My Answer to "Are Romanians Greek?"

Note: Article originally posted as an answer on Quora.

Engravings depicting 19th century traditional Greek (left) and Romanian (right) clothing

I was spurred into providing an answer after casting my eyes on Oreste Papadopol’s “answer” to this question. Which I have to say is absolute rubbish from beginning to end. Unresearched rubbish I might add. With all due respect, Mr. Papadopol (again) displays the historical research level, the argument accuracy and ability of persuasion of the guys who say Dacians flew in UFOs and built the Egyptian pyramids… He sure has a talent for sharing “tall tales” and half-truths on a regular basis, I’ll give him that…

So I’ll answer the question while simultaneously dismantling Mr. Papadopol’s “troll” answer:

1. The term “Greek Catholics”, which Mr. Papadopol cites in favor of his argument, has nothing to do with Greek ancestry or ethnicity. This is a silly extrapolation. The term merely referred to Orthodox Romanians from Transylvania that were brought into the Catholic fold. As for the “Greek” segment of the term: the Eastern Orthodox Church was also called the “Greek Orthodox Church”. Why? Because the Eastern Orthodox Church originated in Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, that is the Eastern Roman Empire under a reborn Greek influence! So those Romanians from Transylvania who converted to Catholicism were not called “Greek Catholics” because of Greek blood ties, but because the Romanian people (regardless of region) had originally been Christianized in the Greek/Byzantine rite (=the Eastern Orthodox faith). The principality of Wallachia, for example, had been placed firmly under the religious authority of the ecumenical patriarch in Constantinople during the reign of Romanian voivode Nicolae Alexandru, as explained by Romanian historians Daniel Barbu and Neagu Djuvara in their works: Sur le nom du prince de Valachie Nicolas-Alexandre and Thocomerius - Negru Vodă respectively. Coming back to the matter of hand: being Christianized in the Orthodox/Greek/Byzantine rite does not make one Greek: Serbians, Bulgarians, Ukrainians, Georgians and Russians are also Orthodox, that doesn’t make them ethnic Greeks nor does it signify a Greek mixture! Just like being Roman-Catholic does not make the Germans for example a Latin people. Let us also not forget that the Byzantine Greek writer Ioannis Kanavoutzis said that:

"For although we are Christians, sharing one faith and one baptism with many nations, we still consider and call the Bulgarians, Vlachs [i.e. Romanians and Aromanians], Albanians, Russians, and other such peoples barbarians."

The pomp and splendor of the Imperial Court in Constantinople, by Romanian illustrator Radu Oltean

2. Mr. Papadopol then says that Romanians and Greeks are the same thing. In an attempt to support his theory, Oreste goes on to say that the term “Romanian” comes from “Roman”, and that the Greeks also called themselves “Romans” at some point. Let’s take it step by step:

• To quote British historian Robert William Seton-Watson, author of a book titled A History of the Roumanians:

“The Roumanians, it is safe to say, are Romanised Dacians, infiltrated with Slav and to a very much lesser degree Tatar blood”.

• Basically, the Proto-Romanians were Daco-Romans who, over time, assimilated some of the Slavs and Turks (Cuman, Tatar, Bulgar etc.) who settled on their lands giving birth to the Romanian people. The Latin roots remained the dominant element- which is why we (particulalry in Wallachia) always called ourselves “rumâni/români”, why the Roman emperor Trajan remained a part of Romanian folklore for a long time and why we speak a Romance language (derived from Vulgar Latin), with significant similarities to Southern Italian dialects and even to Catalan and (according to Djuvara) Dalmatian; not to mention that there are still enough Romanians who exhibit Latin physical features (they could easily pass for an Italian). The Dacian (Thracian) element had been unfortunately reduced during the Roman occupation of Dacia in favor of the Latin civilization - traces of it can still be found, however, in the traditional garb of Romanian peasant women and certain pre-Christian beliefs in Romanian folklore. The Slavic element slightly affected the language phonetically and lexically - which is why Romanian sounds a bit different from the Western Romance tongues - and was also partially assimilated in our genes in some areas, especially the region of Moldavia. The Turkic element played an even smaller part than the Slavic one: Cuman in the territory that was called “Black Cumania”, as well as Bulgar in the territory of Transylvania (according to Gesta Hungarorum) and south of the Danube (according to Byzantine chronicles). There are still some sparce traces to be found of Cuman infiltration through names of people (Coman, Comăneci) and places (Comana, Comarnic, Peceneaga, Pecineaga).

Image from a Roman city in Dacia, by Romanian illustrator Radu Oltean

• As for a Greek element in Romanian culture:
• The Greeks did establish several port cities (chiefly Tomis, Histria and Callatis) in the south of modern-day Romania, towards the Black Sea. They traded with the Getai, ancestors of the Romanians (the Getai are related to the Dacians - with Strabo arguing that they spoke the same language -, but the exact degree of their kinship is still debated), who much like the rest of the Thracian peoples, came under the influence of the Hellenistic civilization. Alexander the Great even conquered the Getai and after his death, the diadoch Lysimachos - one of Alexander’s former generals - led two campaigns to reconquer the Getai, but was defeated by their king, Dromichaites. Years later, the Greek havens on the Black Sea came under the “protection” (overlordship) of the Dacian king Burebista - Burebista even used a Greek man, known as Akornion of Dionysopolis, as an emissary to Pompey during the Roman civil war to negotiate a potential alliance against Julius Caesar. There was clearly some intermingling under Burebista between the Greeks tributary to him and his own Dacian subjects. With the eventual Roman conquest, both the Dacian kingdom and the Greek cities ceased to be indepedent entities, becoming possessions of the Roman Empire, with their citizens being Romanized. At most: you could say that there is a partial Greek element in Dobruja’s regional identity, but that is all: the Hellenistic influence in that part of the world gradually declined during the power struggles between the diadochs and was finally brought to an end with the emergence of the Roman provinces of Moesia and Dacia.

The city of Callatis in Lysimachos’ time, by Romanian illustrator Radu Oltean

• I’ve already talked about our common Eastern Orthodox faith, but that is a thing we Romanians and Greek share with many other peoples (Bulgarians, Serbians, Georgians, Ukrainians, Russians).
• There were indeed a few noble families that rose to prominence in the Romanian principalities that were of Byzantine heritage, such as the Cantacuzino family. But these descendants of old Constantinople were gradually swallowed up, inter-marrying with local Romanian families, to the point that they were seen as being domni pământeni, which means autochtonous lords (only the families themselves remained, remotely, aware of their distant Greek bloodline).
• Greek influence made a comeback many years later during the reign of the Phanariots - wealthy Greeks (though there were a few Albanians among them as well!), hailing from the Phanar quarter in Constantinople (now Istanbul), who were placed by the Ottomans on the thrones of the Romanian principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia as vassals of the Sultan. In that time, plays were often acted in Greek - particularly during the reign of Ioan Gheorghe Caragea, a patron of the theatre-, the garb of the Boyars - the aristocratic caste - became increasingly more Oriental - hearkening to both the Byzantine but also Ottoman custom. There were also Greek merchants who emigrated to the Romanian principalities around this time. One cannot deny that the Greek culture had touched the Romanian world in many ways during the Phanariot period. *But, it did not fundamentally change Romanian culture and gene pool! Which is why, after the Phanariot period, the Greek influence lost any dominance it had.

Illustration of Boyars from the Romanian principalities of Wallachia and Romania during the Phanariot period

• There were also Greek refugees who settled in Romania after WW2 during the Greek Civil War, which lasted between 1946 and 1949. Again, they did not fundamentally change Romanian culture and gene pool. They were assimilated into the already-established Romanian people.
• As for the fact that Mr. Papadopol says that both our nations called themselves “Romans”. I want to point out that we had already distinguished ourselves from each other following the dissolution of the greater Roman Empire: we Romanians called ourselves rumâni/români, whereas the Byzantine Greeks called themselves Romaioi/Rhomaioi (romei in Romanian). Sure, both endonyms come from the same root and acknowledge a common Roman cultural and/or ethnical heritage. But so does the Romansh people in Switzerland! We are not the same mixture of peoples. The very fact that the original term Roman was deformed in so many ways in different corners of Europe points out that these endonyms (Români, Rhomaioi, Romansh etc.) were the result of a division of the Romanized peoples into new ethnical identities!
• Similarly the term Vlach - which has become associated with Romanians and their brothers (Aromanians, Istroromanians and Meglenoromanians) - initially denoted the Latin heritage of a large number of peoples or Roman influence on certain territories, as Romanian historian Neagu Djuvara pointed out in one of his books titled Cum s-a născut poporul român (tr. How was the Romanian people born): the term Waloon, used for the French-speakers in Belgium, comes from Vlach, Wales also comes from Vlach because there was a Roman colony there and Poles used to call both Romanians and their Italian cousins Vlach. And yet we are not the exact same folk! Because we are not the exact same mixture of peoples! Aside from the common Roman origin, some of us have Thracian, Slavic, Turkic elements added in, others have Germanic, Basque, Arabian or Celtic elements.

Map of the Roman Empire where the traces of the term “Valach” were preserved, by Romanian illustrator Radu Oltean

3. Mr. Papadopol says that Romanian national identity is a “mystical-ideological entity by Napoleon III of France”. Out of mere ignorance or ill-intent (I’m not sure which is true in his case), Oreste confuses or neglects to make a difference between the concept of “identity of a national state” and “ethnical consciousness”. “Romanian” identity as in ethnical consciousness existed earlier than the 18th-19th centuries. Since the Middle Ages we called ourselves “rumâni/români” - stemming from “Romans” as said before, so we were very much aware that we were different from our Slavic, Turkic and Ugric neighbors and that we had Latin roots. In his work titled, Letopisețul Țării Moldovei (tr. Chronicle of the Land of Moldavia) Romanian chronicler Grigore Ureche was the first to issue the now famous statement “noi de la Rîm ne tragem” which translates to “we hail from Rome”. And in his own work, Romanian boyar and chronicler Miron Costin further expanded on the Roman origins of the Romanian people, talking about the Roman Emperor Trajan and his wars with the Dacian king Decebalus that led to the Roman conquest of Dacia. There is also the old Romanian legend of Dochia and Trajan - seen by many as a myth related to the Romanian people’s ethnogenesis-, which depicts the Roman emperor attempting to kidnap the Dacian woman Dochia and bring her back to Rome as his possession. 

“Trajan and Dochia”, by Romanian illustrator Valentin Tănase

So while the idea a Romanian national state is indeed a modern concept and ambition, that began to take shape during a time of national awakening throughout Europe, the ethnical self-identification of Romanians (whether hailing from Wallachia, Moldavia or Transylvania) as an Eastern Romance people is far older. 

That being said: contact and ties between the Romanian and Greek peoples as well as their ancestors are undeniable. But to go as far as to say that they are the same folk is a ludicrous and baseless claim, nothing more.

Sources:

• Sur le nom du prince de Valachie Nicolas-Alexandre, by Daniel Barbu
• Thocomerius - Negru Vodă, by Neagu Djuvara
• A History of the Roumanians, by Robert William Seton-Watson
• Geţii lui Burebista şi lumea lor, by Radu Oltean
• Cum s-a născut poporul român, by Neagu Djuvara
• Letopisețul Țării Moldovei, by Grigore Ureche
• De neamul moldovenilor, by Miron Costin