GIFT or 
 
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CHRISTIAN GREECE 
 
 AND 
 
 LIVING GREEK 
 
 BY 
 
 Dr. ACHILLES ROSE 
 
 * ' Alaxpov koTL diyg-v ^'EA/ldfJof 7rda//f adcKov/iiv^g. " 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 PERI HELLADOS PUBLICATION OFFICE 
 
 126 East Twenty -ninth Street 
 
 1898 
 
Copyright, 1898, 
 
 BY 
 
 Achilles Rose, M.D. 
 
 \/Mi\ 
 
 
 • . •• « • 
 
 ^:i^'i^'\R(jjw(v4u^ 
 
To 
 Mr. BERNARD G. AMEND 
 
 MY HIGHLY ESTEEMED FRIEND 
 
 THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED 
 
 ^50401 
 
 C. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAOE 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 An Historical Sketch of Greek. ... i 
 
 CHAPTER n. 
 The Proper Pronunciation of Greek, . . 40 
 
 CHAPTER m. 
 The Byzantines, ...... ^^ 
 
 y CHAPTER IV. 
 
 "^HE Greeks Under Turkish Bondage, . . 131 
 
 N y^ CHAPTER V. 
 
 Thj/Greek War of Independence and the 
 
 European Powers, 168 
 
 The I^:tNGDOM OF 
 
 ^^Y 1897, . 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Greece Before the War 
 
 195 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Greek as the International Language of 
 
 Physicians and Scholars in General, . 226 
 
 Epilogue, 269 
 
A POLITICAL RETROSPECT ON 
 GREECE. 
 
 Those who are now blaming defeated Greece 
 for having gone to war against Turkey unpre- 
 pared and without allies, " with surprising blind- 
 ness and thoughtlessness" as the prime minister 
 of one of the great powers put it, ought to take 
 into consideration the peculiar and exceptional 
 circumstances under which the present Greek 
 kingdom has been laboring since its very crea- 
 tion in 1830. In the revolution of 1821, or 
 rather the war of independence as the Greeks 
 call it, not only Greece proper, but most of the 
 islands of the ^gean Sea, Crete included, took 
 up arms against Turkey. The revolution lasted 
 nearly seven years, and ended with the Battle of 
 Navarino in October, 1827, when thirty men-of- 
 war of England, France, and Russia destroyed 
 the Turkish and Egyptian fleets, composed of 
 one hundred and twenty vessels, at that port. 
 This great act, which sealed the independence of 
 
VI A POLITICAL RETROSPECT ON GREECE. 
 
 Greece, and yet was called " an untoward event" 
 by the Duke of Wellington, then Prime Minister 
 of England, was due to the enthusiasm roused 
 throughout the civilized world by the heroism of 
 the Greeks, when the names of Marco Bozzaris, 
 Canaris, Miaulis, Ypsilanti, Karai'skakis, Coloco- 
 tronis, and others, were in everybody's mouth. 
 But when the fixing of the frontiers of the new 
 kingdom was being discussed, the jealousy of 
 the great powers, with the exception of France, 
 asserted itself as usual, and through the hostility 
 of Prince Metternich, then Prime Minister of 
 Austria, and the selfish policy of England under 
 the Wellington ministry, Crete and most of the 
 islands were ceded back to Turkey, and the new 
 kingdom, scarcely containing eight hundred 
 thousand souls, was made so small that Prince 
 Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, afterwards king of the 
 Belgians, refused the Greek throne which was 
 offered to him by the powers. 
 
 Greece thus began her political existence with 
 a restricted territory, devastated by the long war, 
 and with very scant resources. But gradually 
 the country commenced to thrive, notwithstand- 
 ing so many disadvantages, most of which were 
 an inheritance from its late masters ; agriculture 
 made great strides, a pretty large commerce was 
 
A POLITICAL RETROSPECT ON GREECE. Vll 
 
 established with foreign countries, and a com- 
 mercial marine, comprising over four thousand 
 vessels (in 1850), almost monopolized the carry- 
 ing trade of the Mediterranean, of the Black 
 Sea, of the Sea of Azoff , and of the lower Dan- 
 ube. This development of the Greek marine, 
 which threatened to take large proportions, ex- 
 cited the jealousy of England, and that power, 
 under the Palmerston ministry in 1850, seizing a 
 flimsy pretext of the stoning of the house of a 
 Portuguese Jew, named Pacifico, by the street 
 boys in Athens on Easter day, sent a powerful 
 fleet under Admiral Parker to seek redress. 
 They asked for a large indemnity and an apology 
 from the Greek Government, claiming Pacifico 
 as a British subject. On the refusal of the 
 Greek Government to comply, the British ad- 
 miral seized hundreds of Greek vessels and towed 
 them to the Bay of Salamis. Most of them were 
 loaded with perishable cargoes, and thus brought 
 ruin to their owners. Greece had finally to yield. 
 By this time many enterprising Greeks had 
 established themselves in the large commercial 
 cities of Western Europe, as well as in Southern 
 Russia, the lower Danube, Roumani^, and Con- 
 stantinople, and, having amassed great wealth, 
 sent large sums to Greece from patriotic motives. 
 
Vlll A POLITICAL RETROSPECT ON GREECE. 
 
 It is with these moneys chiefly that the National 
 University of Athens, the Polytechnic School, the 
 Observatory, the Sina Academy, the Arsakeion, 
 orphan asylums, theological seminaries,- national 
 museum, and other public institutions were built. 
 And while such progress was being made within 
 the kingdom, Crete and the other islands were 
 groaning under Turkish rule, Macedonia was 
 overrun by Bulgarian emissaries and Roumanian 
 agents to propagate Slav ideas, while in the 
 other provinces of European Turkey and the 
 eastern coast of Asia Minor thousands of Greeks 
 were looking to Athens for protection from 
 Turkish excesses. 
 
 Greece could not, cannot remain indifferent to 
 these constant appeals of her children living with- 
 out the kingdom. Many of these Greeks living 
 abroad have their own kinsmen in Athens, men 
 of importance, learning, and position. Their in- 
 fluence is felt by each successive government, 
 which is thus obliged to protect those who are 
 living in the Turkish dominions, deprived of the 
 blessings of liberty ; and this task imposes heavy 
 burdens on the little kindgom out of all propor- 
 tion to its limited resources, and it is chiefly to 
 one of these circumstances that the recent dis- 
 asters of Greece are due. 
 
A POLITICAL RETROSPECT ON GREECE. IX 
 
 Crete, with a Christian population of two hun- 
 dred and fifty thousand souls (the other fifty 
 thousand are Mussulmans), rose in insurrection 
 more than half a dozen times, since she was 
 given back to Turkey in 1830, and every time 
 that the movement was suppressed by Turkey, 
 assisted openly or secretly by the European 
 powers, the Sultan promised reforms and gave 
 promises for the amelioration of the condition of 
 the wretched inhabitants, which were never ful- 
 filled. These periodical insurrections placed a 
 very heavy burden on Greece, particularly those 
 of 1866, 1876, and 1896, when the Greek Gov- 
 ernment had to feed more than sixty thousand 
 Cretan refugees, mostly women and children, 
 taxing its resources to the utmost extent. 
 
 The massacres of Christians at Canea in the 
 fall of 1896 roused, very naturally, a cry of in- 
 dignation all over Greece, and the people at 
 large clamored for interference, accusing both 
 king and government of cowardice and neglect 
 of a sacred duty. The opposition joined forces 
 with the popular movement, and the pressure to 
 act became thus irresistible. A Greek squadron 
 and a small contingent of the Greek army were 
 despatched to Crete to protect the Christians. 
 The sequel is well known. The great powers 
 
X A POLITICAL RETROSPECT ON GREECE. 
 
 sent their fleets and an army of occupation to 
 Crete, drove back the Greek vessels, bombarded 
 the Christian positions, and established a strict 
 blockade in order to reduce them to obedience 
 by starvation. Equity, justice, and international 
 law were ignored, or, to speak more plainly, 
 were superseded by brute force, by might against 
 right. The Christians did not lay down their 
 arms, but Turkey, encouraged by at least one 
 of the great powers, massed a large army of 
 one hundred and fifty thousand on the Greek 
 frontier, ostensibly under the command of 
 Edhem Pacha, but practically conducted by Ger- 
 man officers, with one hundred and fifty Krupp 
 guns. Against this formidable force the Greeks 
 under the Crown Prince could only oppose thirty- 
 five thousand men, half of whom were raw re- 
 cruits, full of enthusiasm it is true, but poorly 
 drilled and half disciplined. 
 
 The result could be easily foreseen. The 
 Greek army was defeated and forced to evacuate 
 Thessaly, the German Emperor sent congratula- 
 tory telegrams to the Sultan, a heavy war in- 
 demnity and a curtailment of her frontiers were 
 imposed on Greece, and a foreign control was 
 established over her finances. 
 
 The diplomats of the great powers are now 
 
A POLITICAL RETROSPECT ON GREECE. XI 
 
 rubbing their hands with satisfaction at having 
 localized the war, prevented the reopening of 
 the Eastern question, and pacified Crete. But 
 have they really done so ? Perfect chaos reigns 
 now in Crete on account of the jealousy and the 
 mistrust of the powers of each other. Half a 
 dozen governors have been proposed and re- 
 jected. England wants a Battenberg, Russia a 
 Montenegrin, Italy an Italian, Germany has her 
 own candidate, and so forth. In the mean while 
 the European fleets are at anchor at Canea and 
 Heraclion, and their contingents occupy the four 
 fortresses of the island, ostensibly to protect the 
 Mussulmans from the attacks of the Christians. 
 The latter have placed themselves at the dis- 
 posal of the powers, who have done nothing 
 to establish a local government, and it is very 
 likely that this chaotic state of things will last 
 for some time to come. A more ignominious 
 failure than that of the powers trying to govern 
 Crete can hardly be imagined. 
 
 History will register with shame these doings 
 of the great powers at the end of the nineteenth 
 century. Their conduct toward Greece has been 
 cruel and inconsistent ; but if the truth must be 
 said, some of the powers have always tried to 
 keep Greece backward for selfish purposes and 
 
Xll A POLITICAL RETROSPECT ON GREECE. 
 
 for the accomplishment of their own designs. 
 They are acting thus not from love for Turkey, 
 but from hostility toward Greece. The Austrian 
 men-of-war were about to bombard Mersina the 
 other day, merely because some Turkish zaptiehs 
 maltreated an Austrian subject. But when a 
 whole Christian population of two hundred and 
 fifty thousand souls in Crete were menaced with 
 massacre, and some hundreds of them were 
 actually butchered by the Turks at Canea, the 
 powers found fault with Greece for sending men- 
 of-war and soldiers for their protection. They 
 evidently have different weights and measures 
 for the small and large states. The application 
 of this pernicious principle means assuredly the 
 annihilation of the independence of the small 
 states in favor of the large ones. 
 
 Nothing is heard any more about the promised 
 reforms by the Sultan. The massacre of the 
 Armenians seems forgotten. Abdul Hamid 
 knows that the so-called concert of the powers is 
 a sham and that they mistrust and are afraid of 
 each other. He has succeeded in rendering the 
 celebrated concert the laughing-stock of the civ- 
 ilized world. Turkey is safe, not because she is 
 guarded by the Turkish army, but because she is 
 supported by European bayonets. It is really a 
 
A POLITICAL RETROSPECT ON GREECE. Xlll 
 
 privileged position, which nobody understands 
 better than the Sultan himself. If Greece has 
 sinned, it was on the side of compassion for her 
 oppressed children and coreligionists. She is 
 bleeding from every pore of her mutilated body, 
 but there is a Nemesis which sooner or later will 
 overtake those who seem to rejoice now at her 
 defeat and humiliation. There is, however, 
 great vitality in the Greek race. Hellenism has 
 gone through many severe trials in past ages and 
 finally has come out victorious. It may be hoped 
 that the Greeks of to-day will profit by the 
 severe lessons which they have received, and 
 their late disaster may after all prove a blessing 
 in disguise, if they go bravely to work, reform 
 their political system, pay more attention to in- 
 terior improvements than to foreign politics, ele- 
 vate the national character, and fulfil their na- 
 tional aspirations by the arts of peace, and 
 attract once more the sympathies of those to 
 whom the word " Hellas" means always civiliza- 
 tion and progress. 
 
CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIYING GREEK. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF GREEK.* 
 
 When I offered to read a paper this evening, 
 it was my intention to speak on the new an- 
 atomical nomenclature offered by a German 
 anatomical society. I not only had in view to 
 concur with those who have already expressed 
 themselves on this new lexicology, and who 
 have said that the committee of anatomists who 
 composed the work mentioned have not done 
 what they claim. I wished to go a step farther 
 and demonstrate in what way the committee 
 could have fulfilled their promise — could have 
 executed their intention. 
 
 As we know, the authors decided to give all 
 words in one language — in Latin — and to con- 
 struct them correctly. In reality most words 
 
 *Read before the German Medical Society of the city of 
 New York, February 3d, 1896. 
 
^2' ''CttklSrXA'^' 'GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 are, and it could not be otherwise, Latinized 
 Greek, or they are hybrid words; in some of 
 them, of more than two syllables, we find the 
 syllables alternately from the one and the other 
 language; and finally, as has been shown al- 
 ready, many words are grammatically incorrect. 
 
 Any one who gives a glance at this new 
 nomenclature cannot fail to notice barbarisms 
 in large numbers. In this copy which I pass 
 around I have marked some on the first pages. 
 
 The anatomists have undertaken a thing 
 which was an impossibility — namely, to develop 
 further {/ortbilden) a dead language, to treat a 
 dead language as a living one. 
 
 Had the committee, however, taken the liv- 
 ing Greek for a basis, had they made use of a 
 modern Greek work on anatomy, had they con- 
 sulted real Greeks, they would have fulfilled all 
 their promises, executed all their intentions, 
 without the arduous labor of seven years and 
 the expenditure of quite a sum of money, as 
 enumerated by them. Indeed, their arduous 
 work would have been unnecessary if the lexi- 
 cology of our Greek colleagues of to-day — the 
 best imaginable — had been accepted. 
 
 To prove the superiority of this really homo- 
 geneous, faultless Greek nomenclature, I wrote 
 
AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF GREEK. 3 
 
 to Athens for a modern Greek book on anatomy, 
 since I could not find a copy in New York. The 
 book arrived too late to enable me to complete 
 my preparations, and therefore I selected another 
 subject. Some of you will reproach me for occu- 
 pying your time with a theme which may appear 
 unusual in this place, but if it were not for this 
 I should not regret the change, because, before 
 we can understand the significance of the living 
 Greek language as the one to be selected for our 
 anatomy and for other practical purposes, we 
 must come to an understanding of the language 
 itself, and this can best be accomplished if we 
 begin with the study of certain historical facts. 
 
 Some years ago the Greek question was intro- 
 duced into the medical world by no less a person 
 than Rudolf Virchow, in his inaugural address 
 as rector of the Berlin University, on October 
 15th, 1892. While Virchow spoke of school 
 Greek only, and did not mention living Greek at 
 all, the credit is due to the Medical Record of hav- 
 ing been the first to call our attention to living 
 Greek. The impulse which was given by the 
 editor of that journal has found an echo in the 
 medical press; in all languages in all civilized 
 countries has the subject been discussed; even 
 in the scientific papers of German philologists 
 
4 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 has the question been considered. The Greek 
 question has thus become a legitimate one for 
 us, and, judging from the interest with which it 
 has been treated, we may surely predict for it a 
 brilliant future. 
 
 If we arrive at an understanding of the signifi- 
 cance of the living Greek language, if we famil- 
 iarize ourselves with certain facts concerning 
 this idiom, we shall notice first of all that there 
 exists much less a new Greek than there exists 
 a new German. We shall find that the language 
 which is spoken and written in Greece this very 
 day is exactly two thousand three hundred years 
 old. We shall find that the prevailing assertion 
 that we do not know how the Greek was pro- 
 nounced during the classical period is based 
 upon an error. We shall find that the stones 
 from the seventh century B.C., and from that 
 time through all the centuries until the present 
 one, speak to us and give us the pronunciation 
 of each and every century. 
 
 We shall have to deal with many errors con- 
 cerning the Greek language and the Greeks 
 themselves, with errors which are as extensive 
 almost as the whole civilized world and as old ; 
 some as old as the dissociation of the . Latin 
 from the Greek Church — that is, more than eight 
 
AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF GREEK. 5 
 
 hundred years; others as old as the notorious 
 Dialogus Erasmi Roterdami de grceci latinique pro- 
 nunciatione — namely, three hundred and sixty- 
 eight years. With truth and simplicity alone 
 can the errors concerning Greek be crushed. 
 
 To do justice to the subject, the time allowed 
 for a simple lecture would be too short. It will 
 be enough if I confine myself this evening to 
 giving a sketch of the historical development of 
 the modern Greek language. 
 
 My remarks are based not only on the re- 
 searches of prominent native Greek philologists — 
 I wish to mention especially Hatzidakis* who, 
 like many learned Greeks, has made his studies 
 of old Greek philology in German universities, 
 and who with pride calls himself a scholar of 
 Delbriick; and the great scholar, Papadimitra- 
 kopulos, whose crushing arguments, as my es- 
 teemed friend Professor Leotsakos expresses 
 himself, are not less formidable in strength and 
 length than his name — but also the writings of 
 different authors of different countries found in 
 the periodical 'ElXd^, published by the Philhellenic 
 Society of Amsterdam, and other periodicals and 
 books. 
 
 * In this paper I avail myself mostly of the book of G. N. 
 Hatzidakis, "Einleitung in die neugriechische Grammatik," 
 Leipzig, 1892. 
 
6 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 It is impossible reasonably to dispute the fact 
 that the Greek language of to-day is an uninter- 
 rupted continuation of ancient Greek. The liv- 
 ing Greek of to-day shows much less deviation 
 from the Greek of two thousand and more years 
 ago than any other European language shows in 
 the course of centuries. 
 
 In the great days of Greece, when its literary 
 works received the applause and admiration of 
 enlightened scholars, authors took great pains 
 to write well, fearing that they might be de- 
 spised or forgotten. This emulation produced 
 great works. The language was at its greatest 
 perfection. Every writer found the beautiful 
 form for his thoughts and for the expression of 
 his ideas. Inevitable vicissitudes, in the first 
 instance of civil dissensions, have gradually led 
 to decadence. Literature received less and less 
 serious attention. Poetry was first to decline. 
 Orators and historians were replaced by speakers 
 and chroniclers. Poly bins, the historian (204- 
 122 B.C.), complained of the difficulty he had of 
 putting a nice thought into equally nice form, 
 and he asks his readers not to pay so much at- 
 tention to the form as to the contents of his writ- 
 ings. Such a request could never have been 
 made by Thucydides or Demosthenes. The 
 
AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF GREEK. 7 
 
 land of heroes, of liberty, came under bondage, 
 and the powerful and creative spirit of the old 
 Greeks weakened. 
 
 The history of the Greek language is the 
 mirror of the history of the Greek nation. 
 Naturally enough, a depressed and suppressed 
 nation cannot create national works. Patriot- 
 ism, national pride, free political life, and re- 
 ligion are necessary to inspire the creation of 
 great monuments of literature. While the later 
 Greeks, however, could no longer write classi- 
 cally, they retained a keen sense for the beauties 
 of the classical language. Instead of creating 
 new works themselves, they became imitators of 
 the old writers, scrupulous imitators of their 
 words and forms. 
 
 All nations have more or less a double lan- 
 guage; nowhere do the illiterate use the same 
 forms and words as the educated ; even the latter 
 use only exceptionally artistic and choice lan- 
 guage. A well-marked diglossy has existed 
 among the Greeks at all times. 
 
 When, after Alexander the Great, Greek had 
 become the world and court language, a lan- 
 guage for prose, the language for the educated 
 class was created, the so-called xocv-^, the general, 
 and the foundations of this general language 
 
8 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 were the Attic writers; admixed were provin- 
 cialisms. 
 
 The sources for the study of this language, 
 the xoivrj, are the writers of the Alexandrian 
 period, above all the papyri and the numerous 
 inscriptions which are found in all parts of 
 Greece. This fine literary language, the y.oiv^, 
 is yet the language of to-day; it is a finished 
 language which has taken up to its completion 
 words from the dialects, but which is indepen- 
 dent of dialects. It is the centre around which 
 the dialects are arranged. 
 
 Through two thousand years the Greek lan- 
 guage has proved to be of a most remarkable 
 terseness compared with the Romanic and the 
 German languages; it is surprising how little 
 Greek has changed in words as well as in forms. 
 Most grammatical forms of the pure Attic are in 
 use this very day. The difference between the 
 new and the old consists principally in the sim- 
 plification of old grammar; the new elements, 
 forms, and construction in the new Greek are 
 only exceptionally formed. This simplification, 
 consisting in the generalizing of some and drop- 
 ping of other elements, did not take place re- 
 cently, but during the time of the establishment 
 of the xotvyj; it is therefore not a characteristic of 
 
AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF GREEK. 9 
 
 the new Greek, but it appears more clearly and 
 distinctly in it. 
 
 It has been said that the firmness and the te- 
 nacity of the character of the Greeks, who, more 
 than any other subdued nation, remained true to 
 their customs and habits, were the cause of their 
 clinging to their language more than any other 
 nation. But there exist other peoples with as 
 much tenacity of character as the Greeks who 
 also have preserved their customs and habits, 
 who, however, did not preserve their language 
 unchanged through all the centuries as did 
 the Greeks. Greek of to-day is essentially old 
 Attic Greek. By the Greeks the contempora- 
 neous language of the different periods of Greece 
 was never used instead of or confounded with 
 the xncvTj^ any more than by the Romans during 
 the fourth and fifth centuries of the Christian 
 era would be used the Italian of their time, 
 which was considered as being corrupt, instead 
 of the classical Latin. At no time was there a 
 contemporaneous general demotic language de- 
 viating much from the xotvrj ; if such a language, 
 deviating as much as, for instance, French from 
 Latin, ever had existed, there would be quite a 
 different Greek literary language at present. 
 
 One of the most plausible reasons why the 
 
10 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 Greek of to-day is essentially the Greek of the 
 old glorious time, is the magnificence of the 
 beauty and contents of the classical monuments 
 of literature. As a large tree which excludes all 
 sun rays underneath its mighty foliage will not 
 permit other plants to be lighted and warmed 
 and to thrive within its reach, so have the over- 
 whelming magnitude and the sublimity of the 
 classical form of the old literature prevented a 
 post-classical literature from developing. Since 
 the Greeks for centuries had, on the one hand, 
 the richest and most beautiful works of the class- 
 ical period, and, on the other hand, the most 
 insignificant products of a later time, they natur- 
 ally enough had recourse again and again to the 
 old treasures. During the reign of barbarism in 
 Europe — that is, from the fifth to the twelfth 
 century — the Greeks were the exclusive, jealous 
 conservators of science, arts, industry; they did 
 not allow, even to themselves, that something of 
 the sacred deposit be changed, as if during this 
 sad gap in the history of Europe they had had 
 the thought of transmitting all intact to more 
 prosperous times. During the Latin and the 
 Byzantine reign the Greek writers, neither con- 
 trolled nor encouraged by public opinion-, neg- 
 lected themselves, and their style necessarily 
 
AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF GREEK. II 
 
 deteriorated. Books were not read, and every 
 one wrote only for his own satisfaction. Be- 
 cause the beauties of the classicity of old could 
 not be found in contemporaneous work the error 
 was made of blaming the language for it. 
 
 It is easily understood that the writers of 
 many centuries, even the less educated, who had 
 nothing of the genius of their ancestors, in their 
 admiration of the classical language retained 
 most anxiously all the old orthography, the 
 words, the modes of expression, the construc- 
 tions, because all considered the old language 
 as one of extreme beauty. They looked upon 
 new elements which might be introduced into it 
 as vulgar corruptions. Every writer had the in- 
 tention to use the aristocratic, pure ideal lan- 
 guage instead of the vulgar and irregular. 
 Thus can be explained the fact that the schools, 
 the church, the administration, the military, the 
 legislature, the courts, the correspondents, and 
 the literati of all kinds, during all the centuries 
 while Greece was in bondage, used the archaic 
 language. Books written in dialects, such, for 
 instance, as A B C books or readers, grammars 
 of contemporaneous Greek, were altogether un- 
 known things at those times. In aristocratic 
 society tuhv-ti only was spoken. Even the Roman 
 
 4 
 
12 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 reign, which in the West had forced many na- 
 tions to adopt the Latin, had not been able to 
 interfere with the continuation and the cultiva- 
 tion of the Greek, for Grcecia capta feruin victor em 
 cepit, Rome itself was made a grceca urbs. 
 
 The Roman Empire ceased to be. Other na- 
 tions did not emigrate into Greece, at least not 
 in large numbers. If there had been an inva- 
 sion numerous enough, it would have left traces 
 in the people's language; that is, in the dialects. 
 The language of the continental part of Greece, 
 however, remained as free from such foreign 
 elements as did the language of the islands, of 
 which it is known positively that they were 
 not invaded by foreigners, especially southern 
 Laconia and Maina, for instance. Besides, it 
 is to be taken into consideration that the for- 
 eigners who did come before the thirteenth cen- 
 tury did not come as conquerors, they were 
 simply nomads, people without culture and rela- 
 tively not numerous ; they came among a nation 
 of high culture. It stands to reason that they 
 would adopt the Greek culture, religion, and 
 language rather than that the Greeks would 
 adopt anything of the kind from them. 
 
 An interruption of Greek culture and of. the 
 use of the pure, fine literary language has never 
 
AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF GEEEK. 1 3 
 
 happened in Greece, not even after the Latin 
 conquest in 1204 and the Turkish in 1453. The 
 Attic, the classical language, became, so to say, 
 transfigured ; its forms, words, constructions, ex- 
 pressions, orthography, were considered as some- 
 thing sacred, as something which alone had a 
 right to existence. 
 
 Everybody will understand that all the above- 
 named conditions were unfavorable to the crea- 
 tion of a new literary language and a new na- 
 tional literature. There remained on the one 
 hand the antiquated literary language, and on 
 the other hand the freely developed popular lan- 
 guage — the dialects. Neither one could supply 
 all demands. After the eleventh century the 
 necessity was felt for the alteration of the 
 former, the literary language, as it appeared 
 antiquated. The adoption of a more modern 
 phase, which would be more easily understood, 
 was suggested. But then came the Prankish ad- 
 venturers who conquered Constantinople, divided 
 Greece among themselves, and brought the most 
 terrific misery on the whole Greek world. While 
 the political condition thus grew worse every 
 day, there was a want of national spirit, which 
 is the first essential for a national literature. It 
 remained as it was ; the treasures of the classical 
 
14 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 literature and the church were the only links 
 which held all Greeks together. 
 
 Nothing has been more potent in the preser- 
 vation of the old Greek than the influence of the 
 church. During the dark night which covered 
 the land while the Turks governed it, there 
 remained, overlooked by the conquerors, two 
 points still faintly illuminated by the departing 
 sun rays of liberty : the church with some privi- 
 leges granted for political reasons, and the inac- 
 cessible mountainous regions of old Hellas, 
 where the bravest found refuge from bondage. 
 
 More than a hundred times a year, and for 
 hours at a time, all Greeks had to hear in their 
 churches the fine old Greek, and principally on 
 this account a knowledge of the old Greek was 
 preserved through all the centuries, even among 
 the humblest people. People, although unable 
 either to read or to write, understood the mass 
 very well, the sermon — in short, everything 
 they heard in church. They could be seen in 
 olden times gathered together and listening at- 
 tentively to one among them possessed of a cer- 
 tain amount of education acquired in a convent 
 or elsewhere, explaining the difficult words or 
 expressions. 
 
 It has been said, on the other hand, that the 
 
AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF GREEK. 1 5 
 
 very existence of the Orthodox Church has been 
 the reason that living Greek was considered 
 as a new language. The Byzantines, and the 
 people depending on them, were completely sep- 
 arated from the western European nations in con- 
 sequence of religious and political events. The 
 fact is that the Byzantines, their heirs, and their 
 descendants, even to this very day, do not con- 
 sider themselves as belonging to Europe. We 
 notice this in every newspaper and in daily con- 
 versation. When Greeks speak of Germans, 
 French, and English, they name them, as in con- 
 trast to themselves, Europeans. The Orthodox 
 Church forms a world of its own ; it is a complex 
 of nations and states, some of them half civilized, 
 living between civilized Europe and barbaric 
 Asia. This multiform composition of nations, 
 which in the past has been the bulwark against 
 Asiatic barbarism, seems to be destined for the 
 future to be the medium of bringing civilization 
 from Europe into Asia. Up to date it has been 
 little known, but much misrepresented. This 
 seclusion has been the impediment to the scien- 
 tific study of the middle and new Greek. 
 
 In consequence of the separation of the Occi- 
 dental from the Oriental church — that is, the 
 Orthodox from the Roman Catholic — the history 
 
1 6 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 of the Greeks during the Byzantine era has 
 been neglected by the schools in Western 
 Europe. The hostility toward the Orthodox 
 Church was extended to the Greeks and the liv- 
 ing Greek language. Thus we see that the 
 church on the one hand helped to preserve the 
 old Greek language, and, on the other hand, 
 was indirectly the cause that living Greek was 
 condemned, despised, calumniated. The world 
 is full of wrong and misery caused by religious 
 dissension. 
 
 It is about time that our schools turned their 
 attention to the history of Byzantine Greece. 
 While German, French, English, Italian, and 
 Spanish history are treated with due considera- 
 tion, Byzantine history is restricted to a few para- 
 graphs only, and these so brief that no satisfac- 
 tory understanding is possible. 
 
 The close relation of the middle Greek lan- 
 guage with the old Greek is evident. There is 
 hardly any branch of classical philology which 
 is not enlightened by the study of the Byzan- 
 tines. Even the vulgar Greek, the dialects, 
 and the dialects severally, as we shall see later 
 on, have proved to be essential and important 
 parts of the history of the Greek language. 
 This has been fully demonstrated by a number 
 
AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF GREEK. 1 7 
 
 of Greek philologists, by Maurophrydes, Deffner, 
 S. Meyer, Foy, Dossios, Hatzidakis, Psichari, 
 Oekonomides, Thumb, and others. 
 
 No contemporaneous language had any litera- 
 ture except in the songs of the Klephts. In the 
 ravines of the Pindus, of the Olympus, of the 
 Aroanias, and of the Peloponnesus the fearless 
 men who raised the name Klepht to a pinnacle 
 of honor, with a certain pride developed by their 
 bravery, sang their Klepht songs while constant- 
 ly under arms, and fighting incessantly to guard 
 their independence. These songs are simple 
 and artless, but often sublime, as the summits of 
 the mountains that they came from, and of the 
 same natural beauty as the wild flowers which 
 likewise rooted there. 
 
 The Klephts were a robust people, but all 
 their poetry is characterized by a spirit of chas- 
 tity, though sad and melancholy as was their 
 history. The poets are anonymous, like the 
 heroes of those times. Here are some examples 
 of Klepht songs : 
 
 " I will join the Klephts to become the pride 
 of the desert and the dweller of the forest. I 
 will live in the mountains and on their sum- 
 mits, live where the wild beasts have their 
 lair. I may have the rocks for my couch and 
 
1 8 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 the snow for my cover, but I will not serve the 
 Turks." 
 
 As in the poems of Homer the horses of 
 Achilles and the rivers of Troy assume the hu- 
 man voice; as in the old mythology every tree, 
 every grotto, every spring is animated by a 
 nymph dwelling within, so in these songs are 
 the woods, the eagles perching on the summits 
 of the rocks, the mountains themselves, the 
 sun and the moon, the rivers and the soil and 
 the clouds of heaven made to speak, narrating 
 the adventures of the Klephts, lamenting their 
 death, consoling their mothers and all their 
 grief-stricken family. Touching all chords, the 
 most tender, the most sublime, they give an ac- 
 count of the events of family life and of the life 
 in the fields ; exactly like the ancient rhapsodies 
 they draw a picture of the Greek people and 
 their political history during a period which is 
 not otherwise recorded. 
 
 In one of the songs a dying Klepht dictates 
 his last will : " Dig a grave for me, large and 
 deep that I may stand upright with my gun 
 ready to fight. Open also a window to the right 
 that the swallows may come to announce the 
 springtime, and that the nightingale may come 
 to sing of May blossom." 
 
AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF GREEK. 1 9 
 
 A mother whose son has been killed expresses 
 her grief: "The harts and the deers run on the 
 mountains, only one sad roe does not follow 
 them ; she seeks the shade and rests on her left 
 side ; when she finds clear water she disturbs it 
 before drinking. The sun meets her, rests on 
 her way and asks: What aileth thee, my poor 
 roe? Why dost thou seek the shade and rest 
 on thy left side? Sun, thou askest me, and 
 I will answer thee. For twelve years I was 
 childless; finally I had one child. I nour- 
 ished and I raised it. When it was exactly 
 two years old a hunter killed it. Maledic- 
 tion upon thee, hunter, thou hast killed my 
 husband and thou hast robbed me of my 
 child." 
 
 In many of these songs we observe all the 
 vivacity of the inexhaustible imagination of the 
 ancients, and we are carried away into the re- 
 mote times when poetical creations peopled the 
 Olympus and when the poets made them enter 
 into human dramas. 
 
 It was in Athens last summer; the moon 
 shone, the stars were more brilliant than we see 
 them in our climate, all surroundings were as 
 beautiful as we can find them only in the most 
 favored spots of our planet, when I heard for the 
 
20 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 first time a Klepht song, sung by some sons of 
 the mountains who were passing by. I was 
 spellbound, and it seemed to me' as if these 
 voices which I heard and the sympathetic ex- 
 pression of the words, when compared with the 
 songs heard from artists at an opera, were as 
 much more genuine as the surrounding nature 
 was superior to the painted scenery of the stage. 
 The song I listened to was the following: " Why 
 are the mountains dark and threatening? Is it 
 because the wind shakes them, because the rain 
 strikes them? It is not the wind that shakes 
 them, it is not the rain that pours down ; it is 
 Charon (death) passing with the dead. He 
 chases the young before him, the old are forced 
 to follow him, and the children of tender age he 
 has grouped on his saddle. (There being no 
 rivers in the mountains, the Klepht poets have 
 represented Charon as a horseman.) The aged 
 beg of him, the young fall on their knees before 
 him: Stay, O death, near a village, stay near a 
 fresh spring, that the old may quench their 
 thirst, that the young may throw the stone 
 (disk), and that the children may gather flowers. 
 I shall not rest at a village nor stay at a fresh 
 spring. The mothers would come to fetch water 
 and would meet their children, the spouses 
 
AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF GREEK. 2 1 
 
 would find themselves and I could not separate 
 them again." 
 
 Many a beautiful night I spent at the Phaleron 
 with a dear Greek friend, a grave man of 
 science. He recited for me many of the Klepht 
 songs ; one of those I liked the best was a bal- 
 lad, and when I heard it I said at once, Burger 
 must have borrowed from it for his best poem, 
 " Leonore." It was as follows: 
 
 " O mother with thy nine sons and thy only 
 daughter, thy beloved daughter is tenderly 
 caressed. She was twelve years old and the sun 
 had not seen her yet. Thou bathest her, and 
 thou braidest her hair in the shade of the night, 
 and thou fastenest the hair with ribbons under 
 the rays of the evening star or the morning star. 
 She is asked to marry in a foreign land, quite 
 far away, in Babylonia. Her eight brothers re- 
 fuse their consent, but Constantine consents: 
 Give her, O my mother, send Arete into the 
 foreign land, that I may find consolation when- 
 ever I shall travel far away, and there may be a 
 roof under which I can repose. Thou art pru- 
 dent, Constantine, but what thou sayest is not 
 wise. And when, O my son, sickness or death 
 should happen to us, who will bring her to me? 
 He gave God for bond and called the saints as 
 
22 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 witnesses that if death or sickness should hap- 
 pen, if joy or sorrow should befall them, he 
 would go to fetch her. Then came a year of 
 misfortune, a month of distress. The pest 
 raged and took away the nine sons. The 
 mother alone was left, a reed in the midst of the 
 desert. Before eight graves she struck her 
 chest, from the grave of Constantine she had the 
 stone raised. Rise, O my Constantine, I will 
 have my Arete. Thou hast given God for bond 
 and the saints for witnesses, that when joy or 
 grief should happen thou wouldst go to fetch 
 her. This adjuration brought him from his 
 tomb. Out of a cloud he made a horse for him- 
 self, and out of a star a bridle, he had the moon 
 for companion and went to fetch his sister. He 
 traversed the mountain ranges and he found 
 her combing her hair in the moonshine. He 
 saluted her from the distance, saying: Come 
 with me, my sister, our mother calls thee to her 
 side. Ah, my brother, at what unusual hour 
 thou callest on me. If it is joy which is waiting 
 for me, let me know it that I may put on my 
 garments embroidered with gold; if thou 
 grievest for a sad event then I remain as I am. 
 Come with me, my Arete, and remain as thou 
 art. Along the road they went ; they met little 
 
AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF GREEK. 23 
 
 birds singing and saying : Who has ever seen a 
 nice girl dragged away by a dead man ? Do you 
 understand, my dear Constantine, what the little 
 birds are saying: Who has ever seen a nice girl 
 dragged away by a dead man? They are un- 
 reasonable birds. Let them sing and say what 
 they like. They continued their route, and 
 other birds said again : What do we see ! What 
 a sad sight ! the living travelling with the dead ! 
 Did you understand, my Constantine, what the 
 birds were saying about the living travelling with 
 the dead? They are birds; they have nothing 
 else to do but to sing and to gossip. I fear thee, 
 O my brother, thou hast the odor of incense. 
 Last night we went to the chapel of St. John 
 and the priest put much incense in his censer. 
 They went on further and other birds said : God 
 Almigthy, this is a great miracle which thou 
 doest! A corpse drags after him a young girl 
 full of beauty and of grace. Arete heard it and 
 her heart broke. Did you understand, my Con- 
 stantine, what the little birds said? Tell me 
 where is thy beautiful hair, thy heavy beard ? I 
 have had a grave sickness which threatened to 
 be fatal. It is on this account that I have lost my 
 blond hair and my heavy beard. They found 
 the house closed and the door latched. Cobwebs 
 
24 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 were spread over all the windows. Open, O my 
 mother, open for me. I am your Arete. If 
 thou art Charon, go on thy way. I have no 
 more children to give thee. My poor Arete is 
 far from here, she lives in a foreign land. 
 Open, open, my mother. I am thy Constantine. 
 I gave thee God for bond and the saints for wit- 
 nesses that if joy or sadness should happen I 
 would bring her to thee. Before she could 
 reach the door her soul departed." 
 
 These few examples show that poetry did not 
 die out in the land that was at one time so glori- 
 ous. The germs still exist, and some day the 
 rays of national prosperity may shine on Parnas- 
 sus covered with a new flora. 
 
 May not the form of poetry of which the 
 above are examples be the very same form of 
 poetry that was current among the illiterate 
 class of people in ancient times? This form of 
 language has not been transmitted by the classi- 
 cal authors, but many of the words and gram- 
 matical types are of the remotest epoch. They 
 have disappeared from literary language, but 
 never from the language of the people. 
 
 Here is a world of study and one that would 
 certainly prove more satisfactory to philologist 
 and philological science than the constant fault- 
 
AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF GREEK. 25 
 
 finding with modern Greek and so-called modern 
 Greek pronunciation. 
 
 The different parts of Greece are widely scat- 
 tered, being separated by the sea, by highlands, 
 and by other nations intervening. This peculiar- 
 ity of Greeks living secluded from Greeks became 
 more marked politically when the provinces of 
 the Byzantine reign were conquered. This was 
 another reason why a new people's language 
 would not develop and could not spread. A 
 new national language understood by all Greeks 
 did not exist. There were only the many dia- 
 lects of the different provinces, and so we find in 
 regard to the people's contemporaneous lan- 
 guage polyglossy on the one hand and aglossy 
 on the other. The language to which all the 
 Greeks adhered was the virginal, immortal old 
 Greek. 
 
 It is true that in Cyprus and Crete attempts 
 were made for a while to write contempora- 
 neous language, but these attempts were futile. 
 Writers in the politically and geographically 
 lacerated Greece wrote the idiom of their respec- 
 tive provinces. These dialects were too much 
 intermixed with topical forms and expressions 
 for the majority of the Greeks to understand 
 them, and so none of these writings laid a foun- 
 
26 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 dation for a new literary language of the whole 
 nation. Besides, all these writings are value- 
 less; they show no trace of genuine national 
 spirit and national character ; they are poor imi- 
 tations of weak foreign originals. The difficulty 
 of raising the contemporaneous language of Cy- 
 prus or Maina to the dignity of a national lan- 
 guage became an impossibility with the conquest 
 and political destruction of these two islands. 
 
 The Turkish reign brought along with many 
 other evils much ignorance. This ignorance, 
 one would assume, might have favored the 
 abandonment of the old language. Indeed, the 
 people's idioms were spoken during this fearftil 
 period, and attempts were made to use the 
 vulgar language in literature, but more than 
 ever in vain. The Roman Catholic priests, in 
 order to make propaganda among the Greeks, 
 used the vulgar language, and monks of this 
 church have translated the liturgy into the con- 
 temporaneous idiom of the people, some of these 
 translations being printed even in Latin charac- 
 ters; this same language they spoke in church. 
 The Greeks always entertained a certain dislike 
 toward the people's language, and are careful 
 not to employ it when they speak of sacred 
 things. In some cases it was the church which 
 
AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF GREEK. 2/ 
 
 caused constructions or changes in the meaning 
 of words. It is on this account that many words 
 which otherwise would have been lost are pre- 
 served. Some such words became, so to say, 
 sanctified, and the contemporaneous language, 
 in order not to use these words for profane 
 meaning, was obliged to supply corresponding 
 ones. A Greek will not name, for instance, 
 bread and wine, when spoken of as being used 
 in church, by the names il'ioixi and xpa<7i^ which 
 words are of the people's and not of the literary 
 and the church language, like some others used 
 when spoken of as sacred, rrapdi^oi, the virgin, 
 otherwise xopczffi, xopa<nd. In addition to this 
 aversion against popular language it came 
 about that this despised language was spoken, 
 and, of course, badly spoken, by men who them- 
 selves were much hated by the orthodox Greeks. 
 
 At the time when the Turks conquered Crete 
 and had all Greece under their oppressive con- 
 trol, the Greeks commenced to contemplate how 
 to regain their liberty and independence. 
 
 A factor in favor of the preservation of the 
 pure literary language during the Turkish reign 
 was that in all the Greek colonies, in Venice, in 
 Moldavia and Wallachia, in Joannina, in Con- 
 stantinople, in Smyrna, in Jerusalem, in Bu- 
 
2 8 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 charest, everywhere numerous Greek schools 
 were established and the old classical and new 
 books were printed. All this kept up a most 
 powerful enthusiasm for the old classical Greek 
 everywhere. The old classics were studied with 
 great zeal. 
 
 The Greeks inspired themselves by thoughts 
 of the glory of Athens and Sparta. They felt it 
 an insult to be called Pu)ij.at6<s instead of "Ellr^^j. 
 Vessels destined to form in some future time the 
 national navy were given patriotic names like 
 Athena, Themistocles, Epaminondas. A strong 
 old Greek love for liberty and independence de- 
 veloped in these generations. During a period 
 of almost four centuries it kept the hearts of all 
 Greeks inflamed, and culminated in deeds of 
 heroism in the gigantic war for independence. 
 
 It could not be otherwise but that this united 
 people, although united under Turkish bondage, 
 should want one common language. One party, 
 in boundless love for all that pertained to old 
 Hellas, desired the language in which the his- 
 tory of the deeds of the old heroism, of the old 
 love for liberty was transmitted; another party 
 thought that such language was an impossibility, 
 and wanted a modern language free from 
 archaism as the best organ to educate and en- 
 
AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF GREEK. 29 
 
 lighten the people. This led to an excited lin- 
 guistic war. 
 
 This war lasted long, and was carried on with 
 much zeal and animosity, but it is all over now. 
 The first party did not succeed because it fought 
 against the spirit of the time, which did not ap- 
 prove of such a separation of the descendants 
 from the ancestors, and because the language of 
 its literary productions, written in various provin- 
 cialisms not understood by all, could not possibly 
 be accepted as the general idiom. The second 
 party failed because the archaism which they 
 wrote was not intelligible enough to the mass of 
 the people. 
 
 Since neither of the two extremes succeeded, 
 and neither the written nor the spoken tradi- 
 tion would suffice, a middle way was found and 
 accepted ; both forms were united, the one com- 
 plementing the other ; a mixture of old and new 
 elements was established. This procedure was 
 by no means new to the Greeks ; it was planned 
 by history itself. From its very inception the 
 x(>t>^ has not been used in its original purity ; dif- 
 ferent concessions were made to the demands of 
 the time — that is, a mixture of the old and the 
 modern was formed. That such a mixture was 
 nothing extraordinary or anything like a dis- 
 
30 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 turbing factor can be seen from the mixed lan- 
 guage* of classical poets and from the prose of 
 Xenophon. In making this mixture of old and 
 new elements both were given the old forms. 
 During the time of the Atticists and the Byzan- 
 tines, as well as afterward and down to the pres- 
 ent, the old elements were always considered as 
 beautiful and noble ; the new ones, however, as 
 ugly and hurtful. The new elements were in- 
 troduced for the sake of distinctness and conven- 
 ience; the elegance was looked for in the old 
 words. This middle way prescribed by history 
 was to unite the Greeks, living, as we have 
 seen, so to speak, in groups remote from each 
 other, in the most satisfactory manner, even 
 before the war of independence. 
 
 The origin of the Greek of to-day has been 
 discussed a great deal. In the early part of 
 this century some authors, especially Athanasios 
 Christopulos, said that the new Greek was an 
 -^olo-Doric dialect. This opinion has been criti- 
 cised by Hatzidakis. He found that such asser- 
 tion had no foundation. Although traces of 
 Doric dialect could be found, the fundamental 
 
 * lu speaking of mixed language in regard to Greek it is not 
 meant to imply that Greek had any foreign elements. In this 
 latter sense Greek was never a mixed language. The living 
 Greek is the genuine daughter of the old Greek, 
 
AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF GREEK. 3 1 
 
 character was the xocvtj. New Greek could not 
 be called ^olo-Doric on account of the few 
 Doric elements it contained. 
 
 The literary Greek of to-day consists of three 
 elements: 
 
 1. Of Attic words, forms, and constructions 
 which after the fall of Greece composed the 
 simplified language, the xocvvj, and of elements 
 which, in conformity with the rules and laws of 
 the language, have developed during the follow- 
 ing centuries. 
 
 2. Of some words, forms, and constructions 
 which during the classical time developed in the 
 old dialects, which, however, entered into the 
 Attic or into the x(w^-^, and thus formed a part of 
 the entire xoc^vj. 
 
 3. Of some elements of old dialects which 
 have not come with the xoorj, nor through the 
 xo(V7jj but, on the contrary, independent from it, 
 have been taken into the new Greek literary lan- 
 guage. 
 
 How these elements were introduced into the 
 xotvTj is a question which would lead too far into 
 philological study to be ventilated here. To 
 enumerate examples of words and forms of old 
 dialects thus introduced, words which are fam- 
 iliar to everybody, I will mention ddXaffaa in- 
 
32 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 stead of edUrra, and the word aXixriop, which was 
 unknown in the Attic. The Athenians during 
 the classical period did by no means speak the 
 pure and fine Attic of Plato and Demosthenes; 
 this can be shown by quotations from some old 
 writers and also by inscriptions. It is most 
 probable that some elements from old dialects 
 have entered into the Attic and later on into 
 the xoiVT). 
 
 The literary Greek language of to-day owes 
 its existence, in part at least, to the exertions of 
 the great patriot Korai's. Although the party of 
 the xadapttTTai and the party of the xobdiarai both 
 stood up against Korais, the power of history, 
 which was on Korais *s side, was too strong for 
 both parties, as we have seen. 
 
 AdariavTio? Koparj<i was bom April 27th, 1747, 
 in Smyrna. From early youth he devoted 
 himself to the study of old and new lan- 
 guages. In obedience to his father's wishes, he 
 followed a mercantile career during the years 
 1772-78, without, however, neglecting the 
 sciences. From 1782-88 he studied medicine in 
 Montpellier and established himself as a practis- 
 ing physician in Paris. From there he worked 
 incessantly for the education of his compatriots, 
 and endeavored to awaken a favorable opinion of 
 
AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF GREEK. 33 
 
 his nation in the Occidental countries. In 1800 
 he received the prize of the Academy for an 
 edition of the writings of Hippocrates, but be- 
 fore this time he had attracted the attention of 
 the world of learning by his ability. Later on 
 he gained fame by his Greek translation of Bec- 
 caria's work on crimes and their punishments. 
 This was followed by a work entitled '' De V etat 
 actuel de la civilisation en Grece' (Paris, 1803). 
 This was the first publication in Europe which 
 gave true information on the intellectual and 
 moral conditions of the new Greeks. During the 
 period from 1805-27 he published a collection — 
 twenty volumes — of old Greek classics, with 
 critical explanations and prolegomena. In the 
 latter he gave his patriotic teachings and ad- 
 vices. His greatest merit consisted in his pro- 
 moting the Greek language; he eliminated as 
 much as possible all foreign elements, but re- 
 tained all that was good and useful from all 
 centuries, rejecting the one-sided retention of the 
 old words and forms as not compatible with the 
 understanding of the people. He above all 
 helped to establish a noble literary language. 
 On account of his old age he could take no part 
 in the rising of his fatherland in 1 82 1 , but aided 
 it greatly by his patriotic pen. When Greece 
 
34 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 had gained her independence he took an active 
 interest in the new formation of his country. In 
 1830-31 he attacked the government of Kapo- 
 distria in two publications. These books were 
 in 1832 publicly destroyed on the stake in Nau- 
 plia by order of the brother of the president, 
 Augustine Kapodistria. He died in 1833. His 
 autobiography appeared in Paris in the same 
 year. 
 
 As we have seen, Korai's was still alive during 
 the great national war. In the first year the 
 necessity of draughting a constitution and of 
 enacting legislation arose. Which language 
 should be chosen? The contemporaneous peo- 
 ple's language was not feasible, because it was 
 as varied as possible ; the Greeks as an entirety 
 could not have understood it ; besides, this peo- 
 ple's language was poor and incapable of ex- 
 pressing ideas. The majority of the men com- 
 posing the delegations were not teachers, or 
 professors, or archaeologists; they were physi- 
 cians, sailors, merchants, priests, soldiers, and 
 they used the mixed language sanctioned by 
 practical use at that time. This language of 
 the constitution and the legislation was the same 
 as that in which the journals were written, in 
 which the correspondence was kept. It was a 
 
AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF GREEK. 35 
 
 time of activity, of great national impulse when 
 this language was thus officially adopted, this 
 language which had been predestined by history. 
 When Greece had regained her liberty after 
 almost four centuries of Turkish bondage a 
 regular government was to be erected. Count- 
 less numbers of demands were made on the lan- 
 guage. A new life, a culture of which there 
 had been no idea before, appeared suddenly 
 before the Greeks. The language had to keep 
 pace with the many new political, scientific, 
 technical, commercial, journalistic requirements. 
 Another nation would certainly under such cir- 
 cumstances simply have adopted with the for- 
 eign ideas the words also of foreign people, and 
 would have formed a half-French and half- 
 hybrid language. Not so the Greeks. Their 
 history, their national pride, led them to ex- 
 clude foreign words, led them to take the neces- 
 sary elements from the old Greek to create new 
 symbols for new ideas. This was a gigantic 
 work. Stephanos Kumanudes has enumerated 
 thirty thousand words which have been created 
 during the last hundred years. Let us illustrate 
 how the work was done by a few examples: 
 During the eighteenth century the foreign word 
 azaixTtepia had been used to designate a printing 
 
36 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 establishment, then ro-oypaipia had been formed, 
 and from the latter a great many combinations 
 were made which could not possibly have been 
 formed from araiir.spia. In the same manner was 
 a/Jouzriro^, then the genuine Greek durjydpo?, or first 
 TTOffva, the raxudpufiBiov, etc. Thesc and thousands 
 of foreign words are now entirely out of use, and 
 may be known only to the oldest people ; the 
 majority of the Greeks have no recollection of 
 them. This process continues wherever a for- 
 eign word has been introduced. In my child's 
 dX<pai37jrdpto> I find the word /xai/xoo (monkey). In 
 vain should I look for it in a Greek dictionary. 
 It is not a regular word adopted by the literary 
 language. From nai/io6 we can form the diminu- 
 tive fiaifiouddxc, but that is all; while from the 
 genuine and regular word ttWtjxo? 1 can form 
 
 Tzidrjxt^w, TuOriXL<Tfx6<s^ 7:c0rjXt(TTij<Sj etC. This shoWS hoW 
 
 the metaphoric use of words like fxai/io6 is very 
 limited, that of -tOrjxo?, however, very extended. 
 This facility of combinations which is so fre- 
 quent is a great advantage in regard to genuine 
 and regular Greek words. 
 
 Greek, the new literary language, has steadily 
 become richer and more homogeneous ever since 
 1 821; it undergoes changes all the time. Con- 
 struction and forms are constantly remodelled 
 
AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF GREEK. 37 
 
 after the old Greek, especially in those words 
 and expressions which are taken from the old 
 language; notwithstanding this the new Greek 
 remains a mixed language. The remodelling is 
 called purification. Incorrect elements, when 
 discovered, are extirpated with more and more 
 severity and tact. Greek has changed from age 
 to age because it has continued to live; only 
 what is dead, like Latin, does not change any 
 more. The Greeks now possess a highly devel- 
 oped language ; they can without much difficulty 
 translate every thought expressed in foreign 
 idiom into their mixed language, a thing which 
 even Korais did not always succeed in. The 
 Greeks of all parts can communicate with each 
 other easily without the slightest fear of being 
 misunderstood. Babylonian difficulties are an 
 impossibility to-day. To what extent this lan- 
 guage has spread we find when we consider 
 the highly developed journalism, and the in- 
 numerable works which have been translated 
 from other languages into Greek. Greek is the 
 language of culture in the Orient. 
 
 By the establishment of this literary language 
 quite remarkable advantages have been gained. 
 Everything written by the Greeks of to-day 
 can easily be understood by all those who have 
 
38 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 learned a little Greek in colleges in foreign 
 lands. This could not be the case if some of the 
 dialects had been adopted. The greatest of all 
 advantages, the most important, is the marked 
 similarity which exists between the literary lan- 
 guage of to-day and the old Greek in regard to 
 orthography and forms. For this reason the old 
 Greek is not like a foreign language to the 
 Greeks of to-day. How deplorable if it were 
 otherwise, if the immortal treasures of the old 
 literature were not their own ! They would not 
 be if another system, if the Latin alphabet, 
 which was tried during the Prankish reign, had 
 been adopted. 
 
 Let us once more take a look at the language 
 question as it stood, and, as some will have it, 
 as it stands perhaps among some querulous 
 people to-day. There existed in Greece until 
 the language question was firmly settled three 
 parties : 
 
 I. The Purists or AtticistS, xaOapinrai, or 
 
 xadapiarai ri^? yXmffffrjq, as Korais Called them, who 
 wish to carry purification to the extreme ; they 
 recognize only those words which are found in the 
 old Greek literature as entitled to be accepted in 
 new Greek. It is plausible to any one that not 
 all words which really existed in the old Greek 
 
AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF GREEK. 39 
 
 language have been employed in literature, and 
 besides, a considerable, say the largest, part of 
 the literature vhich once existed in old Hellas 
 has not come to us ; thus these purists seem to 
 place old Greek on the same footing with Latin. 
 
 2. Those who adhered, and adhere, to the 
 literary language in use to-day. 
 
 3. Those who wished, and wish, for the vul- 
 gar Greek idiom ; these are called the /y<5ai <Tra:'. 
 
 That the Hyperatticists did not and will not 
 succeed can be seen from history. Two thou- 
 sand years ago Atticists, like Phrynichos, Mocris, 
 and their disciples, were carrying on the same 
 controversy; they wanted the same purification 
 as the xadapifftai of to-day, but in vain. 
 
 Prose, science, school, and press will uphold 
 the literary language; poetry, especially the 
 comical, will find its appropriate organ in the 
 people's demotic (Klephtan songs, almanacs, 
 comic journals) idiom. This will be as it was 
 during the golden age of Greece, as is found in 
 the chorus of the Attic tragedy and in lyric 
 poetry. 
 
 Modern literary Greek, as history shows, is 
 
 but Attic simplified and complemented.* 
 
 * A Greek translation of this lecture appeared in the Athe- 
 nian journal Katpoi, June, 1896. 
 
CHAPTER II. ' 
 
 THE PROPER PRONUNCIATION OF GREEK.* 
 
 One of the principal points in the study of a 
 language is the knowledge and the application 
 of its correct pronunciation. In order to learn 
 the true pronunciation, one is obliged to go to 
 the only rational and pure source, that is, to the 
 people who speak the language; in the case of 
 Greek, to the Greeks. 
 
 In the middle of the fifteenth century, after 
 the fall of Constantinople, Greek fugitives came 
 to all parts of Europe. The desire to do charity 
 to these refugees without humiliating them too 
 much on the one hand, and to take advantage of 
 the opportunity offered to learn their language 
 on the other, induced many persons to take 
 Greek lessons from these Greeks. It became 
 fashionable for every prince and every noble- 
 man to have a Greek preceptor in his family. 
 In every university a chair for Greek was estab- 
 lished. This movement was similar to those 
 taking place later on with reference to the 
 
 ♦Lecture delivered in Hossack Hall, Academy of Medicine, 
 New York, June, 1896. 
 
PROPER PRONUNCIATION OF GREEK. 4 1 
 
 French language in Germany, England, Switzer- 
 land, and Holland when Frenchmen were forced 
 to emigrate after the revocation of the Edict of 
 Nantes, and later still, during the French Revo- 
 lution. 
 
 With the introduction of the Greek language 
 everywhere, Greek type was cast and editions of 
 Greek authors were printed, most of them with 
 learned notes and Latin translations. The 
 students of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 
 preferred to learn the language by means of 
 translations rather than by the aid of the lexicon. 
 
 Europe had soon an immense number of Hel- 
 lenists able to converse in the purest old Greek 
 with their teachers, the Greeks from Constanti- 
 nople, and later on the former became teachers 
 themselves, surrounded by students. Among 
 these Hellenists were Reuchlin, Melanchthon, 
 Luther, and Erasmus. 
 
 All had, of course, the Byzantine pronuncia- 
 tion, which is essentially the same as that of the 
 Greeks of to-day, and^^also that of the Attic 
 
 With the end of the sixteenth century the -"-*'^ '-' 
 pronunciation of Greek in the schools in the^ 
 countries west of Greece became unsystematical, ,., ^ .. ..^ 
 the language as it was then pronounced in the 
 
 -c 
 
42 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 * 
 
 schools became unintelligible to the different 
 peoples, and especially to the Greeks. This 
 strange pronunciation owes its origin to the 
 lucubrations of a scholar, and is in opposition to 
 old and new traditions of the Greeks. 
 
 Dr. Edward Engel, in his book entitled: "Die 
 Aussprache des Griechischen," has given the 
 history, and in very plain words the definition 
 of the school pronunciation of Greek. Many 
 others before Engel, convinced that this pronun- 
 ciation was incorrect and unscientific, had raised 
 their voices; to Engel, however, is due the 
 credit that his book made it impossible for any 
 college professor to defend this school pronun- 
 ciation as correct or justifiable, and learnedly to 
 pull the wool over anybody's eyes. It is a curi- 
 ous fact that most of those men of profound 
 learning who wrote for the school and against 
 the true Greek pronunciation had absolutely no 
 knowledge of the latter. Had they possessed 
 such knowledge, and had they compared the 
 pronunciation which the old inscriptions give 
 with that of the living Greek of to-day, they 
 could not have remained opposed to truth with a 
 stubbornness which is incomprehensible. 
 
 This school pronunciation is an invention of 
 Desiderius Erasmus, called Rotterdamus, and 
 
J^ROPER MONUNCIAtlON OF GREEK. 43 
 
 this invention he has described in his book, en- 
 titled, " De recta latini graecique sermonis pro- 
 nunciatione dialogus," and printed in 1528. 
 
 There is a funny German story of a race be- 
 tween a hare and a pig, which commences as 
 follows : " This story sounds like a lie ; it must 
 be true, however, otherwise we could not tell 
 it." These words are a most appropriate intro- 
 duction to the history of the Erasmian pronun- 
 ciation. The history is true, the dialogue 
 exists, this most absurd pronunciation has been 
 transmitted from generation to generation down 
 to the present day, that is, through three cen- 
 turies. 
 
 When, as we have seen, after the conquest of 
 Constantinople Greek scholars came to Western 
 European countries and there gave lessons in 
 the language of their ancestors, pupils did not 
 doubt that their pronunciation had a historical 
 right. Reuchlin, the great German philologist 
 of the time of the Renaissance, had learned and 
 taught the Greek language with the pronun- 
 ciation of his Greek contemporaries, hence all 
 persons who follow his example are called 
 Reuchlinians. Even Erasmus himself spoke ac- 
 cording to the Reuchlinian, but never in his 
 life according to the method called after him; 
 
44 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 he also taught his students the Reuchlinian pro- 
 nunciation. Moreover, he requested his Greek 
 friend Laskaris to furnish him a Greek teacher 
 in order that his own children should learn the 
 correct pronunciation. The fact that he spoke 
 Reuchlinian can be established by quotations 
 from one of his colloquies, where the following 
 end rhymes are found : Echo rhymes : eruditionis 
 — ovot^ ; episcopi — xonot ; ariolari — Xdpoi ; astrologi 
 — ^o/ot; grammatiki — eixi;; fameliki — Xoxot. 
 
 It was not until fifty or more years after Eras- 
 mus' death that the Erasmian pronunciation was 
 adopted. 
 
 The above-mentioned dialogue " de recta pro- 
 nunciatione" is indebted, as Engel narrates, ac- 
 cording to well-authenticated tradition, to the 
 following farce: Erasmus, who was childishly 
 vain of his Latin and Greek knowledge, and 
 who styled himself " the most amiable prince of 
 science," met with the following adventure: A 
 gay visitor from Paris, inclined to perpetrate all 
 kinds of roguery, told him the following fib: He 
 had made the acquaintance of some Greeks, very 
 erudite men, who spoke in a manner entirely 
 different from that in which all the world pro- 
 nounced the Greek. And then he showed Eras- 
 mus how these remarkable Greeks spoke: ex- 
 
PROPER PRONUNCIATION OF GREEK. 45 
 
 actly as if Greek were Dutch. Whether Eras- 
 mus put full or only partial faith in this story, it 
 is certain he wished to use it in order to pamper 
 his vanity; he intended to pose before the 
 learned world as the inventor of this latest 
 sagacity. Another version is that Erasmus 
 himself intended a practical joke in writing this 
 "dialogus de recta pronunciatione" and was 
 amazed at being taken seriously by men of 
 learning. 
 
 This dialogue, as already said, was composed 
 in 1528. Most of the contestants in the battle 
 about the Greek pronunciation have not even 
 read this manifesto. It assumes the shape of a 
 dialogue between a bear and a lion, and is ex- 
 ceedingly tedious, a feeble and attenuated waltz 
 in trivial Latin. 
 
 The bear informed the lion that the old 
 Greeks might have possessed the Dutch pronun- 
 ciation, interspersed here and there with speci- 
 mens of French expressions. This nonsense 
 spread like a prairie fire. A flood of pamphlets 
 agreeing with this dialogue was the result. The 
 professors of Greek need not boast of the history of 
 their pronunciation of the Greek language; it shows 
 anything but a scientific basis. If any one doubts 
 the truth of this statement, let him read the 
 
46 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 dialogue referred to; it can still be obtained. It 
 is hardly necessary to marvel at this story. The 
 dialogue was publivshed at a time when, in spite 
 of profound erudition, there was hardly an ink- 
 ling of the substratum of a language, or even of 
 the true relation of languages to each other, to 
 be found in the world of learning; at a time 
 when the greatest imaginable nonsense was 
 uttered in an erudite manner. (Specimens in 
 point are the Latin essays, comprising large vol- 
 umes, concerning the question whether Adam 
 was created with a navel.) At a large waste of 
 learning, it was also proven at that period that 
 Adam and Eve, before biting into the apple in 
 Paradise, must have spoken Dutch, but after the 
 fall, the French language. 
 
 As a diversion, let us take but a small sample 
 of the comic ingenuousness from the dialogue : 
 
 " The lion asks : Quo sono credis haec veteres 
 extulisse ? 
 
 "Ursus: Referam quod in senatu grammati- 
 corum audivi (namely, from the Parisian rogue). 
 
 "Leo: Sat erit. 
 
 " Ursus : Conjecturam faciebant ex Unguis 
 popularibus, in quibus utcunque corruptis resi- 
 dent an ti quae pronunciationis vestigia, oi diph- 
 thongus gallis quibusdam est familiarissima, 
 
PROPER PRONUNCIATION OF GREEK. 47 
 
 quum vulgari more dicunt: mihi, tibi, sibi (moi, 
 toi, soi) ; aut pronunciant fidem, legem ac regem 
 (foi, loi, roi). Hie enim audis evidentur utram- 
 que vocalem o et i. 
 
 " Leo : Sic est profecto. 
 
 "Ursus: Ad eum prope modum sonuisse 
 ve teres arbitror 110 i aoi^ Tohn et xupiot. 
 
 "Leo: Probabile narras." And so on. 
 
 The admirers of the great man of Rotterdam 
 in different countries followed his system ; they 
 pronounced the Greek according to his instruc- 
 tion, or as if it were written in their own native 
 tongue. The consequence was that since the 
 sixteenth century a Babylonian confusion has 
 prevailed concerning Greek pronunciation. No- 
 body understands the Greek of a foreigner, still 
 less that of a Greek. The small boy, when he 
 learned in his book of natural history that the 
 whale belonged to the class of mammalia, re- 
 marked that the whale had brought disorder into 
 zoology. Erasmus, indeed, is the whale in phi- 
 lology. It is impossible to say haw much dis- 
 order this man has caused during the past three 
 hundred and sixty-five years — that is, since he 
 introduced his absurd pronunciation. 
 
 While it is amusing to read the origin of the 
 Erasmian pronunciation, the matter presents 
 
48 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 also a very sad aspect. The introduction of the 
 Erasmian absurdity was the death-blow to the 
 knowledge of living Greek in Western Europe. 
 Greek was only read, but no longer spoken since 
 the Hellenists of the different countries Eras- 
 mized each in his own manner; the fearful ca- 
 cophony of Erasmus took away the charms 
 except those which were left for the deaf and 
 dumb. But even though the Greek existed only 
 for the eye, for the deaf and dumb, it was still 
 beautiful; even the Erasmian pronunciation did 
 not prevent its being studied and its literature 
 read. Still, it is remarkable that the perfectly 
 arbitrary, senseless invention of a cranky pedant 
 should have remained in force these three cen- 
 turies. The attempts to justify it, composing a 
 bulky literature, dating back to 1528, are all 
 based on sophistry. 
 
 While Englishmen and Frenchmen confessed 
 that this pronunciation of Greek was really in- 
 correct, and that they kept it up for convenience' 
 sake, there .were until recently Germans who 
 mounted the high horse and persuaded them- 
 selves and their pupils that the Erasmian pro- 
 nunciation was really the correct one. They 
 took pains to invent scientific proofs of the cor- 
 rectness of the Erasmian method. 
 
PROPER PRONUNCIATION OF GREEK. 49 
 
 Whoever believes that such learned men did 
 not exist in our times need only read a pro- 
 foundly learned book, written by Friedrich 
 Blass, entitled : " Ueber die Aussprache des 
 Griechischen." Berlin: Weidmann, 3 Aufl., 
 1888. 
 
 A prince once offered a prize for an essay on 
 the question : Why were the tails of fishes longer 
 in winter than in summer; and great academi- 
 cians of his country presented the most convinc- 
 ing proofs from Pliny, Galen, and other sources 
 in support of this fish-tail question. Friedrich 
 Blass with his book can well be compared with 
 these academicians ; his proofs of the correctness 
 of the Erasmian pronunciation were as ridicu- 
 lous as were those that fish-tails were longer in 
 winter than in summer. Engel quotes some 
 drastic passages from Blass' work, and criticises 
 them severely. It cannot be the plan of this 
 paper to enter into details; whoever wishes to 
 study this question, although Erasmus is at last 
 dead now, will find enough material in Engel's 
 book, and still more in the more elaborate work 
 
 of PapadimitraCOpOUloS : Bdaavo^ rmv nspl r^? kkXrivt- 
 z^9 7:po(p()pa.<$ ipafffitxaiv dizodsi^eiov. Athens: 1 889, 
 
 752 pages. Engel compares Blass with Moliere's 
 Sganarelle. The quack Sganarelle palms him- 
 
50 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 self off as a physician and explains to the father 
 of a young lady who is dumb the cause of her 
 infirmity. 
 
 " Sganarelle : The dumbness is caused by the 
 loss of speech. 
 
 "Geronte: Very well. But please tell me 
 what caused the loss of her speech ? 
 
 " Sganarelle : All our best authorities will tell 
 you that the cause is to be found in a cessation 
 of the action of the tongue. 
 
 " Geronte : Yes, but how do you think did this 
 cessation originate? 
 
 "Sganarelle: Aristotle says very interesting 
 things on this subject. 
 
 " Geronte : I presume so. 
 
 " Sganarelle : Oh, that was a great man ! 
 
 " Geronte : No doubt. 
 
 " Sganarelle : Do you understand Latin ? 
 
 " Geronte : Not a word. 
 
 " Sganarelle (suddenly jumping up) : You do 
 not understand Latin? Cabricias arci thuram, 
 catalamus, singulariter, nominativo, haec musa, 
 bonus, bona, bonum. 
 
 " Jacquelin (the servant girl) : Ah, what a 
 smart man !" 
 
 The lucubrations of Prof. Friedrich Blass, 
 embodied in the above-named book, have been 
 
PROPER PRONUNCIATION OF GREEK. 5 I 
 
 completely refuted by Papadimitracopoulos. 
 His book is the most exhaustive ever written on 
 Greek pronunciation. 
 
 It is true German philologists have at last 
 acknowledged — thanks to the just and severe 
 criticism of men like Papadimitracopoulos — that 
 the Erasmian pronunciation is faulty. They 
 have ceased to dispute about Erasmian and 
 Reuchlinian methods; they study instead with 
 admirable zeal the inscriptions and establish 
 the times at which the pronunciation of the 
 different written sounds were transformed into 
 the pronunciation of the Greeks of to-day. They 
 found that there has been no material change 
 these two thousand years. Despite the fact 
 that the stones tell the exact truth unmistak- 
 ably, as we shall see presently, how Greek 
 was pronounced in every century ever since the 
 seventh before Christ ; despite the fact that the 
 German schoolmasters, as well as the archaeol- 
 ogists of all other countries, read this conclusive 
 evidence about the only correct Greek pronun- 
 ciation — this story sounds like a lie, but it must 
 be true, otherwise it could not be told — they re- 
 tain to this very day the Erasmian pronunciation 
 in their schools, and many other schools in other 
 countries do likewise. 
 
52 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 Allow me now to read a letter which I re- 
 ceived recently from a professor of Greek of one 
 of our colleges, a man who has written a treatise 
 on the teaching of the classical languages. This 
 letter will illustrate what arguments some of our 
 professors of Greek produce to suppress his- 
 torical truth. 
 
 March qth, 1896. 
 My Dear Sir: 
 
 You sent me a letter addressed to during 
 
 my absence in Europe. I was away two years. 
 I regret that in consequence of confusion among 
 my papers, my answer has been delayed until 
 this time. 
 
 I am not able to put my hand on the pamphlet 
 to which you refer in your letter. Indeed, I am 
 not sure that the copy which you sent to me ever 
 reached me. But, nevertheless, I have learnt 
 through conversation with others the subject of 
 your thesis. 
 
 This whole matter is one of extreme difficulty. 
 If Erasmus had never written his celebrated 
 dialogue, the movement which Reuchlin had be- 
 gun in Germany would have spread, I have no 
 doubt, over the rest of Europe.* At the present 
 time the Erasmian pronunciation so called has 
 securely established itself. The difficulty of 
 introducing the modern Greek pronunciation, 
 
 * I beg to say that Reuchlin did not commence a movement, 
 but simply adhered to the only correct pronunciation. 
 
PROPER PRONUNCIATION OF GREEK. 53 
 
 either among physicians or in schools, is very 
 great. I believe myself that we should all be 
 better off if the modern Greek pronunciation had 
 early been adopted and had always been used 
 among scholars. / do not believe for a moment 
 that the jnodern Greek pronunciation represents the 
 ancient practice, but the practical advantages of 
 using it seem to me to be very great, although I 
 have a less high view of the modern Greeks and 
 their language than I had before my recent 
 residence in Athens of eight months. There is 
 absolutely no modern literature worthy of the 
 name. I find in conversation with my col- 
 leagues and other professional friends, a very 
 fierce objection to disturbing the established 
 practice. T have no doubt that Blass' very extraor- 
 dinary book, which has been translated into English 
 by W. J. Pur ton, under the title, ''Pronunciation of 
 Ancient Greek,"" and is published by Macmillan & 
 Co., New York, has done much to strengthen 
 the faith of those who believe that we ought 
 not to adopt in schools the modern Greek prac- 
 tice. 
 
 It would be most unfortunate to provoke a dis- 
 cussion which led to nothing other than a hot 
 division of opinion. We Greeks must not set to 
 quarrelling among ourselves. We have difficulty 
 enough at the present time to maintain ourselves 
 in a community, a large part of which does not 
 know what is best for itself. 
 
 With renewed expression of regret that my 
 
54 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 answer to your letter should have been so long 
 deferred, I remain, 
 
 Very truly yours. 
 
 I wish to add to this letter a few remarks 
 which do not exactly concern the Greek pronun- 
 ciation, but the calumniation of the living 
 Greek, which is the manifestation of a con- 
 vSpiracy of ignorance and malevolence against 
 Greece. Just such men who have travelled a 
 little in Greece write in a vein peculiar to many 
 tourists in general; they delight in exaggera- 
 tions of exceptional and accidental incidents, 
 and generalize from them. Thus, an English- 
 man writes that he finds in the modern Greek 
 stereotyped phrases most distasteful to the 
 scholar. Sure enough he could have found 
 such phrases at home and everywhere. Every- 
 where scholarly speaking and writing is the 
 exception, the commonplace is the rule. That 
 wise Mirza truthfully has said : " I will praise 
 God that not all men are wise, because if they 
 were, wisdom would be too cheap." 
 
 German residents of Athens have sent a peti- 
 tion to Emperor William of Germany request- 
 ing to have the living Greek pronunciation 
 adopted in the German schools. The petitioners 
 
PROPER PRONUNCIATION OF GREEK. 55 
 
 say that the Erasmian pronunciation is an arbi- 
 trary one, by no means agreeing with the one 
 which had existed during the classical period of 
 Hellas. They further say that the literary lan- 
 guage of the Greeks of to-day is almost equal to 
 the old Greek. Every German student who 
 has passed through the gymnasium is able, 
 without further preparation, to understand mod- 
 ern Greek works, yet he cannot pronounce cor- 
 rectly the living Greek. For members of the 
 German archaeological institution, for instance, 
 it is very painful to have to learn over again, on 
 coming to Athens, the Greek language, the lan- 
 guage to the study of which they had devoted 
 many years of assiduous labor, for the reason 
 that they had been taught at school the Eras- 
 mian pronunciation which deviates entirely from 
 the pronunciation of the living Greek. The 
 document then enters on the pronunciation of 
 the different written soimds. Finally, it is 
 pointed out that the Erasmian pronunciation has 
 been already abandoned in the colleges of Italy, 
 Belgium, Holland, England (they might have 
 added, last but not least, America), and that it 
 is high time that Germany should have done 
 with the Erasmian tradition. 
 
 The Emperor of Germany has lost this oppor- 
 
56 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 tunity to earn the praise and the thanks of com- 
 ing generations, and has left this to the French 
 Government, which has now, recognizing his- 
 torical truth, decided to introduce the living 
 Greek pronunciation into all the schools of the 
 French republic. 
 
 This petition of German residents to the Em- 
 peror is not in harmony with the dignity of the 
 science of philology. Since the German philol- 
 ogists are convinced that the Erasmian pronun- 
 ciation is wrong, they must not teach it any 
 longer. Schools which pretend to give scientific 
 instruction should not teach something which 
 confessedly is unscientific and false. As a rule 
 they do not do so ; they do not teach other liv- 
 ing languages with an invented pronunciation. 
 In regard to really dead languages, such as 
 Hebrew and Latin, all schools in the world, with 
 the exception of some English, follow a pronun- 
 ciation which is based on tradition: for Hebrew, 
 through the Portuguese Jews; for Latin, 
 through the Italians. Only with Greek, schools 
 make an exception. As to Greek, the existence 
 of a pronunciation, the correctness of which can 
 be traced through exactly twenty-six hundred 
 years, should be the greatest inducement to 
 bring the school instruction in close relation to 
 
PROPER PRONUNCIATION OF GREEK. 57 
 
 practical life, so that the students could make 
 practical use of the language. Unfortunately, 
 schoolmasters are opposed to this view, their 
 argument being: non vitce, sed scholcs discimus! 
 
 Engel says : " The corner-stone of the Eras- 
 mian pronunciation is the idea 'it exists,' that is, 
 state and city pay us to teach it. Some day 
 when a minister of instruction orders it, we shall 
 teach another pronunciation, and shall, when 
 ordered to do so, prove that this new one and 
 no other is correct." Such state of things is not 
 creditable to the philologists. There can be no 
 doubt that, as it is practicable and as soon as the 
 professors have familiarized themselves with 
 living Greek, Erasmian pronunciation will no 
 longer be taught in any school. 
 
 When Greeks hear the Erasmian pronuncia- 
 tion of their language they cannot help laugh- 
 ing. Doctor Engel, while travelling in Greece, 
 one day visited a school, and was delighted to 
 observe with how much facility the boys read 
 Demosthenes and Homer. He himself was asked 
 to read before the class some Greek verses with 
 the pronunciation as employed in German col- 
 leges. The Greek boys, while he was reading 
 from the Iliad, did not know what to say at first, 
 as they were under the impression he was read- 
 
58 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 ing German; but when they were given to un- 
 derstand that it should represent Greek, they 
 burst into laughter, stamping with their feet, 
 screaming and uttering cat-calls, and the prin- 
 cipal himself could not help joining in the gen- 
 eral hilarity. Any one can try the experiment 
 of creating fun among Greeks by speaking to 
 them of Erasmus of Rotterdam. 
 
 We can easily understand this hilarity when 
 we learn how a Frenchman, who had long 
 studied English and was thoroughly conversant 
 with the literature, but had never become fami- 
 liar with the sound of the language, read Tenny- 
 son's "Claribel" : 
 
 "At ev ze little bommess 
 Az vart ze zeenet Ion, 
 At none ze veld be ommess 
 Aboot ze most eldston 
 At meednees ze mon commess 
 An lokes doon alon 
 Ere songz ze lint veet svelless 
 Ze clirvoiced mari dvelless 
 Ze slombvoos var ootvelless 
 Ze babblang ronnel creepess 
 Ze ollor grot replee — ess 
 Vere Claribel lovelee— ess." 
 
 Nobody has ever asserted that Greek pronun- 
 ciation has remained unchanged from the time 
 of Kadmus until now. This would be a unique 
 phenomenon. In the course of time the pronun- 
 
PROPER PRONUNCIATION OF GREEK. $9 
 
 elation of every language changes in correspond- 
 ence to the change in the language itself. It is 
 not probable that the pronunciation has changed 
 during the same space of time more than the 
 language itself. Classic Greek was a well- 
 sounding language; we know this through the 
 Greeks themselves, as well as through the 
 Romans. The Greek of to-day still belongs to 
 the most melodious of languages, its pronuncia- 
 tion gives a beautiful and pure harmony. 
 
 In the foregoing remarks on the pronunciation 
 of Greek enough has been said to convince us 
 that a reform of instruction in regard to pronun- 
 ciation is an absolute necessity. In former 
 times, before steam and electricity facilitated 
 travelling, scholars might have given as an ex- 
 cuse for this wrong pronunciation, which could 
 not serve in personal intercourse with Greeks, 
 that they did not expect to meet Greeks. If 
 this could have been an excuse once, it cannot 
 serve as such any longer. The number of 
 archaeologists and philologists who visit Greece 
 is increasing all the time. The opportunity to 
 learn the living Greek should not be denied 
 even to those who cannot enjoy the good fortune 
 to visit Greece. There is no reason why the 
 beautiful Greek language should be tortured 
 
6o CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 hereafter in the Erasmian fashion. // is to be 
 hoped that now, when the inscriptions can be studied 
 by anybody, zvhen the history of Greece and of its 
 entire language is better known, when there can be 
 no more learned defence of Erasmian pronunciation, 
 this pronunciation will be considered, as it should be, 
 a jnonstrosity. It is high time that our learning 
 and studying youth be saved the useless torture 
 of the mind, their parents the useless expense, 
 and citizens generally the unnecessary taxation 
 for schools teaching unscientific pronunciation. 
 
 Modern or living Greek, the literary language 
 understood by all Greeks of to-day, is but Attic 
 simplified and complemented by additional ele- 
 ments taken from the old dialects or formed in 
 strict conformit)^ with the old forms. Neither 
 the language nor the pronunciation has changed 
 materially these two thousand years. We have 
 conclusive evidence from history that the lan- 
 guage did not, and why it did not change. 
 From the inscriptions, which, as a rule, were 
 spelled phonetically, we know exactly how 
 Greek was pronounced in all the centuries since 
 the seventh B.C. The orthographic errors, the 
 bad spelling found on inscriptions and in hand- 
 writings of the Greeks from the time of the 
 seventh century B.C. through all the centuries 
 
PROPER PRONUNCIATION OF GREEK. 6 1 
 
 are an excellent means of showing us how the 
 different written sounds were pronounced in 
 different centuries. The result of the study of 
 the inscriptions has given conclusive evidence 
 that the peculiarity of the pronunciation of the 
 Greek vowels can be traced back as far at least 
 as the fourth century B.C. 
 
 The accentuation is one of the great beauties 
 of the Greek language, and the rules bearing 
 upon it have been considered as sacred, and 
 have not been changed these two thousand 
 years. Accentuation is first mentioned in 
 Plato's Kratylos (399 B.C.), where he says: 
 " Often we change the accent, and instead of the 
 acute we pronounce the grave." FloXXaxtg ra? 
 
 o^urrjTa? iisraj^dXAo/jLev, xai dvrt S^eta? ^apelav ^^dey^d/isOa, 
 
 Demosthenes, in his oration ITspl <TTe<pdvov called 
 ^schines a [Mffdwrov, but had accentuated the 
 word erroneously, namely, fxiffdwrov, whereupon 
 the audience corrected him by crying ixiffdotzov. 
 
 The people of Athens in those times had a 
 perfect knowledge of correct accentuation, al- 
 though no signs for it were then in use. Every- 
 body knew how his native tongue had to be 
 accentuated. 
 
 It is generally conceded that Aristophanes, in 
 the second half of the third century B.C., in- 
 
62 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 vented the accents, but closer research has 
 shown that even in the time of Aristotle (fourth 
 century B.C.) some manuscripts were accen- 
 tuated. Thus, Aristophanes was not the in- 
 ventor of accentuation, merely the one who 
 introduced it. His disciple, Aristarch, in the 
 middle of the second century B.C., wrote explicit 
 rules to be observed in written accentuation. 
 
 It is established that even at the time of Aris- 
 totle the spiritus asper (57 8a(Tsia) was no longer 
 pronounced; that it existed only in writing, and 
 ever since it has not been pronounced except 
 by the Erasmians. No Greek, unless he has 
 learned other languages, has any idea of our " h." 
 Wherever it occurs in a foreign name, as, for in- 
 stance, the German Hans, he writes not ^Jv?, but 
 
 Writers on the accentuation of the Greek lan- 
 guage are known from nearly all centuries, from 
 the third B.C. to the seventh of the Christian 
 era, from the ninth and tenth, from the twelfth, 
 and all the following, up to our own. In all the 
 works of such authors of these two thousand 
 years, the rules of accentuation, the rules which 
 the Greeks have observed from generation to 
 generation, are given. The Greeks of to-day and 
 of all the intervening times accentuate the words 
 
PROPER PRONUNCIATION OF GREEK. 63 
 
 in the literary language the same as did their 
 ancestors of the classical period. It is a mis- 
 representation, one of the inventions of some 
 followers of Erasmus, to say that the Greeks of 
 to-day have lost the old accentuation. If such 
 were the case, would it not be probable that the 
 change would have differed in various parts of 
 Greece; if, for instance, the accentuation had 
 been corrupted through the invasion of the Ro- 
 mans, Huns, Avanes, Slavs, Franks, and Turks? 
 Manifold accentuation, however, never has ex- 
 isted; the educated Greeks of to-day, wherever 
 they live, in all parts of the world, pronounce 
 the words of their language according to rules 
 which have stood the test of two thousand years. 
 The Erasmian assertion of the loss of the old 
 accentuation is one of those misstatements which 
 contain a particle of truth and are therefore the 
 more dangerous, the more deceiving. It is true 
 that some words in the irregular, the people's, 
 language are accentuated differently ; but this is 
 nothing new. Similar deviations existed in the 
 oldest times. Thus, even the people's language 
 has made no change in this regard. 
 
 At the time of Demosthenes, words in prose 
 were pronounced according to accentuation, not 
 according to metric quality. That such was 
 
64 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 also the case prior to Demosthenes' day can be 
 shown by Hephastio, who says of the comic 
 actors that they, in imitating life, spoke accord- 
 ing to accentuation, not metrically rov ^^p ^^^^^ '^^^'^^ 
 
 fitfioufxeuot diXoofft dtaXsXo[xi'^(o<s diakiyeiv ^ xat fii) k[j.[iirp(o<s. 
 
 If, then, the comic actors, in imitation of every- 
 day life, did speak verses — poetry — as people 
 spoke in every-day life, it is evident that people 
 did not speak metrically, but according to accen- 
 tuation, as they do to-day. 
 
 Of late we have had two societies of learned 
 and prominent men who have worked with great 
 zeal for the encouragement of the study of the 
 living Greek with a view to have it adopted as 
 the universal language of scholars. The first of 
 these societies was founded by Gustave d'Eich- 
 thal, a Philhellenist with the zeal and soul of 
 Byron, in the year 1867, for the study and practi- 
 cal use of Greek in France. The transactions 
 and the other publications of the members of this 
 society were collected in Gustave d'Eichthal's 
 work, printed in Paris in 1887. Among the 
 members were the Marquis de Saint-Hilaire, M. 
 Renieri, Nefftzer, Fr. Dlibner, A. Campeaux, 
 E. Littre, Ch, Mendelssohn-Bartholdi, Robert 
 Blackie, I. N. Valettas, Baudry, Louis Mallet, 
 Basiadis, and last but not least, D. Bikelas. 
 
PROPER PRONUNCIATION OF GREEK. 6$ 
 
 Whatever could be said in elegant form in favor 
 of Greek as the best international language for 
 scholars, has been said and written by these 
 eminent men of learning, by men who were ac- 
 complished scholars, both of classical and living 
 Greek. 
 
 Gustave d'Eichthal died April 9th, 1886, at 
 Paris. He had not seen the result of his unselfish 
 labors, which he had longed for so ardently. 
 Greek had not yet become the universal lan- 
 guage. The valiant leaders of the Greek move- 
 ment were admired, but although there had 
 been official recognition and approval by the 
 French Minister of Instruction of the aims of 
 Gustave d'Eichthal and his co-laborers, no prac- 
 tical progress had been accomplished. Mean- 
 while a German, August Boltz, had published a 
 book, entitled " Greek the General Language of 
 the Future for vScholars," which infused new life 
 into the question of the study of living Greek, 
 and in the year 1886 another German, Dr. 
 Eduard Engel, whom I have quoted extensively 
 in this paper, commenced to write against the 
 methods of instruction in Greek prevailing in 
 German schools. In most powerful style he ex- 
 posed the old fogyism, and a new movement in 
 favor of living Greek followed. In the year 
 
66 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 1889 an international Philhellenic society was 
 called into existence in Amsterdam, and men of 
 the highest ranks of life, princes who had dis- 
 tinguished themselves as Greek scholars, cele- 
 brated writers, men of learning from all parts of 
 the civilized world became members to the 
 number of five hundred. This body of Philhel- 
 lenists published a quarterly review entitled 
 'EXXd^y for the propagation of the ideas of the 
 society. The articles published in this organ 
 treat on philological studies, on the solution of 
 the question of the true pronunciation, and give 
 encouragement to the study of the living Greek 
 in order that it may serve as an international 
 language. The idea to make Greek the uni- 
 versal language of scholars will remain the order 
 of the day and will be realized sooner or later. 
 
 Thus far the outcome of the noble labors of 
 d'Eichthal and his followers has been the intro- 
 duction of living Greek pronunciation in the 
 French schools. As soon as this act of the Gov- 
 ernment had been proclaimed, I received many 
 letters from my Greek friends in Paris and in 
 Athens. One of them was from Professor Spiri-^ 
 dis, who had been most active among those who 
 had written and spoken to bring about this happy 
 result. He wrote to me under date of Marcli 
 
PROPER PRONUNCIATION OF GREEK. 6^ 
 
 27th, 1896, from Athens: "Dear Doctor: — The 
 endless debates on the pronunciation of Greek in 
 the French schools are closed, and the historical 
 truth has at last triumphed. The old prejudices 
 have all vanished. We are victorious. Other 
 people will follow the lead of France." In 
 Princeton University there is an earnest advo- 
 cate of the true pronunciation of the Greek 
 as a living language. Besides Princeton, we 
 have a number of other colleges in this coun- 
 try in which Greek is taught as a living lan- 
 guage with its true pronunciation: namely, 
 MacAlester College, St. Paul, Minn. ; Western 
 University, Wooster, Ohio; the University of 
 Colorado, Boulder, Col. ; Emory College, Ox- 
 ford, Ga. ; Colby University, Waterville, Me. ; 
 Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y. ; Swarthmore 
 College, Swarthmore, Pa. 
 
 The living Greek is a language remarkable 
 in every respect. There is nothing wanting to 
 constitute it the most beautiful language of 
 Europe. It is, without the shadow of a doubt, 
 the most perfect. Greece has excellent writers 
 at the present time, although it is only three- 
 quarters of a century since she became again a 
 free and independent nation. There exists a 
 large number of poets since the national resur- 
 
68 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 rection, and there are a genius and creative power 
 in their productions which foreign critics have 
 not yet detected, owing to the comparatively in- 
 sufficient knowledge of modern Greek. Lyri- 
 cism is the chief characteristic of that poetry, but 
 Alexander Rangabes and his son Kleon wrote 
 besides very good dramas. The poems of Atha- 
 nasias Christopoulos compare favorably with 
 Anacreon's. Political satire is successfully em- 
 ployed in poetry by Alexander Soutsos, while 
 the poetry of Dimitri Paparegopoulos and Spi- 
 ridion Vassiliades is remarkable for its social as- 
 pirations and affinity with the genius of Eurip- 
 ides. Elias Tantalides, an exquisite singer of 
 natural beauty, though blind, and George Zalos- 
 kostas, an artist in love lyrics, are very popular, 
 while the poetry of Vizyenos shows many of the 
 undefined longings of Shelley. Dionysius 
 Solomos' celebrated "Ode to Liberty" has been 
 translated into most languages. Aristoteles 
 Valaoritis is known for his almost ^schylan so- 
 lemnity. George Joures, the most remarkable of 
 contemporary Greeks, is a second Aristophanes, 
 with a strong Shakespearian vein, and shows con- 
 siderable resemblance to Chaucer's tenderness 
 of disposition. The most popular of all Greek 
 writers of the present day, a historian and a 
 
PROPER PRONUNCIATION OF GREEK. 69 
 
 poet, is Dimitrius Bikelas. His " Loukis Larras" 
 is one of the best novels of our time, and has 
 been printed in elegant editions and translated in- 
 to many languages. Next to this masterpiece are 
 his stories, known and translated into several lan- 
 guages. D. Bikelas translated several of Shake- 
 speare's dramas into Greek in a masterly man- 
 ner. His translation of Andersen ' s Fairy Tales is 
 so beautiful that we are in doubt in which form 
 we like it better — in the original or in this Greek 
 translation. 
 
 The glory and prosperity of Greece are things 
 of the future, not alone of the past. They are 
 to come in the ordinary course of events, and 
 not by the vain attempt of a return to the past. 
 
 The beautiful, like the Greek language, is like 
 sunshine upon this world: the beautiful lives 
 forever ! 
 
 REMARKS AT THE LECTURE OF DR. A. ROSE. 
 BY PROF. S. STANHOPE ORRIS, PRINCETON 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 A few years ago, a vigorous attack was made 
 upon the required study of the Greek language 
 as a condition of an academic degree. The at- 
 tack was made presumably on the ground that 
 
yo CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 the results of the study when viewed in a prac- 
 tical light appeared small and unsatisfactory — 
 too small for the time devoted to it. If, indeed, 
 the attack had been made, not upon the study of 
 the language, but upon the method by which the 
 language has been taught and studied in our 
 schools, it would have been a just attack and 
 might have resulted in greater good. But there 
 is something better than the visible and tan- 
 gible, the outward and the perishable. And the 
 Greek language, with the immortal literature 
 which it enshrines, has been prized and cher- 
 ished most for its power to discipline the mind, 
 to purify the intellectual vision, to liberate, re- 
 fine, enrich, and ennoble the inward man, the 
 immortal man. But in order that this dis- 
 cipline, refinement, culture, mental wealth may 
 be attained in the highest degree, the language 
 must be acquired as a living language and made 
 a part of the individual being so that it shall be 
 a perennial source of life and strength and shall 
 make the man once more a man forever. 
 
 Born as we are, heirs to but a single tongue, 
 on this side of the Atlantic, when we acquire a 
 foreign tongue — the Greek, for instance — as it is 
 acquired in our schools, the first degree of the 
 mastery of the language consists in the ability to 
 
PROPER PRONUNCIATION OF GREEK. /I 
 
 translate it by means of a grammar and lexicon 
 into the English. Another degree of mastery- 
 consists in the ability to translate the English by 
 means of a grammar and lexicon into the Greek. 
 A higher degree of mastery, which is not at- 
 tained because it is not sought, consists in the 
 ability to take the language in through the ear, 
 to understand it when we hear it spoken. The 
 highest degree of mastery consists in the power 
 to think in it and feel in it, and to speak it with 
 ease and without friction. 
 
 And the degree of the discipline which a 
 study imparts is in the direct ratio of the degree 
 of the mastery of that study. 
 
 The highest mastery, therefore, is the highest 
 discipline. If, then, we would attain the high- 
 est discipline which the Greek language with its 
 wealth of literature may be made to yield, we 
 must acquire it as a living language by living 
 methods. And if we would be practical and 
 would acquire it as a modern tongue for practical 
 purposes, we must yet acquire it as a living lan- 
 guage by living methods. And the first step in 
 the direction of such an acquisition is to put our- 
 selves in relations with it as a living language, 
 to accept it as a living language, meant first for 
 the ear, not for the eye ; to pronounce it as the 
 
72 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 living Greeks themselves to-day pronounce it, 
 and to converse in it until the ear becomes 
 accustomed to it and the mind through the ear 
 takes hold of it and makes it a possession for- 
 ever. 
 
 And reasons why we should pronounce it as it 
 is pronounced in the land where it has ever 
 lived and still lives in the freshness and beauty 
 of immortal youth are given by the learned and 
 enthusiastic Dr. Rose, to whom all friends and 
 lovers of Greek owe a debt of genuine and last- 
 ing gratitude. 
 
 REMARKS BY HON. D. N. BOTASSI, CONSUL GEN- 
 ERAL OF GREECE. 
 
 After the admirable and exhaustive paper 
 which my learned friend, Dr. Rose, read before 
 you, it would be a presumption on my part to 
 try and add anything, at least to the literary 
 side, so I will limit myself to a few general 
 remarks. 
 
 When Erasmus published his famous treatise 
 in 1528, Greece was simply a geographical de- 
 nomination, a Turkish province in fact, having 
 been conquered by the Turks ten years after the 
 fall of Constantinople, which, as you know. 
 
PROPER PRONUNCIATION OF GREEK. 73 
 
 occurred in the year 1453. Few people then 
 paid any attention how Greek was pronounced in 
 that Turkish province called Greece, which had 
 changed masters so many times, having been 
 under the Romans, Franks, Venetians., and the 
 Turks. 
 
 Greek was considered then a dead language, 
 like the Latin and Hebrew, and the savants 
 from that time on adopted unhesitatingly the 
 Erasmian pronunciation as the correct one. 
 
 But the Greek Revolution of 1821, which 
 ended in the establishment of the present Greek 
 kingdom in 1830, put a new aspect on the exist- 
 ing state of things. It was almost a revelation ! 
 Old Hellas rose from her ashes like the phoenix 
 of mythology, with Athens for her capital, 
 with her cities called Pirseus, Sparta, Corinth, 
 and Pylos, as of old, with her Marathon and 
 Salamis, with her Acropolis and its immortal 
 Parthenon. 
 
 The Greek language was preserved from gen- 
 eration to generation in that extreme corner of 
 Southern Europe chiefly through the Greek 
 church. The Turks, fortunately for the Greeks, 
 left public worship free, and the reading of the 
 New Testament and the liturgies of St. Basil 
 and of St. John Chrysostom were heard every 
 
^4 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 Sunday from one end of Greece to the other in 
 their original purity. 
 
 With the establishment of schools and colleges 
 the people's vernacular was gradually purified 
 from the intermixture of foreign words, and 
 now the language of the Athenian newspapers 
 and of the government despatches differs very 
 little from the language of the New Testament, 
 which is, as you know, ancient Greek in a sim- 
 plified form, commonly called the Alexandrine 
 Greek. 
 
 This is a wonderful achievement in sixty-five 
 years, which is the length of the political life of 
 Greece. Modern Greek is nothing else but 
 ancient Greek in a modified form. The orthog- 
 raphy, accents, aspirants, etc., are absolutely 
 like the old Greek. It is now a complete lan- 
 guage for the conveyance of human thought, 
 and we have at present many prose writers and 
 poets who have acquired a European reputation. 
 You would be astonished to hear how pleasantly 
 it sounds to one's ears, to hear the song of Hia- 
 watha translated into modern Greek, as well as 
 some of the plays of Shakespeare, like " King 
 Lear," "Romeo and Juliet," and "Hamlet." 
 
 Modern Greek is now spoken by ten millions 
 of people, for, besides the present Greek king- 
 
PROPER PRONUNCIATION OF GREEK. 75 
 
 dom, numbering over two and a half millions, 
 Greek is extensively spoken in European 
 Turkey, Bulgaria, Servia, Roumania, Southern 
 Russia, through all the northern coast of the 
 Black Sea, and thence from Trebizonde and Sin- 
 ope to Constantinople and down to the coast of 
 Asia Minor, the ancient Ionia, from Smyrna 
 down to Beyrout and Alexandria. One can 
 travel through all those countries to-day and get 
 along very well if he knows no other language 
 than modern Greek. It is absurd, therefore, to 
 call a language spoken by over ten millions of 
 Greeks a dead language, and it is a matter of 
 deep regret that, owing to the prevailing Eras- 
 mian pronunciation in your colleges, your young 
 men cannot ask for a glass of water and be 
 understood in Athens, although they spent 
 many years of their life in learning Greek in 
 America. 
 
 I will not detain you any longer. Dr. Rose 
 brought the strongest argument to prove why 
 the modern Greek pronunciation should be uni- 
 versally adopted in America. I will finish my 
 remarks with a recitation of a few verses from 
 the heroic poem of one of our celebrated modern 
 poets, Alexander Soutzo, called o llspmXa^xbiievo^, 
 viz.: "The Wanderer." 
 
76 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 Xcjpa fieyahxpvtag ; elg rovg kSXttov^ gov to ndlai 
 'i2 narpig fiov^ al Idiai avejSXdaravov jueydXac^ 
 Kal TvpawoKrdvov ^L(poq KpvKTovreg elg rag fivpcivag 
 01 ' kpfiddiOL dvopdow iaovdnovg rag 'ABijvag. 
 ' ATJhore deol hndrow rd hdd(^rj aov Kal deiav 
 "Ewf OT/fiepov r) yi) aov dvadidei evuSiav 
 
 Kal 1^ ah pa rov Ze^vpov 
 'i'tdvpi^ei r^v dpxaiav fieloidiav rov 'Ofiijpov. 
 
 A?;(j e^epe uoxOovaa Tiyavrag rfjg yfjg rj (j(j)alpa, 
 Kal To)v di'O) oi alibveg ae KtjpvTTovaL (iijTEpa. 
 YtTpaTTiTudTTig rov 'EA/l^v^v IkSikcjv rov Mapadibva 
 'ATie^avdpog ela^We viKT/r^g elg Ba(3v?io)va. 
 Aier^pet alfiardg gov elg rag <j)Mj3ag rov pavida^ 
 '0 KopGCKavbg 6 ex(^v to Tav yerov narpida 
 
 Kal eig fiiav p.6vT)V upav 
 Ttjv yijv Tzai^ag^ ttjv y^v X0'^<''^ ^^f '''ov Bareplo) Tr)v ;^;cjpav. 
 
 'AAA' 6 TrpuTog dyaTruv gc Kal ttjv 66^av rov 'EAA^vwv 
 Tiepav Tov 'Ivdov Kal Tdyyov fJ.ixP'- T^POttikov £/cre/vwv, 
 'ATze^icjae fiovdpxvQ i^oX cig rov ttoM/liov "Xeiav 
 Miav IduKtv elg Ttdvra Grpar^ybv rov (Saaileiav. 
 '0 6e devrepog fiiotjv gs Kal rov ddo^ov ^ovXrdvov 
 'ETTiar^i&v TOV ^'ikov dvrl gov irapaXafx^dviJV 
 
 Aeofiiog elg vrjaov ^evrjv^ 
 dkeofiiog elg ryv 'Ay tav ereMvrrfGev 'EA^v^. . . . 
 
 William J. Seelye, Professor of Greek, Wooster 
 University, Ohio, lectured on the same subject, 
 the Pronunciation of Greek, almost simultane- 
 ously with me. I saw his excellent scholarly 
 paper, which is published in the transactions of 
 College Association of Ohio for 1896, only when 
 my book was partly in type. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE BYZANTINES.* 
 
 The Byzantine Empire, otherwise called the 
 East Roman, the Romaic, the Oriental, the 
 Greek Empire, was created when Theodosius 
 the Great, before his death in 395, divided the 
 Roman Empire between his two sons. 
 
 In the first days of September, 476, the Occi- 
 dental empire of the Romans ceased to be. 
 
 When the Roman Empire was dying out, it 
 had the good fortune to be absorbed in the life 
 of Greece, and it derived from that union a re- 
 newed energy which secured for it another mil- 
 lennium of existence. 
 
 The absorption of the Roman into the Byzan- 
 tine Empire was a blessing to civilization and to 
 mankind. 
 
 The conquests of Philip and Alexander the 
 Great had had the effect of widely extending 
 Hellenism throughout the East. This extension 
 
 * Lecture delivered before the Society for Literary Knowl- 
 edge, New York, in March, 1897. 
 
yS CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 received a new impulse from the unity of the 
 government of the new — that is, the Byzantine 
 — Roman Empire over the whole civilized 
 world. Then came Christianity, which bor- 
 rowed from Hellenism its language, and also 
 contributed to spread the influence of Greek 
 letters and Greek culture beyond the limits 
 which geography would have assigned. In the 
 end the Greek language was spoken as far as the 
 Danube on the north and Armenia and the Eu- 
 phratus on the east; and all these Greek-speak- 
 ing countries gradually united into a sort of a 
 mixed world, which constituted the Byzantine 
 Empire. 
 
 Until recently the Byzantine era was the least 
 known and the most obscure in the field of his- 
 torical study. When the Greeks, by a heroic 
 struggle lasting seven years (from 1821 to 1828), 
 had regained their independence from Turkish 
 bondage they received the full and enthusiastic 
 sympathy of the civilized world. 
 
 Nevertheless, the history of the Byzantines, 
 of their Greek and Christian state of over a 
 thousand years of existence, was still treated 
 with great injustice, exaggerated severity, and 
 contempt. 
 
 To the popular imagination the Byzantine 
 
THE BYZANTINES. 79 
 
 Empire appeared as a political monstrosity in 
 which one incapable emperor succeeded another, 
 each putting out the eyes of his predecessor, an 
 empire in which romantic scenes of bloodshed, 
 barbarous cruelty, and stormy disputes over 
 dogmatic questions were the rule. 
 
 The hatred toward the Greeks, who, as the out- 
 post of Christendom, have been fighting the 
 battle of civilization against the world of bar- 
 barism, and hav€ succumbed only after a heroic 
 resistance of a thousand years, has its source in 
 religious dissensions, and has been taken up by 
 ignoramuses who took no interest even in ques- 
 tions of religion. 
 
 The empire of the East fell four hundred 
 years ago and was thereby silenced. The West 
 survived, and until recently has had the talk all 
 its own way. It has used the opportunity in the 
 full spirit of the rancor which already animated 
 it. There is an abundant anti-Hellenic litera- 
 ture by a numerous body of writers who during 
 many years have undertaken to enlighten the 
 European public. 
 
 National intercourse, which is characteristic 
 of our time, will gradually efface the traditions 
 begotten in ignorance. The impartial decisions 
 of the latest learned and critical Western writers 
 
8o CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 have already brought a great deal of light and 
 justice. 
 
 During the last decade no part of history 
 has received more attention than the Byzan- 
 tine period. Krumbacher's Byzantinische Zeit- 
 schrift, a periodical devoted to the study of By- 
 zantine history, language, literature, and art, has 
 reached its sixth year. The six volumes contain 
 contributions from the pens of the best scholars, 
 philologists, archaeologists, historians of all the 
 civilized countries, articles and communications 
 in German, English, French, Italian, and Greek. 
 The scholars of the different countries co-operate 
 assiduously to enlighten us, to do justice where 
 there had been a tendency to do injustice. 
 
 Six years ago Krumbacher, A. Ehrhard, and 
 H. Gelzer published an elaborate work on the 
 history of the Byzantine literature. The appear- 
 ance of a second edition more than twice as large 
 as the first gives evidence that researches in this 
 direction are appreciated. The attention of the 
 world of learning is again directed to the By- 
 zantines in order to vindicate the truth and ren- 
 der tardy justice where for four centuries both 
 had been denied. 
 
 When we compare the history of the Roman 
 Empire of the East with the Roman Empire of 
 
THE BYZANTINES. 8 1 
 
 the German nation, each with a history of a 
 thousand years ; when we see what influence the 
 Empire of the East had on the Empire of the 
 West, and which influence culminated at the 
 period of the Renaissance, we will no longer 
 treat the history of the Byzantines with contempt. 
 
 The history of the Byzantines is one of un-l 
 ceasing and unwearied activity. Christian Con- 
 stantinople, from the hour of her foundation 
 to that in which her sun finally set in blood, was 
 engaged in constant struggles against successive 
 hordes of barbarians and foreign adventurers. 
 
 The facts that the old monarchy of Constan- 
 tine and of Theodosius, although much divided 
 and diminished, resisted the repeated attacks of 
 masses of Persians, Bulgarians, Slavs, Arabians, 
 Turks ; that it rose after every deep humiliation ; 
 that it withstood the severest catastrophe — 
 namely, the destruction of the empire by the 
 knights of the fourth crusade, the loss of the 
 capital at the Golden Horn, before it sank under 
 the Osmans — these remarkable facts should in- 
 cite us to familiarize ourselves with the true his- 
 tory of an empire of such wonderful, of such 
 exceptional vitality. 
 
 During several centuries the Byzantine Em- 
 pire could more than once be compared to an 
 
82 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 immense fortress simultaneously attacked and 
 besieged from all sides. Her vast borders — ex- 
 tending from the Apennines to Jerusalem, from 
 the Syrtes to the mountainous regions of Ar- 
 menia — had to be repeatedly defended against 
 the enemies of half the world. 
 
 Within, she had to fight heresy after heresy, 
 but succeeded nevertheless in raising the edifice 
 of the Church upon solid and enduring founda- 
 tions, and at the same time, by preserving and 
 completing the Roman legislation, she estab- 
 lished principles of jurisprudence which are rec- 
 ognized to-day throughout the civilized world. 
 
 We have to lay great stress on the most ex- 
 traordinary significance of the Byzantine Em- 
 pire: from the end of the Roman reign, the 
 Byzantines were the heirs and preservers of a 
 highly developed civilization and of the treasures 
 of antique culture. It is true that the Byzantine 
 literature could not rival the productions of 
 earlier ages, but it preserved none the less the 
 traditions of the intellectual splendor of Greece. 
 
 The time when the Turkish cannon made an 
 opening into the gigantic walls of Constanti- 
 nople corresponds to the period when the Wes- 
 tern countries — thanks to the Byzantines, now 
 strong and happy — developed the new culture 
 
THE BYZANTINES. 83 
 
 and gave asylum to the last representatives of 
 Greek learning. 
 
 There are three writers especially who have 
 done a great deal to promulgate error and injus- 
 tice in regard to Byzantine history, namely, 
 Montesquieu, Gibbon, and, to a limited extent, 
 Fallmerayer. Since, however, historians like 
 Zinkeisen, Finlay, Ross, Curtius, Hopf, and 
 Mendelssohn-Bartholdi have made scientific re- 
 searches, there are few, and there should be 
 none, who will form a judgment upon the By- 
 zantines, based upon no other, no better, no 
 later source than the three first-named writers 
 upon the history of mediaeval Greece. Still 
 every day we meet people who have by tradition, 
 without personal research into the facts, accepted 
 the most absurd ideas about the Byzantines. It 
 is on account of such people that it may appear 
 proper to consider the writings of the two first- 
 named historians, Montesquieu and Gibbon, and 
 later on to speak of Fallmerayer. 
 
 Montesquieu treats of the Roman period in a 
 masterly manner; the subject of the Byzantine 
 epoch, however, is beyond his depth ; here he is 
 superficial and prejudiced. He informs us in a 
 general way that from the period of Phokas 
 onward the history of the Greek Empire is a 
 
84 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 mere tissue of rebellion, conspiracy, and treach- 
 ery. He says : " The emperors were led by the \ 
 nose by the monks and priests, who became all 
 powerful after their triumph over the icono- 
 clasts. ... If any one will compare the Greek 
 clergy with the Latin clergy, and the conduct of 
 the Popes with that of the Patriarchs of Constan- 
 tinople, he will see on the one side men as wise 
 as those on the other side were silly." These 
 quotations are in themselves quite enough. As 
 for the reasons by which Montesquieu proposes 
 to explain the fact that the Byzantine Empire 
 lasted for more than a millennium, they are 
 simply self -contradictory. 
 
 The history of an empire which endured for 
 a thousand years cannot be given by being 
 crumpled up into a few contemptuous sentences, 
 as Montesquieu has done, especially not when 
 that history presents complications probably 
 greater than those of any other empire. 
 
 " The truth is," says Bikelas (of whose lectures 
 on Christian Greece, delivered at the Cercle St. 
 Simon in Paris in the year 1885, I avail myself 
 to some extent for this paper), "that it has been 
 only by enveloping the shallowness of his his- 
 torical judgments upon Christian and imperial 
 Constantinople in the glittering phantasmagoria 
 
THE BYZANTINES. 8$ 
 
 of a witty style and an audacious dogmatism that 
 Montesquieu has succeeded so largely in induc- 
 ing posterity to swallow his aphorisms.'* 
 
 Gibbon has given the history of the Byzan- 
 tines in a monumental work, written in an en- 
 tirely partial manner; he has allowed his judg- 
 ment to be biassed by his prejudices, and has 
 written with the express aim and object of pro- 
 pounding and supporting his own preconceived 
 ideas. The fundamental principle of his theory 
 is that Christianity was the cause alike of the 
 ruin of ancient civilization, of the decline and 
 fall of the Roman Empire, and of all the misery 
 and darkness of the Middle Ages. 
 
 Almost on every page, at least on every occa- 
 sion, he shows his hatred toward the Greeks, 
 which goes so far that it is his custom to qualify j 
 the word " Greek" by some depreciatory adjec- 
 tive. Altogether Gibbon has written history as 
 it should not be and as it is not, as a rule, written 
 any more. However, Gibbon's theory of history 
 is but one instance of a feature which is only too 
 characteristic of the English mind. Many an 
 act of the English people toward the Greeks can 
 be explained by the same trait. 
 
 "The Byzantine Empire," says Bikelas, "was 
 predestined to perform in particular one great 
 
S6 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 work in human history: that work was to pre- 
 serve civilization during the period of barbarism 
 which we call the Middle Ages. For the per- 
 formance of that work no abundant originality 
 was needful. The mission of Christian Con- 
 stantinople was not to create, but to save; and 
 that mission she fulfilled for the benefit of the 
 Europe of the future. It is not just on the part 
 of the modern world, which has thus profited 
 thereby, to refuse to its benefactors the tribute 
 of this gratitude, and still less so when it carica- 
 tures history in order to lessen the apparent 
 burden of its indebtedness." 
 
 The first fundamental principle is that the 
 Byzantine Empire was built on the most perfect 
 centralization. This principle of the Byzantines 
 found its best support in the site, and thereby in 
 the military and commercial signifiance of the 
 capital, of Constantinople. The history of nine 
 centuries from Justinian I. to the entrance of Ma- 
 homet II. into the blood-soaked streets of Byzan- 
 tium shows what great ideas Constantine had in 
 view when he founded his new residence. Since 
 the day on which he transferred the seat of gov- 
 ernment to the Bosphorus it has from century to 
 century become more apparent what wonderful 
 offensive and defensive strength the new capital 
 
THE BYZANTINES. 87 
 
 could develop against attacks, and what great ad- 
 vantages its site offered in keeping together a 
 reign extending into three continents. Con- 
 stantinople during the time of the Byzantines 
 until the days of terror of the Prankish conquest 
 in 1204 was a marvellously beautiful city and at 
 the same time the most powerful military strong- 
 hold of the whole Middle Ages. 
 
 Against the attacks of all the hordes which 
 the Byzantines had to fight before the year 1204 
 the city was almost invulnerable, especially 
 since they had in the Greek sea fire a weapon 
 of most terrific effect. This fire was the inven- 
 tion of a Greek, Kallinikos of Heliopolis. It 
 consisted of a mixture of combustibles, contain- 
 ing naphtha, sulphur, pitch, and other ingre- 
 dients, which burned even under water. When 
 the incendiary ships with their copper cylinders 
 containing the composition for the destructive 
 fire came near to the battle-ships of the enemy 
 the latter was overtaken by fright and fear. 
 The formula of the composition was kept a state 
 secret. The Byzantines were enabled repeat- 
 edly to destroy large masses of enemies under 
 the walls of their capital, and thus to save an 
 empire which otherwise would have been lost. 
 
 The imperial government has been accused 
 
88 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 of neglecting material interests. It is not his- 
 tory alone, however, that tells of the supremacy 
 of the Greek world throughout the whole of the 
 Middle Ages in matters which insure the well- 
 being of a state, but the ruins of public works, 
 ruins which savagery has left, show us that 
 the subjects of this empire had no ground 
 for casting on their rulers the reproaches 
 which Western European writers so persist- 
 ently repeat. 
 
 The history of nation?, as that of states, as a 
 rule represents epochs of decadence and of 
 greatness, and thus it is with the Byzantines. 
 
 For us Americans it is especially interesting 
 to study the history of a state which, like our 
 own republic, was not built upon a national 
 basis. The empire presented since Justinian a 
 multiform mixture of different Latin and Greek 
 colonists alongside a strong body of real Greeks ; 
 in addition to these came the descendants of the 
 old Egyptians, and quite imposing numbers of 
 Semites and Berbers. 
 
 Empress Irene, an Athenian, excepted, we 
 find, until the end of the Basilides — i.e,, until the 
 middle of the eleventh century — Latin, Asiatic, 
 and Graeco-Slavic emperors wielding the sceptre 
 at the Golden Horn. Only the last dynasties of 
 
THE BYZANTINES. 89 
 
 the Komnenes, of the Dukas, of the Angelos, of 
 the Palseologi were real Greeks. 
 
 It was not until after the decline of the Byzan- 
 tine Empire that the Byzantines began to call 
 themselves Hellenes and their monarchy em- 
 perors of the Hellenes. Up to that time the 
 autocrats were called August! and the subjects 
 Romans. This custom has proved so deep- 
 rooted that it not only still survives as the uni- 
 versal usage of the East, but even in such 
 writers as Byron we find the Hellenic language 
 termed "Romaic." At the same time the in- 
 habitants of Hellas proper were not called Hel- 
 lenes but Helladikoi, and the ancient and glori- 
 ous word Hellene was employed (by usage pos- 
 sibly imitated from the New Testament) in a 
 deprecatory sense, to indicate an idolater. 
 
 Constantinople had been founded not as a 
 Greek, but as a Latin city. From the begin- 
 ning, however, Greeks were in considerable 
 numbers among the inhabitants. Greek cities 
 and provinces had been forced to give a great 
 many of their magnificent works of art to orna- 
 ment the new capital. In the development of 
 the empire the whole population assumed a 
 more and more Greek character. Exactly as it 
 is to-day, the beautiful city on the Bosphorus 
 
90 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 with its gay life, a place where wealth could be 
 gained, became attractive to many Greeks from 
 the islands, from Asia Minor, from Macedonia, 
 from Thessaly, Epirus, and Achaia. This reg- 
 ular immigration increased during the first two 
 centuries of its existence while northern bar- 
 barians invaded Greece and devastated the coun- 
 try and smaller cities. 
 
 History shows that, in relative opposition of 
 the Graecized peoples to the Greeks of the old 
 Greek colonies, and all Greeks in the ethno- 
 graphic sense of the word, the genuine Greeks 
 have always maintained a predominating posi- 
 tion : first, on account of their influence on the 
 ethnographic and linguistic composition of the 
 mixed Hellenism in the population of the 
 capital ; secondly, on account of the strength 
 peculiar to their nation (this strength having by 
 no means been lost, nor has it been to this 
 very day) ; and, finally, on account of their 
 excellent influence in politics, most marked 
 and significant during the time of the Kom- 
 nenes. Through these a new phase of the 
 empire was developed. 
 
 Those who, when Constantinople fell, fled from 
 the ruin, bearing with them the treasures of the 
 wisdom of their ancient forefathers, well de- 
 
THE BYZANTINES. 9 1 
 
 served the name of Hellenes, which they as- 
 sumed. 
 
 The emperors reigned under conditions which 
 had developed in the political new-formation or 
 creation of Constantine the Great. They repre- 
 sented in their person the majesty, the unity, 
 and the coherence of the empire. The emperor 
 had control of the army and navy, of the ex- 
 ternal politics, of the executives, and of an 
 essential part of the legislative power. All this 
 constituted on the one hand the strength of the 
 autocracy and explains on the other hand its 
 temporary weakness. The fundamental con- 
 struction, the essential institutions were so well 
 founded that this remarkable organization, the 
 Byzantine Empire, maintained itself while weak 
 and even decidedly bad emperors governed. It 
 endured repeatedly, without actually endanger- 
 ing its existence, during the severest crises. It 
 required the work of a century of the miserr 
 able dynasty of the Angelos to enable Enrico 
 Dandolos and the Knighthood of Lombardy, 
 Burgundy, Champagne, and Flanders to gain 
 the victory over the Byzantines, in the year 
 1204. 
 
 The condition of the vast empire during the 
 six or seven centuries from Justinian I. until the 
 
92 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 fourth crusade was only very exceptionally such 
 that the position of a Byzantine emperor would 
 have been considered enviable, or as the highest 
 degree of earthly happiness. The situation con- 
 tinually demanded men of a high sense of duty 
 and understanding of their enormous task, men 
 of great talents and excellent training for their 
 vocation, men of great vigor and perseverance. 
 By no means was the throne always occupied by 
 men who excelled in the princely attributes 
 mentioned, still less were they always men of 
 such type as the circumstances, sometimes very 
 difficult, would have required. 
 
 During more than a millennium, from the ac- 
 cession of Arcadius in 395 to the heroic death of 
 Constantine XIII. in 1453, the Eastern Empire 
 was governed by a succession of eighty-one em- 
 perors. Of these eighty-one autocrats seventy- 
 three can be assigned to one or other of the ten 
 dynasties. Each of these dynasties comprises a 
 group of persons who succeeded one another 
 upon the throne either by right of blood, or by 
 reason of the imperial will and the consent of 
 the regnant family, of which they were the 
 representatives and, in one sense, the members 
 and perpetuators. The continuity of the ten 
 Byzantine dynasties was broken only by seven 
 
THE BYZANTINES. 93 
 
 isolated princes, the duration of whose combined 
 reigns amounts to about thirty years. 
 
 With these facts before us we find it difficult 
 to understand the historians who write: Mo- 
 mentous was often the circumstance that there 
 existed no regular order of succession to the 
 throne. Imposing or meritorious emperors, who 
 enjoyed great popularity, were well able to tes- 
 tate the crown to their sons or even their widows, 
 and thus we find a whole number of dynasties. 
 It is true, however, that when in the nature of 
 things a change of rulers was in view, bloody 
 palace revolts, cowardly murder, and open acts 
 of atrocity occurred during the long history of 
 the Byzantine Empire as well as during the his- 
 tory of other empires. The influence of women 
 of the court, of powerful ministers, but also 
 of eunuchs which came more and more into 
 the foreground became significant in such 
 moments. We shall see later on how much 
 all this was due to the unavoidable influence 
 of barbarism. 
 
 Of the seventy-six emperors and five em- 
 presses who occupied the Byzantine throne fif- 
 teen were put to death, seven were blinded or 
 otherwise mutilated, four were deposed and 
 imprisoned in monasteries, and ten were com- 
 
94 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 pelled to abdicate. "This list," says Bikela, 
 from whose book I have copied it, " comprising 
 nearly half of the whole number, is a sufficient 
 indication of the horrors by which the history of 
 the empire is only too often marked, and it may 
 be frankly admitted that these dark stains, dis- 
 figuring pages which but for them would be 
 bright with the things that were beautiful and 
 glorious, go some way to excuse if not justify 
 the obloquy which Western writers have been so 
 prone to cast upon the East. But it is not by 
 considering the evil only, any more than the 
 good only, that it is possible to form a correct 
 opinion of an historical epoch. To judge the 
 Byzantine Empire only by the crimes which de- 
 filed the palace would be as unjust as if the 
 French people were to be estimated by nothing 
 but the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the Reign 
 of Terror, and the Commune of 1871." 
 
 Notwithstanding the existence of the Chris- 
 tian Church in the Byzantine Empire, the con- 
 tinual and uninterrupted contact of the Byzan- 
 tines with the barbaric elements by which they 
 were surrounded from the beginning to the end 
 of their existence explains the lamented inci- 
 dents in their history. The Byzantine people, 
 although in every respect the superiors of their 
 
THE BYZANTINES. 95 
 
 contemporaries, could not altogether escape from 
 the influence of their neighbors; they, however, 
 were the guardians of classical civilization and 
 were Christians, and strove to keep above the 
 deluge of barbarism by which the rest of the 
 world was then inundated. When modern 
 writers accuse the Byzantines of cruelty they 
 seem to forget that their contemporaries in 
 Western Europe had manners and principles of 
 jurisprudence which were marked by a ferocity 
 unapproached by anything in Byzantine despo- 
 tism. Bikela refers to executions of Dolino in 
 Italy and of Hugh the Defender (the young) in 
 England, to the murderers of James I. in Scot- 
 land, and to the whole history of the processes 
 against the templars or the lepers in France ; to 
 the peculiar sentence of high treason in England, 
 often fully carried out within the last century, 
 and even pronounced in Ireland in the present 
 century ; to the legislation of England with re- 
 gard to religion, and especially its application 
 during the sixteenth century; to the execution 
 of the last Inca of Peru by the Spanish Govern- 
 ment, and of Damiens by the French. Bikelas, 
 however, does not mention the Spanish Inquisi- 
 tion, thQ chambers of torture, especially in Ger- 
 many, the institutio criininalis Carolina, the tor- 
 
96 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 tures to which supposed witches were subjected 
 even in our own country. 
 
 The most deplorable epoch in the history of 
 the Byzantine Empire, the period in which as- 
 sassination and mutilation most abounded, was 
 that in which it was exposed to the influence of 
 the crusaders and thus brought in contact with 
 Western Europe. During the twenty years be- 
 tween II 83 to 1204, six emperors occupied the 
 shaky throne of the East ; all of them were de- 
 posed, two of them were blinded, and all were 
 put to death, except Isaac IT., who anticipated 
 the executioner by dying in prison. 
 
 No nation can boast of an immaculate history. 
 The French kingdom, the unity of the Catholic 
 Church of the Middle Ages, and Protestantism 
 have been established through all sorts of crimes 
 and errors. A great man even is constituted by 
 his faults as much as by his good qualities. The 
 roughness, the harsh ways of Napoleon formed 
 to some extent his strength. Had he been well 
 trained, polite, modest, he would not have suc- 
 ceeded ; he would have been no more powerful 
 than we are. 
 
 If we are to judge the Byzantine court by its 
 fruits, we shall see that it was not, as some 
 writers maintain, the abode of frivolity and 
 
THE BYZANTINES. 97 
 
 effeminacy. It is true for a time a herd of eu- 
 nuchs dishonored the imperial palaces, and alto- 
 gether many crimes were committed within 
 their walls; on the other hand, however, manly 
 virtue was never long lacking to the Byzantine 
 throne, and the majority of the sovereigns who 
 occupied it showed themselves worthy of their 
 exalted station. This can be proved by the fol- 
 lowing extract from history : 
 
 In the sixth century Justinian I. reigned for 
 over forty years. As a conqueror he restored to 
 the Roman army its ancient fame ; as a sover- 
 eign he adorned with great buildings not only 
 his capital, but cities located in his remotest 
 provinces ; as a legislator he took a place in the 
 history of jurisprudence which has made his 
 name immortal. 
 
 The seventh century is filled by the great 
 name of Heraclius, who, in his victorious wars 
 against the Persians, resumed and continued the 
 work of Alexander the Great. His great-grand- 
 son, Constantine IV., was faithful to the glorious 
 traditions of his progenitor, and by his brave re- 
 sistance to the repeated expeditions of the Arabs 
 against Constantinople stemmed the tide of 
 Mohammedan conquest and earned the title of 
 
 Deliverer of Europe. 
 
 7 
 
98 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 In the eighth century Leo III., the savior of 
 Constantinople and reformer of the empire, 
 gave a new impulse to the Byzantine world. 
 
 In the ninth century Basil I. crowned the 
 work of Justinian I. by his final codification of 
 Roman law, and exalted the power of the em- 
 pire, which under him and his successors enjoyed 
 a lengthened period of greatness and prosperity. 
 
 In the tenth century Nikophorus II., John I., 
 and Basil II. (the Bulgar slayer) fought glori- 
 ously against the Mohammedans and the Bul- 
 gars. 
 
 In the twelfth century three successive mon- 
 archs of the house of the Komnenes, Alexis L, 
 his son John II., and his grandson, the heroic 
 Manuel I., in the midst of every variety of plot 
 and distraction, saved the dignity of the throne 
 and preserved the safety of the state. 
 
 In the thirteenth century Theodore I. and 
 John III. rallied the national forces in the 
 midst of calamities and shed lustre upon the 
 imperial crown, till the day when Michael VIII., 
 by the recon quest of Constantinople, opened the 
 way to a new period in the history of the East- 
 ern Empire. And these are not the only Byzan- 
 tine emperors whose names shine gloriously in 
 history. Ignorance and spite have for a long 
 
THE BYZANTINES. 99 
 
 time combined to cast obscurity over the renown 
 of some, but the impartiality of more modern 
 writers is at length beginning to do justice to 
 their memory. 
 
 It is not to the throne alone that we must look 
 in order to find the great names of Byzantine 
 history. Through the whole course of the em- 
 pire's existence, there were never lacking emi- 
 nent men who preserved the best ^traditions of 
 the classical ages. In every period there arose 
 illustrious soldiers, able statesmen, good and 
 saintly ecclesiastics, and men of learning to 
 whom the Greek nation owes at least the almost 
 unique advantage of possessing, in its own lan- 
 guage, its own annals for an unbroken period of 
 more than twenty centuries. 
 
 From the very foundation of Constantinople, 
 with the afflux of more and more Greeks to this 
 new capital, a most important factor was at work 
 to complete its character, namely, the influence 
 of the Christian Church. 
 
 The conversion of Constantine the Great and 
 his house to the new world religion promoted 
 the Christian cause to a high degree. The 
 development of the Greek nation under the in- 
 fluence of Christianity is highly interesting. 
 The world language of the East, the elegant Ian- 
 
;00 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 I guage of conversation and literature of the new 
 Roman Empire between the Adria and the Eu- 
 phratus had become the language of the Church, 
 and this circumstance contributed largely in giv- 
 ing the new capital, Constantinople, a Greek phy- 
 siognomy. The Christian religion took root on 
 Greek soil. It was embraced not only by the 
 poor and humbler classes, but also by the edu- 
 cated Greeks with their acute intellect, inclined 
 especially to dialectic activity regarding the 
 dogmatics of the new religion. They had in- 
 herited philosophic speculation and dialectic 
 cunning from the antique Greek philosophers, 
 and this inheritance which they now applied 
 to theological questions became subsequently 
 dangerous to them since it led to religious dis- 
 sensions. 
 
 Montreuil says: "The Greeks are by their 
 very nature philosophical and speculative. The 
 search for abstract truth is to them more attrac- 
 tive than the pursuit of reforms or the regulation 
 of manners. They are a race eminently liter- 
 ary. They have always been thinkers rather 
 than statesmen. They accordingly seized upon 
 that side of theology which appealed most 
 strongly to their natural genius. The heresies 
 which arose among them were begotten by the 
 
THE BYZANTINES. WOt, 
 
 same spirit which is manifest through the whole ( 
 history of their race. 
 
 " The unity of the Church was saved by the 
 councils. These assemblies dealt with the here- 
 sies and eradicated them ; they defined the doc- 
 trines and ratified the organization of the Church. 
 The territory of the Byzantine Empire was the I 
 locality where the councils met. Their conduct 
 was animated from first to last by the keenness 
 of the Greek intellect, which, now clothed in its 
 Byzantine phase, here offered to the service of 
 the Gospel the same natural gifts which had once 
 produced all that was best in thought of the old 
 Hellenic world." 
 
 The Greek inclination to partisanship showed 
 itself in regard to religious matters to an ex- I 
 traordinary degree. The fiercest fights between 
 orthodoxy and heterodoxy inflamed the Greeks 
 for centuries, lasting far into the Middle Ages, 
 and often disturbed the public peace ; but event- 
 ually they all ceased, never to return. In firm 
 tenacity the Greeks adhere to the orthodox, the 
 Anatolic Church, and their religion has become 
 as well marked a part of their nationality as the 
 religion of Homer and Plato was characteristic 
 of the old Hellas. 
 
 It must be confessed that unceasing disputes, 
 
5€a,' CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 now about a word, and again about a syllable, 
 Have not added to the glory of the empire. 
 There were times when Constantinople was con- 
 verted into a vast theological seminary, in which 
 everybody took part in controversies. " If you 
 ask a person," says Gregorius of Nyssa, "about 
 coins, he delivers a discourse about ^ey^ryrov and 
 dy^v'^rjTov. You inquire concerning the price of 
 bread; the baker informs you that the son is 
 subordinate to the father. If you wish to know 
 whether the bath is in good order, the answer 
 is: 'The son was created out of nothing.' " 
 
 Perhaps the controversies were so lively at 
 Constantinople because the intelligent and culti- 
 vated people found in them a field for the exer- 
 cise of their mental activity, which was not 
 furnished them by printed matter, by news- 
 papers or telegrams, or by presidential elections. 
 With the Byzantines religion was an object of 
 public interest. The fact, however, that there 
 was a war in Germany between Protestants and 
 Catholics, lasting thirty years, and the records 
 of the Spanish Inquisition, show how questions of 
 conscience have excited human passion in other 
 countries likewise. 
 
 The question of truth in religion touched the 
 Byzantine state more deeply than it did most 
 
tHE BYZANTINES. IO3 
 
 States. They had to make the Church strong. 
 The Church was the very foundation upon which 
 rested the prosperity and even the preservation 
 of the state. "The Greeks," says Montreuil 
 " felt toward their religion an attachment which 
 amounted to fanaticism ; their religious beliefs 
 were the centre around which all other ideas 
 were grouped; and the bond of religion was 
 more powerful than any other in inspiring the 
 Hellenic nationality with a lively, enduring 
 unity." 
 
 The main feature which checked the power of 
 the emperors was the Anatolic Church. Public 
 opinion was controlled by the Church, and with 
 this even emperors had to reckon. It is true 
 that the Church was not able to suppress vice 
 and passion to such an extent as to prevent the 
 horrible manifestations of savagery, the cruelty 
 of judicial proceedings, which often formed a 
 direct contradiction to the otherwise brilliant 
 civilization of the Byzantines; but Christian 
 morality and Christian views had developed far 
 enough, at least, to prevent entirely or tem- 
 porarily such outrageous conduct as had been 
 shown by not a few of the Roman emperors. 
 
 It is easy to understand why the intellectual 
 life of the capital and also that of the provincial 
 
104 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 centres became more and more decidedly ab- 
 sorbed in ecclesiastical questions and interests. 
 All higher interests for centuries were concen- 
 trated in ecclesiastical affairs. The powerful 
 dogmatic fights which shook the empire like 
 earthquakes, the long-continued wrestling of the 
 parties in the image question, and still later the 
 dogmatic war with Rome were by no means con- 
 sidered as a decided evil. The genius of the 
 Byzantines found pleasure in these movements 
 to such an extent that the repeated dogmatic 
 parliamentary battles before the greater or lesser 
 synods appeared to them almost of more impor- 
 tance than the actual fights of the legions with 
 the barbaric peoples at the Danube, the Balkans, 
 and Strymon, and with the overwhelming masses 
 of Islam. 
 
 It has been admitted in the foregoing remarks 
 that the population sometimes devoted an exces- 
 sive amount of attention to theological discus- 
 sions, and it must be further conceded that there 
 were periods when the development of monas- 
 ticism was anything but beneficial to the state, 
 when monasteries were universal to excess, 
 when the clergy became a danger to the state, 
 and finally contributed to the fall of Constanti- 
 nople. On the other hand, historic truth com- 
 
THE BYZANTINES. 105 
 
 pels US to accord the monastic orders the just / 
 praise which is their due for spreading Chris- 
 tianity and Christian civilization among the bar- 
 barous nations, since while they preached the 
 Gospel they taught letters and art. The Sla- 
 vonic language was reduced to writing by the two 
 Greek monks Cyril and Methodius, and Greek 
 monks were the teachers of Ulphilas, the prin 
 cipal apostle and civilizer of the Goths. . 
 
 "The free Greece of to-day, moreover," says 
 Bikelas, " can never forget her everlasting debt 
 to the monasteries of her church, which were 
 centres of national life and national culture, as 
 well as of national religion during the ages or 
 her bondage." 
 
 On the whole, the administration of the 
 finances of the Byzantines was economical. Ex- 
 cellent statesmen and financiers succeeded, dur- 
 ing the good times of the empire, in accumulat- 
 ing larger sums in the treasury than any other 
 power during the earlier part of the Middle 
 Ages. Nothwithstanding this, there were pe- 
 riods of senseless extravagance and unscrupu- 
 lous corruption. But even in this direction a 
 bad government could not go too far, because of 
 the development of principles which nobody 
 could overstep without danger to himself. For 
 
to6 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 instance, it was considered absolutely unpardon- 
 able to reduce the value of the normal gold coin 
 of the empire. Those emperors who were suc- 
 cessful in reducing the taxes were sure of the 
 greatest popularity. Extortions, when not jus- 
 tified by extremely dangerous conditions of the 
 state, were revenged by bloody revolts, some- 
 times of a cruel character. The readiness and the 
 fighting power of the army corresponded exactly 
 with the flourishing and well-regulated state of 
 the finances. 
 
 To Finlay belongs the eminent and scholarly 
 credit of having contradicted and completely 
 dispelled the general belief in the military 
 feebleness and incompetency of the Byzantines. 
 
 The Byzantine soldiery was recruited from 
 among the most warlike races of both the Greek 
 and the barbarian population of the Empire. 
 They were in tactics and arms superior to every 
 enemy against whom they had to contend. They 
 were often braver than they got the credit of hav- 
 ing been. They knew how to fight when they 
 could not count on victory. The continued in- 
 vasions constantly brought against them hordes of 
 new enemies with new modes of warfare and new 
 terrors. But Byzantine soldiers never refused 
 the challenge. Under Heraclius and John Tzi- 
 
THE BYZANTINES. lO/ 
 
 miskis they glowed with enthusiasm; tinder 
 Leo VI. they knew how to face their fate and do 
 their duty. It is true the Greeks were first over- 
 come by the Latins, but finally they were vic- 
 torious over them. As already mentioned, long- 
 continued bad government gave the Frankish 
 adventurers the advantage. The wealth of the 
 provinces contributed largely to the treasury; 
 the sums which would have served to render 
 armies efficient and provinces happy were squan- 
 dered by the emperors at that period to furnish 
 amusements for the inhabitants of the capital or 
 to feed the luxurious splendor of the imperial 
 court. 
 
 By looking at the incessant succession of ene- 
 mies who never left the Byzantine government a 
 moment of respite from attack, we shall be able 
 to form a fair idea as to what must have been 
 the strength and vitality of the empire itself, 
 and what the extent of the service it rendered to 
 Europe, to the cause of civilized humanity. 
 
 The first adversary against whom the Byzan- 
 tines had to contend were the Goths. About 
 eighty years before the foimdation of Constanti- 
 nople these savages crossed the Dniester and the 
 Danube and devastated the country far and 
 wide. Constantine brought them into subjec- 
 
I08 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 tion. They rebelled again under Theodosins 
 the Great and were, after a long struggle, sub- 
 dued anew. After Theodosius' death they com- 
 menced their invasion under Alaric. At length 
 they were checked by the imperial armies, and 
 the East was delivered from this plague and 
 danger to civilization. " If they had taken 
 root," says Bikela, "and founded states in the 
 East, as they did in Italy, Gaul, and Spain; if 
 the Byzantine world had been engulfed beneath 
 the flood of their immigration, the history of 
 the human race would have been a different one 
 from that which it has been. If the East had 
 been barbarized by the Goths as was the West, 
 and the Eastern Empire had been destroyed, 
 from what material would the European Renais- 
 sance have sprung?" 
 
 About a century and a half after Alaric, 
 Belisarius and Narses, the generals of Justinian, 
 crushed the Gothic power in Italy, and destroyed 
 the Vandals in Africa. These military victories 
 aided the regeneration of social life and order in 
 these countries. 
 
 After the Byzantines had rendered such great 
 service to Italy by fighting the Goths and had 
 helped to preserve culture in the West, it is one 
 of the most regrettable parts of Byzantine history 
 
THE BYZANTINES. IO9 
 
 that their excessive interference in affairs purely 
 Italian brought on the rupture between the East- 
 ern and the Western churches. 
 
 After the Goths came the Huns. These 
 hordes, gradually advancing from Asia into 
 Europe, made their appearance in the fifth cen- 
 tury under Attila. He ravaged Thrace and 
 Macedonia and imposed a humiliating peace 
 upon the government of Constantinople, which 
 happened to be represented at the time by a 
 child and a woman, namely, Theodosius H. and 
 his sister, the Empress Pulcheria. When, how- 
 ever, in course of time the husband of the latter, 
 the Emperor Marcia, ascended the throne, and 
 Attila sent to demand the continuance of the 
 tribute, he was met with the reply: " I have iron 
 for Attila, but no gold!" Attila moved away 
 westward, spreading devastation and terror 
 around him, till the day when ^tius broke the 
 power of the Huns upon the plain of Chalons- 
 sur-Marne. 
 
 In the sixth century the Avans poured down 
 from the region of the Volga. In the time of 
 Justinian II. and that of his successor, they dev- 
 astated Byzantine provinces. Priscus, the gen- 
 eral of the Emperor Maurice, at last subdued 
 them in the year 600. But twenty years later 
 
no CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 they advanced, in alliance with the Persians, to 
 the very walls of Constantinople and plundered 
 the suburbs. The siege itself was in vain, the 
 Avans retired, and never afterward played an 
 important part in the history of the empire. 
 The deliverance of the capital from these bar- 
 barians is still commemorated by the Church in 
 the use of the "Avadiffto^ 'T/xvo?, which was com- 
 posed to celebrate it. 
 
 The consequences of the incursions of the Slav 
 tribes were much more permanent than those 
 produced by any other barbarous nation. The 
 first Slavs who attacked the empire, after having 
 seized Dacia, were subdued by the Great Jus- 
 tinian. Nevertheless Slavs continued to move 
 forward till they entered even Greece itself. 
 
 From this time onward, sometimes as allies, 
 sometimes as enemies, sometimes as subjects, 
 and sometimes as prisoners, the Slavs scattered 
 themselves over the empire, and at last took 
 permanent possession of the settlements in 
 which they are still to be found. From the 
 sixth to the eighth century Slav invasions of 
 Greece were frequent, and it is upon this fact 
 that Fallmerayer based his famous theory to the 
 effect that the Hellenes are extinct and that 
 Hellas is now peopled by a Slav population. 
 
THE BYZANTINES. Ill 
 
 In the older works on the history of Greece 
 before the time of the Osmans, the history of 
 Athens from the year 529 to the time of Basilios 
 II. is almost a blank. 
 
 In the year 1835 the celebrated Fallmerayer, 
 at the time the best instructed man about New 
 Greek matters, received some documents from the 
 contents of which he tried to prove that Athens, 
 about the time of Justinian I., had been over- 
 whelmed by masses of the Slavic army and had 
 been devastated ; that the Athenians had then left 
 the city and had retired to Salamis, where they had 
 spent four hundred years in exile, during which 
 time the monumental splendor of Athens had 
 been destroyed and the city transformed into a 
 wood of olive-trees; that in the year 746 these 
 woods, together with what little had been left of 
 the city, had been consumed by fire. This view 
 has been held with a certain tenacity for some 
 years in the world of learning. Researches made 
 since, however, have furnished conclusive evidence 
 of the spuriousness of the documents. Not only 
 that, but historical facts have now been estab- 
 lished to prove the uninterrupted existence of 
 the city of Athens during the whole of the 
 Middle Ages. 
 
 Napoleon, on December 26th, 1805, without 
 
112 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 further preliminaries, pronounced and pro- 
 claimed through the Moniteur: " The dynasty of 
 Naples has ceased to reign." Fallmerayer, per- 
 haps admiring the style of the great man in 
 deciding the fate of a nation, disposed of the 
 Greeks in the following words: "The Hellenic 
 race has died out in Europe." This bold asser- 
 tion was made by him in the year 1830. For 
 some years Fallmerayer gained an easy victory 
 over numerous opponents who attacked him with 
 much passion, but with insufficient philological 
 and historical knowledge. Only one German 
 scholar, the eminent Zinkeisen, has taken the 
 proper course to contradict the ingenious an- 
 nihilator of the Greeks. He disproved Fall- 
 merayer's statements by means of a careful and 
 systematic research of Byzantine historians, and 
 thereby succeeded in exposing many errors and 
 superficialities of that writer. After Zinkeisen 
 came scientific men like Ludwig Ross, Ernst 
 Curtius, and Carl Mendelssohn-Bartholdi, who 
 aided in refuting Fallmerayer's theories com- 
 pletely. 
 /^ This reiteration of Fallmerayer' s error may 
 \ appear superfluous, but it is not; for there are 
 I many people who have read Fallmerayer only 
 I and are ignorant of the fact that his statements 
 
THE BYZANTINES. II3 
 
 ^ 
 
 have been refuted. The publications of this 
 man of learning have produced some good re 
 suits : they have caused one of the most obscure 
 periods in the history of the Middle Ages to 
 be thoroughly investigated by eminent scholars. 
 These investigations have shown that the Greeks 
 of to-day are the direct descendants of the an- 
 cient Greeks; and their war for independence 
 from 1 82 1 to 1828 is evidence that they are also 
 the heirs of the immortal glory which lives in they' 
 annals of history of their ancestors. 
 
 Bikelas says in regard to the Fallmerayer 
 theory : " Moreover, whether the Slavs over- 
 spread Greece or not, no one who has any 
 knowledge of the actual phenomena could testify 
 to anything but that their absorption has been 
 complete. The entirely and exclusively Hel- 
 lenic character of all the features, physical and 
 intellectual, manifested by the present inhabi- 
 tants of the country is a most striking fact, al- 
 most unique in history, a glorious mark of our 
 race, and a wondrous proof of the intensity of 
 our national vitality." 
 
 The Russians appear on the stage of history 
 in the ninth century. Four times in two cen- 
 turies did they set sail toward Constantinople, 
 but their attempts failed. 
 
114 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 In 956 Olga, a Russian princess, came to Con- 
 stantinople, where she was baptized. By her 
 Christianity was introduced into Russia. From 
 that time the Russians were generally friendly 
 to the empire. 
 
 The Bulgars, originally a Turkish tribe but 
 who at present speak a Slavonic dialect, moved 
 forward from the Volga to the Danube, invaded 
 Thracia in 559 and menaced Constantinople. 
 The city was saved by Belisarius. Thenceforth 
 they were a source of continued trouble to the 
 empire. The humanizing influence of Chris- 
 tianity seemed to have mitigated the savagery of 
 the Bulgars, when toward the close of the tenth 
 century a war broke out which was fiercer than 
 ever. After a bloody struggle lasting thirty 
 years Basil 11. , the Bulgar slayer, completely 
 shattered their power in 10 18, and Bulgaria was 
 made a Byzantine province. One hundred and 
 seventy years later they again rose in rebellion, 
 after they had acknowledged the religious su- 
 premacy of the Pope. Nevertheless while the 
 Latin dynasty was reigning in Constantinople, 
 John, Krai of the Bulgarians, fought on the 
 Greek side against the Franks. 
 
 The Magyars or Hungarians, another Turkish 
 tribe, filled Europe with alarm until their power 
 
THE BYZANTINES. II5 
 
 was destroyed by the German emperor Otto the 
 Great. 
 
 In the end the empire succeeded, often by 
 arms, at other times by diplomacy, but most of 
 all by the influence of religion, commerce, and 
 civilization, not only in protecting itself against 
 the changes of these successive inroads, but in 
 laying the foundation of civilization and even of 
 future greatness amid these hostile barbarous 
 tribes. 
 
 The Oriental enemies of the empire were of 
 a different sort. In their case the Byzantine 
 power had not to deal with barbarous tribes 
 which might first be conquered, but could after- 
 ward be assimilated to the imperial state by the 
 influences of civilization and Christianity. In 
 the East, new Rome was called to wrestle with 
 mighty nations possessed of a highly organized 
 polity and animated by a special religious faith. 
 Europe and Asia were thus brought face to 
 face in implacable contrast and collision; the 
 empire of the Byzantines is deserving of last- 
 ing gratitude for the long contention by 
 which it continued the traditions of classical 
 Hellas. 
 
 The continuity of these traditions was espe- 
 cially marked in the struggle of the empire with 
 
Il6 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 Persia. The collision between these opposing 
 forces was terrible. Whole armies perished; 
 rich and fertile provinces were reduced to 
 deserts. The deadly conflicts of so many cen- 
 turies did not convince either Greeks or Persians 
 of the futility of trying to alter the natural boun- 
 daries between the two empires. In the end 
 the Persians were overcome by Heraclius, who 
 after a long and glorious struggle imposed peace 
 upon them in 628. 
 
 Since the days of Scipio and Hannibal no 
 bolder enterprise has been attempted than that 
 which Heraclius achieved for the deliverance 
 of the empire. The peace he forced them to 
 accept they never broke. From this time 
 the Asiatic enemies of Christianity were no long- 
 er the Persians, but Mohammedans, first the 
 Arabs, and afterward the Turks. 
 
 Jerusalem was captured by Omar in 637. The 
 next year Egypt fell into the hands of Amron, 
 after Alexandria had sustained a siege of four- 
 teen months. Nine years later the Arabs con- 
 quered the remaining countries of Roman 
 Africa, and in sixty more they destroyed the 
 kingdom of the Goths and took possession of 
 Spain. From Spain they passed into France, 
 but the tide of their conquest, in that direction, 
 
THE BYZANTINES, 11/ 
 
 was at length arrested forever by Charles Martel 
 upon the plains of Tours in 732. 
 
 While Mohammedanism was thus pouring into 
 Western Europe, Constantinople formed a bar- 
 rier on the East which it utterly failed to sur- 
 mount. Under Constantine IV. the Arabs as- 
 sailed the dominions of the Byzantine Empire, 
 and in 672 the imperial city itself sustained a 
 siege of five months. The attempt was repeated 
 in vain for seven consecutive years, and was fol- 
 lowed in the end by a peace of thirty years' 
 duration, but in 717 the Arabs again subjected 
 the capital to a futile siege, which lasted thirteen 
 months. 
 
 If they had succeeded in their first attempts, 
 and conquered the European provinces of the 
 Byzantine Empire, they would have been able to 
 advance westward and unite their forces with 
 those of their brethren who were moving north- 
 ward out of Spain. In that event, we should 
 have had no victory of Charles Martel to cele- 
 brate to-day or the deliverance of the Christian 
 world, and the probable result would have been 
 that delineated by Gibbon : " A victorious line of 
 march had prolonged above a thousand miles, 
 from the Rock of Gibraltar to the banks of the 
 Loire; the repetition of an equal space would 
 
Il8 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 have carried the Saracens to the confines of 
 Poland and the Highlands of Scotland; the 
 Rhine is not more impassable than the Nile or 
 Euphratus, and the Arabian fleet might have 
 sailed without a naval combat into the Thames. 
 Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would 
 now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her 
 pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised peo- 
 ple the sanctity and truth of the revelations of 
 Mohammed." 
 
 In 823 the Arabs from Spain conquered Crete, 
 and when one hundred and thirty-eight years 
 afterward it was reconquered by Nikephorus II. 
 (Phokas), that prince found it so thoroughly 
 Mohammedanized that it required a new evan- 
 gelization before the island could be retained for 
 Hellenism and Christianity. 
 
 " The terrible example of the work wrought by 
 the Arabs," says Bikelas, "in this instance is a 
 sufficient proof of how great was the danger 
 from which not only the Hellenic world of the 
 East in particular, but also Christian Europe in 
 general was saved by the efforts of the Byzan- 
 tine emperors." 
 
 The power of the caliphs, however, was 
 broken ; they gave way to a new mortal foe of 
 Christianity — that new enemy was the Turk. 
 
THE BYZANTINES. I I9 
 
 In 1068 the Turks invaded the provinces of 
 the empire and took the emperor, Romanus II., 
 prisoner. Twenty years later they conquered 
 Asia Minor and expelled the caliphs from Jeru- 
 salem. 
 
 The capture of the Holy City by the Turks 
 was the cause of the crusades, which, instead of 
 achieving the permanent deliverance of the holy 
 places, effected the impoverishment and ruin of 
 the Byzantine Empire. 
 
 The struggle between the empire and the 
 Ottoman Turks lasted for four hundred years. 
 The effort of the Turks was, by continued and 
 violent incursions, to exterminate, if possible, 
 the Christian inhabitants of the country, and 
 thus weaken it, with a view to ultimate conquest. 
 As a matter of fact, by dint of habitually mas- 
 sacring the peasantry, making slaves of the sur- 
 vivors, and reducing the cultivated tracts to a 
 wilderness, they succeeded after a while in ex- 
 tinguishing the Greek population and doing 
 away with the Greek language in the interior of 
 Asia Minor. The imperial armies, ever becom- 
 ing feebler, strove in vain to repel these sudden 
 invasions and to protect the territory and sub- 
 jects of the empire. Nevertheless, the internal 
 dissensions among the Turks were so serious. 
 
120 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 and their wars against the Mongols so unfortu- 
 nate, that it is possible the Byzantines might in 
 the end have prevailed over them, had the Latin 
 Christians been willing to become the allies and 
 helpers of Christendom in the East. Unfortu- 
 nately the Latins, instead of becoming allies, be- 
 came enemies. 
 
 Says Bikelas, from whom I have quoted so 
 much : " Blinded by religious and commercial 
 rivalries, by the question of Papal supremacy, 
 and by the material interests of the Italian re- 
 publics, Western Europe failed to see that the 
 line of defence which was imperilled was really 
 her own, and that by being themselves the first 
 to rend and degrade the imperial purple, the 
 crusaders were only hastening the moment when 
 the Turks should trample it down in mire and 
 blood. 
 
 " Thus it came to pass that the Eastern Em- 
 pire ultimately fell before the unceasing attacks 
 of its Asiatic foes. Equally unceasing was its 
 strife with the enemies who assailed it from the 
 north and west. In the case of these latter, 
 however, there always existed the tie of the 
 common profession of the Christian religion, 
 which always left open the door, in some sort, 
 for the hope of reconciliation. On the other 
 
THE BYZANTINES. 12 1 
 
 side it was quite different. Between Constanti- 
 nople, Christian, Hellenic and Imperial on the one 
 hand, and the despotism of pagan or Moham- 
 medan Asia on the other, there was a great gulf 
 fixed. With them no community of life could 
 ever be possible. The Arabs took the place of 
 the Persians, and the Turks took the place of the 
 Arabs. From the beginning to the end the 
 Asiatic enemy, whoever it was, was always in- 
 spired by an intense feeling of religious hatred; 
 the motive, a rabid longing to annihilate that- 
 Christian state which formed a barrier between 
 them and the destruction of Europe. But it wasj 
 due to that barrier that Christian Europe was! 
 saved from extermination through persecution \ 
 conducted by Persian fire-worshippers, and from 
 slavery consequent on the propagation of the re- I 
 ligion of the Koran by the sword of the Arabs. 1 
 And thus it was, thanks to that barrier, that West- 
 ern Europe had the time given her so to develop 
 her strength that long after Constantinople her- 
 self had fallen in the struggle, a martyr in the 
 cause of the human race, she was able to shatter 
 the Turkish navies upon the waters of the Lepanto 
 and to rout their hordes before the walls of Vien- 
 na. Unhappily, however, the fall of Constanti- 
 nople was in great part the work of that very 
 
122 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 Europe which owed and owes her so much. It is 
 true that the deathblow was given by the battle- 
 axe of Mahomet II., and this blow was only fatal 
 because the victim was already half dead, but it 
 is the crusades which are responsible more than 
 anything else for reducing her to that condi- 
 tion." 
 
 In our school-books the crusades bear indeed 
 a very different aspect. But here is the powerful 
 truth expressed from a Greek point of view. 
 From the facts as given by Bikelas we learn how 
 evil may spring from the best motives. A like 
 illustration may be given from the life of Christo- 
 pher Columbus, the devout Christian. He had 
 the idea of selling the natives of the New World 
 as slaves in order to raise money for a new crusade. 
 Columbus and the Knights of the Cross — the 
 latter called themselves champions of the faith 
 and murdered priests of Christ on the ground 
 that they were schismatics — had views of the 
 Christian religion which appear most peculiar 
 now. 
 y'rhe appearance of the crusaders upon the 
 / stage of history is the first act in the final trag- 
 / edy of the empire. The climax was reached in 
 I the capture and ransacking of Constantinople in 
 \ 1204. From this outrage the empire never again 
 
THE BYZANTINES. 12 3 
 
 rallied. " If," says Paparregopoulos, speaking of 
 the first crusade, " the Emperor Alexis had been 
 able to employ against the Turks the land and 
 sea forces which he at length found himself com- 
 pelled to turn against his pretended allies, and 
 the troops which he had been obliged to send 
 with them into Asia Minor and Syria ; if he had 
 been able to reserve for the struggle against Mo- 
 hammedanism the resources of which he was 
 plundered by the looting and extortions of the 
 crusaders, he would have been able to get rid of 
 all danger from the unbelievers far more effec- 
 tively than was done by the ephemeral success 
 of the Latins." 
 
 History has yet to treat the attitude of the 
 crusaders in the East from a point of view of 
 judicial impartiality. The images of these 
 events are still shown to us through the glass of 
 Western prejudices. "The Latins," says Fin- 
 lay, " would not allow that their disasters were 
 caused by their own misconduct and imprudence, 
 they persisted in attributing all their misfortunes 
 to the treachery of the Greeks; and though 
 Alexis delivered many from captivity, the cru- 
 saders generally regarded him as an enemy. 
 According to these accounts, it was always the 
 Byzantines who were in the wrong ; they were 
 
I 
 
 124 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 liars and traitors ; and had no cause to regard the 
 crusaders with suspicion." 
 
 The Latin conquerors remained in possession 
 of the imperial throne for only fifty-seven years. 
 During- that time a succession of gallant em- 
 perors gathered together in exile the now recov- 
 ering forces of Greek nationalism, and turned 
 them upon the Christian adversaries until the 
 day came in 1261, when Michael VIII. recon- 
 quered the city of Constantinople. From that 
 time the division between the Greek and the 
 Latin church became more marked — all attempts 
 at reunion have thus far failed. 
 
 The Frank occupation of Greece proper which 
 followed the seizure of Constantinople in 1204 
 lasted two centuries, but it has left hardly any 
 abiding trace, and introduced no important 
 change in the destiny of the country. Neither 
 did it do anything to retard the progress of the 
 Turkish conquest. And then Constantinople 
 fell and the whole Hellenic world passed into 
 Turkish slavery. Western Europe looked with 
 unconcern at the appalling catastrophe. 
 
 Thus perished Constantinople, Christian and 
 Imperial, after having fought more than a thou- 
 sand years. 
 
 It was in the centuries of the Byzantine Em- 
 
THE BYZANTINES. 12$ 
 
 pire that the Hellenic world which exists to-day, 
 the New, the Christian Hellas, was formed. 
 The decline and fall of the Greeks were not due 
 to any fault in the people. They lacked no 
 quality which renders states great. They met 
 the attacks from without manfully so long as the 
 empire had sufficient strength left to stand. 
 The empire fell at last, exhausted, conquered, 
 but not dishonored; it fell like a soldier who 
 dies on. the field of battle, with his sword in his 
 hand and his face to the enemy. 
 
 Despite the many wars with their alarming 
 situations and their dangers, Constantinople 
 studied, worked, and continued industrious. In 
 the midst of attacks by barbarians she preserved 
 the traditions of the culture of Athens and Rome 
 and prepared the way for the European Renais- 
 sance. 
 
 The fine arts developed, as we all know, with 
 great fecundity : the Byzantines created a style 
 of art which is known by their name. It is 
 necessary to mention only the church of St. 
 Sophia which has served as a model for church 
 edifices in Italy and Russia. The predecessors 
 and the teachers of Raphael were imitators, 
 copyists of the Byzantines. 
 
 In Constantinople, says Finlay, manners were 
 
126 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 milder, more Christianlike, more chaste than 
 those of the contemporary Occident. 
 
 "The Byzantines," says Bikelas, "have, during 
 peace and war, virtues which would have been 
 ornamental even to old Greece. In rendering 
 justice to these virtues which have been calum- 
 niated, in revenging their memory which has been 
 insulted, we must confess that their noble deeds 
 never will inflame our hearts to the same degree 
 as will the deeds of Marathon and Plataia ; our 
 admiration for the Byzantine heroes and sages 
 will never be that felt for the great men of an- 
 tique Hellas. Is it because the Parthenon is 
 more beautiful than St. Sophia, or because 
 Athens was the great place of JEschylus and 
 Thucydides, while Byzantium gave us only 
 Photius ? No ; it is because Byzantium does not 
 elevate our soul, does not inflame our hearts to 
 the same degree as ancient Greece, because it 
 had not the double love for country and liberty ^ 
 Herein lies the difference between the two 
 worlds which otherwise present so many anal- 
 ogies. Greece of to-day always has its eyes 
 upon the glory of the Greece of the past. The 
 national song does not invoke Constantine the 
 Great, nor Heraclius, nor the Komnenes, nor the 
 last of the Palseologes: the Greeks bend their 
 
THE BYZANTINES. 1 2/ 
 
 knees before the memory of the three hundred 
 of Thermopylae when they celebrate their liberty. 
 
 'Att' ra KdKKoka '6ya?i/j,evj} 
 Twv 'E/l/l//v6>v TO. iepd 
 Kat 'oav Trptora avdpeLUfievrj 
 Xatpe tj ! x^^P' '^^£v6epia 
 
 O liberty, descended from the Greeks of old 
 and on fire with the ancient valor, hail, all hail! 
 
 And after all, alongside of the incomparable 
 glory of the old Hellas, there lives in the grate- 
 ful memory of Hellas to-day the glory of the 
 Byzantine Greeks. The Greece of Heraclius, of 
 Nikophorus, and of the Komnenes was in a more 
 difficult situation than the Greece of Miltiades 
 and Themistocles. After Marathon and Salamis 
 Athens was delivered from the barbarians. 
 Constantinople during ten centuries was con- 
 stantly under arms against invasions. A Xerxes 
 more terrible than the one of Herodotus ap- 
 peared in every century. Athens could not 
 have erected the Parthenon, built the long walls, 
 applauded Sophocles, heard Pericles and Demos- 
 thenes, if Plataia had not established security 
 for two centuries. The Greeks of to-day are 
 bound to feel affection for the old empire. It 
 fought long, and did not fall without glory. The 
 devotion of the last of the Palaeologs — in our time 
 
128 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 emperors do not sacrifice themselves — stands 
 well alongside of the devotion of Leonidas. The 
 poets of the hymn of liberty may well reverence 
 the memory of the three hundred who died for 
 liberty, but the poets of the Greek people have 
 by no means forgotten Constantine Dragazes, the 
 autocrat who sacrificed himself for his country. 
 
 Suddenly at two o'clock during the night of 
 Tuesday, the 29th of May, 1453, began the last 
 fight, the death agony of the Byzantines. While 
 throughout the city the alarm bells of all the 
 churches were ringing, and while in the churches 
 themselves the women lay prostrate before the 
 altars in fervent prayers of despair, the Greeks 
 and Latins succeeded fortunately in warding off 
 the first charge of the Osmans. The second at- 
 tack, accompanied by the sound of kettle-drums 
 and directed against the Romanos gate where 
 the emperor himself was commanding, was like- 
 wise repulsed, with heavy losses to the Osmans. 
 Futile also were the efforts of the marine soldiers 
 along the docks. Then at last Mohammed or- 
 dered his best troops, the janizaries, to the attack 
 which was preceded and sustained by the terrific 
 fire of the largest pieces of artillery. Still the 
 besieged stood firm, although the combat repeat- 
 
THE BYZANTINES. 1 29 
 
 edly wavered dangerously, and the number of 
 Turks in action was seventy thousand. The 
 Turks had already sustained severe losses, when 
 the brave Guistiniani was seriously wounded by 
 an arrow. The pain caused him to lose his pres- 
 ence of mind ; he ran toward the port to have his 
 wound dressed on board of his vessel. The con- 
 fusion among the Byzantines brought on by this 
 casualty was at once taken advantage of by Saga- 
 nos Pasha ; it enabled a number of the janizaries 
 to gain a foothold upon the top of the walls, and 
 while a fierce engagement with these janizaries 
 was fought upon the wall, a Turkish company 
 entered through a small gate south of the Heb- 
 domon, which port had been opened on May 
 27th for the purpose of a sortie, and to the great 
 misfortune of the Byzantines had not been locked 
 again. They marched upon the walls in the di- 
 rection of the gate of Adrianople, where they 
 were soon reinforced by an additional force which 
 had climbed up by the aid of ladders, and finally 
 attacked the emperor from the rear. Now all 
 was lost. After the Turkish cannon at the point 
 of the principal engagement near the Romanes 
 and Charsios gates had made a large breach in 
 the walls, the victors entered the city without op- 
 position. Constantine, fighting like an ordinary 
 
130 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 soldier, sought and found the death of a hero. 
 The Turks for a long time massacred the Byzan- 
 tine soldiers until, convinced of the numerical 
 weakness of their adversaries, they stayed the 
 slaughter in order to commence plundering. 
 
 A most mournful fate befell the many thou- 
 sands of both sexes, of all ages, of all ranks of 
 society, who from six to seven in the morning, 
 since the first fatal news had been spread in the 
 city, had fled into the church of St. Sophia. The 
 victors broke in the doors with axes, violated 
 boys and virgins, broke and soiled the sacred 
 vessels, ate and drank, fed their horses, and com- 
 menced to destroy the beauty of the marvellous 
 edifice. 
 
 The corpse of the Emperor Constantine was 
 searched for and recognized. The Sultan or- 
 dered its head cut off and exposed on the point 
 of a lance until evening. The trunk was per- 
 mitted to be interred with imperial honors. 
 Near the Wifa Mosque, covered by a stone with- 
 out inscription under a laurel tree, is the tomb 
 of the noble hero; above it a simple lamp, sup- 
 plied with oil, is lit every evening. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE GREEKS UNDER TURKISH BONDAGE. 
 
 The monstrous wrong had been accomplished ; 
 the old magnificent city of Constantine the Great 
 was now in the hands of the ruler of the Os- 
 mans. A history of eleven centuries had 
 reached its termination. The significance of 
 the increase of power of the Turks was soon ap- 
 parent to the Christian nations of the West, who 
 had permitted the last Emperor of Byzantium 
 to perish. 
 
 As the history of the Hellenes during the last 
 century of the Roman republic belongs to the 
 dark leaves in the annals of the Greek people, 
 exactly so does the history of this nation from 
 the time of the appearance of the fearful Moham- 
 med II. present for centuries a dark picture, only 
 scantily illuminated here and there by a flash of 
 light. 
 
 We have to place ourselves in a certain far- 
 distant position to obtain a historical perspective 
 in order to see how the subjection and the gath- 
 ering of the whole Greek nation under Osmanic 
 
132 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 government secured for the Greeks the possi- 
 bility of remaining a united nation until this 
 day. The union under the Osmanic rule was 
 due in the first instance to the gradual de- 
 struction of all the Prankish rulers on Greek soil, 
 and in the second place to the misrule of the 
 Turks, which, being to all Greeks worse than 
 death, made them risk their lives in a struggle 
 for liberty. 
 
 Western Europe for centuries forgot the exist- 
 ence of a Greek people; not so the Osmans. 
 
 The unfortunate Greek people, for centuries 
 excluded from all active participation in politics, 
 living only as members of their respective com- 
 munities, did not enjoy the modest satisfaction 
 of being enabled to accumulate wealth. 
 
 The Turks had only one thing in view in re- 
 gard to the Greeks: to govern and to tax them. 
 According to Turkish law the Sultan was the 
 real owner of all conquered soil. The vast ma- 
 jority of the Greek peasants were therefore sim- 
 ply tenants or common laborers. 
 
 The Greeks had to pay the kharadsh ; further- 
 more they were obliged to contribute a tenth, 
 which in reality meant often as much as a fifth 
 or even a third, of all that they raised or produced 
 in natura; they had also to pay rent, and if this 
 
THE GREEKS UNDER TURKISH BONDAGE. 1 33 
 
 were not enough, they had to do soccage service, 
 and to all this was added the most infernal blood 
 tribute of which we shall speak presently. 
 
 In exhausting the conquered land by extortion 
 the Turks acted like animals with thoughtless 
 instinct; they ate what they found without 
 thinking of the next day. "Wherever," ob- 
 serves the English eye-witness Eton, "the Turks 
 have established their dominion, science and 
 commerce, the comforts and the knowledge of 
 mankind have alike decayed. Not only have 
 they exemplified barbarism and intolerance in 
 their own conduct, but they have extinguished 
 the flame of genius and knowledge in others." 
 Higher aims in regard to literature, science, and^ 
 art did not exist among the Turks, not even 
 music was cultivated. Since the Turks are polyg- 
 amists they are without that institution, monog- 
 amy, which more than anything else is apt to 
 coerce animal passion in man. Even those who 
 understand the Turks best and judged them 
 mildly had to confess that the lower classes were 
 ignorant, lazy, fanatic; that the upper classes, 
 as a rule, appeared dull from debauch, most of 
 the time brooding and smoking after exhaustion 
 from sensual excesses. 
 
 Turkish government means destruction of 
 
134 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 public welfare and prosperity. Bikelas writes: 
 "In the year 1204, when Villehardouin and his 
 fellow-comrades came into contact with the East, 
 their first emotion was one of amazement at the 
 spectacle of such marvellous wealth and splen- 
 dor, but since those days the Turks have been 
 allowed to effect a complete change. The trav- 
 ellers who visited the Turks at the end of the last 
 or the beginning of this century are unanimous 
 in recording with horror the wretchedness which 
 was coextensive with the Ottoman Empire. 
 The inhabitants had learned by experience not 
 even to till the ground beyond what was neces- 
 sary for the bare support of life." "They have 
 no courage," says the French traveller Savary, 
 " no spirit. And why should they attempt any- 
 thing? If they took to sowing or planting, it 
 would lead to the idea that they were rich, and 
 so inevitably bring down the aga to devour 
 whatever they possess." The cultivators of the 
 soil and the manufacturers, all exposed to the 
 extortions from public officers, lived in constant 
 anxiety and fear. For this reason most fertile 
 land, perhaps nine-tenths of all, remained uncul- 
 tivated. Where the densest population might 
 have lived in abundance, the smallest one had to 
 contend with famine. There was no systematic 
 
THE GREEKS UNDER TURKISH BONDAGE. 1 35 
 
 administration, no protection against conflagra- 
 tion, against inundation, there was no provision 
 made for good roads, there existed no precaution 
 against the plague and other epidemics. Foreign 
 relations grew less and less "on account," as is 
 expressed by M. Chaptal, "of the insecurity 
 which reigns inland, where every species of dis- 
 order was rampant." "Our own French mer- 
 chants," says M. Juchereau de Saint-Denis, 
 " were at one with those of Holland and England 
 in complaining, years before our revolution, 
 that trade in the Levant had ceased to offer 
 the same advantages as formerly, and they attrib- 
 uted the miserable prices offered for their own 
 merchandise and the diminution of their profits 
 to the increasing poverty and depopulation of 
 the Turkish Empire." The plain of Elis had 
 become an uncultivated wilderness. "The ex- 
 ecrable government of the Morea," says the 
 English witness Leake, " added to local tyranny, 
 has reduced the Greeks of Gastouni to such dis- 
 tress that all the cultivated land is now in the 
 hands of the Turks, and the Greek population 
 have become cattle feeders or mere laborers for 
 the Turkish possessors of the soil." 
 
 With the cessation of cultivation and produc- 
 tion ceased also the communication with the rest 
 
136 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 of the world. Greece became unknown. From 
 time to time travellers like those already quoted 
 , would venture to visit Hellas to see what monu- 
 ments of her past greatness might still survive. 
 Some of these men were moved by sympathy; 
 others reproached the unfortunate Greeks, 
 cruelly and unjustly, as being unworthy of the 
 soil of classical Hellas. And even this very day 
 those latter sentiments run riot in the heads of a 
 large class of ignorant and malevolent people, 
 and in anti-Hellenic literature. " When I was 
 at Gastouni," says M. Bartholdy, "I overheard 
 a conversation between an English traveller, 
 a Greek monk, and our host, who was the doctor 
 in the place. The churchman and the physi- 
 cian complained bitterly of the Turkish yoke. 
 'God,' said the Englishman, 'has deprived the 
 Hellenes of their freedom because they did not 
 deserve to have it.'" "The town of Dhivri," 
 says the traveller Leake, already quoted, "oc- 
 cupies a large space, the houses to the num- 
 ber of three hundred being dispersed in clusters 
 over the side of the hills, but a great part of 
 them are uninhabited. This is chiefly owing to 
 the angaria of the Lalliotes, who come here and 
 force the poor Greeks to carry straw, wood, with- 
 out payment." The inhabitants of Monembasia 
 
THE GREEKS UNDER TURKISH BONDAGE. 1 37 
 
 and its neighborhood had endeavored to save 
 themselves by emigrating to Hydra, to Spezzia, 
 and even to Asia Minor. Different travellers tell 
 of deserted villages and districts in Morea. 
 Greeks went to Asia Minor where they were sub- 
 ject only to the land tax and the kharadsh. The 
 poor wretches by nomadic movements, as Bikelas 
 says, " strove to find some amelioration in their 
 condition by passing from one part to another of 
 the Ottoman Empire. " This was merely like the 
 action of a sick man who seeks to find relief by 
 thrusting his aching limbs first into one and then 
 into another part of his bed of pain. "The de- 
 population of some provinces," testifies M. Ju- 
 chereau de Saint-Denis, "has been so marked 
 that, out of twenty flourishing villages which for- 
 merly existed in the neighborhood of Aleppo, it 
 is now scarcely possible to reckon four or five. 
 The tyj-anny of the provincial governors drives 
 the peasants to seek refuge in the town, and, once 
 they are there, starvation soon decimates them." 
 Wealth, whether honestly or dishonestly accu- 
 mulated, was a danger to its possessor; even the 
 Sultan would lie in wait, and still much more 
 the pashas who had bought their offices and 
 acted in their provinces like hungry wolves. 
 All offices had to be bought; even the Sultan 
 
138 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 sold the highest offices to the highest bidder. 
 Frederick the Great said the Turks would sell 
 even their prophets for money. Felix Beaujour, 
 a traveller, says : " The whole divan is for sale, if 
 only the intending purchaser has money enough 
 wherewith to buy it ; and this is the reason why 
 the beys and the agas utilize the provinces to 
 obtain the means of saving themselves from the 
 bowstring and acquiring appointments to the 
 office of pasha. They buy their appointments 
 at Constantinople, where there is nothing which 
 is not for sale, and they recoup themselves any 
 way they can. Throughout the whole of the 
 Ottoman Empire the governors work an inex- 
 haustible mine of fines." This system extin- 
 guished all honor in public offices, and encour- 
 aged extortion. Judges as well as witnesses 
 could be bought and bribed. A man who might 
 have been honest in private life could not help 
 being tainted with corruption and dishonesty 
 when connected with the public service. The 
 sense of duty and right upon which all public 
 welfare depends was wanting. 
 
 It was the habit of the pasha to make a peri- 
 odical round of all the towns and villages under 
 his jurisdiction, in order to receive the "volun- 
 tary offerings'* of his wretched subjects. When 
 
THE GREEKS UNDER TURKISH BONDAGE. 1 39 
 
 "AH," says Leake, "makes a tour round this 
 part of his territory, he never fails to visit this 
 place. The archons generally meet him in the 
 plains, and offer perhaps twenty purses, beg- 
 ging him not to come into town. He receives 
 the present with smiles, promises that he will 
 not put his friends to inconvenience ; afterward 
 comes a little nearer, informs them that no pro- 
 visions are to be had in the plain, and, after 
 being supplied upon the promise of not entering 
 the town, quarters on them, in the course of a 
 day or two more, with his whole suite, perhaps for 
 several days, and he does not retire until he has 
 received a fresh donation. In these rounds he 
 expects something from every village, and will ac- 
 cept the smallest offerings from individuals. His 
 sons, in travelling, do not fail to follow so great 
 an example. . . . Neither pestilence nor famine 
 is more dreaded by the poor natives than the 
 arrival of these little scraps of coarse paper 
 scrawled with a few Greek characters, and 
 stamped with the well-known seal which makes 
 Epirus, Thessaly, and Macedonia tremble." 
 
 The people of Galaxidi had taken flight be- 
 cause Ali Pasha wished to compel them to serve 
 as sailors on board the fleet which he was equip- 
 ping. 
 
I40 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 "The present pasha of the Morea," says 
 Leake, "is said to have paid the Porte four hun- 
 dred purses for his appointment for one year, 
 and he will probably squeeze one thousand out 
 of the poor province. Vanli Pasha, who was 
 removed last year to Candia, paid six hunderd 
 purses for two years, and yet greatly enriched 
 himself. The Morea has the character of being 
 the most profitable pashalik in the empire." 
 
 In the report which Capodistria addressed in 
 1828 to the representatives of the powers in 
 answer to the questions which they had put to 
 his Government, he gives some extremely inter- 
 esting information as to the manner in which 
 pashas were in the habit of exercising their 
 powers: "How was it possible," he asks, "to 
 look for just and enlightened administration 
 from a pasha who but very shortly before attain- 
 ing that dignity had been employed as a slaugh- 
 terman, and who is now simply the ignorant 
 nominee of an absolute despot? . . . No man 
 dared to open his mouth in the presence of the 
 pasha of the Peloponnesos. That pasha had 
 the power of life and death over his subjects, and 
 they trembled whenever they had to go near his 
 seraglio. Fear seized them before even they 
 found themselves within sight of the despot, or 
 
THE GREEKS UNDER TURKISH BONDAGE. 14I 
 
 within earshot of the terrors of his voice. At 
 the gate of his palace were always to be found 
 ready waiting a hundred and fifty soldiers 
 under full arms, an itch-aga, and an execu- 
 tioner. It needed only a significant move of his 
 head to cause any one of his petitioners to be led 
 out to die." 
 
 "The Ottoman Empire," says Pouqueville, "is 
 the empire of woe. It is not like any other 
 country in the world. The people who live in 
 it are at once ferocious and apathetic, and are 
 destitute of the slightest feeling for the public 
 interest. From Constantinople to the banks of 
 the Euphratus, and from the shores of the Bos- 
 phorus to Cattaro, the towns are cesspools full of 
 dung and filth, the villages are either dens of 
 wild beasts or deserted. The exclusive sub- 
 jects of conversation are pestilence, conflagra- 
 tions, epidemics, and famines. The gates of 
 the great cities are hidden by groups of gibbets, 
 and towers loaded with human skulls. The 
 roads traversed by the local governors are lined 
 with gory heads, stakes for impalement, and 
 other instruments of death. The traveller meets 
 no one who is not clad in the livery of destitu- 
 tion. There is no police, no public order, no 
 rest, and no safety for life and property. The 
 
142 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 gentler virtues are unknown in this country. If 
 a man has money he buries it, and if he has any 
 valuable objects he hides them in the depths of 
 his harem. If he wishes to escape suspicion he 
 must avoid living with the appearance of being 
 in easy circumstances." 
 
 Savary relates an anecdote illustrating the 
 treatment the Greeks received in their own coun- 
 try. The circumstances occurred in 1780. 
 With the exception of the archbishop and of 
 Europeans, no Christian has the right to ride 
 inside a town. The Bishop of Canea took it in 
 his head to disregard this tyrannical regulation. 
 One evening, when he was returning from the 
 country along with several monks, he did not 
 dismount, but passed through and rode quickly 
 up to his own house. The janizaries who were 
 on guard at the gate looked on this action as an 
 insult. The next day they roused the troops, 
 and it was determined to burn the bishop and 
 the priests. The mob, roaring curses, were al- 
 ready carrying combustibles to the bishop's 
 house, and its inhabitants could not have escaped 
 the horrible fate to which they were destined, 
 had not the pasha, warned in time, issued a pro- 
 clamation, by which any Greek, of what class 
 soever, was forbidden to sleep within the walls 
 
THE GREEKS UNDER TURKISH BONDAGE. I43 
 
 of Canea. This prohibition was rigorously en- 
 forced, and every evening these wretched 
 slaves might be seen slinking out of the gates of 
 Rettimo, and retiring for the night into the 
 fields. This state lasted for two months, but 
 money is here the cure for all evils. The Cre- 
 tans collected their resources together, and by a 
 very heavy bribe, obtained the revocation of the 
 verdict. The pride of their bishop cost them 
 dear. 
 
 Eton relates: "The insulting distinction of 
 Christian and Mohammedan is carried to so great 
 a length that even the minutiae of dress are ren- 
 dered subjects of restriction. A Christian must 
 wear clothes and head-dresses of dark colors 
 only, and such as Turks never wear, with slip- 
 pers of black leather, and must paint his house 
 black or dark brown. The least violation of 
 these frivolous and disgusting regulations is 
 punished with death." 
 
 A Christian on horseback had to dismount as 
 soon as he came in sight of a Turk. The gov- 
 ernment of the Sublime Porte invented with 
 great ingenuity infinite humiliations and vexa- 
 tions for the Greeks, for objects of taxation. 
 Churches could not be built nor repaired without 
 conditional payment of large sums to a mosque 
 
144 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 at Constantinople; sometimes the sums de- 
 manded were exorbitant. 
 
 If a neighborhood happened to possess any 
 natural peculiarity, this feature was taken advan- 
 tage of for the benefit of the Turks. There is a 
 spot near Kandelion in the Peloponnesus, where 
 the snow lies long. "The mountain on the 
 left," says Leake, "has a remarkable cavern, or 
 a shady hollow, an unlucky circumstance for the 
 poor Kandeliotes, who are obliged to supply the 
 serail at Tripoliza from it, and carry the snow 
 there at their own expense." 
 
 j Any Turk could with impunity maltreat a 
 Ichristian. Colonel Leake saw a Turk kill a 
 Greek peasant at the gate of Larissa, because the 
 Christian had an ass loaded with charcoal, which 
 he wished to carry for sale to the market place 
 in hopes of a more certain, as well as a higher 
 price for it, instead of letting the Turks have it. 
 It is hardly necessary to add, says Bikelas, in 
 whose lectures all the reports of travellers here 
 enumerated are collected, that the Cadi declared 
 the murderer guiltless. The only chance of a 
 conviction would have been, if the family of the 
 'victim had had more money. However, it was 
 not held to be a crime for a Turk to murder a 
 Christian. 
 
THE GREEKS UNDER TURKISH BONDAGE. 145 
 
 Christians were not admitted as witnesses 
 against Turks. If, however, Christians were 
 wealthy they could buy Turkish witnesses, who 
 were never wanting to call God to witness to any- ^ 
 thing so long as a suitor was able and willing to 
 pay them to do so. If the suitor possessed 
 the funds which were needed for securing the 
 favor of the judge his case stood very well. 
 
 We will not go into details in regard to Turk- 
 ish jurisprudence, which was obscure and often 
 inconsistent. Capodistria has given an account 
 of it in the statement already mentioned. " It 
 may be remarked," says Eton, "that there is not 
 one instance of a fetra which declares the mur- 
 der of a Christian to be contrary to the faith; 
 or of any argument drawn from justice or re- 
 ligion, used to dissuade the sultans from perpe- 
 trating such an enormity. But, on the other 
 hand," remarks the same writer, "a Christian \ 
 may not kill a Mohammedan even in self-defence ; 
 if a Christian only strikes a Mohammedan, he is 
 most commonly put to death on the spot, or at 
 least ruined by fines and severely bastinadoed ; if 
 he strikes, though by accident, a sheriff (emil in 
 Turkish, i.e., a descendant of Mohammed, who 
 wears green turbans), of whom there are thou- 
 sands in the cities, it is death without remission." 
 
146 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 We learn from Olivier that in Crete the Turks 
 are more than anywhere else given, upon the 
 slightest pretext, to either killing a Greek with 
 their own hands or sending him to execution. 
 
 The most convenient medium for the extor- 
 tions of the Turkish governors was the khar- 
 adsh. Every ray a, says Eton, that is, every 
 subject who is not of the Mohammedan reli- 
 gion) is allowed only the cruel alternative of 
 death or tribute, capitation tax. The very words 
 of the formula given to the Christian subjects 
 paying the kharadsh, or capitation tax, import 
 that the sum of money received is taken as a com- 
 pensation for being permitted to wear their heads 
 that.year. 
 
 ( Mohammedan jurisprudence recognizes be- 
 tween Mohammedan and non-Mohammedan na- 
 tions but one category of relations — that of 
 jdjehad or holy war. By the sacred law all 
 giaours (Christian dogs) are under the ban. 
 Yet, although devoted to destruction, they may 
 be spared for a season, whenever this is to the 
 advantage of Islam. That these principles of 
 law are in force in Turkey to this very day is 
 fully shown in a most scientific article by Pro- 
 fessor A. D. F. Hamlin which appeared in The 
 Forum, July, 1897. This paper of Professor 
 
THE GREEKS UNDER TURKISH BONDAGE. 147 
 
 Hamlin furnishes conclusive evidence that the 
 above reports from travellers in Greece during 
 the time of the Turkish bondage are by no 
 means exaggerations or inventions. 
 
 It is one of the strangest occurrences that books 
 are published and journals appear which deny or 
 make little of the ill treatment the Greeks were 
 subjected to by the Turks. Such whitewashing 
 was done for political ends during the time of the 
 Greek war of independence, and many writers 
 of to-day either do not or will not search for his- 
 torical truth. 
 
 The nominal figure, says Bikelas, of the poll 
 tax was not high. But the collectors, to whom 
 the collection was sublet, always found means 
 for extorting from the taxpayers at least double 
 the sum which found its way into the treasury. 
 The fifty per cent went, as a matter of course, 
 into their own pockets. Even children of eight 
 years in towns and five in the country were as- 
 sessed. If, says Beaujour, the father of a little 
 Greek raises any dispute as to his exact age, the 
 tax gatherers measure the child's head with a 
 cord, which is made to serve as a sort of a stand- 
 ard, and, as they can make the cord what 
 length they like, the father can always be proved 
 in the wrong. 
 
148 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 In the islands it was in vain that inhabitants 
 fled to their mountains when the tax collectors 
 came. The Turks seized the elders and put 
 them to the bastinado until their wives had 
 brought them their trinkets and those of the 
 neighboring women. It was, moreover, very 
 often the case that the Turks, after appropriat- 
 ing the jewelry, threw husband, wife, and child 
 into slavery. Besides, the inhabitants of the 
 isles were subject to a blood tax, conscription of 
 young men for service in the Turkish fleet. 
 
 Yet the conscription, writes Bikelas, of sea- 
 faring lads was as nothing in comparison with 
 that indescribable blood tax, the conscription of 
 little children, the memory of which haunts every 
 Greek home like the presence of a devil. Every 
 five years came the moment when the Greek 
 nation received a stab into the heart, when a 
 tenth in human flesh was taken, a tenth which 
 deprived the people of the hope based on the 
 blossom of the manly youth, and which desolated 
 the land with most atrocious certainty. Small de- 
 tachments of Turkish soldiers, each detachment 
 commanded by a captain and each armed with a 
 special firman, travelled through the provinces 
 from place to place. When they came the elders 
 of the villages or towns gathered the inhabitants 
 
THE GREEKS UNDER TURKISH BONDAGE. I49 
 
 with their sons. The Turkish officer had the 
 power to seize one-fifth of all the boys between 
 the age of seven years and puberty and to select 
 those who were especially handsome, strong, and 
 intelligent or otherwise talented. The fathers 
 and mothers knew that the children they lost were 
 lost to them forever, that they would be circum- 
 cised, become Mohammedans, live and die jani- 
 zaries. As for the race, this tribute threatened 
 its very existence, the very hope of its future was 
 turned against it, its persecutors forged from its 
 very blood the instruments of their oppression. 
 No other enslaved nation has ever had to suffer 
 such torture as this. 
 
 With all these historical facts before us, it would 
 be difficult to understand how writers, as for in- 
 stance W. Alison Phillips in a book recently 
 published and entitled " The War of Greek In- 
 dependence, 1 82 1 to 1833" (New York: Charles 
 Scribner's Sons, 1897), can repeat statements like 
 the following, did not the author give us the ex- 
 planation : " It is a mistake to suppose that it 
 was the intolerable tyranny of the Turk which 
 forced the Greeks into rebellion." "In many 
 parts of the Turkish dominions, the cultivators 
 of the soil enjoyed a prosperity unknown to the 
 peasantry of some nations accounted more civil- 
 
150 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 ized." He enumerates the books from which he 
 has taken his information. He has selected 
 just those which were either written in an anti- 
 Hellenic spirit or which do not contain the re- 
 searches of those historians of our time who have 
 made real scientific investigations. Thus, for 
 instance, he does not or will not know the 
 writings of Zinkeisen, Ross, Gervinus, Bikelas, 
 and the excellent historian Hertzberg. On the 
 other hand he has used a book, as he confesses 
 himself, which was issued by its author as a 
 counterblast to the Armenian agitation, intended 
 as an apology for the Turk and an indictment 
 of the Oriental Christian. Mr. Phillips, it ap- 
 pears, has never heard of the horrible blood tax 
 of which mention is made above, or is it that 
 he does not wish to state anything which is un- 
 favorable to the Turk ? I refer to this author only 
 because his book is the most recent on hand, and 
 it will serve as an example of how some writers 
 treat modern Greek history, namely, by misrep- 
 resentation, by omission, and by repetition of old 
 intentional untruths. 
 
 But, to return to the horrors of the Turkish 
 reign over the Greeks : The proverb says where 
 there is much light there is much shadow. 
 Here we may say, where there is so much shadow 
 
THE GREEKS UNDER TURKISH BONDAGE. 151 
 
 there must be some light. And indeed we shall 
 now see the dawn of a new glory of Hellas, 
 when we come to speak of her great patriot 
 Korais, and further on when we shall see how 
 their religion was the most potent means of sav- 
 ing the Greeks. 
 
 Korais, in the preface to his translation of 
 Beccaria, expressed his conviction that no 
 remedy could heal the misfortune of the Greeks 
 but the light of science; and he made it his 
 task to imbue the hearts of the youth of 
 Hellas with love for their glorious ancestors, 
 the youth who were destined to become Greece's 
 legislators. 
 
 From the moment Korais read his " Memoire 
 sur r^tat actuel de la civilisation dans la Grece" \}wji 
 before a learned society in Paris in 1803, i^i 
 order to direct the eyes of the world to the 
 regeneration of his country, until the time of 
 the uprising of the Greeks, when he wrote his 
 political admonitions, he incessantly reminded 
 his countrymen of patriotism, union, lawfulness, 
 and perseverance. He spoke to them as citizen, 
 as patriot, as philosopher, in the spirit of Plutarch, 
 who wrote his biographies for the purpose of 
 giving the oppressed Greeks self-respect before ] 
 the Romans. Korais' aim all the time was to 
 
152 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 convince his countrymen that the political resur- 
 rection of Greece had to be prepared by means 
 of spiritual regeneration, and as a corollary 
 that the spiritual regeneration would positively 
 be followed by political resurrection. He im- 
 plored them in the name of the Fatherland, of 
 wife and child, of God and religion, of all that 
 was sacred to the Greeks, of the graves of father 
 and mother, that the people should rise against 
 the barbaric oppressors who had robbed them 
 of law and morals and honor, of life and faith 
 and virtue. 
 
 Korai's' opinions and views were shared by a 
 large number of travellers who, as we have re- 
 lated already, visited Greece in the beginning of 
 this century, men of excellent character, and 
 with sound, profound judgment. 
 
 Every change in the fate of the Greek people, 
 every political movement of theirs had its reflex on 
 the rest of Europe. During the fifteenth century, 
 as we have seen, when the conquest of the Os- 
 mans forced Greek scholars to disperse, they 
 united with the humanists, and this memorable 
 union brought about a revival of Greek learning 
 in the schools of the Western world. When in 
 the seventeenth century Crete was taken by the 
 Turks Europe regretted to see all places of classi- 
 
THE GREEKS UNDER TURKISH BONDAGE. 1 53 
 
 cal Greece in the hands of the barbarians. When 
 in the eighteenth century Russification of Greece 
 was threatening, it created a shudder in the 
 world of learning throughout Europe. The many 
 publications of French and English travellers at 
 the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of 
 this century show the deep interest the people 
 of those countries had in the fate of Greece. 
 
 After Korais in Paris had begun to make com- 
 parisons between old and new Hellas, men of 
 learning of all nationalities vied with each other 
 to instruct the Greeks in their own history ; after 
 Korais, the great Greek scholar, had visited 
 Europe and made himself heard there, men of 
 science went to Greece. 
 
 The first in time and the first in value of these 
 travellers was Colonel William Martin Leake, the 
 celebrated English archaeologist, born in 1777. 
 He came of a high family, was an officer of the 
 British artillery, and lived in the Levant, being 
 entrusted with a diplomatic mission, from 1804-9. 
 In 1823 he received his discharge as lieutenant- 
 colonel and thereafter devoted his time to science 
 and the publication of his writings. These publi- 
 cations show profound critical judgment, power of 
 practical observation, extensive learning in geog- 
 raphy, history, and literature, and unsurpassed 
 
154 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 clearness of diction in the description of the 
 conditions of ancient as well as modern Hel- 
 las. The rich information which he had gained 
 by his travels in almost all parts of Greece are 
 found in his works: "Travels in the Morea," 3 
 vols., London, 1830; "Travels in Northern 
 Greece," 4 vols., Cambridge, 1835 ; " Topography 
 of Athens," 2 vols., second edition, Cambridge, 
 1841; "Tour in Asia Minor," London, 1824; 
 " Memoir on the Island of Cos," London, 1843; 
 " Greece at the End of Twenty-three Years of 
 Protection," London, 185 1. Having finished his 
 elaborate work, " Numismatica Hellenica," 3 
 vols., Cambridge, 1854-59, ^^ ^i^^ January 6th, 
 i860, at Brighton. 
 
 Other travellers were W. Gell, Dodwell, Doug- 
 las, Lord Guildford, Macdonald, Kinneir, Hol- 
 land, Hughes, Hobhouse, Byron. Athens was 
 at that time the meeting-place for strangers, a 
 regular colony of scholars. The central figure 
 in this society was for a time Lord Guildford, 
 whom the Greeks gave the name of the greatest, 
 the three times greatest Philhellene. There 
 was also the Austrian Consul Gropius, a Philhel- 
 lene, notwithstanding the pronounced hatred of 
 his government toward the Greeks. Further the 
 Frenchman Fauval, who for a period of thirty 
 
THE GREEKS UNDER TURKISH BONDAGE. 1 55 
 
 years was looked upon and honored as the cus- 
 tos of the ruins. 
 
 While all the fearful destruction was going 
 on in Greece the Acropolis of Athens had not 
 been completely ruined. It appears as if even 
 the barbarians had been charmed by the divine 
 art. The edifice would have been much better 
 preserved if Christian hands had not contributed 
 to its ruin: the Venetian siege in 1687, Greek 
 defence during the war of independence, and 
 English vandalism. Lord Elgin, recalled from 
 his post as ambassador to Constantinople, passed 
 through Greece, and with Turkish permission 
 deprived the temple of Minerva of its most 
 beautiful ornament. All foreigners, foremost 
 the Frenchmen, and even many Englishmen — 
 Lord Byron more than anybody else — were furi- 
 ous in their condemnation of such vandalism. 
 The most touching reproach is contained in the 
 Athenian tale : When one of the five Caryatides 
 of the pandrosium was taken away the other four 
 girls in the evening cried after their lost sister 
 with painful woe, and the one who had been 
 taken away answered them from the lower part 
 of the city with similar cries of pain. 
 
 The number of foreign guests increased. 
 They all were filled with compassion when they 
 
156 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 observed the dull silence of slavery, and men 
 like Chateaubriand in their writings awakened 
 sympathy, drawing the hearts from the ruins of 
 stone to the living ruins. It is impossible to 
 understand how any one could look upon the 
 cruel treatment of this people without being 
 touched, how any one could wander without 
 heartfelt pity among these oppressed unfortu- 
 nates in a country where there is no stone with- 
 out a name, no brook, no spring which has not 
 been celebrated in poetry or history, where 
 every ravine, every valley reminds one of 
 great deeds and great men. Foreign wanderers 
 on this soil voluntarily hoped for and dreamed 
 of the resurrection of Greece. To many it ap- 
 peared as if the jealousy of the powers, which 
 regarded Turkey as a necessary barrier against 
 Russia, delayed the day of Greece's liberty. 
 Most of them, however, agreed with Korais that 
 the intellectual activity of the Greeks would be 
 the forerunner of this complete resurrection, and 
 necessarily had to be. 
 
 All travellers, even those who believed that 
 the Greeks were so devoid of education and 
 virtue that they could not understand and create 
 a better political condition, deemed it cruel to see 
 them condemned to everlasting slavery. Those 
 
THE GREEKS UNDER TURKISH BONDAGE. 1 5/ 
 
 who witnessed the system of outrage under which 
 the Greeks were suffering declared it shameful 
 that civilized nations allowed the Turks contin- 
 ually to oppress this people. 
 
 The American Revolution had established 
 principles of human rights and spread democratic 
 views. 
 
 The Greeks were found in misery, but even 
 among the peasants who lived in out-of-the-way 
 places there existed the feeling of shame at their 
 ignorance. They were surprised that strangers 
 interested themselves in their condition, ap- 
 proaching as it did that of animals. This spark 
 of self-knowledge kindled hope in those who had 
 pitied them. For there was none even among 
 the most malevolent travellers who was not full 
 of admiration of the activity, the desire for knowl- 
 edge, the intelligence, the individual self-posses- 
 sion, the soundness of judgment, the practical 
 sense, the talent of rhetoric in this people. 
 
 For political reasons, perhaps in order to ac- 
 custom the Greeks to bear their yoke the better, 
 to facilitate the control over them, the Patriarch, 
 the ecclesiastical head, was empowered to exer- 
 cise civil jurisdiction over the Christians. The 
 Greeks were allowed the public celebration of 
 their religious worship, the clergy were exempt 
 
158 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 from the kharadsli, and were themselves al- 
 lowed to levy a tax upon every Christian family, 
 in order to meet the expenses incidental to the 
 discharge of their public functions. The clerics 
 thus placed at the head of the Hellenic people 
 showed themselves endowed with such an 
 amount of intelligence and of patriotism that 
 they upheld the standard of Hellenism under 
 the shelter of the Phanar. The Greek Church 
 never lost the consciousness of her duty toward 
 the Greek nation. The Greek people owe to j ^idy- 
 their church the preservation of their faith, of \ ^ 
 
 their language, and of their unity; yes, we may 
 say, of their race. The Greeks will never be 
 found lacking in gratitude toward their Church. 
 Some errors from which the higher clergy had ■ 
 not always been free were more than atoned for \ 
 by the death of the Patriarch, Gregor V., hanged \ 
 at the Phanar in 1 82 1 ; by the patriotic devotion 
 of Germanus of Patras ; and by the deeds of so j 
 many other prelates who have died as the martyrs / 
 or lived as the confessors of the cause of Greek 
 national independence. J 
 
 Happily amid the degradation which the na- 
 tional character suffered under the influence of 
 the dangers and the evils of slavery, the Hellenic . 
 people never lost the sense of their own dignity. 
 
 0^ 
 
THE GREEKS UNDER TURKISH BONDAGE. 1 59 
 
 It was this sense which made them long to 
 be free again. The consciousness of dishonor 
 hurt them more than the hardships of the life 
 of slavery. Proofs of this exist in the writings 
 which Hellenes published in foreign countries, 
 and, after the war broke out, in documents in 
 which the insurgents made known to Europe 
 their resolve to die sooner than endure again 
 what they had suffered so long. 
 
 Next to the privileges granted to the Church it 
 was the communal system which was the social 
 anchor to which Hellenism owed its preserva- 
 tion. While the patriarchs supplied the ele- 
 ments of political unity, the communal system 
 gave shape to the home life of the people. 
 
 The pressure of slavery, which weighed upon 
 all alike, made close the ties which bound the 
 members of every family, of every little com- 
 munity together. It is needless to enter here 
 into the question whether the communal system 
 which existed in Greece under the Turks owed 
 its origin to classical or mediaeval times. Fortu- 
 nately, it did not occur to the Turks to make" any 
 attack upon this system. On the contrary, they 
 found that it suited their system of administra- 
 tion very well. Just as they made the Patriarch 
 of Constantinople responsible for the whole race, 
 
l6o CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 SO did they make the elders responsible for the 
 whole of each community. It facilitated the as- 
 sessing of tribute, the regulating of the forced 
 labor, and the getting in the kharadsh. 
 
 The communal system, by binding the inter- 
 ests of every individual to those of institutions 
 common to all, by concerning all in the local 
 government, in the affairs of schools and hos- 
 pitals, prepared the people for freedom. The 
 Greeks had and have a family life more intimate 
 and more pure than many of the people of the 
 South ; they treated their women with that respect 
 which is due to their sex, and this alone already 
 gave them the expectation for higher culture. 
 
 When the war of independence broke out the 
 communal societies served as centres of activity, 
 and also as bases for the new organization of the 
 country. The elders of all kinds, like the prel- 
 ates of the church and the rest of the Phan- 
 ariote hierarchy, now cast aside the signs of their 
 slavery and degradation and contended for the | \J^ 
 honor of leading the national movement. '^ 
 
 When the war broke out it became more man- 
 ifest how vast a gulf separated Hellene from 
 Turk. For four centuries had they been asso- 
 ciated in intimate contact. Mutual familiarity 
 had only intensified their mutual hatred. The 
 
 'j^ 
 
THE GREEKS UNDER TURKISH BONDAGE. l6l 
 
 Turk degraded and corrupted the Greek popula- 
 tion, and the Osmanic government looked upon 
 all Hellenes as enemies, and treated them ac- 
 cordingly. 
 
 Bikelas has shown in a special treatise how- 
 large a part of the awakening of the Greeks was 
 due to the increase of education. In the earlier 
 periods of Ottoman dominion education was con- 
 fined to a few clergy and a still more limited 
 number of laymen. The mass of the popula- 
 tion was plunged into ignorance. The village 
 teacher was generally the parish priest, and the 
 few pupils whom he could gather around him 
 acquired little more than a mechanical power of 
 reading the Psalms and the ecclesiastical office 
 books. From the seventeenth century the Hel- 
 lenes in the service of the Porte rendered aid to 
 the Patriarchate in commencing an extended 
 system of education, by founding schools, and 
 protecting the teachers and their pupils. The 
 true development, however, took place toward 
 the end of the last century. Then it was that 
 the lowly teachers of the preceding generations 
 gave place to men of learning with love for 
 the classical glory of their race. Thenceforth 
 many a Hellenic town had a school, and pupils 
 came from the country round about. In these 
 
l62 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 schools, moreover, the works of classical authors 
 and of the fathers of the Church no longer 
 formed the only subjects of study. In them 
 were taught the results of modern science, either 
 from original works or from translations of the 
 best foreign treatises. 
 
 The principal source, says Bikelas, which sup- 
 plied means to education, and was the strongest 
 lever for raising the Greek people out of the rut 
 of lethargy into which they had fallen, was com- 
 merce. Commercial activity dates its revival 
 from the eighteenth century. 
 
 The Greeks of other days, said M. Juchereau 
 de Saint-Denis, crushed under the yoke of Os- 
 manic despotism, used to get European merchan- 
 dise through the medium of European agents, 
 established in the different seaports of the 
 Levant. Within the last fifty years, under the 
 impulse of their constantly disappointed hopes 
 for a brighter future, they have taken to study- 
 ing our language, imitating some of our manners 
 and customs, and trying to gain some knowl- 
 edge of Europe by personal observation. From 
 the epoch when he wrote, the commerce of the 
 Levant became mainly centred in the hands of 
 the Hellenes. The Greeks began to experience 
 pleasurable sensations of ease and comfort, and 
 
THE GREEKS UNDER TURKISH BONDAGE. 163 
 
 with this improvement began the aspiration after 
 a higher position. The Greeks are more indus- 
 trious than any other southern people, and under 
 equal taxation' and justice they would by their 
 industry alone have starved out their Turkish 
 masters. By carrying on commerce and naviga- 
 tion on a grand scale during the first period of 
 their awakening, they proved themselves so 
 much superior that the observing Englishmen, 
 full of admiration for their talent, their perspi- 
 cacity, their experience, diligence, economy, and 
 honesty, predicted with the most absolute cer- 
 tainty their success. Their merchant ships were 
 indeed now beginning, in ever-increasing num- 
 ber, to bear to their homes the wealth which was 
 destined later on to keep alive the war of inde- 
 pendence. The improvement was soon to be 
 seen in landward Hellas also, wherever the ab- 
 sence of Turks permitted some security and free- 
 dom. The existence of such oases in the midst 
 of the desert of Osmanli savagery startled the 
 few travellers. The German Bartholdy, who 
 was by no means favorably inclined toward the 
 Greeks, was astonished to find at Ampelania, in 
 Thessaly, several persons who were capable of 
 addressing him in his mother tongue, and he 
 was still more astonished when he found that, as 
 
164 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 a recreation, they had opened a small theatre, 
 in which they were representing Kotzebue's 
 *' Menschenhass und Reue," which was then in 
 vogue in civilized Europe. At Kallarrytes, at 
 Syracon, in Epirus similar phenomena were to 
 be found. It is the tradition of Kallarrytes, 
 says Leake, that the Vlakhiotes have not been 
 settled in this part of Pindus more than two hun- 
 dred and fifty years, which is very credible, as 
 it is not likely that they quitted the more fertile 
 parts of Thessaly until they felt the oppression 
 of the Turkish conquerors, and their inability to 
 resist it. The removal has not been unfortu- 
 nate, for their descendants have thereby enjoyed 
 a degree of repose, and have obtained advan- 
 tages which their former situation could hardly 
 have admitted. They began by carrying to 
 Italy the woollen cloaks, called cappe, which are 
 made in these mountains and much used in 
 Italy and in Spain, as well as by the Greeks 
 themselves. This opened the route for a more 
 extended commerce; they now share with the 
 Greeks in the valuable trade of colonial produce 
 between Spain and Malta, and many are owners 
 of both ship and cargo. The wealthier inhabi- 
 tants are merchants who have been abroad 
 many years in Italy, Spain, or the dominions of 
 
THE GREEKS UNDER TURKISH BONDAGE. 1 65 
 
 Austria or Russia, and who after a long absence 
 have returned with the fruits of their industry to 
 their native towns, which they thus enrich and 
 in some degree civilize. But they seldom return 
 for permanent residence till late in life, being 
 satisfied in the interval with two or three short 
 visits. The middle classes pursue a similar 
 course ; but, as their traffic seldom carries them 
 as far from home as the higher order of mer- 
 chants, they return more frequently, and many 
 of them spend a part of every summer in their 
 native place. 
 
 At Siatista, in Macedonia, Bikelas narrates, 
 there could hardly be said to be a single family 
 some member of which was not established in 
 Italy, in Hungary, in Austria, or in Germany. 
 Among the old men in the town, there were 
 very few who had not lived abroad for ten or 
 twelve years. Among the mountain villages 
 near Volo, in Thessaly, the same activity was 
 attended with the same results. It is to these 
 merchants, while either still living in some for- 
 eign land or when returned to their native coun- 
 try, that Hellas owes that wonderful revival of 
 popular education which preceded her political 
 resurrection. Such men were Zosimai, the Ma- 
 routsoi, the Kaplanai, and so many other benefac- 
 
1 66 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 tors of their race. Such were those who founded 
 and endowed schools. There were others who 
 were either themselves workers in the fields 
 of literature and learning, or who generously sub- 
 sidized and supported the publication of useful 
 books by others. These were the men who made 
 themselves the leading apostles of freedom and 
 of civilization, by telling their fellow-country- 
 men what they had heard and seen in the do- 
 minions of civilized governments, and exciting 
 in them the desire to obtain similar blessings 
 for their own land. It is among these mer- 
 chants that are to be found the names of the first 
 founders of the Hetairia. It was principally 
 from among them that the emissaries were 
 drawn who spread through the provinces and 
 colonies of the Hellenic race the secret knowl- 
 edge of the national movement which was about 
 to break forth. Of six hundred and ninety-two 
 recorded names of members of the Hetairia, two 
 hundred and fifty-one are those of business men, 
 and thirty-five of ship owners. 
 
 Bikelas concludes : Trade helped to engender 
 the war of independence, trade brought out and 
 hastened the moral and intellectual awakening 
 of the people. In the merchant ships were 
 raised those sailors who have gained immortality 
 
THE GREEKS UNDER TURKISH BONDAGE. 167 
 
 by fighting for Greece. The Church and the 
 communal system had, as we have seen, saved 
 the integrity and the unity of the nation. The 
 klephthai and the armatoloi, from generation to 
 generation, had handed down the warrior spirit 
 of the Hellenic race, and when the hour of 
 battle came Hellas had children who could fight 
 for her. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE\ iGREEK WAR OF INDEPENDENCE AND THE 
 EUROPEAN POWERS. 
 
 From the time of their complete ruin the 
 Greeks attempted to rise again. Agitations and 
 plots existed continually. As they felt that they 
 were not strong enough by themselves, they 
 asked for help from the Christians of Western 
 Europe. Different projects were set on foot for 
 raising a new crusade. Meanwhile, however, 
 the Greeks seized upon every occasion to break 
 out into insurrections, which being suppressed, 
 only served the Turks as a pretext to make 
 slavery more severe. Charles VIII. intended to 
 help the Greeks re-establish the Greek empire. 
 Laskaris and Arianites were in the conspiracy 
 to prepare a general rising of the Greeks as 
 soon as the King of France should set foot 
 among them. But Charles VIII. dying, the 
 scheme was abandoned. Many other brilliant 
 schemes and ingenious plots to resuscitate the By- 
 zantine empire, different projects to raise a new 
 crusade, and the insurrections which broke out in 
 
THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. 169 
 
 Greece, all came to nothing. Only one of the 
 Western European states, the republic of Venice, 
 was incessantly opposing the Turks, and often 
 with success, but the Venetians in their turn like- 
 wise oppressed the Greeks. They acted not as 
 their friends, but from selfish motives. 
 
 The religious separation between the Eastern 
 and the Western churches is a thing of great im- 
 portance to be considered in regard to the posi- 
 tion of the Greek people toward the peoples of 
 Western Europe. This religious dissension was 
 to some extent the reason why Western Europe 
 ceased to care what happened to the Greeks. 
 The Turks made their final conquests in the ' 
 south; they took Crete. The last half of the . 
 seventeenth century was the direst period through 
 which the Greeks ever had to pass. 
 
 With the beginning of the eighteenth century 
 Greece hoped for help from Russia, the very 
 power whose population shared her religious 
 belief, and who freely fed her with promises 
 and encouragements. Catharine II. together 
 with Emperor Joseph II. both had for a time the 
 same plans as Charles VIII. — namely, to restore 
 the Byzantine -Greek empire. The Greeks were 
 for the first time undeceived in their confidence 
 in Russia at the time of the insurrection in 1770 
 
170 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 on the appearance of the Russian fleet under 
 Orloff. In the treaty which ended this Turko- 
 Russian war the Greeks were entirely forgotten ; 
 they were left to the mercy of their old tyrants. 
 The vengeance which the Turks took was ter- 
 rible. 
 
 This first attempt to bring about a general ris- 
 ing of a whole nation, although it failed, was 
 far from extinguishing all hope. The struggle 
 was not given up, and the Klephtai in the moun- 
 tains kept it continually alive. 
 
 The Greeks began to face the Turks at sea. 
 Lampros Katzones fitted out about the year 
 1788, with the help of patriotic subscriptions, a 
 little fleet, and the Greek banner with the cross 
 of Christ was floating over the Greek seas until 
 the Turks destroyed this small navy in 1792. 
 Now the American and the French revolutions 
 had their effect on Greece; they hastened the 
 national awakening. Two apostles of the gospel 
 of liberty, Rhigas and Korai's, preached the 
 principles of the French Revolution. 
 
 The Hetairia was a secret patriotic brother- 
 hood, a national league, organized by Constan- 
 tine Rhigas, who took the opportunity to form 
 this union when the attention of his compatriots 
 had been directed from the events of the French 
 
THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. I/I 
 
 Revolution to their own sad condition, a union 
 which was created to prepare the way for 
 political revolution. The first step of these 
 united patriots was toward promotion of public 
 instruction and education. 
 
 Rhigas, handed over by the Austrian police to 
 the Turks, was executed by the latter in 1798, but 
 the elements of his society remained, and it was 
 reorganized and received new life during the 
 years of 18 14-17. Every member had the right, 
 with the consent of another, to receive any Greek 
 whom he believed to possess the required quali- 
 ties. The new member knew only the one who 
 had admitted him. Before admission his life's 
 conduct, his principles, his financial circumstances 
 were strictly examined, and on admission the 
 candidate had to swear an oath which gave evi- 
 dence of his piety, love of liberty, and patriotism. 
 The next object was to secure contributions, 
 which every new member, through the one who 
 had admitted him, had to make to the national 
 treasury. The whole was governed by a central 
 head which had possession of the funds. To 
 gain new members and for other purposes 
 apostles were sent out, and in many places of 
 the Turkish Empire, especially in Constanti- 
 nople, the society had its agents and ephores. 
 
172 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 About 18 18 the Hetairia commenced to prepare 
 the Greeks for a change of their condition to be 
 expected in the near future. Greece was ready 
 for liberty. All her population were but waiting 
 the moment to shake the chains from their 
 limbs. The apostles of the brotherhood had 
 everywhere good ground. 
 
 When the war broke out there was a want of 
 organization either military or political, the 
 means were insufficient, and there was no al- 
 liance and no hope of help from any foreign 
 nation. On the side of the Osmanli there were 
 power and strength; the struggle was to be a 
 desperate one. Hellas in fighting for many 
 years against her gigantic oppressor received no 
 quarter, her population became much more than 
 decimated, in the field, by massacres, by epi- 
 demics. Turkish savagery spared nothing. 
 The towns were destroyed. The country was 
 laid waste. When all the bloodshed, the horrors 
 of was were over, only a little fraction of the 
 Hellenic race obtained independence. Three 
 hundred thousand Hellenes gave up their lives 
 in order that six hundred thousand might be free. 
 This independence could be won only sword in 
 hand in order to wash out the stains of slavery. 
 
 Some people thought the Greeks, instead of 
 
THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. 1 73 
 
 taking up arms and proclaiming their rights, 
 would have gained these rights in the course of 
 time and events, by cabals and intrigues, per- 
 haps peacefully. "But," says Bikelas, "to 
 what depths of degradation would the Greek 
 race have sunk had they refused the ancestral 
 blood which filled their veins for the honored 
 task of washing out the stains of slavery?** 
 
 Besides, if the Greeks had not claimed and won 
 these rights as they did, the Turks and the Greeks 
 together would have been very likely to have 
 fallen one common prey to another conqueror. 
 Within the mighty empire of Russia the em- 
 pire of Hellas would have run great risk of los- 
 ing the very consciousness of her nationality, 
 and would certainly not have regained inde- 
 pendence. 
 
 Napoleon Bonaparte's expedition into Egypt 
 appeared in the eyes of the Greeks as a war of 
 civilization against savagery, of the Christian 
 against the Moslem. Rhigas called on the vic- 
 torious French general to plead for the aid of 
 France in the national movement for which 
 Rhigas was laboring. The hope of the Greeks 
 in this direction was not realized. They found 
 that they could count on no help from Western 
 Christendom, so they turned toward Russia. 
 
174 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 The Greeks appealed to the West as the de 
 scendants of the old Hellenes, in the name of her 
 historic past, and as Christians with the tradi- 
 tions of the Byzantine empire. 
 
 The empire of Rome had been absorbed by 
 Hellenism. The Greek language, Greek civiliza- 
 tion, the profession of a common Christianity had 
 united the Romans with the Greeks. The im- 
 perial Byzantine tradition went on in the Church 
 after the fall of the empire, after the fall of 
 Constantinople. Her calendar of fasts and fes- 
 tivals still celebrates year by year the commem- 
 oration of events in Byzantine history. All 
 these things tended to bring the empire home 
 to the Greek revolution, and with that recollec- 
 tion to combine the hope of the resurrection of 
 the Greek empire. The schemes for a restora- 
 tion of the empire from Charles VHI. to Catha- 
 rine II. had been incentives to this dream of 
 a new Byzantium. Alongside of this dream the 
 thought of old Hellenism brightened more and 
 more clearly. 
 
 In a foregoing chapter it has been shown why 
 the Greeks, with all their love for the memory of 
 the Komnenoi and Palaeologoi, hold still more 
 sacred the memory of their ancient heroes. 
 Fifty years before the war of independence 
 
THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. 1 75 
 
 they wrote to the Czarina : " Set free the chil- 
 dren of the Athenians and Lacedsemonians from 
 the crushing yoke under which they groan, and 
 which, nevertheless, has not been able to de- 
 stroy the spirit of their nation, where the love of 
 freedom still burns. Our chains have been 
 powerless to stifle that love, for we always had 
 set before our eyes the living memory of our 
 heroic fathers." 
 
 The two ideas to restore the Byzantine em- 
 pire and to reawaken ancient Hellas became in- 
 termingled. There was as much of the one as of 
 the other in the minds of those who prepared 
 the national movement in 1821. The poet 
 Rhigas addressed his passionate appeal to every 
 Christian in bondage "to light a fire which 
 should wrap all Turkey, from Bosnia to 
 Arabia." 
 
 The Byzantine project was then not so vision- 
 ary as it now seems. The spirit of nationalism 
 had not been roused in the other races of the 
 Balkan peninsula. They felt that they all were 
 Christians. 
 
 The other states might have united under the 
 leadership of Greece to form one Christian state 
 if the revolution had been better organized. If 
 Ypsilanti had possessed the genius of a Wash- 
 
176 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 ington or of a Napoleon, the great ilea of a re- 
 stored Byzantine empire might perhaps then 
 have been realized. The rising of Wallachia 
 was soon stamped out, and the struggle for inde- 
 pendence became limited to Greece alone. 
 Since then the Byzantine idea was more and 
 more abandoned for the Hellenic idea. The 
 war of independence became an exclusively 
 Greek war, and since the formation of the new 
 Greek kingdom the Greek aspirations have be- 
 come exclusively Hellenic. The centre of Greek 
 thought is in Athens, and in Athens dwells the 
 hope of Greece's future, the hope that Hellen- 
 ism may again be what it has been. 
 
 In the first of the foregoing chapters an his- 
 torical sketch of the Byzantine empire is given 
 in order to show the most extraordinary mis- 
 representations which have existed until re- 
 cently in regard to this history. In the second 
 chapter another historical sketch exposes the 
 erroneous views which have prevailed in regard 
 to the relation of the Greek of to-day to the 
 Greek of the classical period, at least the Greek 
 of the Attic orators. Chapter III. shows what 
 absurd ideas were in vogue in regard to Greek 
 pronunciation. The fourth chapter gives an ac- 
 count of the misery into which the Greek world 
 
THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. 1/7 
 
 was thrown during the centuries of Turkish bond- 
 age, of the wonderful rising of the Greek people 
 from the lethargy caused by slavery, and of 
 their spiritual and political resurrection. Now 
 we come to the strangest and the most incom- 
 prehensible of all the wrongs done to this noble 
 race, the treatment received from the European 
 powers while she was struggling for liberty 
 after long centuries of terrific vicissitudes, un- 
 der circumstances which presented more diffi- 
 culties than any other nation had encountered. 
 
 Toward the end of the year 1822, the Euro- 
 pean sovereigns and their ministers were assem- 
 bled in the council at Verona to consider the 
 Greek question. 
 
 In the spring of the preceding year the mon- 
 archs, assembled at Lay bach, had deliberated 
 already over the news of an insurrectionary 
 Greek movement. Alexander I. and the whole 
 of Europe disowned and condemned the Hel- 
 lenic war of independence from the very mo- 
 ment it began. 
 
 The Greeks in their assembly at Epidauros on 
 January 15th, 1822, proclaimed: "Our war 
 against the Turks is not the outcome of seditions 
 and subversive forces, nor the weapon of party 
 ambition. It is a national war, undertaken with 
 
178 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 no aim save that of regaining our rights, and pre- 
 serving our existence and our honor." Their 
 appeals and proclamations remained perfectly 
 futile. The world continued to regard them as 
 subjects in rebellion against their lawful sover- 
 eign. 
 
 They hastened to send a mission to the Con- 
 gress of Verona to explain their wishes and 
 plead their cause. The Congress refused, 
 thanks to the influence of Prince Metternich, 
 even to receive the petition. They forbade the 
 Greek representatives to set foot in Verona, and 
 requested the Pope to expel them from Ancona. 
 
 It was in the lurid glare of Chios that the 
 powers met at Verona to declare " that the sov- 
 ereigns had determined to repel the principle of 
 revolution without inquiring in what shape or in 
 what country it made its appearance," and Wel- 
 lington was the voice of Christian constitutional 
 England on that occasion. 
 
 Chios is an island with a population of one 
 hundred thousand Greeks. This island was a 
 kind of an apanage (mastic patch) of the Sultana 
 mother. Chios became the garden of the archi- 
 pelago. It drew to itself all that was refined, 
 intelligent, and cultivating in Greek society. 
 Schools, colleges, libraries were founded and 
 
THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. 1 79 
 
 flourished. The Chiotes took no part in the 
 struggle, but in April, 1822, Moslem fanaticism 
 let loose upon them the hounds of hell. Fire, 
 sword, and the still more deadly passions of fa- 
 naticism and lust ravaged the island for three 
 months. Of one hundred thousand inhabitants 
 not five thousand were left alive upon the island ; 
 forty thousand of both sexes were sold into 
 slavery, and the harems of Turkey, Asia, and 
 Africa are still (fifteen years after the massacre, 
 when Richard Cobden wrote this, while he 
 visited the stricken island) filled with victims. 
 
 Gladstone has characterized it as " that horror, 
 that indescribable enormity, that appalling 
 monument of barbarian cruelty, a scene from 
 which human nature shrinks shuddering away." 
 Such was the massacre of Chios, unparalleled 
 in modern history, a tragedy compared by the 
 British consul, an eye-witness, to the destruction 
 of Jerusalem, which thrilled Europe and Amer- 
 ica with horror. 
 
 After the Congress of Verona war went on, a 
 butchery sanctioned by Christian Europe in the 
 interest of toppling thrones and a balance of 
 power. 
 
 "During the last twenty-five years," says 
 Bikelas, " a number of new states have been ad- 
 
l8o CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 mitted into the European family of nations, and 
 that sometimes after defeats instead of victories, 
 and sometimes after the populations have merely 
 allowed themselves to be massacred without 
 making any resistance. In view of these facts 
 it is difficult to realize that Hellas, after having 
 fought and triumphed by sea and by land for 
 two years, and thus virtually acquired indepen- 
 dence by her army, entirely failed to make the 
 governments of that epoch even listen to what 
 she had to say. Diplomatic Europe was at that 
 time guided by the principles of the Holy Al- 
 liance, and these principles were ironically de- 
 picted by the Due de Broglie in one of his 
 speeches : " Every revolution whatever is not 
 only a rebellion against the government which it 
 attacks in particular, but a criminal attempt 
 against civilization in general. Every nation 
 which tries to gain its rights, when its govern- 
 ment has refused it the liberty, is a nation of 
 pirates which ought to be outlawed and pro- 
 scribed by all Europe. Constitutions have no 
 lawful source except in absolutism. Any gov- 
 ernment which is the child of a revolution is a 
 monster which ought to be killed as soon as pos- 
 sible." 
 
 It was against such doctrines as these, as much 
 
THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. l8l 
 
 as against the army of Turkey, that Hellas had 
 to contend in order to conquer her independ- 
 ence. The powers were exceedingly tender 
 about the sovereign rights of Turkey. They 
 left Hellas to her fate in the conviction that it 
 would not be long before the Sultan would crush 
 her. The little nation had no organization, no 
 resources, no allies, and no protectors; but the 
 energy of despair gave tenfold force to the 
 Greeks to resist the formidable Turkish power. 
 
 The Greeks went on fighting, and prospered for 
 two years after the Congress of Verona until the 
 armies and fleets of Egypt came to the aid of 
 Turkey. The Greeks were beaten, still they 
 contested their burnt and blackened fields against 
 the Arabs, and with the continued cry of 
 "EXeodspia rj 0dvazo? they appealed to the conscience 
 of Christian Europe. 
 
 Then despite their governments the nations 
 began to show sympathy with Hellas. Material 
 help and moral support came from all sides. In 
 Germany, in England, in France, societies were 
 formed for the support of the Greeks. The 
 head-centre of these societies was the banker 
 Eynard in Geneva. Philhellenic volunteers or- 
 ganized, and one of these volunteers was Lord 
 Byron. The first result of this favorable condi- 
 
1 82 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 tion was the negotiation of a Greek loan in Eng- 
 land. 
 
 One time France took the lead in the Philhel- 
 lenic movement. This nation was entirely free 
 from selfish motives. A philanthropic society 
 for the support of the Greeks was founded in 
 Paris, and this society prepared the way for 
 Philhellenism in all ranks of society, the king's 
 family included. The French press took a most 
 active part ; and among many prominent writers 
 in favor of the Greeks was Chateaubriand, who 
 said that the world of learning and the political 
 world were longing to see the re-establishment 
 of the mother of sciences and religion, and to see 
 the altars free again in a Christian country where 
 St. Paul had preached the unknown God. The 
 warmth and the courage with which the Greek 
 cause was taken up in France awoke old sym- 
 pathies in Switzerland and Germany. Banker 
 Eynard of Geneva, the president of the Philhel- 
 lenic society, was said to be more Hellenic than 
 Hellas' best citizen. He became the head- 
 centre of the whole Greek movement in Europe. 
 
 The first active participation came from Ger- 
 many. The language of human generosity 
 knew no bounds. Dr. Iptis, Ypsilanti's phy- 
 sician, came to Austria to excite sympathy for 
 
THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. 1 83 
 
 the Greeks. In Vienna friends had to aid him 
 to flee quickly to save him from the fate of 
 Rhigas ; in Germany he was everywhere enthu- 
 siastically received. Among the many noble 
 Germans who worked for the Greek cause were 
 Krug and Thiersch. The German journals gave 
 correct news and explanations about the Greek 
 rising and refuted the Austrian calumniations 
 until the Austrian and German governments in- 
 terdicted the Philhellenic agitations. 
 
 When the news of the massacre of Chios was 
 published in England and Waddington described 
 the terrible distress in Athens, where over 
 twenty thousand poor refugees were starving, 
 contributions were made quietly without osten- 
 tation. Erskine, in a letter on the situation in 
 Greece to the Earl of Liverpool, London, 1822, 
 attacked the league between England and the 
 Porte, the fraternity between the king and the 
 Sultan, and characterized this relation as a dis- 
 grace to the English nation so long as the ruin 
 of Chios was not atoned for. But only under 
 Canning did The Quarterly Review adopt a 
 friendly attitude toward the Greeks, and only 
 then were Philhellenic societies organized. 
 This was the time when the first loan was made 
 to Greece. 
 
1 84 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 Moral encouragement, material aid, political 
 support were needed to help the Greek nation in 
 her struggle; and help came from Occidental 
 Europe. Admiration of the heroic deeds, and 
 sympathy with the sufferings of the little nation 
 showed itself in unselfish exertions. Indeed, 
 the record of this Philhellenic movement fills 
 one of the most beautiful pages in the history 
 of mankind. The ladies of the highest rank in 
 Paris formed special sodalities; organized in 
 different divisions, they made house-to-house 
 collections in the city. In all salons it became 
 the custom for the lady of the house to take up a 
 collection for Greece. In the French provinces 
 this new zeal took root and spread. Eynard 
 took charge of the forwarding of provisions ; he 
 and his friends sent 24,000 francs in cash, the 
 committee of Paris 60,000 francs, Amsterdam 
 30,000, and the society in Stuttgart a similar 
 sum. When the sad news of the fall of Misso- 
 longhi was made known, when the Bishop of 
 Arta asked help for the wives and children who 
 were sold like cattle, transported to Egypt, 
 never to return — and when Eynard transmitted 
 this appeal to Paris, and from Paris to all 
 parts of the world, all Europe was filled with 
 pity, a pity which confers lasting honors on 
 
THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. 1 8$ 
 
 society of those times. King Lewis of Bavaria 
 had already given from his own money 20,000 
 florins, and he added 20,000 francs to buy the 
 liberty of Missolonghians sent into slavery, and 
 later on again 20,000 florins of his own money 
 and 26,000 francs contributed by the royal 
 family. He interdicted all festivities in his 
 realm, requesting that the money intended 
 therefor should partly go to the poor of the re- 
 spective communities and partly to the Greeks. 
 The Philhellenic Union in Munich sent 65,000 
 francs, similar contributions came from Dresden 
 and Leipsic, where Tiedge and W. Mliller 
 kindled the fire ; while in Berlin it was the great 
 physician Hufeland and the historian Neander 
 who first made appeals to alleviate the sufferings 
 and to buy the liberty of prisoners sent into 
 slavery. Berlin sent 240,000 francs. In The 
 Hague, in Namur, Bruxelles, Luxemburg, Stock- 
 holm, this example was followed. In France 
 the deep indignation caused by the fact that 
 Frenchmen had taken part in the destruction 
 of Missolonghi, and sold cannon to the Turks, 
 gave a sharp impulse to the sense of national 
 honor. In the French chamber Chateaubriand 
 made a motion to punish Frenchmen who aided 
 the Turks; French subjects were forbidden to 
 
1 86 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 hire out their ships for the transportation of 
 Greeks into Egyptian slavery; Alexis de No- 
 ailles moved that 300,000 francs be given 
 to the French consuls to buy the liberty of 
 Christian slaves, and Constant rose to ask the 
 Minister of War whether among the French 
 officers, who together with the Egyptian hordes 
 had covered their hands with the blood of the 
 Missolonghians, there were any who were still on 
 the rolls of the French army, and whether they 
 still held commissions and still received pay. 
 
 All international jealousies disappeared in 
 those days. Eynard expressed his deep indig- 
 nation when, at the catastrophe of Missolonghi, 
 English politics prevented the besieged Greeks, 
 dying of starvation, from being supplied with 
 food from the Ionian Islands. If he had been 
 governor, instead of Maitland (one of the most 
 detestable, cruel monsters among the enemies of 
 the Greeks), he would have acted differently, 
 even if he were to have died on the scaffold. 
 
 In England there were published venomous 
 accusations against the Greeks and their govern- 
 ment, in order to defend the English policy, 
 representing that all aid of the people was 
 wasted on unworthy subjects. It is true, some 
 unavoidable mistakes were made by the Greeks 
 
THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. 1 87 
 
 in applying the money sent by Philhellenes ; 
 sometimes they trusted egoistic people. There 
 were English and even American contractors 
 who enriched themselves by cheating the 
 Greeks, notably two firms in New York, Row- 
 land, and Le Roy Bayard & Co., against whom 
 the United States Government had finally to 
 proceed, in order to recover part of the money 
 paid to them by Greeks for ship contracts. 
 
 The leaders of the Parisian Philhellenic 
 unions, however, did not allow themselves to be 
 influenced by the occasional misappropriation of 
 money nor the ill-treatment of Frenchmen in 
 Greece. These leaders were mild in their judg- 
 ments; they looked with admiration at Greek 
 bravery and Greek perseverance.. Thjey^^alw^s 
 reported favorably on them, overlooking th( 
 evils which, naturally enough, were unavoidable 
 in such a chaos of misery and wamt of insigh^ 
 and order. The Greeks have sonbliern__bJ 
 they are known for their quick impulses. While 
 they formerly displayed pride and sometimes 
 hatred toward foreigners, they were now filled 
 with heartfelt gratitude. They knew that with- 
 out the intervention or the generosity of the for- 
 eigners their country would have succumbed, 
 and they appreciated the more keenly their obli- 
 
1 88 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 gations toward the French because, firstly, they 
 had had to overcome the policy of their govern- 
 ment, and secondly, they had succeeded in mak- 
 ing all European nations co-operate with them 
 in the work of charity. At the end of the fear- 
 ful year 1826, the Parisian committee had sent 
 2 , 500,000 francs. Even in Vienna the ice melted 
 and contributions came in ; and in America there 
 was great activity in behalf of the Greeks, with 
 happy results. 
 
 This popular sympathy, this public opinion 
 in favor of Greece, however, became an addition- 
 al reason for the rabid hostility with which 
 the governments regarded the Hellenic cause. 
 "How is it possible to doubt," wrote Count 
 Bernstorff from Berlin, "that the safety of Euro- 
 pean society is menaced by the war which 
 threatens Europe, when we see that every revo- 
 lutionist in every country is making it the object 
 of all his hopes and expectations ? ... It would 
 appear that their aim in wishing to have Greece 
 free is only that they may set free the spirit of 
 evil in all the Christian states of Europe ; they 
 hate the Turks only in order to satisfy their 
 hatred of the allied powers, and they call for 
 the intervention of Russia with the treacherous 
 hope of thereby dissolving the union which 
 
THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. 1 89 
 
 curbs them, restrains them, and chastises them." 
 The powers never dreamed of doing anything 
 when they heard of the massacre of Chios and of 
 Constantinople, of Cydonia. It was only when 
 Greece, broken down by the struggle, fell a prey 
 to anarchy, when the men of the fleet took to 
 plundering the seas of the archipelagos that 
 Europe found it necessary to put an end to the 
 war, when Prince Metternich wrote that in tne 
 near future there might be no more Greeks left 
 to be delivered. When the powers thus were 
 obliged to put an end to the war they wanted to 
 do it without cutting Greece clear of Turkey. 
 In their treaty of July 6th, 1827, each of the 
 powers tried to turn events to its own advantage 
 or to prevent their turning to the advantage of 
 some one else. There was only one point upon 
 which they were all agreed — and this was, to 
 prevent the formation of any Greek state strong 
 enough to be really independent. Emperor 
 Nicholas, in an interview which he held with the 
 Austrian ambassador, assured him that he de- 
 tested the Greeks, because he regarded them as 
 subjects in rebellion against their lawful sover- 
 eign ; that he did not wish that they should be- 
 come free; that they did not deserve freedom, 
 and that if they were to succeed in obtaining it, 
 
190 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 it would be a very bad example for other coun- 
 tries. 
 
 During the whole of the war Austria — the most 
 implacable of her enemies — did everything pos- 
 sible to hinder Greece's regeneration. Prince 
 Metternich, as was remarked by the Duke of 
 Wellington, gave himself up "body and soul" to 
 the Turks as far as regarded Greece. He looked 
 upon the Greeks simply as rebels against their 
 lawful sovereign. The Greeks complained bit- 
 terly of the conduct of the Austrian ships, which 
 they represented as being the most effective allies 
 of the Turkish cause. The Austrians trans- 
 ported convoys and munitions of war to the 
 Turkish garrisons and fortresses, and broke 
 through the Greek blockades — acts which were 
 more than a gross violation of neutrality, they 
 amounted to a direct participation in the war on 
 the side of the Turks. 
 
 The Hellenes owe much to Byron, Canning, 
 and Gladstone, and the English people, although 
 the English government had not done half as 
 much for the Greeks as has been done in the 
 attempt to fashion an independent Bulgaria. 
 
 Among the many enemies of the Greeks 
 who do their nefarious work in the daily 
 papers or other periodicals is a man who signs 
 
THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. I9I 
 
 his articles "W. J. S.," who with venomous 
 malevolence makes plausible misstatements, 
 which go to make up that tissue of splendid 
 mendacity which is deceiving some people who 
 are not familiar with history. This W. J. S. 
 is a Mr. W. J. Stillman who was United States 
 consul in Crete during the years from 1866-68. 
 In 1874 he published his book on the Cretan 
 insurrection of 1866-68. Strange it is that W. 
 J. S., or W. J. Stillman, leads a double life, as 
 Mr. Gennadius has so clearly exposed in a letter 
 from London dated April ist and published 
 in The Evening Post. While his book is fair and 
 correct, his articles of recent date are the con- 
 trary. Both Mr. Bikelas and Mr. J. Gennadius, 
 another brilliant Greek scholar and writer, and a 
 historian and philologist well known also in Eng- 
 lish literature, have answered this Jekyl-Hyde. 
 Since there is so much quoted from Mr. Bikelas 
 it may be well to quote now Mr. Gennadius. 
 When W. J. S. (Hyde), says Gennadius, comes 
 to survey past history, he (Jekyl-Hyde) declares 
 that this contemptible little vState of Greece 
 "owes its existence and every foot of ground 
 over which its rule extends" to the great powers. 
 " Not an inch of territory has ever been won by 
 Greek effort." How we lament, continues Gen- 
 
192 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 nadius, the fact that Mr. Stillman (Dr. Jekyl) 
 has not also written for us a history of the Greek 
 war of independence. We might then have 
 appealed to him against W. J. S. (Mr. Hyde). 
 For every one, except W. J. S., knows that the 
 Greek war of independence — the most noble and 
 most glorious struggle for liberty which modern 
 history records — had already been waged for 
 seven long and terrible years by a handful of 
 heroes against the then dreaded power of the 
 Ottoman empire before any of the great powers 
 stirred a finger in behalf of (k*eece, nay, they 
 were all opposed to Greece. The Greek insur- 
 gents were branded by the European govern- 
 ments (as related in this chapter), as malefactors 
 and outlaws. Austrian men-of-war, continues 
 Gennadius, did scout duty for the Turkish fleet. 
 The cabinets of Europe championed the diplo- 
 macy of the Porte. Lord Ellenborough, a 
 member of the British administration, declared 
 that the Sultan had absolute right to do just as 
 he pleased with his unruly subjects. But the 
 splendid heroism, the fortitude, and the self- 
 reliance of the Greeks aroused at last the public 
 sense of Europe to such a pitch that the govern- 
 ments were compelled to intervene, and the 
 battle of Navarino ensued. Even that was 
 
THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. I93 
 
 speedily regretted, neutralized, and lamented 
 as an untoward event. Finally the Cretans, 
 who had practically conquered their freedom, 
 were ordered back to the old servitude. 
 
 In the first chapter the name of the Klephts 
 is mentioned. Since the newspapers during the 
 recent war translated this word as bandit or brig- 
 and, it may be well to state here who these men 
 really were. 
 
 The Klephts of old defied their oppressors; 
 they kept the tradition of their nationality 
 vivid, and the love for their freedom burning, 
 until the time arrived when these bands became 
 the chief instrument of their country's libera- 
 tion. Their life was a wild and lawless one, but 
 there was an element of chivalrous nobility and 
 simple grandeur about them that was admired 
 even by their enemies. The attacks and depre- 
 dations of the Klephts were directed against the 
 Turks alone, upon whom they retaliated for 
 every wrong inflicted upon their countrymen of 
 the towns and villages. A raya family which 
 had a son in the mountains was far more secure 
 from the exactions and insults of the Turks than 
 one whose submission was complete. The halo 
 of a national glory encircled, therefore, the exis- 
 tence of these men, who were looked upon as 
 13 
 
194 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 the champions of faith and independence. 
 They, on their part, justly considered them- 
 selves as a superior caste to the common ray as, 
 who trembled at the sight of the Osmanli. 
 The answer Kolokotronis gave to those who ad- 
 vised him to submit is a characteristic example 
 of the high and independent spirit which ani- 
 mated these men. He said: "The Turks have 
 murdered other Greeks and made slaves of many ; 
 but we have lived free from generation to gen- 
 eration. Our king was killed in battle without 
 making peace, his guard has since kept up the 
 fight and some of his castles are still unsubdued. 
 We, the Klephts, are his guard, and Maina and 
 Souli his castles." Thus lived these men, un- 
 conquered and unsubdued, until the day when 
 they freed the land of their fathers of the infidel 
 pest, and hailed a new king. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 KINGDOM OF GREECE BEFORE THE WAR OF 
 1897. 
 
 The powers had witnessed the tremendous 
 sacrifices of the heroic little nation, which tinder 
 the black night of tyranny held out the torch of 
 liberty, of the nation which had fought until her 
 land had been devastated and her race deci- 
 mated. Finally, after the famous blunder of 
 Navarino, the untoward event as Palmerston 
 called it, they declared Greece an independent 
 state and offered its throne to Prince Leopold of 
 Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. 
 
 The object of the war of 1821 was to free the 
 entire Hellenic race from the Ottoman yoke. 
 This was the watchword of Rhigas and the 
 Hetairia, this was what Ypsilanti proclaimed in 
 his declarations, and the voice which was heard 
 amid the sound of the nations rising from the 
 Danube to Tenaron, from Souli to Cydonia, 
 from Athos to the Cretan Ida. The first na- 
 tional assembly proclaimed at Epidauros that 
 this was their object, and it has been to this end 
 
196 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 that blood has run in every Greek country of 
 Europe and Asia. The great powers of Europe 
 allowed only a small portion of the Hellenic ter- 
 ritory and the Hellenic race to recover their in- 
 dependence. 
 
 Prince Leopold, who first had accepted the 
 crown, resigned because he could not consent to . 
 the mutilation of Greece and to the injustice y 
 that Greeks should desert their brethren, who 
 had fought along with them to set their country 
 free ; he could not consent that these very Greeks 
 should now be cut off to be sent back into Tur- 
 kish slavery. 
 
 This abdication of Prince Leopold was the 
 formal condemnation of the policy of the pow- 
 ers, especially of English policy. The English 
 government indeed acted throughout as the ad- 
 vocate of Turkey; its aim was to take from 
 Turkey and to give Greece as little as possible. 
 
 Prince Leopold had failed to obtain any of the 
 concessions which he regarded as indispensable 
 conditions of stability and progress for the state 
 which he had been called to govern. On Feb- 
 ruary 9th, 1830, he wrote to the Duke of Welling- 
 ton : " I have considered the protocol of the 3d 
 inst. ; it appears that, if its spirit be duly exe- 
 cuted, it will affect as follows : i . It will estab- 
 
GREECE BEFORE THE WAR OF 1 897. I97 
 
 lish an armistice and de facto peace between the 
 contending parties, provided peaceable means 
 suffice to carry this purpose. 2. It will give 
 birth to a Greek state and promise its indepen- 
 dence. 3. It will have traced out for this state 
 boundaries, weak from a military, poor from a 
 financial point of view. 4. It will have found a 
 sovereign for the new state. " The obstinacy with 
 which freedom was refused to Crete appeared to 
 him especially unjustifiable. " As I see every- 
 where," he wrote in the same letter, "that it is 
 English policy to separate Candia from Greece, I 
 am afraid that the hidden interest which caused 
 this separation to be determined on will augur no 
 good to the new state. The exclusion of Candia 
 will cripple the new state, morally and physi- 
 cally, will make it weak and poor, expose it to 
 constant danger from Turkey, and create from 
 the beginning innumerable difficulties for him 
 who is to be at the head of the government." 
 The subsequent history of Crete and of Greece 
 has amply justified his sorrowful foresight. 
 
 This combination of interestedness and insin- 
 cerity upon the part of England and the other 
 powers of Europe is all the more repulsive when 
 we examine the history of the Turks and the 
 motives why they are protected and succored by 
 
198 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 the powers. In the foregoing chapters we have 
 seen that wherever they have set their foot, 
 there they have brought ruin and devastation; 
 the finest lands of the universe have been turned 
 into deserts, and the most intelligent races have 
 degenerated under their sway into nomadic tribes 
 and arrant outlaws. Cities have fallen into dust, 
 and arts and science have fled before this wild 
 herd of savage debauchers. They are the people 
 for whom the powers sacrificed, and sacrifice to- 
 day yet, justice and humanity. Turks have re- 
 corded their national life on the pages of history 
 by a big dark blot of blood and infamy, and the 
 names of the powers are to be associated with 
 them as their protectors. 
 
 France had recommended to the other powers 
 the emancipation of the island of Crete, but 
 neither the French Government, nor Kapodistria, 
 nor Prince Leopold were able to shake Eng- 
 land's opposition to the emancipation of Crete. 
 
 The Nemesis for all this English wrong 
 toward Greece has not been waiting long. 
 Thomas Davidson, in a paper entitled " Victorian 
 Greater Britain and its Future" {Forum, July, 
 1897), has depicted it, showing again the truth of 
 the German proverb. Die Weltgeschichte ist das 
 Weltgericht. Davidson says: 
 
GREECE BEFORE THE WAR OF 1 897. 1 99 
 
 " While Russia is frankly despotic and op- 
 posed to democracy, and Germany is rapidly be- 
 coming so, both thus assuming a definite direc- 
 tion and aim. Great Britain is wasting her 
 opportunities and strength in trying to follow 
 two courses at once. She is internally divided 
 against herself. Being more than any other 
 nation dependent upon a state of peace, she has 
 to sacrifice interests of humanity, honor, and 
 authority. She is in a corner where she is com- 
 pelled to aid her rivals in disgraceful acts 
 against humanity. She has stood by while 
 Turkey has committed atrocities upon her Chris- 
 tian subjects such as would have disgraced the 
 most barbarous nations in the darkest of the 
 dark ages. Nay, she actually has lent her aid 
 in carrying out the policy of Russia and Ger- 
 many — the two greatest foes of human liberty — 
 in coercing Crete, humiliating and paralyzing 
 Greece, and thereby crushing out all movement 
 toward freedom and democracy in the East. 
 She has become the instrument of dirty work for 
 the despotic nations." 
 
 ^^^^OnJFgJxaiarjL.i,;lh, h^^^r.ui,iL.i Oilin r>r Biivfi 
 ria, who had b een prp poRf^ d by, FrauoQy wa,^ tiaiiTPd 
 King of the Hellenes, His father. King Lewis, 
 insisted upon the annexation of Crete, but was 
 
200 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK, 
 
 no more successful in obtaining it than had been 
 Prince Leopold. Otho was sent to reign over a 
 country of which Thiersch said: An Hellas 
 which did not embrace the Ionian Islands, nor 
 Crete, nor Thessaly, nor Epirus, did not deserve 
 the name, and was incapable of either maintain- 
 ing her own independence or of educating her- 
 self for the destiny to which Providence seemed 
 to be calling her. 
 
 Leopold became King of Belgium. He has 
 been called the first of statesman -kings of his 
 day or perhaps of his century. How fortunate 
 for Greece would it have been if this man had 
 become her ruler, a full grown man of thirty, 
 and a trained soldier! Belgium secured under 
 him and his son Leopold II., the^^resent king, 
 sixty-five years of wise and /Steady rule. Un- 
 happy Greece got King Qfho, a princeling of 
 seventeen, absolutely ignorant of kingcraft, ut- 
 terly incompetent to govern a people new born 
 from a bloody war. It il& true, Otho^was ani- 
 mated by excellent intentionv^Jo^jie^of justice, 
 and thoroughly devoted to his adopted country ; 
 but all these good qualities were not sufficient ; 
 it required more to meet the difficulties of the 
 task imposed upon him. 
 
 What Leopold was too wise to undertake. 
 
GREECE BEFORE THE WAR OF 1 897. 20I 
 
 Europe committed to this child Otho, and as we 
 shall see further on, held Greece responsible. 
 
 With the establishment of the kingdom in 
 Greece the sovereigns of France, Great Britain, 
 and Russia pledged themselves for a loan of 
 60,000,000 francs for the new king. The money 
 was to be raised in three series, each of 20,000,- 
 000; the first series at once, the others as the new 
 government should be in need of them. The 
 diplomatic representatives of the three powers 
 in Athens had to see to or to supervise the pay- 
 ment of this debt, which was to be in seventy- 
 two half-yearly instalments. The interest was 
 six per cent, which was deducted beforehand. 
 Rothschild, who put the loan in the market, was 
 allowed two per cent commission. Four mil- 
 lions were lost by the rate at which the loan 
 stood in the market; 1 1,000,000 were at once to 
 be paid to Turkey for an improvement of the 
 Greek frontiers, which arrangement had been 
 made by the diplomatic representatives of the 
 powers on July 21st, 1832. A pitiful increment 
 of territory was thus conditioned on the payment 
 of 1 1 ,000,000 to Turkey by the unfortunate coun- 
 try, which the Turkish mercenaries had ren- 
 dered a desert. Greece was made to pay for this 
 operation out of this first of the vicious loans. 
 
202 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 Of the 60,000,000 francs loaned less than one- 
 third found its way into the Greek treasury. The 
 principal of 60,000,000, however, has been paid 
 in the stipulated half-yearly instalments, the last 
 of these in the year 1871. The history of this 
 first loan made to Greece with all its details has 
 been written in a voluminous work by Professor 
 Herman von Sicherer, entitled " Das bayerisch- 
 griechische Anlehen aus den Jahren 1835, 1836, 
 1837. Ein Rechtsgutachten." Miinchen, 1880. 
 The king was sent with money, with papers 
 representing Greece's debt of 60,000,000 francs, 
 a debt contracted in the name of the country 
 which was virtually a stranger to the whole 
 transaction, and which was bound down by this 
 load in the shape of principal and interest before 
 it was ever ascertained j*^at its revenues were 
 likely to be. 
 
 \With the kin^^me a numerous body of Ba- 
 rian tropf^ infantry, cavalry, artillery, and 
 engine^fs, nine thousand in all, flushed with 
 military enthusiasm. The glittering arms of 
 these fine troops and the golden prospects of the 
 high pay secured by the funds which the allied 
 powers had placed at the disposal of the gov- 
 ernment were in direct contrast with the sight of 
 bands of irregular and lawless Greek soldiers, a 
 
GREECE BEFORE THE WAR OF 1 897. 203 
 
 half-clad people suffering under the pressure of 
 famine in a country everywhere laid waste, in 
 which far and wide no tree, no cottage could be 
 seen. 
 
 Indeed the war had reduced the surviving 
 population to a state of the most complete desti- 
 tution. All agricultural stock was extirpated; 
 houses, barns, and stables were destroyed ; fruit- 
 trees and vineyards rooted up. The destruction 
 of agricultural cattle was so complete that Pro- 
 fessor Thiersch proposed to import ten thousand 
 pair of cattle the first and tpn thousand the 
 second year. The professor was laughed at, 
 but he was right ; Greece had more need of beef 
 than of Bavarians. 
 
 The sword, the famine, and disease had re- 
 duced the inhabitants of the mainland and of 
 Morea to about one-third of their original num- 
 ber. There has been no war in modern times 
 in which an equal loss of property and life has 
 been sustained by any people, who despite 
 this suffering have remained unsubdued. From 
 1 82 1 to 1832 Greece had been deprived of every 
 internal revenue. Her commerce was com- 
 pletely annihilated. The commercial navy 
 which had formerly added to the national wealth 
 suddenly became a drain on former savings. 
 
204 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 There were no revenues with which to pay and 
 provision the fleet, to purchase stores and am- 
 munition, to pay for repair of vessels. All had 
 to be furnished from the former savings of the 
 proprietors of the ships. The leading families 
 of Hydra acquitted themselves of this duty 
 nobly. Wealthy families have been reduced to 
 want and thrice suicide has been committed to 
 escape starvation. Even with the immense sup- 
 plies which Greece received from the Philhel- 
 lenic committees of Europe and America, the 
 revolution seemed not infrequently to be in 
 danger of extinction from the actual starvation 
 of the whole population. 
 
 The establishment of new Greece by the 
 powers was an evident mockery. No nation 
 whatsoever could have flourished under the con- 
 ditions given in this case. The Greeks were ex- 
 horted to be free with their chains half-severed, 
 to run in the race with shackles on their feet, 
 to be a model for the very Europe which from 
 the beginning demoralized them. Europe de- 
 manded an impossibility of Grecee. r\ 
 
 Of the regency which acted during- Kii|g y< 
 Otho's minority no onk understooid'"a word or 
 Greek. Had this regen??7-~cohsisted of men 
 more experienced in practical affairs, its mem 
 
GREECE BEFORE THE WAR OF 1 897. 205 
 
 bers would have felt that their foreign troops 
 were too numerous and much too expensive 
 (they cost 20,000,000 francs in two years) for 
 a permanent royal guard. These Bavarian 
 troops received higher pay than the Greek. Ba- 
 varian officers were promoted in rank, while 
 Greek officers and Philhellenes were reduced. 
 This was the first cause of the complaints of the 
 Greeks and Philhellenes against V^at was called 
 the Bavarian system of the army'. The men of 
 the regency were incapable of either under- 
 standing or appreciating the quick and fiery, but 
 honest and enthusiastic nation. The Greeks, 
 elated by victory, ridiculed the pedantic forms 
 and vain regulations to which the Bavarians en- 
 deavored to reduce them, and which were 
 diametrically opposed to their habits, and use- 
 less in reality. The Bavarians, instead of hu- 
 moring, exasperated them by a show of force. 
 The Bavarians insisted, and men who had 
 fought for their country and had endured untold 
 privations for years past, in order to obtain 
 liberty, and who by their heroism had obtained 
 immortal fame, now found themselves dragged 
 into prison and treated with contempt by men 
 who had no title to power but what chance had 
 given them, and who individually were nonenti- 
 
206 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 ties as compared with Kolokotronis, Grivas, and 
 Phlessas. A wise administration, understand- 
 ing the people and bearing with their foibles, 
 would have had a golden opportunity to bring 
 on peace between the people and the govern- 
 ment. The mistake once made brought on diffi- 
 culties which could not be overcome in a coun- 
 try demoralized by many centuries of barbarous 
 slavery and completely unsettled by many years 
 of a devastating war. 
 
 In describing now the condition, the politics 
 of Greece, I avail myself of a pamphlet which I 
 found in the library of the Historical and Ethno- 
 logical Museum of Athens. The author was 
 not named; the paper was written in 1870.'^ 
 
 The anonymous author says : " I desire to put 
 forward what I believe to be a true and impar- 
 tial statement to vindicate the calumniated, to 
 expose abuse which is simply infamous, and to 
 repel accusations which are directed against the 
 Greek people and which are untrue, unmerited, 
 and unscrupulous. . . , Correspondents take a 
 particular pleasure in endeavoring to make out, 
 
 * Only after this part of the book was in type did I learn 
 that the author of the pamphlet here quoted is J. Gennadius, 
 the same from whom I have quoted already, and who later on 
 became, and continued until recently, Minister Plenipotenti- 
 ary of Greece to England. 
 
GREECE BEFORE THE WAR OF 1 897. 20/ 
 
 whenever the chance offers, as black a case as 
 possible against the Greek people." 
 
 The author also tells that the English news- 
 papers had refused to accept his statement, and 
 that he was obliged to have it published at his 
 own expense, and thus to come forward in an 
 unusual way. 
 
 It was the plea of the great powers that the 
 new government required not only armed pro- 
 tection, but political guidance. But the three 
 flags which floated beside the banner of the 
 Greek cross covered also the distinct interests 
 of the several protecting powers which they 
 
 represented.. This protectorate of the three 
 
 great powers w^ a systematic interference in 
 the affairs of the 'country, thus paralyzing the 
 government, debasing it in the eyes of its sub- 
 jects. " Political passions, thanks to the jeal- 
 ousies of the three "protecting" powers, ra«r 
 high. The unfortunate country had been m^de 
 the chess^Doard of European diplomacy and was 
 ^'"^^J ^^riinto three great parties, the English, the 
 French,' and the Russian, with, the... -r^pective 
 ambassade>r,^at the head of eachj,-.---''''''^ 
 
 The young 2ing~Onio7perplexed in the midst 
 of this state of things, the more so as he was 
 surrounded by many counsellors among whom 
 
208 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 existed also a diversity of opinion, committed 
 inevitable errors of judgment. To his credit 
 it may be said that he alone assumed the re- 
 sponsibility for all the actions of his government. 
 This brought on him charges of maladministra- 
 tion for which he was only partly guilty. 
 
 The powers intrigued to bring this or that 
 party at the direction of affairs ; instead of pro- 
 tecting the Greek kingdom, they worked toward 
 the dangers of revolution. Thus in 1830 and 
 1840 Russia organized the vast conspiracy of 
 the Philorthodox ; iruTBijj Pur;p.in nruLJu^lnnd 
 combined pushed energetically the event of 
 the 3d of September (demand of a constitu- 
 tion) ; in 1 847 England excited formidable re- 
 volts in Euboea, in Phthiosis, and Archsea. In 
 1850 the persistent ill-will of the English gov- 
 ernment showed itself especially in the Pacifico 
 affair. Lord Palmerston sent the British fleet 
 into the Piraeus under the pretext of supporting 
 the ridiculous claims of the Jew Pacifico. 
 
 Otho had hardly attained his majority when 
 risings took place in Epiros and in Crete. They 
 were crushed one after the other. In 1840, on 
 the outbreak of a struggle between the Sultan 
 and his great vassal in Egypt, Crete, together 
 with Epiros, Thessaly, and Macedonia, then 
 
GREECE BEFORE THE WAR OF 1 897. 209 
 
 thought that the hour of deliverance had struck. 
 The Crete population rose as one man, and the 
 Cretans made themselves the masters of the 
 whole island, but supported by England the 
 Turks were able to drown the rising in blood. 
 If the Greeks had possessed the necessary prep- 
 arations, and if Europe had not come to the 
 rescue of the Ottoman dynasty, the Greeks 
 might even have succeeded in overthrowing it. 
 
 Since then things have changed. Turkey re- 
 gained strength ; her foreign relations became 
 such that in case of necessity she could count 
 upon the help of some of the European powers. 
 Maurokodatos in a memorandum placed before 
 King Otho in 1 848 says : " When we speak of 
 Turkey, we of course know too much to share 
 the delusions of the Westerns^ who, for the most 
 part, neitjier know her nor (it would appear) 
 wish t<5K:now her." 
 
 tter ten years of absolutism, the Greeks, by 
 a h&oodless revolution, wrested fron>^ King Otho 
 tha^constitution of 1843. Things, Went on better 
 but Vpt until the Crimean war-.^' 
 
 The^^hopes^f the^Ucirenes were reawakened 
 
 with the prospects which this war between 
 
 Russia and Turks seemed to open. Russian 
 
 emissaries brought about a rising in the Hel- 
 14 
 
2IO CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 lenic provinces of Turkey. Epiros and Thes- 
 saly broke into insurrection at the beginning of 
 1854. Greek volunteers went to the Crimea. 
 At home the prospect of another struggle to 
 complete the work of independence was received 
 with enthusiasm. Armed bands crossed the 
 frontier to join their insurgent fellow-country- 
 men. The people, the army, and the court all 
 gave themselves up to the most brilliant dreams. 
 Hellas was soon undeceived. The allies, France 
 and England, would not tolerate a diversion in 
 favor of Russia. 
 
 France occupied the Piraeus from May 26th, 
 1854, till February 27th, 1857; the Greeks found 
 themselves reduced to absolute powerlessness, 
 and the insurrection in the border provinces was 
 soon crushed by the arms of the Turks. The 
 history of this Greek inactivity in the Russo- 
 Turkish war is still a mystery. At the moment 
 when this war broke out Hellas possessed an 
 army of between 35,000 and 40,000 Vnen/'' If she 
 had interfered in the struggle, the Wsult would 
 have been a general rising in Turkey and the 
 radical and definitive solution of the Greco- 
 Turkish difficulties. The states of Epiros, Thes- 
 saly, and Crete urged the Greeks to interfere. 
 Hellas, knowing the complications which the 
 
GREECE BEFORE THE WAR OF 1 897. 211 
 
 general collapse of Turkey might produce both 
 in the East and the West, hesitated and finally 
 consented to yield to the wishes of Europe. 
 She consented to contribute her part to realize 
 the wishes of the powers for an immediate pa- 
 cification and checked the action which had 
 already begun for the realization of what the 
 Hellenes have desired for so many centuries. 
 This she did after having received from Europe 
 a promise that the rights of the Hellenic race 
 should be taken into consideration. The Hel- 
 lenic government could not leave the inhabitants 
 of the insurgent provinces exposed to all the 
 horrors of a bloody repression by the undis- 
 ciplined troops employed by the Turks for that 
 purpose ; it therefore decided to occupy the prov- 
 inces provisionally. Diplomacy saw the danger of 
 a fresh conflagration which the armed interven- 
 tion of Greece was ca|!>able of enkindling. The 
 utmost possible amdunt of pressure was therefore 
 brought to bear upon the government of Athens 
 in order to induce it to withdraw the troops; 
 these recrossed the frontier upon the solemn as- 
 surance of the great powers that the national 
 aspirations and interests of the Greeks should be 
 tbje subject of the deliberations of the approach- 
 ing congress. 
 
212 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 When the Italians, through their revolution 
 from 1859 to i860, obtained their independence 
 and were soon to obtain their unity through the 
 help of France, the Greeks hoped that Italy 
 would do for Hellas what France had done for 
 Italy. The Hellenic cause had warm friends in 
 Italy. There were ne^tiations with Garibaldi, 
 but while this new insW-rection wasj^hg pre- 
 pared there began to breaKlSuTthose agitations 
 which ended in the dethronement of King Otho. 
 
 There were then, and there still are, those 
 who attribute his fall to the action of English 
 agents. England justified the act. " Her Maj- 
 esty's Government," wrote Earl Russell, "can- 
 not deny that the Greeks have good and suffi- 
 cient cause for the step they have taken." 
 
 The king yielded without resistance to the 
 revolution which overthrew his dynasty, thus 
 giving Hellas a last proof of his love for her by 
 deliberately sparing her the woes of civil war. 
 He left the land of his adoption with words of 
 farewell full of majesty, and good wishes for her 
 ha^pi^f gl^ which were dictated by a sincere 
 le Hellenes have not forgotten his 
 » e - , but thgy nrc^c ^r recaliing''"his gS^a 
 
 r|iia1itjp>^ nrfcu=y-^4MamfiiT|'bfir hnmJIw-^^Pfr their 
 
GREECE BEFORE THE WAR OF 1 897. 213 
 
 At King Othp's departure in 1862 the king- 
 dom was confined within the same narrow limits 
 which i^'liad occupied when he came to the 
 The statesman-king Leopold at that 
 e had been building up a strong state in Bel- 
 
 King George, the new king who took the 
 throne in 1862, brought to Greece on his arrival 
 the news of the annexation of the Heptannesos. 
 The resigning of the protectorate of the Heptan- 
 nesos was a generous gift from England, and it 
 was all the more appreciated because it was un- 
 expected. It appears that the generosity was 
 the expression of England's satisfaction at hav- 
 ing got rid of King Otho. It certainly grati- 
 fied the wishes of the islanders and it was 
 considered a striking mark of friendship, 
 and this gave rise to the greatest hopes for the 
 future. 
 
 Not all the statesmen of England agreed as to 
 the cession. Lord Derby wrote to Lord Mal- 
 meiroy on December 22d, 1862: "I think the 
 measure at any time one of very doubtful policy, 
 but the present moment appears to me singu- 
 larly ill-chosen. It strikes me as the height of 
 folly to make a gratuitous offer of cession, and to 
 throw the islands at the head of a nation in 
 
214 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 the very throes of revolution, whose finances 
 are bankrupt, whose naval power is insignifi- 
 cant," etc. 
 
 The lonians have not had to regret their re- 
 union with the rest of Hellas, and to Hellas this 
 annexation was a fortunate thing. How much 
 more might be hoped for other Hellenic lands, 
 especially Crete, whose case is so much more 
 crying because the Cretans are under the in- 
 tolerable administration of the Turks ! 
 
 The Cretans endeavored to gain for them- 
 selves the same good fortune which had fallen 
 upon the lonians. They defied Turkey for three 
 years — 1866, 1867, 1868. With the exception 
 of certain fortresses, the whole island was free. 
 Acts of heroism and sacrifice again challenged 
 the attention of the world. Hellenes of the 
 mainland came to their brethren in the hour of 
 danger to fight at their side, and opened in their 
 own homes a place of refuge for the women and 
 children of the island. Nearly sixty thousand 
 fugitives found protection. 
 
 The deliverance of Crete seemed to be accom- 
 plished. Russia and France were favorably dis- 
 posed, but England, supported by Austria, op- 
 posed. Diplomacy fought for the enslavement 
 of the Cretans with as much persistence and 
 
GREECE BEFORE THE WAR OF 1 897. 2 1$ 
 
 better success than it had opposed the deliver- 
 ance of Greece. 
 
 The islanders gained by their struggle noth- 
 ing but a doubtful amelioration of their condition. 
 A sort of a charter was extracted from the Porte 
 in 1868, under the name of the Organic Regula- 
 tion, which has never been put in force. At the 
 time of the Congress of Berlin they thought 
 once more that they would succeed; they only 
 received another paper, a sort of a mockery, " to 
 enforce scrupulously the Organic Regulation of 1868, 
 ivith such modifications as might be judged equi- 
 table r 
 
 The history of the Greek question at the Con- 
 gress of Berlin and the conferences which fol- 
 lowed it is very voluminous, since many docu- 
 ments have been published, but it throws no 
 light on the motives which inspired the action 
 or inaction of each government which took part 
 therein. 
 
 The Greeks desired from the Berlin Congress 
 the fulfilment of the hopes which they had en- 
 tertained ever since 1 82 1 , namely, the liberation 
 of the entire race, not only of a fraction, since 
 their government was under no delusion as to 
 the many difficulties with which the realization 
 of that wish had to deal. It felt bound to be 
 
2l6 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 contented for the time being with the annexation 
 of Crete and of the border provinces, this being 
 all which was at that moment practicable. 
 
 On July 5th, 1878, the Congress assigned to 
 Hellas the whole of Thessaly and a large part of 
 Epiros. The island of Crete was not included. 
 This resolution of the Congress was sanctioned 
 by the Conference of Berlin on July ist, 1880. 
 But all this was given on paper only. Greece 
 was left to sue the Turk, cap in hand, for the 
 provinces given on paper. When Turkey found 
 that she was not confronted by united Europe 
 determined to be obeyed, she refused to submit. 
 Poor Greece, instead of being able to dedicate 
 herself to the work of internal development, 
 was left to put herself in possession. The 
 mobilization of her forces swallowed up the en- 
 tire sum of the great loan of 1881. 
 
 On July 2d, 1881, three years after the signing 
 of the famous protocol of Berlin, Hellas signed 
 the convention by which Turkey ceded to her the 
 flat part of Thessaly and a small strip of Epiros. 
 She signed this convention, but she protested 
 that the faults of the new frontier would soon 
 give rise to new difficulties and dangers. " Eu- 
 rope," in the words of Koumoundouros, "had 
 allowed her own work to be undone for the sake 
 
GREECE BEFORE THE WAR OF 1 897. 2 1/ 
 
 of humoring Turkey ; . . . Epiros and Thessaly 
 have the right to be free, a right which Europe 
 has admitted and Hellas accepted ; it will seem 
 incredible to them that the European govern- 
 ments should have played with their sufferings, 
 or should have recanted their own doctrines for 
 no object but to please Turkey." 
 
 Greece's narrow artificial limits condemn her 
 to be always looking to her frontiers, and the 
 present Hellenic state has been passing for the 
 last fifty years from one crisis into another, 
 which were followed by periods of exhaustion. 
 Hellas had hardly recovered from the struggles 
 and the sacrifices which it cost her to obtain a 
 fraction of the territory which had been added 
 to her by the Congress of Berlin, when the re- 
 union of eastern Roumelia with Bulgaria and 
 the results of this violation of the treaty of 
 Berlin involved her in new difficulties. 
 
 Many hold King George responsible for 
 many evils because he could not retain a stable 
 ministry of state. But the political parties, which 
 in their fight with each other caused the many 
 changes, existed before he was called to govern. 
 If he had attempted to suppress them he might 
 perhaps have brought on greater evils. It was 
 his idea to allow the people of Greece to cause 
 
2l8 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 their own constitutional education. The chaos 
 of administration which had so long existed — 
 the average duration of the time a prime 
 minister held his office was not calculated by 
 years but by months — seemed to have ceased 
 when Tricupis took charge of affairs for the 
 first time and remained in office for over three 
 years. 
 
 It is one of the current remarks of a certain 
 class of writers that Greece, until she can govern 
 what she has, is unfit to be entrusted with a 
 larger area. When we shall come to con.sider 
 in what condition Greece has been at the end of 
 the war of independence, and how she has devel- 
 oped in spite of the difficulties which the Euro- 
 pean powers have caused her, we shall unhesi- 
 tatingly disagree with this view; but we have 
 a more powerful argument against it. The dif- 
 ficulty Greece experienced thus far in govern- 
 ing the area she has — and this is mainly a finan- 
 cial question — is entirely due, as Prince Leopold 
 has so correctly foreseen and as foregoing pages 
 of these lectures show, to the very restricted 
 limits of that area. 
 
 The constant strain on her financially is very 
 severe and is never relaxed; the feeling of un- 
 rest, the repeated mobilizations to liberate the 
 
GREECE BEFORE THE WAR OF 1 897. 219 
 
 brethren who are still in Turkish slavery are 
 impediments to her routine work of internal 
 progress. 
 
 The finances of Greece have been the subject 
 of much discussion ; to enter into details would 
 require a long treatise by itself. A clear state- 
 ment has been published by Joseph D. Beck- 
 mann, in November, 1892. It is contained in a 
 pamphlet, entitled "Les Finances de la Grece, 
 6tude composee sur la bare de documents au- 
 thentiques." Up to 1880 the Greek foreign debt 
 (nominal — perhaps but half of the money they 
 owed has ever reached the Greek treasury) 
 amounted to 256,000,000 francs. With that year 
 began a series of heavy loans, amounting up to 
 1892 to a total of 539,448,421 francs, and bring- 
 ing the total public debt (nominal) up to the stu- 
 pendous figure of 818,476,339 francs. Of this 
 sum 130,192,159 francs constituted the floating 
 debt. 
 
 This constant borrowing of money had a de- 
 moralizing effect on the nation; nevertheless 
 with all her borrowing Greece was not utterly 
 reckless. Tricupis had a constant and rational 
 policy. It was to develop the country by means 
 of highways and railways, harbors, lighthouses, 
 and, above all, to re-establish sound money. In 
 
220 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 1884 ^^ Spent nearly 70,000,000 francs in taking 
 up the forced currency, but unfortunately the 
 very next year Delyannis lost his head in a fili- 
 bustering fit (into Roumelia), mobilized the 
 forces, and provoked a new blockade by the 
 powers. Of course he brought back the forced 
 currency, which is now larger than ever. M. 
 Beckmann, in summing up his study of Greek 
 finance, says: "Though Greece has borrowed a 
 large amount of money, she has something to 
 show for it. Thessaly, many miles of road, rail- 
 ways, a respectable little army, and a very rapidly 
 developing commerce. Her budgets have been 
 gradually improving and are now in a stable 
 equilibrium. 
 
 But since 1893 a new situation has super- 
 vened. Then the premium on gold was sixty 
 per cent, as against thirty per cent in 1891 ; it 
 reached ninety per cent when Beckmann pub- 
 lished his pamphlet. The purchase of gold to 
 meet the demands of the foreign debt (in the 
 budget of 1893, 35,468,596 francs) was a disas- 
 trous operation, and commerce was paralyzed by 
 the condition of the money market. Then the 
 glut in the current market of the preceding sea- 
 son cut off the only surplus gold revenue of the 
 nation, and the payment of cash in January be- 
 
GREECE BEFORE THE WAR OF 1 897. 221 
 
 came inevitable, for no government can weather 
 a panic. 
 
 Four years before Delyannis had been dis- 
 missed by the king because he had failed to deal 
 successfully with the financial situation. Tri- 
 cupis came in ; he brought forward a broad and 
 statesmanlike project for dealing with the situa- 
 tion. His plans were not approved; he went 
 out after having stood for fifteen years before 
 Europe as the Greek with an honest and rational 
 financial policy. He came in again. More than 
 once he seemed on the very threshold of success, 
 when the political whirlpool would undo it all. 
 His sisyphous role seems at last to have worn 
 him out, and returning to power in 1893 he pro- 
 posed his now famous provisional reduction of 
 thirty per cent on the interest of the gold loans, 
 and a compromise with the foreign creditors. 
 This cost him his European prestige, and his in- 
 ternal programme did the rest. In his long lease 
 of power he had wiped out the Turkish land tithe, 
 provided for a sound currency, and rendered 
 many a noble service to the country. 
 
 Vincent Corbett, second secretary of the Eng- 
 lish legation to Greece, wrote a report on the 
 finances of Greece for the year ending June 15th, 
 1 8^6, which was submitted on that date, by 
 
222 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 Edward H. Egerton, Minister to Greece, to Mar- 
 quis of Salisbury. After having enumerated the 
 different difficulties of the financial conditions 
 of the country, he says : " But after all, these 
 considerations must not be taken too seriously. 
 In no country in the world are there greater 
 material resources than in Greece, no country 
 offers greater attractions to the student and the 
 traveller, and no country can boast of a more in- 
 dustrious peasantry or a more intelligent and 
 ambitious middle class. The government does 
 well not to grudge expenditures on roads and 
 railways, and when the country is opened up it 
 will be its own fault if Greece does not enter 
 upon a future of prosperity and health." 
 
 What has Greece to show for her blanket 
 mortgage? Sixty-five years ago there was not a 
 mile of wagon road, to-day there are more than 
 three thousand miles built, often over mountains. 
 Thirt}'' years ago there were but five miles of rail 
 connecting Athens with her seaport, now there 
 are seven hundred miles of railway in operation, 
 connecting the capital with most of the Pelopon- 
 nese and opening up a good part of Acarnania 
 and Thessaly, while the Pirseus and Larissa Rail- 
 way traverses northern Greece, thus bringing it 
 in direct communication with Europe. The 
 
GREECE BEFORE THE WAR OF 1 897. 223 
 
 Corinth Canal, which Periander dreamed of and 
 Nero began, has been finished. Lake Korais 
 has been drained, not only uncovering pre-his- 
 toric cities, but reclaiming 60,000 acres of rich 
 alluvial soil. The Greek merchant marine con- 
 sists of 120 steamers and 1,000 sailing-vessels 
 and 3 ironclads. With a sea line seven times 
 as great as France's and twelve times as great as 
 England's, Greece maintains 69 lighthouses and 
 is building as many more. The average in cur- 
 rants and vineyards has increased a hundredfold 
 and more since the declaration of independence. 
 
 Greece offers to every Greek child within the 
 kingdom free public instruction from the primary 
 school to the university. There are 2,278 demot- 
 ic or primary schools, 281 Hellenic or grammar 
 schools, 41 gymnasia, special schools for agri- 
 culture, of war, of the navy, a polytechnion, 
 wherein are taught all arts from chiselling a statue 
 to building a steam engine, and a complete uni- 
 versity on the German model, with 120 professors 
 and 3,500 students. 
 
 Her little army is smaller than our own (24,- 
 877 men in 1893) costing only 2,000,000 
 drachmas a year, her navy only 600,000. 
 Greece alone among European states has ab- 
 stained from following the progress of military 
 
224 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 science, her army contenting itself with the rifle 
 of large bore. Ever since the acquisition of the 
 three ironclads, the question of their supplemen- 
 tary armament has been dragging on, but it has 
 not been solved for economical reasons. 
 
 The development of the currant trade was one 
 of the first outward signs of the freedom of 
 Greece. In 1820 there were produced four 
 thousand tons, but the Turks persistently de- 
 stroyed the plants. The production has since 
 steadily increased: 1830, 8,900 tons; 185 1, 40,- 
 510 tons; 1861, 42,759 tons; 1871, 81,374 tons; 
 1881, 124,826 tons; 1891, 167,000 tons. 
 
 The last-named quantity was worth to Greece 
 70,000,000 francs in gold. 
 
 The olive-trees form the most familiar feature 
 in Greek landscape. Thus it was of old and 
 thus it continued to be till Ibrahim Pasha cut 
 down two-thirds of the trees. No sooner had 
 the Greeks gained independence than they be- 
 gan to plant' olives ; in 1834 there were 2,300,000 
 trees, in i860 370,000 stremmata with olive- 
 trees, in 1887, 1,742,154 stremmata. 
 
 A little more knowledge of wine culture, and 
 a great deal more attention to scientific wine- 
 making ought to lead to a very extensive in- 
 crease in the export of wine, as Greece can cer- 
 
GREECE BEFORE THE WAR OF 1 897. 22^ 
 
 tainly produce better wines than Italy, even 
 including Sicily, and not improbably as good 
 wines as any country. 
 
 Greece far excels all other countries in her 
 claims on travellers. No country has the same 
 wonderful combination of scenery as Greece. 
 The view from the summit of many Greek 
 mountains is inconceivably beautiful. From 
 Parnassus you can see peak and plain, island 
 and sea to great distances; from Zakynthos to 
 Asia Minor, and from Mount Athos to Crete, are 
 the most beautiful panoramas known to mortals. 
 In no more northern country, moreover, is there 
 the same clear air — an air that seems to act magi- 
 cally on distant objects. But the innermost 
 secret of Greek scenery is the sublime charm of 
 association. 
 
 We naturally feel sympathy for the names of 
 places taught and familiarized at school, when 
 we learned what is the most beautiful in the his- 
 tory of mankind, when we heard first the names 
 that pervade all history, all literature, and are 
 the best in arts, in philosophy, and other sciences. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 GREEK AS THE INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE OF 
 PHYSICIANS AND SCHOLARS IN GENERAL.* 
 
 All those who attend the international medi- 
 cal congresses notice an unpleasant circum- 
 stance, which becomes more and more marked 
 with every succeeding assemblage. It is the 
 inconvenience caused by the want of one lan- 
 guage understood by all. There are some mem- 
 bers who understand and fluently speak the offi- 
 cial languages; they can easily take part in 
 every debate, no matter which official language 
 is used by the speakers. But few such members 
 can be found ; the majority of the participants, 
 and among them frequently some who are most 
 prominent in their specialties, understand but 
 one language, and thus lose about two-thirds of 
 everything spoken during the meeting. They 
 are often unable to enter upon the discussion of 
 a question because they cannot understand the 
 subject mentioned; and if they speak on some 
 
 * Read before the New York Academy of Medicine, March 
 15th, 1894. 
 
GREEK AS INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE. 22/ 
 
 subject, as a rule it is not understood by at least 
 two-thirds of the participants in the congress. 
 
 An illustration of the difficulty thus present- 
 ing itself on account of the polyglot condition of 
 these medical assemblies is found in a letter 
 written by a prominent German surgeon, dated 
 December 28th, 1892, to the Pfesident of the 
 American Surgical Association, concerning the 
 Pan-American Medical Congress. 
 
 The languages of the congress were the Span- 
 ish, French, Portuguese, and English. The 
 German was excluded, probably because it is 
 nowhere in America recognized as official. 
 
 The surgeon says in his letter : " I do not be- 
 lieve that the physicians of Germany will be 
 able to take an active part in the transactions of 
 this Pan-American Congress, unless they are 
 enabled to use the German language in deliver- 
 ing their lectures.'* 
 
 The difficulty in this case was overcome by 
 changing the statutes, by allowing lectures to be 
 delivered in any language, provided that the 
 authors of lectures in other than the official lan- 
 guages transmit to the general secretary a synop- 
 sis, of not more than six hundred words, before 
 a certain date in advance of the date of the con- 
 gress. A further condition was that a manu- 
 
228 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 script of each lecture of this kind was to be 
 delivered, before or during the session, to the 
 recording secretary of that section before which 
 the essay was to be read. Remarks on articles 
 read could be made in any language, provided 
 the member making such remarks handed them 
 in, before the close of the meeting, written in 
 one of the official languages. I enumerate these 
 details in order to illustrate how complicated the 
 difficulties of a polyglot congress are. Every- 
 body can complete this chapter either from per- 
 sonal experience or by reflection. 
 
 One might think the remedy in this dilemma 
 would be the adoption of a universal language, 
 and indeed, this idea has already for a long time 
 occupied the minds of the greatest thinkers, 
 above all, of Leibnitz. . His attempt was based 
 on the supposition that every act of thinking 
 might successfully be reduced to an arithmetical 
 basis, if it were possible to discover symbols for 
 the most simple comprehensions and for the 
 combination, as well, of such symbols, as, for 
 instance, is done in mathematical science. Al- 
 ready in his youth he aimed at this purpose in a 
 well-developed plan, maintained up to an old 
 age, of a ^^ Characteristica universalis,'" or ^^ ars 
 signum et lingua philosophica,'' However, this 
 
GREEK AS INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE. 229 
 
 plan was never realized. As far as his idea was 
 correct, it has been carried out by the signs of 
 the mathematical and chemical sciences. A 
 world-language, so far, exists only in the tele- 
 graphic marine code. 
 
 As the attempts of Leibnitz failed in the 
 seventeenth century, so also did those of the 
 eighteenth century. 
 
 During the nineteenth century the means of 
 communication increased in gigantic proportion, 
 international commerce became of far more im- 
 portance than ever before, and the attempts at 
 creating a world language were resumed. The 
 best known of these is the Volaplik of the Rev. 
 Mr. Schleyer, and the partial success obtained 
 for some time by this artificial language proves 
 the existence of a great desire for an interna- 
 tional means of communication. 
 
 Whatever may have been the object of Vola- 
 plik, it could never have been the intention of 
 the inventor, nor could it have been expected of 
 him, to make it an international language for 
 scientific purposes. 
 
 It was an idea of King Maximilian of Bavaria 
 to transmit to history a reminder of his reign. 
 He instructed the architects of Germany to 
 design a new style to be named after him. 
 
2 so CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 Such a style of Maximilianesque was created. I 
 have seen, in Munich, houses built after this 
 plan. An architect — it was Semper, if I am not 
 mistaken — when asked to take a part in this 
 creation of the so-called Maximilian's style, an- 
 swered that such a thing could not be made to 
 order, that a style of building is the consequence 
 of the history, the culture, life, and doings of a 
 great period of a people. If such be the case 
 with a style of architecture, how much more 
 must it be the case in regard to language ? 
 
 The history of this style of Maximilian's is, 
 that it has no history. This short history is also 
 that of the attempts to create a new world lan- 
 guage. 
 
 While a universal language, sufficient to sat- 
 isfy the intellectual want of every people and of 
 every time, can be as little imagined as the 
 equality of all mankind, still such a uniformity 
 is possible in a restricted part of human society, 
 viz., in that aristocracy formed by art and 
 science. It is not the masses who need such a 
 universal language, but the men of science. 
 
 Since Latin is no longer used as an interna- 
 tional scientific language, the want of such a 
 language makes itself more and more felt as 
 science extends. I do not know if any, and 
 
GREEK AS INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE. 23 1 
 
 what, serious attempts have been made in re- 
 gard to this desideratum. I read that the 
 American Philosophical Society has proposed 
 that the question of the creation or adoption of 
 an international scientific language should be 
 considered at a congress which was to be held at 
 Paris in connection with the last exhibition. I 
 read further that the Societe de Medecine Pra- 
 tique had taken up the question, and a commis- 
 sion, consisting of representatives of the prin- 
 cipal scientific associations in Paris, had been 
 appointed to study the matter. As far as I have 
 learned, these associations set their face abso- 
 lutely against Volapiik. 
 
 Just at present there is much agitation in 
 France for reform of instruction and examina- 
 tion in medicine. The Ministry of Instruction 
 propounded quite recently questions in this 
 direction, to be decided upon by the medical 
 faculty of Paris. A commission of five profes- 
 sors and the rector of the faculty have consid- 
 ered these questions, the principal of which was 
 whether the study of the classical languages 
 should be abandoned. The commission in its 
 answer said : The physician is obliged to use a 
 lexicology which is derived from the Greek and 
 the Latin. Although he may, without having 
 
2 32 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 been instructed in the classics, in the course of 
 time acquire a superficial knowledge of the ex- 
 pressions, still there will remain in such a case 
 a sentiment of inferiority because he does not 
 know their origin. In the interest of the dig- 
 nity of the profession, this sentiment should be 
 spared to the future physician. The commis- 
 sion further said it would be absolutely neces- 
 sary that, in addition to the knowledge of the 
 classical idioms, the knowledge of one of the 
 modern languages should be required, namely, 
 the German. In the present condition of med- 
 ical science, which derives its elements from 
 all parts of the world, every physician ought to 
 be somewhat of a polyglot. 
 
 The rivalry of the nations is against the em- 
 ployment — as an international language — of on^ 
 of those principally spoken in the civilized 
 world, such as English, French, or German. In 
 addition these languages are insufficient for the 
 expression of new ideas and for the composition 
 of words. Even as it is now, the English, 
 French, and German scholars have one thing in 
 common : they borrow from one and the same 
 language when new words have to be formed 
 for new things. They borrow from the Greek, 
 from that language which has many claims to be 
 
GREEK AS INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE. 233 
 
 preferred to every other in the selection of a 
 universal language for scholars. 
 
 Sola virtus in stia potestate est ; omnia prcBter 
 earn subjecta sunt fortunes dominationi. This sen- 
 tence of a Latin poet can well be applied to the 
 Greek language. As Virtue, and Virtue only, is 
 her own master, not, as are all other things, 
 subject to the influence of Fortune, so is Greek, 
 and Greek only, of all European languages, her 
 own master. 
 
 If we take up a Greek dictionary written for 
 Greeks, we notice that it contains no foreign 
 words. The Greeks love their language as they 
 love their religion. They are jealous to pre- 
 serve its purity. The use of a foreign word in 
 Greek conversation is as detestable to an edu- 
 cated Greek as is swearing to a well-bred Ameri- 
 can. English, French, Italian, Spanish cannot 
 be learned satisfactorily without a knowledge of 
 Greek and Latin ; and German, an original lan- 
 guage, has become so much confused by admix- 
 ture with foreign words that a knowledge of at 
 least Greek and Latin is indispensable to its un- 
 derstanding. 
 
 The fact that Greek is the only living homo- 
 geneous language is one of the many reasons 
 why it should be chosen as the future interna- 
 
^34 CHRiStiAN GREECE AND LIVING GtlEElC. 
 
 tional language of physicians and scholars in 
 general. 
 
 In choosing the Greek no mutual rivalry need 
 be taken into consideration. It is the old, old 
 idiom of a small nation and of a small country. 
 The language is rich and is musical, clear and 
 precise, and especially abounding in combina- 
 tions. It is able to render every modern idea 
 completely, and already it has, in this regard, 
 given life to thousands of words. In thousands 
 of schools, and in every university, it forms a 
 necessary part of instruction. Not only do we 
 use a multitude of Greek words in our daily in- 
 tercourse, but our entire medical lexicology, also 
 the general nomenclature of the arts and of 
 sciences, is, for the most part, dominated by the 
 Greek language. 
 
 The magnificent structures of the ancient 
 Greeks, their equally splendid works of sculp- 
 ture, have been so little approached by us that 
 nobody, in the whole world, would entertain the 
 possibility of a comparison in our favor when 
 modern achievements are contrasted with the 
 masterpieces of Greek art. The temple of the 
 Olympian Jupiter, the Acropolis of Athens, 
 the Venus of Melos, the Hermes of Praxiteles, 
 are proofs that the Greeks had a much better de- 
 
GREEK AS INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE. 23$ 
 
 veloped sense of beauty than any other people 
 of a later age. 
 
 Greek art is still alive, for it affords the high- 
 est examples for our architects and sculptors. 
 Everybody knows this to be a fact. 
 
 The Greek language still lives, the same old 
 Greek which is taught in our schools — taught, 
 however, by the eye only. It is spoken by 
 seven million people, and it is more beautiful 
 and noble than any other language, just as 
 Greek art is more beautiful and more noble than 
 any other. There are, however, but few who 
 seem to be be aware of this fact. 
 
 Greek has once before now been the world's 
 language. Its use was extended over a larger 
 territory than the Latin. ** Grceca leguntur in 
 omnibtis fere gentibus, Latina suis finibus,'" says 
 Cicero. " La langue grecque deviendrait la langue 
 tmiverselle, " Voltaire wrote. The humanists at the 
 end of the Middle Ages caused its Renaissance. 
 
 Let us hope that a second Renaissance and a 
 brilliant period of the study of the Greek lan- 
 guage will ensue, the final purpose of which can 
 only be the greatest possible extension of gen- 
 uine science and culture. 
 
 The colleges have sprung from the Latin 
 
236 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 schools of the Mediaeval Age ; they have, on this 
 account, inherited a steady preference for that 
 language. The general use of the Latin on the 
 part of the learned professions has, in the 
 easiest manner, facilitated the learned inter- 
 course of all. This has now, however, alto- 
 gether changed. The national languages have 
 obtained their natural rights, and should always 
 maintain them, even if a universal language 
 for scholars shall have been adopted. We must 
 concede that it is impossible to reinstate the old 
 relation the Latin has held — when all the lec- 
 tures on any subject whatever at the universities 
 were delivered in Latin. Neither would such 
 be desirable. 
 
 Virchow says, in his inaugural address as rec- 
 tor of the Berlin University : " It was from the 
 beginning a weak side of the humanistic educa- 
 tional institutions to favor the Latin language. 
 It must be conceded that they could not do 
 otherwise. They found the Latin the universal 
 language of church and law. They were all 
 Latin schools. They only continued what had 
 become a general practice in consequence of the 
 habit transmitted for a thousand years. But for 
 this reason they had accepted an element of 
 weakness. For the classical writers of Rome 
 
GREEK AS INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE. 237 
 
 were in their works way behind the Greek 
 authors. Indeed, the best among them are in- 
 debted to their Greek antecedents for their 
 education. The school of Athens formed the 
 background of all learned activity. Our own 
 Western civilization has adopted from the Greek 
 literature the really moving thoughts and the 
 facile forms. Homer, Aristotle, and Plato have 
 continued to be, up to our time, the teachers of 
 mankind. 
 
 "Since the Greek authors have again been 
 read in the original, the active interest in the 
 Latin language has been reduced. Still, the 
 Latin remained the principal object of informa- 
 tion. But it steadily accomplished less. As the 
 use of the language as such became gradually 
 less, rhetoric was omitted, restricting the study 
 more and more to the grammar. Indeed, in- 
 struction in grammar gradually so overpowered 
 everything that even the Latin essay became a 
 pium desiderium." 
 
 The Latin, as an international and scientific 
 language, loses every day more of its impor- 
 tance. Indeed, it might almost be said that it is 
 kept alive only in purely philological and theo- 
 logical literature. Latin is a dead and restricted 
 language, insufficient for the present time. 
 
238 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 The number of Latin scientific terms, with the 
 exception of the vocabulary for law matters, is 
 inferior to the number of words from the Greek. 
 Moreover, we possess only the written Latin 
 language; the language of daily commerce has 
 not been transmitted. The Latin of the Church, 
 of the learned, is an artificial, a forced language. 
 It can easily be understood why, under these 
 circumstances, the instruction in Latin became 
 more and more purely grammatical ; but why the 
 Greek, a living language, a language just as 
 living as our own, has been treated alike in our 
 schools, is a question which should be addressed 
 to all the learned world, in order to expose a 
 wrong that has been committed and kept up for 
 centuries. 
 
 "Grammatical schooling," says Virchow, "is 
 not that auxiliary means of progressive develop- 
 ment which is needed by our youth. It does 
 not cause that desire for learning which is a pre- 
 supposition of independent further development ; 
 but, on the contrary, it is manifest that many 
 scholars, as well as their parents, regard it with 
 hatred." 
 
 Professor John Williams White, of Harvard 
 College, says : " High grammar, philological re- 
 search concerning forms and laws of construe- 
 
GREEK AS INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE. 239 
 
 tion, should be undertaken by no one until he is 
 well on his course, and, it may well be, by the 
 majority of men never at all. The study of the 
 classics is an effective means of mental dis- 
 cipline, but theoretical grammar does not fur- 
 nish the best field for its exercise." 
 
 Study, like almost everything else in our 
 times, and especially in this country, must be 
 done at high pressure; and no time is to be 
 lost, since many things have to be learned. It 
 is true the Boston Latin School does not do 
 what it did forty years ago — teach boys for a 
 whole year the forms, rules, and exceptions of 
 Latin grammar without even a single sentence 
 of illustration; the "Method of Classical Study," 
 by Dr. Taylor, of Andover, in which he asks 
 seventy-six questions upon the first three lines 
 of Xenophon's "Anabasis," and one hundred 
 and twenty-seven upon the first three verses of 
 "^neid," I suppose is not in use any more; yet 
 radical change of instruction in the classical lan- 
 guages, especially in Greek, is needed, whether 
 we consider either of these languages as an in- 
 ternational medium or simply as a means of 
 mental discipline. 
 
 The higher aim in language study is to know 
 the language colloquially and idiomatically. 
 
240 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 This cannot be attained by means of the gram- 
 mar. There is great activity on the part of 
 modern linguists toward devising a rational way 
 of imparting a colloquial knowledge of a lan- 
 guage. A number of natural methods have 
 sprung up, and have produced new activity in 
 every country. Not alone the modern lan- 
 guages have been taught by such systems, but 
 attempts have been made to teach Latin after 
 such methods. The best, indeed the only suc- 
 cessful one, is the Tusculum system of Arcade 
 Mogyorossy, of Philadelphia, Pa., who was born 
 in Hungaria, where up to the time of the Revo 
 lution of 1848-49 Latin served as universal lan- 
 guage among the cultured people of the many 
 nationalities in the country. Mogyorossy, al- 
 though born after 1849, was taught his school 
 lessons in geography, history, mathematics, 
 physics, astronomy, all in Latin. He came to 
 this country, where five years ago he com- 
 menced to publish a number of books to intro- 
 duce his method ; a little later on he published 
 the most admirable Latin monthly, PrcEco Lati- 
 nus, which has now reached its fourth year. The 
 Tusculum system surprises us by its simplicity, 
 the main feature being that the language is 
 taught within itself out of its own material. 
 
GREEK AS INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE. 24 1 
 
 In order to command a language, it is above 
 all necessary to know how the people speak. 
 The every-day language must be familiar to us. 
 Whoever knows the conversational language of 
 a nation has the key to the understanding of its 
 writings like the people themselves. 
 
 The Attic boy needed for reading the Greek 
 poets, the Attic farmer for the theatre or a 
 public meeting, only the knowledge of the Attic 
 conversational language in its most simple 
 form. It enabled them to understand the trag- 
 edies of Sophocles and the speeches of Pericles. 
 
 It has often been claimed that there are re- 
 markably few words and sentences which suffice 
 for the common man in speaking his native lan- 
 guage, and which enable him to understand 
 even that which to him is a new formation. 
 The every-day language must first be known 
 before acquiring the art language. 
 
 Macaulay and others recommend, while learn- 
 ing a language, to lay aside the grammar, as the 
 laws of speech will be easily comprehended 
 while reading good authors. It seems to me 
 that whosoever begins the study of a language 
 with the learning of its rules, will never learn 
 the language, unless he abandons the study of 
 
 the grammar and commences anew. 
 16 
 
242 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 So long as Greek is taught in the schools ac- 
 cording to the present methods, it will be consid- 
 ered as a language too difficult to be learned, and 
 could not be selected for a universal language. 
 
 Greek is a living language and must be treated 
 as such. It is difficult to find a proper expres- 
 sion without using strong terms, to characterize 
 the erroneous common opinion that Greek is a 
 dead language ! 
 
 We frequently meet with people who, having 
 attained a certain degree of education, make this 
 mistake, while as a matter of fact Greek news- 
 papers are continually published and new books 
 treating of various subjects also appear regu- 
 larly in the Greek language. An uneducated 
 man may be excused for such mistakes, as cer- 
 tainly professional philologists have contributed 
 not a little to the propagation of such views. 
 
 Many professors of the classical languages 
 simply pay no attention to the living Greek, 
 without having even the least semblance of any 
 grounds for such disregard; and yet they pro- 
 nounce the language of the Muses according to 
 the usage of their respective countries, in the 
 English, Dutch, or German manner. The pro- 
 nunciation, which ought to be alone the rule, is 
 unknown to them, nor do they wish to know it. 
 
GREEK AS INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE. 243 
 
 Nothing is easier than the proof that the 
 Greek is not a dead language. The daily Greek 
 newspapers published at the present time prove 
 that the Greek language of to-day is still the 
 same Greek of the classical age, showing merely 
 such differences as each living language under- 
 goes in the course of time. Look, for instance, 
 into the Katpoi^ published in Athens. Whoever 
 has been instructed merely at school, on behold- 
 ing for the first time this paper, will be agree- 
 ably surprised to find that he is able to under- 
 stand its contents without any difficulty. A 
 better and more convincing proof can hardly be 
 imagined. 
 
 The fact that the Greek language alone has 
 preserved itself almost unchanged through thou- 
 sands of years in its original beauty is, in my 
 opinion, as a modern Greek writer expresses 
 himself : 
 
 " 616x1 TO oipalov elvat uaav Xaf^-ipig tov rjTiiov ettI rijq yrjQ^ 
 6i6ri TO opaiov ^y alcoviug." 
 
 The Greek language has been transmitted to- 
 gether with its pronunciation. The majority of 
 the Greek people, kept in bondage since the 
 mediaeval age until 1822, were altogether unable 
 either to read or write. 
 
 Much has been said garrulously about the de- 
 
244 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 generated descendants of Pericles, Socrates, and 
 Phidias. Still, these degenerated descendants 
 have the undeniable fortune to speak a language 
 which Pericles, Socrates, and Phidias would 
 have understood. An unbroken chain continues 
 from generation to generation, and back again, 
 from the Greeks of the nineteenth century to 
 those of Pericles, Socrates, and Phidias. 
 
 It is a customary assertion that the modern 
 Greek is a barbarous mixture of a good deal of 
 Slavonic, Albanese, Turkish, and Italian, and of 
 a little corrupt Greek. As we have seen, this is 
 just as untrue as the assertion that the Greek is 
 a defunct language. Naturally, such incorrect 
 views are held among the ignorant. However, 
 as I know from experience, such ignorance is 
 found also among the otherwise educated classes 
 who have studied the Greek language while at 
 college. It is remarkable how the very Greek 
 language, from which every other European lan- 
 guage has drawn so freely, has been calumni- 
 ated in such a manner. 
 
 Aside from the Greek as published in news- 
 papers and books, which some are pleased to 
 designate as an artificial old Greek in a new 
 Greek garb, the living and really spoken lan- 
 guage of both the higher and the lower classes, 
 
GREEK AS INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE. 245 
 
 of the inhabitants of the cities as well as of the 
 peasantry, is by no means a barbarian mixture, 
 but rather a genuine Greek. Everybody ac- 
 quainted with this language is aware of this fact. 
 I cite as witness thereof: Ernst Curtius, a first- 
 class expert in both forms of the Greek lan- 
 guage, who says in his work, "The New Greek 
 and its Meaning with Regard to the Old Greek," 
 that, excepting a few tracts at the border of the 
 territory where Greek is spoken (as, for instance, 
 the Ionian Isles), " even the lowest Greek uses a 
 pure Greek language." 
 
 The question of the physical descent of the 
 new Greeks, which cannot be separated from 
 that of the language, is best settled by answer- 
 ing that of the descent of the language. Ac- 
 cording to late researches, a Slavonic descent of 
 the Greeks can no longer be maintained. Proof 
 can be furnished that not only are the modern 
 Greeks not Slavonic, but also that no trace of a 
 Slavonic influence can be found, with one excep- 
 tion to be mentioned presently. 
 
 A colleague, who had studied Greek and was 
 also a college graduate, claimed, while convers- 
 ing with me, that the modern Greek and Sla- 
 vonic languages were very much intermingled. 
 A Greek gentleman, a scholar, on hearing this 
 
246 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 reproach, replied: "I shall be very much 
 obliged to this gentleman if he will mention 
 even one single Slavonic word found in the 
 modern Greek language." The Slavonic is en- 
 tirely restricted to the designations of habita- 
 tions, hills, landscapes, waters, and even then it 
 appears only in occasional places and by no 
 means in all Greece. 
 
 In spite of a long-continued intercourse, the 
 Albanese have, if possible, left still less traces 
 in the Greek language. 
 
 It is somewhat different concerning the Turk- 
 ish language. The Turkish dominion was for 
 centuries very effective and oppressive ; it can- 
 not, therefore, seem strange if words of the offi- 
 cial language have permeated the language of 
 the conquered people. We find some Turkish 
 words for Turkish things, as for instance, ytovpTi 
 for a certain preparation of milk, Tzddcpi for a 
 Turkish preparation of rice, just as beefsteak, 
 the English dish, is called by this name in all 
 countries. In the written language, however, 
 nearly everything of foreign origin has been 
 carefully avoided. 
 
 It is true the works of the modern Greek 
 writer are not of so much beauty as the works of 
 the classical period, but the language is not to 
 
GREEK AS INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE. 247 
 
 be blamed for this. The marble of Pentelicon 
 is not at fault when, in later periods, no Venus 
 of Melos, no Hermes of Praxiteles could be 
 formed of it. 
 
 The Greek of the schools is looked upon as a 
 dead language ; the method of teaching as well 
 as the purpose for which it is taught are of no 
 account for practical life. Those leaving school, 
 except such as choose philology as a profession, 
 forget what they have learned more rapidly than 
 they have learned it, and thus it seems to be of 
 no consequence to the teachers whether the 
 Greek is pronounced in one way or another. 
 A custom handed down for three hundred 
 and sixty-five years is followed, and thus the 
 necessity is removed of imparting to the lan- 
 guage the sound of a living, undoubted Greek 
 idiom. 
 
 The French, English, and Russian peda- 
 gogues think in the same manner as the German 
 philologists, therefore the Greek language is 
 learned in the respective countries according to 
 the modern high German, French, English, and 
 Russian pronunciation, and forgotten again. 
 The fate of the Greek language in the schools 
 seems therefore to be sealed, unless a better 
 mode of instruction is introduced. A language 
 
248 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 which is spoken by seven million people is for- 
 cibly reduced to a defunct language. 
 
 A school which is proud of its scientific teach- 
 ers should teach nothing that has been proved, 
 and also been admitted, to be unscientific and 
 false. Neither should this be done even with a 
 really defunct language. Nor does it ever hap- 
 pen in regard to any dead or living language, 
 except in the case of the Greek. Instruction in 
 the living languages is not given with an in- 
 vented pronunciation, and even in teaching dead 
 Latin and Hebrew a pronunciation is taught in 
 the schools which is preeminently based upon 
 the living tradition. Latin is taught as it is 
 transmitted through its pronunciation in Italy, 
 and through the pronunciation of the Italian lan- 
 guage; Hebrew as it is really spoken by the 
 Portuguese Jews. 
 
 Only with the Greek an exception is made by 
 the school, and just in this case the existence of 
 a living Greek language ought to be a reminder 
 to place instruction in close relation to life, so 
 that the scholar might later employ it for prac- 
 tical purposes. The phrase ought to be borne 
 in mind : Non scholcB, sed vitce discimus. 
 
 It is certainly very discouraging to the scholar 
 who, having devoted years to the study of the 
 
GREEK AS INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE. 249 
 
 language, finds that, thanks to the college pro- 
 nunciation, he must pass among the Greeks in 
 their beautiful country like a deaf and dumb 
 person, neither understanding nor understood. 
 
 The time has passed long since when a crea- 
 tive activity in Attic philology and archaeology 
 was, almost exclusively, evinced in the dust of 
 domestic libraries with fac-simile and picture 
 book. The number of archaeologists, especially 
 since Schliemann, who try to enlarge the knowl- 
 edge of old Greece in the new Greece, is steadily 
 increasing. Tuere are inducements enough, 
 even without the idea of making Greek an inter- 
 national language, to employ the pronunciation 
 of the now living Greeks. No probability exists 
 that the ancient Greeks spoke like the college 
 professors ; certain it is, however, that their pro- 
 nunciation was similar to that of the Greeks of 
 to-day. 
 
 The study of the classics, especially the Greek, 
 has been greatly favored in this country during 
 the past decade by the establishment of an 
 American school at Athens. This school was 
 founded in October, 1892, by the American 
 Archaeological Institute, and is supported by 
 yearly contributions from eighteen universities 
 in the United States. One result of the estab- 
 
250 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 lishment of this school has been the gradual 
 diffusion among cultivated people of a more cor- 
 rect notion of the Greek language, and of the 
 appreciation of the fact that it is not a dead, but 
 a living language. 
 
 As the humanists, toward the end of the 
 Middle Ages, brought about a revival of Greek 
 learning in the schools, so may it be that a 
 second Renaissance may receive its quickening 
 impulse in America, and that we may be at the 
 beginning of a brilliant period of study of the 
 Greek language, the results of which can but be 
 most favorable to the advancement of true cul- 
 ture among us. 
 
 When we consider the absurdity of the school 
 pronunciation of the Greek, we must regret that 
 a clumsy joke, perpetrated upon Erasmus, of 
 Rotterdam — a joke which certainly does not be- 
 come science on account of its venerable age — is 
 still taken seriously by many. 
 
 I said elsewhere : " In order to command a 
 language, it is above all necessary to know how 
 the people speak. The every-day language 
 must be familiar to us." 
 
 " Whoever knows the conversational language 
 of a nation has the key to the understanding of 
 its writings like the people themselves.** 
 
GREEK AS INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE. 25 I 
 
 " The every-day language must first be known 
 before acquiring the art language." 
 
 Should we not feel sorry for the student who 
 begins to learn English by studying the poetical 
 works of Chaucer? In what a roundabout way 
 would he finally be enabled to understand the 
 peculiarity of the language of Longfellow ; how 
 long would it be before he would be able to de- 
 rive any sort of enjoyment from this poet's writ- 
 ings, if he were to learn the English language 
 by reading Longfellow's works exclusively, and 
 in learning it were obliged to parse every word? 
 
 The color of a language and the kind of style 
 of a literary work, can be fully perceived only 
 by one who is able to judge how far this lan- 
 guage differs from commonplace daily conver- 
 sation. We do not subject good wine to a 
 chemical analysis by means of acids and salts in 
 order to prove its value, neither do we gram- 
 matically analyze a poem to enjoy its charm. 
 
 In learning a language we notice one thing: 
 in order to advance rapidly we have to read, in 
 the beginning, only such books as are written in 
 an easily comprehensible style, the contents also 
 to be of an entertaining character. If we choose 
 the more difficult, serious, or tedious books, we 
 shall not advance, but rather retrograde. If we 
 
252 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 begin with children's stories or literature for the 
 common every-day people, we shall be surprised 
 to find how soon we can dispense with the use of 
 a dictionary. We soon guess and learn new 
 words by reading the context. We thus learn 
 to think in the language, and the more we pro- 
 gress the more we enjoy the better, higher, more 
 serious, classical literature. 
 
 Professor John Williams White, of Harvard 
 College, in a series of articles published in the 
 New England Journal of Education^ in 1878, en- 
 titled "Latin and Greek at Sight," recommends 
 the instruction in the classical languages after 
 the manner of teaching German and French, i.e., 
 to accustom the pupils to read at sight, without 
 any preceding preparation. He mentions that 
 the pupils learn much more quickly and better 
 to read the German than the Latin languages, 
 although twice as much time is spent in the 
 study of the latter. Concerning Greek, he says : 
 " It is to be reckoned that it is more difficult to 
 learn to read Greek than, for instance, German ; 
 but then there is not so much difference between 
 the two languages as to justify the fact that 
 pupils, after studying Greek for years, are not 
 yet able to read without the aid of a dictionary, 
 or through some other means of assistance, 
 
GREEK AS INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE. 253 
 
 while they learn in a much shorter time to read 
 German fluently." 
 
 In order to obviate this evil, he recommends, 
 among other means, that the pupils should study 
 no higher Greek or Latin grammar until they 
 are enabled to read these languages with a cer- 
 tain ease, and also have read a good deal. His 
 claims are rather modest. He says: "The 
 study of grammar should be rendered more 
 practical, especially during the first years. The 
 pupil, after having studied both the Greek and 
 Latin languages for three or four years, should 
 be able to read the Greek writings of Xenophon, 
 Lysias, and Herodotus, and the Latin of Caesar 
 and Cicero, without either previous preparation 
 or the use of a dictionary." 
 
 Professor White, in his suggestions regarding 
 reformation of the instruction in Greek, has not 
 gone far enough, because he, like other college 
 professors, ignores modern Greek. The literary 
 Greek of to-day is identical with the Attic 
 dialect in orthography, almost also in form ; the 
 syntax is here and there circumscribed and sim- 
 plified. There is more difference between the 
 Greek of Herodotus and the Greek of Xenophon 
 than there is between the Greek of the latter and 
 the Greek of to-day. There is more difference 
 
2 54 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 between the English of Chaucer and the English 
 of to-day than there is between old and new 
 Greek. The living, the Greek as it is spoken 
 and written in Greece to-day, is the one which 
 should be taught in our schools. The Greek as 
 it is taught in general in our schools is simply 
 a skeleton without life. Our college professors 
 should not look upon Greek as a dead language, 
 and above all they should give up pronouncing 
 it in their barbarous, arbitrary manner. 
 
 It appears to me that Greek, taught like other 
 living languages, by one or the other modern 
 methods — Meisterschaft's, or any similar system 
 — is not more difficult to learn than French or 
 Spanish, certainly much easier than German. 
 
 If we commence with a regular ABC book, 
 a First Reader, Fairy Tales, then read works of 
 the best modern writers like Bikelas, we shall 
 soon get the aim to acquire understanding, and 
 highest pleasure in reading the old Greek classi- 
 cal authors, much better, and without having to 
 undergo the well-known tortures of the present 
 school instruction. If the acquiring of the 
 Greek language is thus made easier, and the 
 classical Greek literature brought more and more 
 within our reach, Kant's saying will become more 
 obvious. " Even during the dark ages great men 
 
GREEK AS INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE. 255 
 
 have existed. During those periods, however, 
 only those could attain greatness who, by na- 
 ture, had been stamped for it. Now, since in- 
 struction has been perfected, men are made 
 great by training." 
 
 If the Greek language becomes the property 
 of all scholars of all civilized nations in such 
 manner that it may serve as the medium of in- 
 tercourse, there is no telling how great the prac- 
 tical advantage will be along with the ideal gain. 
 The introduction of the living Greek language 
 into our schools would be of not less significance 
 than the work of the humanists at the end of the 
 Middle Ages. 
 
 As the humanists in their times fought against 
 the obstinate and clumsy form in which the 
 scholastic science was taught, as they fought 
 against the prevailing professional quarrelling, 
 and the cunning and subtilizing in words, just 
 as much is it timely now to agitate for a reform 
 in teaching Greek in our schools. These men 
 were inspired for the grand inheritance left 
 by the ancient classical nations ; they recognized 
 in this inheritance one of the most excellent 
 means of improvement of the mind, and an inex- 
 haustible soil of noble sentiment. 
 
 The single individual can accomplish very 
 
256 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 little to have justice done to a language which 
 our profession uses already so much in its lexi- 
 cology in preference to any other ; to have this 
 language seriously considered when the question 
 of an international language for scholars of all 
 nations is brought up — a language which gives 
 terms to all new inventions and discoveries, and 
 which cannot be replaced by any other ; which is 
 already, to a certain extent, an international 
 language. 
 
 Ttc oI(5e, iaug ^/lipav riva 7rpayfiaronoiTi6y to 
 upalov 61 rjfia^ bveipov tovto. — A. BiKeAag. 
 
 The question of adopting the living Greek of 
 to-day as the international language of scholars 
 has become the subject of much discussion. 
 Many American and European journals, even 
 journals printed in Turkey, have entered into 
 the discussion. Professors of philology in Ger- 
 man universities and colleges have found it 
 worthy of reply, and have published their views 
 on this subject in scientific philological periodi- 
 cals — a subject which was warmly discussed in 
 the New York Academy of Medicine on April 
 2 1 St, 1894, when I read before it a paper bearing 
 on this matter. 
 
 On the whole, the responses have been favor- 
 able to our cause. The great number and the 
 
GREEK AS INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE. 257 
 
 tone of the commentaries prove that thought on 
 the subject has been aroused, and will continue. 
 Bikelas, the Greek Washington Irving, after 
 having read my article, wrote the words quoted 
 above in regard to the idea of Greek as the uni- 
 versal language for scholars: "Who knows, 
 some day perhaps, this our beautiful dream may 
 become reality." 
 
 I have received many congratulatory letters 
 from physicians, from other scholars, from men 
 of prominence and of high official positions, 
 many urging me to continue speaking and writ- 
 ing on the Greek question. 
 
 A German philologist, after expressing him- 
 self very courteously in praise of the energy 
 which, he says, I have exhibited, is of the opin- 
 ion that the idea of having Greek as the inter- 
 national language of scholars will not become 
 realized. He refers to my narration of the 
 failure of all attempts to invent a world-lan- 
 guage, and also to my illustration of the at- 
 tempted official invention of the Maximilian style 
 of architecture. He says an international lan- 
 guage for scholars can likewise neither be nomi- 
 nated nor invented. Resolutions to this effect 
 might be adopted, but nobody will learn the lan- 
 guage, because nobody has time to learn an 
 17 
 
258 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 extra language for the sole purpose of con- 
 gresses and periodicals. "Dr. Rose," he says 
 further, " is probably not sufficiently aware that 
 the question of pronunciation does not stand now 
 as it stood formerly : Erasmian or Reuchlinian ? 
 but rather : When was the pronunciation of the 
 different words transformed into the pronuncia- 
 tion of the Greeks of to-day? This change of 
 pronunciation of the different sounds — as they 
 are written — has taken place at different periods. 
 When? — that is found by the study of inscrip- 
 tions." 
 
 I do not know if researches have been made 
 as to how German, French, and English have 
 been pronounced in different centuries. I can- 
 not determine whether the result of such re- 
 searches would compensate for the immensity of 
 brain-work employed, but it appears to me that 
 much time and brain-work have been wasted 
 through the fault of Erasmus. If it had not 
 been for him, nobody might have suggested, or 
 might now suggest, any other pronunciation of 
 classical Greek than the pronunciation employed 
 by the Greeks of to-day. Whatever the scien- 
 tific value of historical studies of pronunciation 
 may be, it concerns in no way the practical study 
 of Greek. Higher philology should be at- 
 
GREEK AS INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE. 259 
 
 tempted only after the language has been 
 learned practically. 
 
 It is quite true that a universal language for 
 scholars cannot be introduced by force or by 
 persuasion, and that nobody has time to learn an 
 extra language for the purpose of congresses 
 and periodicals. 
 
 It is conceded, even "im naturwissenschaft- 
 lichen Jahrhundert," as the Germans call it, 
 that a regular and solid scholar should know 
 Greek and Latin ; it is conceded that the classics 
 are powerful means to elevate, to ennoble our 
 mind, our character. Since Greek is on the 
 school plan already, there is no new language to 
 be learned; only another, a rational method of 
 learning has to be adopted ; it has to be learned 
 practically for practical purposes, as well as for 
 ideal. The most perfect, the ideal language 
 will then speak for itself, and will inspire schol- 
 ars to unite in agitation for its general adoption. 
 
 Dr. E. Engel, in his book " Griechische Frtih- 
 lingstage," gives the following instruction: 
 " How shall we learn the real language of the 
 new Greeks? Turn over the leaves of one of 
 the many grammars and read something about 
 pronunciation, but then throw it, and leave it, 
 aside, and take instead a collection of Greek 
 
260 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 popular songs and fairy tales. Finally read 
 comedies which really have been played." I 
 myself had followed a similar course when I un- 
 dertook to learn the living Greek, and I gave 
 some of my correspondents the advice to do like- 
 wise. I recommend the reading of children's 
 stories, above all of Bikelas' beautiful Greek 
 translation of "Andersen's Fairy Tales." The 
 most essential, however, is to speak with Greeks 
 and hear Greeks speak among themselves. 
 
 Dr. Engel says: "Whoever has learned old 
 Greek will need not much more than to learn 
 some additional few hundred new words. This 
 is rather easy work, since the roots of these 
 words are old Greek." He says further that a 
 foreigner of classical education thus prepared 
 will understand the Greeks in Greece, and the 
 Greeks will understand him, provided he has 
 the right pronunciation. 
 
 To this one might say : there exists in reality 
 no new Greek. Many words which deviate 
 from the literary language of the classical period 
 are as old as the words of the same meaning in 
 the classics, although we cannot find them in 
 our school dictionary. 
 
 The methods of learning Greek or any lan- 
 guage which Dr. Engel, myself, and perhaps 
 
GREEK AS INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE. 26 1 
 
 many more, have discovered for ourselves in- 
 stinctively, is really pointed out as being unmis- 
 takably the best when we consider certain facts 
 of physiological anatomy and pathology of the 
 brain. From the ways in which the use of the 
 language is lost, or suffers varying degrees and 
 kinds of impairment, we can learn how it best 
 may be acquired. Monographs, above all Kuss- 
 maul's philosophical and elaborate work on the 
 disturbance of speech, numerous articles in our 
 medical periodicals, and special chapters in our 
 text-books on nervous diseases, treat on the de- 
 fects of speech in their relation to neuropath- 
 ology. The first to apply the recent discoveries 
 in this direction to the methods of learning and 
 teaching languages was Dr. Howel T. Persh- 
 ing. He has expounded his views in an article 
 entitled "Language and Brain Disease,'" which 
 appeared in the Popular Science Monthly for 
 October, 1892. 
 
 I may be permitted to give an abstract of this 
 most valuable paper : All the motions and sensa- 
 tions of the various parts of the body have their 
 centres in the brain. Four centres are espe- 
 cially concerned in the use of language: the 
 auditory centre, by which words are heard ; the 
 motor-speech centre, which excites and controls 
 
262 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 the vocal organs in speaking ; the visual centre, 
 by which the written words are seen; and the 
 writing centre, which guides the motions of the 
 hand in writing. The centres are capable of 
 individual development by practice. Certain 
 pathological conditions instruct us in the relative 
 importance of each of these centres in the differ- 
 ent ways of using language. The loss occa- 
 sioned by the destruction of any language centre 
 is an indication of the defect that must result from 
 neglecting to cultivate the same centre by prac- 
 tice. When the auditory centre is aroused by 
 impulses coming from the ears, we have the sen- 
 sation of sound; when it is aroused by nerve 
 currents, not from the ears but from other parts 
 of the brain, we have only the memory of sound. 
 For a word to be understood, the auditory centre 
 alone is not sufficient. The sound must awaken 
 the memories of other sensations. The nerve 
 currents passing from one centre to another are 
 called association impulses. Prompt and strong 
 associations must be cultivated as a means of 
 securing clear and vivid ideas. The auditory 
 centre is the first language centre to be devel- 
 oped. A child first hears, then understands the 
 sound of a few words, then it imitates the 
 sounds it understands, and soon can use them. 
 
GREEK AS INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE. 263 
 
 Here we have the cooperation of the motor- 
 speech centre. The two centres work and de- 
 velop together, but the auditory centre is the 
 more independent and fundamental. If a child 
 becomes deaf, even as late as the tenth or 
 eleventh year, it also becomes mute, unless 
 special educational measures are employed; in 
 adults destruction of the auditory centre inter- 
 feres sadly with talking, while destruction of the 
 motor-speech centre does not seem to interfere 
 at all with the understanding of speech. When 
 reading is first undertaken, the auditory and 
 motor-speech centres, with their association 
 fibres, are already well developed. The visual 
 centre now begins to work with them. At first 
 it is necessary to read aloud in order to make 
 the association impulses exact and vigorous. In 
 writing, the visual memory may be an aid to 
 correct spelling. Disease cutting off the com- 
 munication of the visual centres with other cen- 
 tres causes mind-blindness. The patient sees 
 but does not recognize what he sees. If the 
 affection is so slight that he can still recognize 
 ordinary objects, but not written or printed 
 words, he is only word-blind. Although read- 
 ing in such a case i.j impossible, writing is not 
 prevented; the patient, however, cannot read 
 
264 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 what he has just written. Speaking and the 
 understanding of speech are not interfered with 
 at all. Destruction of the motor-speech centre 
 causes a much more extensive interference with 
 the use of language; the motions of the vocal 
 organs being no longer coordinated, an inarticu- 
 late jargon, or the senseless repetition of word 
 or phrase, is all that is left of the power of 
 speech. The ability to write is also lost. Read- 
 ing aloud is, of course, impossible ; but it is also 
 a matter of common observation in such cases 
 that the ability to understand print is lost or 
 greatly impaired. This proves that in most per- 
 sons direct associations between visual words 
 and ideas, if they exist at all, are too weak to be 
 depended upon. 
 
 It is the destruction of the auditory centre 
 which causes the most extensive loss of lan- 
 guage. In such pathological conditions in 
 which words are heard but not understood, we 
 speak of word-deafness. There are other patho- 
 logical conditions in which, although the vocal 
 apparatus is in perfect order, the words uttered 
 are mutilated, deformed, and often totally differ- 
 ent from the ones intended. We learn here 
 that in talking the most important association 
 impulses do not go directly from the centres for 
 
GREEK AS INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE. 265 
 
 ideas to the motor-speech, centre, but to the 
 auditory centre, which, remembering the sounds 
 by fresh impulses, arouses the motor centre to 
 utter them. Writing is still more interfered 
 with, because it depends upon the utterance- 
 memory, which goes astray without the sound- 
 memory. 
 
 The auditory centre is essential to the under- 
 standing of what is read. In reading, the visual 
 centre cannot, as a rule, call up the ideas, else 
 destruction of the motor-speech centre would 
 not interfere with reading as it does. Nor is 
 the motor-speech centre directly connected with 
 the centre for ideas; if it were, destruction of 
 the auditory centre would not interfere with 
 talking as it does. This leaves only the audi- 
 tory centre, which is abundantly capable, for the 
 sounds of the words readily awaken ideas before 
 the other language centres begin to work and 
 after they have been destroyed. The auditory 
 centre is the central station through which the 
 other language centres communicate with the 
 centre for ideas. The sound of a word is the 
 word itself. Printed words are only convenient 
 symbols for recalling the sounds. Thinking 
 requires the use of words, not visual words, but 
 the words heard and uttered. It is true deaf- 
 
266 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 mutes may learn to read and even to speak, and 
 doubtless to use visual words in thinking, but it 
 is with much more than ordinary difficulty. It 
 is a fact of great significance that those deaf- 
 mutes who have once been able to hear, have a 
 great advantage over those deaf from birth, not 
 only in learning to read and speak, but in gen- 
 eral mental capacity. 
 
 Let us apply the above facts to the method of 
 learning another language than our own. 
 There is the prevailing school and college 
 method to learn the language by force of mem- 
 ory from grammar and dictionary. By this 
 method it is conceded that the ability to con- 
 verse is not acquired, but it has been generally 
 assumed that by it the pupil could at least learn 
 to read, and perhaps, if diligent, to write to ad- 
 vantage. Yet, even for this purpose alone, the 
 grammatical method must be a failure in so far 
 as it neglects to train the pupil to a quick per- 
 ception and a ready utterance of the sounds of 
 the language, for we have seen that the auditory 
 and motor-speech centres do an essential part of 
 the work in reading and writing. Even if direct 
 associations from the visual centre may be culti- 
 vated, as in the case of deaf-mutes, why, instead 
 of an easy and natural method, choose an un- 
 
GREEK AS INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE. 267 
 
 natural and difficult one that leads to poor 
 results? What are the results of the gram- 
 matical instruction? The vast majority of our 
 college graduates neglect to read the ancient 
 authors. They are not able to read them, but 
 only to make a translation. They find no suffi- 
 cient reward for this slow and irksome process. 
 
 A student, having reached the stage of prog- 
 ress in reading and writing our language, visits 
 our country whose language he has been read- 
 ing. What he hears at first is almost wholly 
 unintelligible, though the same words in print 
 would be familiar. A little later it is not un- 
 common for him to hear a sentence without 
 comprehending it at all, when suddenly it will 
 flash upon his mind as though he had seen in 
 print what he is hearing and as if he had pro- 
 nounced it himself, and then he understands 
 readily. The same thing occurs in listening to 
 one's native tongue when the auditory centre 
 has been slightly damaged by disease. When 
 the student becomes familiar with the spoken 
 language through every-day experience, he 
 reads faster, finding a clearness and vigor of 
 meaning before unknown. It is not because his 
 vocabulary is larger, but because it is more effi- 
 cient. The auditory centre, which formerly, 
 
268 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 through lack of practice, failed to perforin an 
 essential part of the work, is now, at the sugges- 
 tion of the visual centre, quick to recall each 
 sound, and, reinforced by the utterance-memory, 
 is quick, accurate, and vigorous in reviving each 
 idea. The work of exchange is now done by 
 the true coin of the realm. 
 
 Our civilization, as it stands, is thoroughly 
 impregnated with Greek ideas. Our arts, our 
 letters, our morals, our institutions, our religious 
 tendencies even are based upon Greek culture, 
 inspired by Greek perfection, and renovated 
 with Greek refinement. The study of Greek is 
 not, as it has been heretofore, a mere linguistic 
 discipline, or a purely scholarly attainment, but 
 it means a practical study of the sources and 
 origins of our modern civilization. It affords to 
 the modern mind a better comprehension of the 
 nature and character of our own elements of cul- 
 ture. For this purpose the methods and sys- 
 tems of teaching and learning Greek must be 
 remodelled. Grammatical chicane has to be 
 reduced to a more human minimum; a closer 
 attention to the spirit must be advanced to a 
 really humanistic maximum. 
 
 Greek, the most beautiful of languages, will live 
 TO QPAION ZH AIQNmZ ! 
 
EPILOGUE. 
 
 It is a most peculiar habit of tourists who have 
 been a few days in Athens to write childish arti- 
 cles for their home journals about Greece and 
 the Greeks. I recollect such a paper which ap- 
 peared in one of our first-class illustrated maga- 
 zines. The author, a reverend gentleman, had 
 been staying in Athens two days in all. He was 
 addressed as Kurie, and people said kalimerra 
 instead of good-day, and this was all he wrote 
 about the Greek language. Unfortunately 
 these tourists, not understanding the language 
 of the country, are ill-humored and write with 
 malevolence. Their readers at home believe 
 everything, and the most absurd ideas are 
 spread. 
 
 Perhaps nothing is more amusing than the in- 
 voluntary drollery of the man in the shabby full- 
 dress suit in a dime museum. " Here, ladies 
 and gentlemen, you see two busts: this is Cae- 
 sar's and the other Pompey's. They are very 
 much alike, especially Caesar." This is about 
 
2/0 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 the Style in which the essays on modern Greek 
 history and the modern Greek language are 
 treated in the popular guide books, Murray and 
 Baedecker. 
 
 Here is a quotation from Murray's " Hand- 
 book for Travellers in Greece," edition of 1896: 
 " The claim of the modern Greeks to true Hel- 
 lenic descent is a question which admits of con- 
 siderable doubt and not very profitable discus- 
 sion. A large proportion of the slaves employed 
 in agriculture during the most flourishing pe- 
 riods of the state were of foreign origin, as we 
 know from the enormous extent of the slave 
 trade. We know also that under the domina- 
 tion of the Romans the higher classes of Greece 
 either died out or lost their nationality by 
 adopting the names and assuming the manners 
 of Roman citizens. It seems therefore probable 
 that pure Hellenic blood began to be greatly 
 adulterated about the time when the ancient dia- 
 lects fell in disuse." Murray and Baedecker are 
 very much alike. 
 
 Baedecker is not less ignorant. He writes: 
 "When a (Greek) priest is made a bishop he 
 must renounce his wife and children, the former 
 frequently entering a nunnery." 
 
 This ignoramus Baedecker is quoted, and so 
 
EPILOGUE. 271 
 
 are other ignoramuses who have written about 
 the Greeks, and it is quite annoying to meet 
 people who dispute with you on the strength of 
 Baedecker-Murray authority. 
 
 But there are more dangerous people than 
 Baedecker and Murray and the every-day tourist 
 who write about Greece. It is that class to 
 which the professor belongs whose letter is 
 quoted in the chapter on pronunciation. He 
 says : " I have a less high view of the modern 
 Greeks and their language than I had before my 
 recent residence in Athens of eight months. 
 There is absolutely no modern literature worthy 
 of the name." This professor is indeed a man 
 of profound learning, a great Greek scholar, 
 who has written important works on the Greek 
 language ; but he is like some other old gentle- 
 men — in the medical profession, for instance. 
 
 Our learned professor in the chapter on pro- 
 nunciation says : " I have a less high view of the 
 modern Greeks." 
 
 Athens possesses monuments of art superior to 
 any others to be found anywhere in the whole 
 world. The monuments in Athens date from 
 the most brilliant epoch of the classical period. 
 Every one has heard of the incomparably won- 
 derful climate and magnificent scenery of Athens 
 
272 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 and its surroundings. I cannot say which of 
 the three impressed me the most favorably : the 
 wonders of art, those of nature, or the thousand 
 good qualities I have seen in the Greeks them- 
 selves. The Greeks, notwithstanding their 
 faults — no nation is free from faults — notwith- 
 standing their mistake in going to war alto- 
 gether unprepared against a foe well prepared, 
 well supported, and thrice as numerous, the 
 Greeks not only have been, but never have 
 ceased to be to this very moment, the noblest 
 race. 
 
 There exists no alcoholism in Greece. Even 
 the bitter enemies of Greece, the tourists, who 
 are fault-finding all the time, in their publica- 
 tions generally mention that they never saw 
 drunken people in Greece. The Greeks live 
 plainly, moderately, and much more according 
 to the laws of nature than the people in Europe 
 or elsewhere in the civilized world. Obesity 
 even is extremely rare. There are fewer crimes 
 committed in Greece than in any other state of 
 Europe. The only crimes which are compara- 
 tively frequent are those of violence. Southern 
 blood, easily excitable, although by no means 
 ill-tempered — a little dispute about a trifle, 
 words are exchanged, the dispute becomes hot, 
 
EPILOGUE. 273 
 
 the blood boils ; everybody, at least of the coun- 
 try people, constantly carries arms ; the knife or 
 the pistol is drawn — there is a victim. Thiev- 
 ing is extremely rare. Dishonesty among the 
 Greek post-office employees, for instance, is 
 almost unknown. Money is exposed in glass 
 cases in large amounts on the sidewalks of Ath- 
 ens by the money-changers, sometimes almost 
 with as much confidence as the newspapers on a 
 newstand in New York. But we have some 
 illustration right in New York. Here these 
 many years have been and are living between 
 two and three thousand Greeks — mostly young — 
 of the poorest class. I am sure none of them 
 has ever been accused of stealing; at least I 
 never heard of such a case. It is true the po- 
 lice, after having made them pay a license for 
 peddling fruit, continually arrest these innocent 
 people under all sorts of pretexts, because they 
 sell fruit. 
 
 From official statistics we learn that in the 
 year 1885, when Greece had a little over two 
 millions of inhabitants, there were in the whole 
 kingdom 1,503 blind, 1,084 deaf, and 1,088 in- 
 sane. This small number of insane, especially, 
 is attributable to the absence of alcoholism. I 
 
 studied the statistics of all the lunatic asylums in 
 18 
 
274 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 Greece, and found that there were years in which 
 not a single case was recorded in which alcohol- 
 ism figured as a causal factor. 
 
 From official statistics we learn the following 
 most interesting facts: Among 5,000 deaths at 
 all ages, there is i occurring at the age of 100 
 years or more. One in 3,020 inhabitants attains 
 85 to 90 years (in France i in 4,354) ; i in 5,918, 
 90 to 95 years (in France i in 20,000, in Saxony 
 I in 11,000); I in 11,988, 95 to 100 years (in 
 France i in 83,145); i in 16,678, 100 or more 
 years (in France i in 352,947). 
 
 No country in all Europe is less afflicted with 
 syphilis than Greece. The reasons for this re- 
 markable fact are the following : 
 
 1. The majority of the population — namely, 
 55.27 per cent. — are peasants. 
 
 2. Houses of prostitution, except in some but 
 by no means in all cities, do not exist. This is 
 the more honorable to the Greeks of to-day 
 when one recalls the ancient cult of Aphrodite 
 Pandemos. Even Athens was without a brothel 
 until the French introduced their morals, or lack 
 of morals, during the blockade of the Piraeus at 
 the time of the Crimean war (1854-57). 
 
 3. The restricted communication between 
 many districts with large cities or foreign lands. 
 
EPILOGUE. 275 
 
 4. The strict morals of the majority of the 
 population. All witnesses agree that chastity is 
 law in Greece. The bitter enemies of this un- 
 fortunate country cannot deny that Greek wo- 
 men are virtuous women; that women are no- 
 where more highly respected. 
 
 Our professor was eight months in Athens. 
 He must have seen all the noble edifices, the 
 public institutions of science, art, and charity, 
 founded and provided for by Greek patriots, 
 which adorn Athens. I ask him, Is there any 
 city in the world which can rival Athens in 
 works of philanthropy and patriotism ? 
 
 Our professor of the chapter on pronunciation 
 says further: "There is absolutely no modern 
 literature worthy of the name." 
 
 In Athens the following learned societies ex- 
 ist: Parnassos Literary Society, founded 1865; 
 Byron Society, 1868; Society for the Propaga- 
 tion of Hellenic Literature, 1869; Society of the 
 Friends of Education, 1836; Historical and 
 Ethnological Society, 1883; The Physical Sci- 
 ence Society, 1887; Athens Scientific Society; 
 Teachers' Society, 1873; Orient, or Asia Minor 
 Society; Academy, 1859. 
 
 Has our professor in the chapter on pronunci- 
 ation not seen the transactions of these societies? 
 
2^6 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 They can be found in the libraries of Athens, 
 and they alone form a literature worthy the 
 name; but, above all, the professor must know 
 the publications of the Archaeological Society! 
 May I ask, are not the books of Papadimitrako- 
 poulos, of Hatzdakis, of Arguriados, for instance, 
 worthy of our highest admiration ? Do they not 
 belong to the best of any literature of our time ? 
 The following letter, which I wrote in Athens 
 for publication in the New York Medical Journaly 
 however, gives an idea of a work of a monumen- 
 tal grandeur belonging to the noblest of the lit- 
 erature of any country in the world. Is there 
 any literary production in any country at the 
 present time which is superior to this? 
 
 Athens, August idth, iSgy. 
 To the Editor of the New York Medical Journal : 
 
 Sir: One of the noblest buildings of modern 
 times is the Academy of Athens. As is well 
 known, it was built at an expense of five million 
 drachmas, the gift of a rich Greek, Simon G. 
 Sinas. Its features in general, its statues, the 
 gilding, and the colors give an idea of the 
 splendor of classical architecture. All this has 
 been well described and depicted. 
 
 However much we may admire this structure 
 
EPILOGUE. 277 
 
 and its beauties, we shall find in one of its vast 
 halls a treasure which is of much greater value 
 still, of a value for science, the praise of which 
 cannot possibly be exaggerated. 
 
 It is a collection of skulls and skeletons found 
 in Greece, dating from all periods — the prehis- 
 toric, that is, the period of Mykense, the archaic, 
 the classical, the Roman, and the Christian — and 
 in order to make comparisons with these ancient 
 skulls there are also skulls of our times from 
 different sections of the country. 
 
 The founder and conservator of this collection, 
 which is more important than any collection in 
 any other museum in the world, is Dr. Klon 
 Stephanos, the author of a scientific work en- 
 titled " La Grece au point de vue naturel, eth- 
 nologique, anthropologique, demographique et 
 medical" (Paris, 1884). 
 
 Each and every one of these skulls and other 
 parts of the skeleton have come to light through 
 the official excavations of the Greek government 
 and the Archaeological Society, under the strict- 
 est control of men of science who hold them- 
 selves responsible to the government and to the 
 world of science. Many of the skulls were taken 
 by Dr. Klon Stephanos himself at the moment of 
 their excavation. The skulls and skeletons are 
 
278 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 identified as to their origin, that is, the locality 
 where they were found, the surroundings, the 
 grave, the arms, the pottery, the tools, the orna- 
 ments — in fact, all that would aid in giving infor- 
 mation, nay, conclusive evidence, as to the period 
 to which the skulls or the skeletons belonged. 
 
 Here are — an important part of the collection 
 — forty skulls of the prehistoric, of the Mykense 
 period — that is, about the fifteenth century be- 
 fore Christ. Let us see what this number of 
 skulls of this early period signifies. Nine years 
 ago — that is, before this collection was begun — 
 there was not a single Greek skull of this period 
 known to science. Thus the question in regard 
 to the two principal peoples of the most ancient 
 Greece — the Pelasges and the Greeks proper — 
 the question of their being brachycephalous or 
 dolichocephalous, and in what proportion the one 
 or the other form predominated, could by no 
 means be decided. Now, by means of this rich 
 material which presents itself here, it may be 
 said positively and surely : Some of the prehis- 
 toric Greeks were mesaticephalous ; others were 
 dolichocephalous . 
 
 Until the year 1884 there were, in the differ- 
 ent collections of Europe, about ninety ancient 
 skulls known, of which twenty-nine belonged to 
 
EPILOGUE. 279 
 
 Attica (Nicolucci, Virchow, Broesike, et aL), 
 thirty-eight to Asia Minor (twenty-two to Troy 
 [Virchow] and sixteen to Ionia [Zaborowsky]), 
 four to the Greek islands (Quatref ages) , and 
 nineteen to southern Italy and Sicily (Nicolucci 
 et al.). This shows that there were only thirty- 
 three skulls from Greece, and that from most 
 parts of Greece not a single ancient skull was 
 known to science. There was the impossibility 
 of obtaining reliable results in regard to the 
 most important part of Hellenic ethnography, 
 the impossibility of a comparison of the ancient 
 type with all the later types of Greece. 
 
 There are in the collection some skeletons 
 from the oldest Iron Age of Greece, the twelfth 
 to the thirteenth century before Christ, found at 
 Eleusis. The objects of art found with these 
 skeletons show the geometric instead of the 
 naturalistic style, the latter being the style of 
 Mykense. Of the Iron Age, the museum pos- 
 sesses a number of skeletons of very small chil- 
 dren which had been preserved in vases in the 
 necropolis of Ereusis. At this period the mesat- 
 icephalous and the brachycephalous types begin 
 to make their appearance; the mesaticephalous 
 type is the predominating one, but the brachy- 
 cephalous type is frequent. 
 
28o CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 The number of skulls in the Museum of the 
 University of Athens, from this epoch to the 
 classical period, is very large, also the number 
 of those from the Roman and from the Christian 
 periods. Among the ancient skulls there are 
 series from Eretria, Corinth, and Boeotia (Thes- 
 pia, Chorsia, and Tanagra). Of the more recent 
 periods, there are series of skulls from Thessaly, 
 Naxos, Amorgos, Attica, ^gina, and Megara. 
 
 Dr. Stephanos takes the measurements accord- 
 ing to the adopted international method, but be- 
 sides he records according to his own method, 
 which gives the best results. As much as possi- 
 ble descriptive terms are avoided ; the measure- 
 ments alone, as a rule, are presented to demon- 
 strate the characteristics. These measurements, 
 as they are written down according to both 
 methods for each skull, show quite an extensive 
 amount of work. 
 
 While speaking of measurements, I will state 
 here that Dr. Stephanos has measured more than 
 ten thousand heads of Greek recruits. The re- 
 sults of these measurements are demonstrated 
 on a cephalometric map. On this map the ad- 
 ministrative divisions are ignored, since they 
 are often completely neutralized by the result of 
 anthropological researches. Thus, for instance, 
 
EPILOGUE. 281 
 
 villages are found far apart, which, according to 
 anthropological resemblances, belong together. 
 By lines of different colors the frequency of the 
 different types — hyperbrachycephalic, brachy- 
 cephalic, mesaticephalic, and dolichocephalic — 
 is demonstrated in a clear manner, and each 
 conglomeration of specimens of the one or the 
 other of these types can be seen at a glance. 
 
 The distribution of the frequency of the differ- 
 ent colors of eyes and hair is marked on a spe- 
 cial map by lines of different color. This latter 
 map is the first of its kind to demonstrate the 
 frequency of these characteristics for each special 
 type. 
 
 Dr. Stephanos has improved craniometric 
 methods by demonstrating certain characteristics 
 by means of measurements, and has in this man- 
 ner given the value of these characteristics in 
 exact mathematical form; he has also comple- 
 mented the "seriation" method by means of 
 which we are enabled to determine and to distin- 
 guish, in all cases in which different types come 
 under consideration, that part which belongs to 
 the one or the other of the different types, and 
 which are the oscillations and the maxima of fre- 
 quency of each cephalometric character in each 
 series. 
 
282 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 But not only has he improved the different 
 craniometric methods, but he has devoted himself 
 on a very large scale to the study so as to give all 
 sorts of elements which can be brought in to aid 
 more or less closely the study of anthropology. 
 In order to carry out this plan, thousands of ar- 
 chives, documents, deeds, ecclesiastical, fiscal, 
 and family papers, especially papers of the Middle 
 Ages, papers never before published, had to be 
 studied, and personal inquiries had to be made 
 in all parts, or among the inhabitants of all 
 parts, of Greece. The results of these re- 
 searches, comprising every locality of Greece, 
 myriads of names of places, of mountains, of 
 rivers, of families, of words in all the different 
 dialects for things pertaining to agricultural, 
 pastoral, and domestic life, of words from natu- 
 ral history, names for animals and plants, the 
 geographical domain of each phonetic phenome- 
 non of the Greek dialects, are collected in volu- 
 minous manuscripts which I have had the pleas- 
 ure, the delight, to examine. 
 
 There is, first, one volume treating of the re- 
 lation of all facts pertaining to invasions, cap- 
 tures, the captives taken, the transportation of 
 these captives, massacres, and depopulation. 
 
 The collection of family names presented in 
 
EPILOGUE. 283 
 
 another manuscript has proved to be of great 
 importance, as one example will demonstrate: 
 In parts where there was a great immigration, as 
 in the island of Zante at the end of the fifteenth 
 century, we find hundreds of family names taken 
 from the files of death certificates. We find 
 these names from the time mentioned down to 
 the present time, and can determine the place 
 whence the individuals came and where they 
 settled with a most surprising exactness and 
 certainty. 
 
 There is a map adorning the wall of the An- 
 thropological Museum the like of which has 
 never been executed before in any country. It 
 is a map of Greece during the Middle Ages, with 
 the names of all the villages, places, mountains, 
 rivers, etc., as they were found by the extensive 
 researches in history, in chronicles, in archives, 
 in documents, and in papers that I have men- 
 tioned. 
 
 One volume belonging to Dr. Stephanos* 
 great work of studying the anthropology of his 
 country in a more satisfactory manner and more 
 thoroughly than was ever done anywhere before, 
 gives the provincialisms, the dialects, and pho- 
 nological characters of all the words for things, 
 as already mentioned, relating to agricultural, 
 
284 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 pastoral, and domestic life, the terms of natural 
 history in the people's language, for instance, of 
 the fauna and flora of Greece in all the different 
 parts of the country, and also the description of 
 ceremonies, especially of weddings, in their va- 
 riety and peculiarity to locality. 
 
 The following copy, which I was allowed to 
 make, will serve to illustrate this part of the 
 work ; it will also illustrate some of the wonder- 
 ful poetical beauties of the Greek dialects and 
 the richness of the language : 
 
 "* //)«?, rainbow. 
 
 do^dpt^ arc/i, Syra, Kymi (Euboea), Cephalonia, 
 Chimarra (Epirus), Eurytania, etc. 
 
 d6^a, glory (only an abbreviation of a word, not ex- 
 actly meaning glory), Mykonos, Andros, Kythnos, 
 Karystos, Levadia, Anachona (Boeotia), Doride, 
 Redestos (Thrace). 
 
 Otodo^apo^ arch of God^ Nauplia, Lamia. 
 
 T^9 Xpf]a<s TO da^dpt, the arch of the old woman, Leu- 
 cade (Santa Maura). 
 
 do^dpt T7j^ xaXoypiqa^, arch of the nun, Ithaca. 
 
 K£pa^6.>y}j ij, belt of our lady, Naxia. 
 
 xspa^oo, Paros, Kythnos. 
 xtpar^oo, Siphnos. 
 
 The mean- 
 ing of these 
 
 xepa^ouka, Sikinos. r j j. 
 
 rr,. >,., * 'words cannot 
 
 vepavr^obXa, Thera, Milos, Amorgos u 4- a 
 
 (dvepal^ouXa ?). J 
 
 'Ay{a "EXivTj, Chios, Mitylini (perhaps first 'Aytag 
 ''EXivrj'i Z(ov7)y belt of St. Helen). 
 
EPILOGUE. 285 
 
 Constructions 
 of w h i c h no 
 translation can 
 be given. 
 
 KepaffeXivTjj Kos. 
 
 xspaffoXivT^y Lemnos. 
 
 xepaffoXi^ Ikaria. 
 
 xoupaXy)<Td, Libision (Asia Minor). 
 
 IIavaYia<s to ^cuvdptj belt of the Blessed Virgin^ Leu- 
 kadia. 
 
 xaXoYp-qa<s to ^lovdpt^ belt of the nufi, Sparta, Messina, 
 Argolide. 
 
 xaX6yp-qa<s^ Elide. 
 
 xaXoypi^j Gortynia. 
 
 '^Ayia '^(ovrj^ the holy belt, Syra. 
 
 Kaiidpa, Megata, Keos, Andros, Kypros. 
 
 Add I xai xpaffc, oil and wine (because the prophecy 
 is : If the rainbow has much of the green color there 
 will be a rich harvest of olives, and if there is much 
 red there will be a good wine year), Monemuasia. 
 
 'Avefiod6;(u?, Mykonos, Tinos. 
 
 MapooXi (xa/jL/j.apodXi2), Magne. 
 
 xanipdvi, Sphakia (Crete). 
 
 Dr. Stephanos is preparing a bibliography for 
 his own use and also to aid every student of the 
 subject, giving the titles of all books, pamphlets, 
 articles in periodicals, and manuscripts which 
 treat of the anthropology of Greece or may 
 serve for its study. 
 
 The books, pamphlets, prints of all kinds, and 
 manuscripts which form the library of the Mu- 
 seum of Anthropology of the University of Ath- 
 ens, it goes without saying, make the most com- 
 plete collection of its kind. The nucleus of this 
 
286 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 library was the gift of the celebrated man of sci- 
 ence, Alexander Paspatis, and his widow has 
 given a considerable sum for the completion of 
 this library. 
 
 If we take a glance over the whole, the great 
 collection and the great work connected with it 
 which present themselves to the scholar, we may 
 well envy the University of Athens, and Greece 
 in general, which are so fortunate as to possess 
 them. Here is a rich material for the study of 
 anthropology, and a master is here to make use 
 of it as nobody ever before has been able to do. 
 It is especially noteworthy that one single man is 
 working on a scale of such immense proportions. 
 
 The Greeks incurred the displeasure of the 
 European governments by their revival of 
 the Olympian games in 1896. The eyes of the 
 world were directed toward the Greeks, and it 
 appeared very probable that many of the artifi- 
 cially kept up prejudices against them would 
 vanish. This, however, as we can understand 
 after having read history, did not harmonize 
 with the politics of the English, the Russian, and 
 the German governments. With the commence- 
 ment of the Cretan difficulties the press of Eu- 
 rope, foremost that of Germany, was directed to 
 
EPILOGUE. 287 
 
 influence public opinion against the Greeks. It 
 is painful to say there was nothing too base, 
 nothing too absurd in calumniation, but the pub- 
 lic accepted it. The journals refused everything 
 that was offered to correct misrepresentations. 
 Most remarkable was the conduct of the German 
 press of New York ; here the German Wahrheits- 
 liebe was suspended, and Freiheitsliebe was not 
 accorded to the poor Cretans suffering under 
 cruel Turkish yoke. The pleasure at the de- 
 feat of the Greek army was great; no Ger- 
 man seemed to remember anything about the 
 history of the battles of Jena and Auerstaedt, 
 and all that preceded and all that followed. Let 
 us hope that the Greeks may learn from history 
 how the soldiers of 1806 — that is, the soldiers 
 from Jena and Auerstaedt — became the soldiers 
 of 18 1 3, the soldiers of Leipsic. 
 
 In the Historical and Ethnological Museum of 
 Athens there is a glass case, surrounded by 
 Turkish flags. In this case there are, as the 
 following inscription tells : 
 
 66ibt<s xai OpaoafiaTa 66idiov xai 6oXi8£<; ix tvjv pi<pBtiau>v 
 ix rou xoXnoo rwv Xavicav izapa too r/va/xivou arokoo twv i$ 
 MeydXwv Auvdfiswv xard t(ou iv IJpo^TJTrj ^HXia tod' Axpiovqpioo 
 iffrparoTzedeufiivcov 700 XpiffTiavibv Kprfzwv rijv g-qv 0e(fpoua' 
 ptou, 1897, 8)pa 4^ p.fi. 
 
288 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 (Shells and fragments of shells and balls 
 which have been thrown from the Gulf of Canea 
 by the united fleet of the six great powers into 
 Prophiti Ilia of Acrotisi against the 700 Chris- 
 tian Cretans encamped there on the 9th of Feb- 
 ruary, 1897, at 4:30 P.M.) 
 
 These projectiles tell of the greatest shame, 
 not only of our century, but of the history of 
 mankind. 
 
 It was my good fortune while in Athens to see 
 Professor Hatzidakis, whom I have quoted in the 
 first chapter of this book. He is a Cretan. 
 When the revolution broke out, he left his place 
 at the university and fought for his country with 
 the other insurgents. He told me : "In Crete 
 mourning, poverty, and famine reign. There 
 is no money. People are sadly in need of cloth- 
 ing, and they have no bread." Hatzidakis was 
 with his people. One day they baked bread. 
 This became known, and children in masses 
 came asking for a piece of bread. There was 
 none with a whole garment. 
 
 Early in September last I left the Piraeus to 
 return home to America. It was two o'clock in 
 the morning when we were passing the isle of 
 Crete. We saw the men-of-war of the six pow- 
 ers ; they had illuminated ; on board there were 
 
EPILOGUE. 289 
 
 music and dancing and fireworks. The brave 
 men who had fired from a safe distance upon the 
 Cretan Christians were celebrating the anniver- 
 sary of the Sultan's ascension to the throne. 
 
 While in Athens Mr. Bikelas invited me, to- 
 gether with my little daughter, to dinner. He 
 listened with great interest to all I had to say 
 about Hellenism in America. "How unfortu- 
 nate," he said, "that America is so far from us." 
 
 In the house of a lady of distinction, where I 
 had been honored with an invitation, I met some 
 refugees from Thessaly — ladies and gentlemen. 
 We spoke of America, and each and every one 
 expressed himself in the very words of Mr. Bi- 
 kelas. 
 
 When you come to Athens, the doors, the 
 
 arms, the hearts of the people are wide open to 
 
 you, because you are an American. 
 19 
 
LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS. 
 
 The author begs to express his sincerest gratitude for being 
 permitted to publish the list of subscribers, which includes the 
 names of many reverend and illustrious men. The object of 
 the publication was expressed in the circular, namely, to iden- 
 tify and draw nearer together the Philhellenes of America. It 
 may serve useful ends to have this list as complete as possible, 
 and therefore all Philhellenes are asked to send iii their names 
 for publication in a later edition of the book. 
 
 No, of copies. 
 
 3 Miss Fanny S. Adam, 13 E. 40th St., New York. 
 
 1 Rev. M. W. Adams, Dean Atlanta University, Atlanta, Ga. 
 
 2 Mr. A. M. Agelasto, Norfolk, Va. 
 
 5 Hon. Eben Alexander, former United States Minister to 
 Greece, Professor of Greek, North Carolina University, 
 Chapel Hill, N. C. 
 
 I Mr. E. Alexander, 41 Fulton St., Boston, Mass. 
 
 I Dr. Rudolf Allert, 502 E. 58th St., New York. 
 
 I Mr. B. G. Amend, 205 Third Ave., New York. 
 
 1 Mr. C. A. L. Amend, 205 Third Ave., New York. 
 
 2 Mr. Robert F. Amend, 205 Third Ave., New York. 
 
 I Louis F. Anderson, Professor of Greek, Whitman College, 
 Walla Walla, Wash. 
 
 I S. J. Ansley, Professor of Greek and Latin, Howard Col- 
 lege, East Lake, Ala. 
 
 I Rev. Archimandrit Chrysanthos Antoniadis, Ph.D., 
 Athens, Greece. 
 
 I Mr. B. Antoniou, Athens, Greece. 
 
 I John Argyriadis, Professor of Philology, Theological Sem- 
 inary, Athens, Greece. 
 
 I Mrs, F. Bagoe, 423 Fourth Ave., New York. 
 
292 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 No. of copies. 
 
 I Mrs. Xenophon Baltazzi, 16 E. 40th St., New York. 
 I Mr. T. S. Baltazzi, Schulenburg, Texas. 
 I Hon. S. J. Barrows, House of Representatives, Washing- 
 ton, D. C. 
 I Mr. S. Bazanos, 558 Broad St., Augusta, Ga. 
 I Lukas S. Bellos, M.D., Athens, Greece. 
 I Mr. Peter M. Biegen, 558 Mott Ave., New York. 
 
 1 Mrs. Mary L. Biegen, 1035 E. 156th St., New York. 
 
 2 Mr. D. Bikelas, Athens, Greece. 
 
 2 Mr. Francis Blake, Keewaydin, Weston, Mass., Auburn- 
 dale P. O. 
 I Mr. James A. Blanchard, Tribune Building, New York. 
 I Mr. Andrew Blaurock, 604 E. 17th St., New York. 
 10 Hon. D. N. Botassi, Consul General of Greece, New York. 
 
 1 Mr. John Botassi, Athens, Greece. 
 
 2 Mr. John L. Brower, 156 and 158 Broadway, New York. 
 
 I Prof. George S. Brown, Antioch College, Yellow Springs, 
 
 Ohio. 
 I Dillon Brown, M.D., 40 E. 57th St., New York. 
 I Mrs. Louise Buchtel, 153 W. 23d St., New York. 
 I Rev. Henry A. Buttz, Dean Theological Seminary, Madi- 
 son, N. J. 
 I Arch. M. Campbell, M.D., 36 First Ave., Mt. Vernon, 
 
 N. Y. 
 I Mr. Demetrius Carra, 33 S. William St., New York. 
 I Thomas Carter, Professor of Greek and Latin, Centenary 
 
 College, Jackson, La. 
 I Joseph Collins, M.D., Professor Post-Graduate Medical 
 
 School, New York. 
 I Mr. F. O. Collins, 131 Third Ave., New York. 
 I Miss Phroso Colocotronis, Athens, Greece. 
 I Cooper Union, New York. 
 I Rev. N. E. Cornetet, Professor of Latin and Greek, Avalon 
 
 College, Trenton, Mo. 
 I Most Rev. M. A. Corrigan, Archbishop of New York. 
 I C. Everett Conant, Professor of Greek and Latin, Lincoln 
 
 University, Lincoln, 111. 
 I Prof. J. M. Cox, Philander Smith College, Little Rock, 
 
 Ark. 
 
LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS. 293 
 
 No. of copies. 
 
 I J. K. Crook, M.D., 36 E. 29th St., New York. 
 
 I Andrew F. Currier, M.D., 120 E. 34th St., New York. 
 
 I M. G. Dadirrian, M.D., 73 Lexington Ave., New York. 
 
 I Dr. J. E. David, 70 Liberty St., Asheville, N. C. 
 
 I Mr. J. W. Davis, Public School 81, Bedford Park, New 
 York. 
 
 I Mr. M. Diepenbrock, 50 E. 58th St., New York. 
 
 I Mr. Angelo Dotorato, 192 E. 125th St., New York. 
 
 I Mr. Nicholas Dotorato, 192 E. 125th St., New York. 
 
 I T. J. Downing, M.D., New London, Mo. 
 
 I Mortimer Larason Earle, Professor Bryn Mawr College, 
 Bryn Mawr, Pa. 
 
 I Mr. Carl Edelheim, 202 West Logan Square, Philadelphia, 
 Pa. 
 
 I Max Einhorn, M.D., 20 E. 63d St., New York. 
 
 I Mr. F. Eissner, 18 Bible House, New York. 
 
 I John F. Erdmann, M.D., 149 W. 44th St., New York. 
 
 I His Excellency Athanasios P. Eutaxias, Minister of Cultus 
 and Public Instruction of Greece, Athens, Greece. 
 
 I Mr. B. Eutichidi, 914 Gravies St. , New Orleans, La. 
 
 I Miss Mary Evarts, 231 Second Ave., New York. 
 
 I Rev. Wm. Everett, 44 Second Ave., New York. 
 
 I W. A. Ewing, M.D., 134 W. 58th St., New York. 
 10 Mr. P. F. Fachiri, 145 W. 58th St., New York. 
 
 I W. E. Farrar. Professor of Latin and Greek, Bethel Col- 
 lege, Russellville, Ky. 
 
 I Miss Louise M. Fitzgerald, 314 E. 30th St., New York. 
 
 I Mr. Sophocles Fouriesos, 2260 St. Catherine St., Montreal, 
 Canada. 
 
 1 Rev. James Eraser, Professor of Greek, New Windsor Col- 
 
 lege, New Windsor, Maryland. 
 
 2 Francis Foerster, M.D., Professor Post-Graduate School of 
 
 Medicine, New York. 
 I G. R. Fowler, M.D., 301 De Kalb Ave., Brooklyn, N. Y. 
 I W. Freudenthal, M.D., 1003 Madison Ave., New York. 
 I J. Henry Fruitnight, M.D., 161 W. 57th St., New York. 
 
 1 Mr. C. S. Galanopoulo, 2-]}4. Madison St., New York. 
 
 2 Mr. A. S. Galatti, Stegul Hotel. Temple, Texas. 
 2 Mr. P. J. Galatti, 15 Old Slip. New York. 
 
294 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 No. of copies. 
 
 I Deaconess Gardner, Grace Memorial Home, 94 Fourth 
 Ave., New York. 
 
 I Mrs. Mary R. Geis, 136th St., New York. 
 
 I A. G. Gerster, M.D., Professor New York Polyklinik, 
 New York. 
 
 I Mr. E. W. Gilles, 120 E. 53d St., New York. 
 
 I J. W. Gleitsmann, M.D., Professor Polyklinik, New York. 
 
 I Mr. G. Georgopoulos, 33 S. William St., New York. 
 
 I Rev. A. E. Gobble, President Central Pennsylvania Col- 
 lege, New Berlin, Union Co., Pa. 
 
 I Miss Caroline A. Godfroy, 366 Jefferson Ave., Detroit, 
 Mich. 
 
 I Dr. H. Goetter, 338 Second Ave., New York. 
 
 I C. M. Gould, M.D., West Superior, Wis. 
 
 5 Dr. G., New York. 
 
 1 Miss Elisabeth Hatten, Professor Union Christian College, 
 
 Merom, Sullivan Co., Ind. 
 
 2 Rev. F. Heiermann, S.J., Professor Canisius College, 
 
 Buffalo, N. Y. 
 I Messrs. Hunt & Gregorius, 259 First Ave., New York. 
 I Rev. W. R. Huntington, Rector Grace Church, New York. 
 I G. N. Hatzidakis, Professor of Philology, University 
 
 Athens, Greece. 
 I C. Imperatori, M.D., 28 Oliver St., New York. 
 I A. V. Williams Jackson, Professor Columbia University, 
 
 New York. 
 5 A. Jacob!, M.D., Professor Columbia University, New 
 
 York. 
 
 1 George W. Jacoby, M.D., 663 Madison Ave., New York. 
 
 2 Mr. D. Jannopoulo, St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 I Mr. George W. Jarchow, 445 Second Ave., New York. 
 
 I S. S. Jones, M.D., 712 Madison Ave., New York. 
 
 I Mr. Panagiotis D. Kalogeropoulos, Conservator of the 
 
 Library of the Parliament, Athens, Greece. 
 I Rev. Dr. Kalapothakis, Athens, Greece. 
 I Mr. Petros Kannelidis, Editor of the Athenian Daily 
 
 Kairoi, Athens. 
 I Mr. John Kasimatis, 39 Odos Themistokleous, Athens, 
 
 Greece. 
 
LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS. 295 
 
 No. of copies. 
 
 I P. Kastriotis, Ph.D., Ephoros Archaiotiton, Athens, 
 Greece. 
 
 I Mr. Starros Kazis, W. Blackstone St. , opposite Old Boston 
 and Maine Depot, Boston. 
 
 I Alexander Kerr, Professor University of Wisconsin, Madi- 
 son, Wis. 
 
 1 Kettembeil, M.D., 662 E. 146th St., New York. 
 
 2 Ed. L. Keyes, M.D., 109 E. 34th St., New York. 
 
 I John B. Kieffer, Professor Franklin and Marshall College, 
 
 Lancaster, Pa. 
 I Mrs. Marie Kleman, 444 Central Park West, New York. 
 I Rev. D. Kosionis, Greek Orthodox Church, Chicago, 111. 
 
 1 Dr. Constantin Kourouniotis, Ephoros of the Archaeological 
 
 Society of Athens, Chios. 
 
 2 Mr. L. C. Kuchukoff, 41 E. 69th St., New York. 
 
 I George F. Laidlaw, M.D., 137 W. 41st St., New York. 
 I Mile. Marie Lambert, 46 Seventh St., New York. 
 I F. Lange, M.D.. 130 E. 6ist St., New York. 
 I G. Langmann, M.D., 121 W. 57th St., New York. 
 I Mr. Nicholas Laskaropoulos, 960 Lexington Ave., New 
 York. 
 
 1 Charles A. Leale, M.D., 604 Madison Ave., New York. 
 
 2 Mr. John Lefferts, Jr., Lawyer, 186 Remsen St., Brooklyn, 
 
 N. Y. 
 
 I Mr. G. Lekas, 17 Roosevelt St., New York. 
 
 I Dr. Basilios Leonardos, Ephoros of the Museum of Inscrip- 
 tions, Athens, Greece. 
 
 I Mr. Michael Likopantis, Athens, Greece. 
 
 1 Miss F. Margaret Linton, 414 E. 14th St., New York. 
 
 2 Mr. Gregory G. Livierato, 91-93 Wall St., New York. 
 
 I Rudolf Loreck, Dr. Juris., Lawyer, 253 Broadway. New 
 
 York. 
 I Mr. Angelo Lucato. 301 Columbus Ave. , New York. 
 I Mr. J. E. McAfee, Parkville, Mo. 
 
 1 N. G. McMaster," M.D., 322 E. 15th St., New York. 
 
 2 Mr. John McClure, 259 W. 52d St., New York. 
 
 I Rt. Rev. James A. McFaul, Bishop of Trenton, N. J. 
 I John McNaugher, Professor Theological Seminary, Alle- 
 ghany, Pa. 
 
296 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
 No. of copies. 
 
 I Rev. Brother Maurice, President Rock Hill College, Elli- 
 
 cott City, Md. 
 I Mr. John C. Maximus, Manhattan Club, cor. 34th St. and 
 
 Fifth Ave., New York. 
 
 1 Mr. C. Fo Mehltretter, 239 E. 87th St., New York. 
 
 2 Mr. C. Menelas, Mobile, Ala. 
 
 I Mr. George Merck, 8th St., University Place, New York. 
 
 I E. J. Messemer, M.D., 144 Second Ave., New York. 
 
 I Mr. Max Meyer, Lawyer, 120 Broadway, New York. 
 
 I Dr. Franz Meyer, Bound Brook, N. J. 
 
 I Willy Meyer, M.D., Professor Post-Graduate School of 
 
 Medicine, New York. 
 I Mr. F. G. Miliadis, Augusta, Ga. 
 I Mr. Miltiades A. Mitaranga, Waco, Texas. 
 
 1 Mrs. Bertha Morat, 321 E. 84th St., New York. 
 
 2 Rev. F. E. Murphy, S.J., President College of St. Francis 
 
 Xavier, New York. 
 
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 I Mr. Nicholas Nikias, 960 Lexington Ave. , New York. 
 
 I Edward North, Professor Hamilton College, Clinton, 
 N. Y. 
 
 I Northwestern University Library, Watertown, Wis. 
 
 I Harry S. Oppenheiraer, M.D., 49 E. 23d St., New York. 
 
 I Mrs. William Orlick, 51 E. 29th St., New York. 
 
 I S. Stanhope Orris, Professor of Greek, Princeton Univer- 
 sity, Princeton, N. J. 
 
 I F. A. Packard, M.D., Kearney, Neb. 
 
 3 Mr. John C. Palamaris, 117 S. Robey St, Chicago, 111. 
 
 I Th. Papadimitrakopoulos, Ph.D., Professor of Philology, 
 
 University Athens, Greece. 
 I Mr. Gregory D. Papadopulos, 828 Palace St., Montreal, 
 
 Canada. 
 3 Rev. Archimandrit Agathodoros Papageorgopoulos, Rector 
 
 Greek Church, New York. 
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LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS. 29/ 
 
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298 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
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LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS. 299 
 
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300 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. 
 
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