was the independence of Greece formally recognized and the international situation regularized. The three allied powers, after failing to negotiate terms with the more suitable candidates such as Leopold of Saxe Coburg, installed a son of King Ludwig of Bavaria, as Otho King of Greece. For the first years of its independence Greece was virtually a Bavarian colony." (p. 348)
"The seventeen hundred years or so between the Emperor Hadrian and the outbreak of the Revolution in 1821 came to be looked upon as a regrettable, even shameful interlude in the country´s history. If in any respect Greece did not appear to be a fully mature Western European state with all the appurtenances of national culture and identity, the blame could always be put on the past and especially on the Turks." (p. 351)
"In 1830 the German historian Fallmerayer published a theory that the Ancient Greek population had been ousted by Slavic immigrants in the in the early middle ages, and that the Modern Greeks were mainly of Slavic race.1 Fallmerayer´s ideas were looked upon as a deadly heresy, and the supposed identity of the Ancient and Modern Greeks became a question of intense political feeling." (p. 351)
"Innumerable measures were introduced to emphasize the link with the remote past. Ancient names were resurrected or devised for the coinage, for offices of state, for ranks in the army and navy, for the law. The streets of Athens were names after the famous and obscure men of antiquity whose names have been handed down. It became customary to call Greek children after ancient heroes in preference to saints." (p. 351)
"Few signs were allowed to remain in Greece to show that the country once contained a large Turkish minority. The minarets and mosques were destroyed. The Acropolis of Athens was stripped of everything but its ancient remains and rendered a lifeless desert. The marvelously impressive Frankish tower which had stood at the entrance to the Acropolis for hundreds of years was knocked down without regret. An interesting structure on the top of the pillars of the temple of Olympian Zeus, apparently the hermitage of some Byzantine stylite, was removed as being non-ancient and therefore not respectable. Only shortage of money prevented the Parthenon from being ´restored´ and rebuilt as part of the campaign to emphasize the alleged continuity of the Hellenic race." (p. 351)
"The Modern Greeks must learn to speak the language of Pericles, or if that seemed too difficult, at least a language purged of foreign accretions, with the ancient words replacing the modern and a simplified ancient grammar. Generations of hapless school children were unsuccessfully inculcated with different versions of ´purified´ Greek." (p. 351)
"It was the intention of the Greeks who assembled at Argos in July 1829 to confer the Order of the Saviour of Greece upon all the Philhellenes who had taken part in the war. They also intended to record their names in a book of remembrance and to erect a monument to the dead in a church at Missolonghi. But even in providing memorials to express their eternal gratitude–a theme which had featured in innumerable philhellenic poems and addresses–the Greeks did not come up to expectations. The promised lists were not drawn up and soon the names of many of the Philhellenes were forgotten." (p. 352)
In spite of Greece´s artificiality today one can proudly call him or herself a "Hellene" with a 4,000 year old heritage, with roots extending back to the classical Greeks of 2,000 years ago but a real and genuine Macedonian cannot call him or herself a Macedonian because according to modern Greek logic "Macedonia is Greek" and "there is no such thing as a Macedonian"!
Many thanks to TrueMacedonian for his contribution to this article.
Source:
St. Clair, William. That Greece Might Still be Free, The Philhellenes in the War of Independence. London: Oxford University Press, 1972.
The End
You can contact the author at rstefov@hotmail.com