geography-of-greece

"Renoun’d Epire, that gave Olimpias life, Great Alexanders Mother, Phillips Wife."

"For all of us who love History, and know History, Macedonia is as Greek as the Acropolis."

"The borders between Greece and Serbia were defined in 1913 on the basis of the advances of the armies of the two nations during the first Balkan war. The border between Greece and Bulgaria was defined at the Treaty of Bucharest. Since then, the borders of the three nations had remained the same. Macedonia, a region mostly of Greece since ancient times, was divided into three perhaps even four parts, with Greece keeping the largest portion of about 50%, then-Yugoslavia receiving about 35%, Bulgaria about 10% and a small percentage eventually ending in Albania. The Greek people on the portion of the Macedonia part in Greece have been there since time immemorial -- over more than forty centuries before the Slavs arrived. The language spoken in the Greek region since antiquity is Greek, whereas the language of the former-Yugoslavia portion is a Slavic dialect of Bulgarian (Marline Simons, The New York Times, February 3, 1992). As a matter of fact, the portion of Macedonia in then-Yugoslavia was part of the Eastern Branch of the Roman Empire. The people who ruled over Serbia spoke Greek. Constantinople was their headquarters. Their main trade was to the South and East..."

"Even the peace that followed the Balkan Wars was cruel, in a novel manner that would become a recurrent feature of the twentieth century. It no longer sufficed, in the eyes of nationalists, to acquire foreign territory. Now it was peoples as well as borders that had to move. Sometimes these movements were spontaneous. Muslims fled in the direction of Salonika as the Greeks, Serbs and Bulgarians advanced in 1912; Bulgarians fled Macedonia to escape from invading Greek troops in 1913; Greeks chose to leave the Macedonian districts ceded to Bulgaria and Serbia by the Treaty of Bucharest. Sometimes populations were deliberately expelled, as the Greeks were from Western Thrace in 1913 and from parts of Eastern Thrace and Anatolia in 1914. In the wake of the Turkish defeat, there was an agreed population exchange: 48,570 Turks moved one way and 46,764 Bulgarians the other across the new Turkish-Bulgarian border. Such exchanges were designed to transform regions of ethnically mixed settlement into the homogeneous societies that so appealed to the nationalist imagination. The effects on some regions were dramatic. Between 1912 and 1915, the Greek population of (Greek) Macedonia increased by around a third; the Muslim and Bulgarian population declined by 26 and 13 per cent respectively. The Greek population of Western Thrace fell by 80 per cent; the Muslim population of Eastern Thrace rose by a third. The implications were distinctly ominous for the many multi-ethnic communities elsewhere in Europe."

"Kemal saw no need to massacre all the Greeks in Smyrna, though a substantial number of able-bodied men were marched inland, suffering assaults by Turkish villagers along the way. He merely gave the Greek government until October I to evacuate them all. By the end of 1923 more than 1.2 million Greeks and 100,000 Armenians had been forced from their ancestral homes. The Greeks responded in kind. In 1915 some 60 per cent of the population of Western Thrace had been Muslims and 29 per cent of the population of Macedonia. By 1924 the figures had plunged to 28 per cent and zero per cent, their places taken by Greeks."

"The Greek War of Independence, which came to a successful conclusion in 1832, affected less than one half of the Greeks in the Turkish Empire. It did not bring freedom to the Greeks of Macedonia and Thrace, of Crete and the Aegean Islands, nor to the more than two million Greeks in Asia Minor and Constantinople."

"Journalist: Do you believe that the uprising in Macedonia will be suppressed soon? Stournaras: There is no uprising in Macedonia. Noone from the inhabitants has rebelled against the rulers of the region. There is an incursion of Bulgarian gunmen and other brigands and nothing more. Do you believe that these low-numbered Bulgarians will be able to conquer Macedonia or force the inhabitants to rebel? [...] In one clash in Panitze, outside of Serres, a few months ago where the notorious Delchev was murdered and 52 Bulgarians were arrested, only 2 Bulgarians managed to escape and the rest were killed. This of course has no meaning anymore, because through the fuss they managed to create, many believe now in Europe that Macedonian question is actually Bulgarian question."

"When the Turks and the Bulgarians left, Macedonia remained a purely Greek region."

"I dwell no more in Arcady, But when the sky is blue with May, And birds are blithe and winds are free, I know what message is for me, For I have been in Arcady."

"Et in Arcadia ego."

"Alas! the road to Anywhere is pitfailed with disaster; There's hunger, want, and weariness, yet O we loved it so! As on we tramped exultantly, and no man was our master, And no man guessed what dreams were ours, as, swinging heel and toe, We tramped the road to Anywhere, the magic road to Anywhere, The tragic road to Anywhere, such dear, dim years ago."

"Arcades ambo, Et cantare pares, et respondere parati."

"Tamen cantabitis, Arcades inquit montibus Hæc vestris: soli cantare periti Arcades. O mihi tum quam molliter ossa quiescant, Vestra meos olim si fistula dicat amores."

"In the days when we went gypsying A long time ago."

"Arcades ambo—id est, blackguards both."

"The Arcadians were chestnut-eaters."

"What, know you not, old man (quoth he)— Your hair is white, your face is wise— That Love must kiss that Mortal's eyes Who hopes to see fair Arcady? No gold can buy you entrance there; But beggared Love may go all bare— No wisdom won with weariness; But love goes in with Folly's dress— No fame that wit could ever win; But only Love may lead Love in. To Arcady, to Arcady."

"Auch ich war in Arkadien geboren."

"I too, Shepherd, in Arcadia dwelt."

"Auch ich war in Arkadien."

"Les moi aussie je fus pasteur dans l'Arcadie."

"The Balkan Wars had revealed both the strengths and the limits of Balkan nationalism. Its strength lay in its ferocity. Its weakness was its disunity. The violence of the fighting much impressed the young Trotsky, who witnessed it as a correspondent for the newspaper Kievskaia mysl. Even the peace that followed the Balkan Wars was cruel, in a novel manner that would become a recurrent feature of the twentieth century. It no longer sufficed, in the eyes of nationalists, to acquire foreign territory. Now it was peoples as well as borders that had to move. Sometimes these movements were spontaneous. Muslims fled in the direction of Salonika as the Greeks, Serbs and Bulgarians advanced in 1912; Bulgarians fled Macedonia to escape from invading Greek troops in 1913; Greeks chose to leave the Macedonian districts ceded to Bulgaria and Serbia by the Treaty of Bucharest."

"That much I can say, without endless talking and without becoming tiresome, that she [Eusebia] is of a family line that is pure Greek, from the purest of Greeks, and her city is the metropolis of Macedonia."

"It was the Byzantine Empire, which was to realize Alexander's idea - Macedonian Panhellenism -in face of an Asia in revolt, and realize it for the Greeks."

"Sometimes populations were deliberately expelled, as the Greeks were from Western Thrace in 1913 and from parts of Eastern Thrace and Anatolia in 1914. In the wake of the Turkish defeat, there was an agreed population exchange: 48,570 Turks moved one way and 46,764 Bulgarians the other across the new Turkish-Bulgarian border. Such exchanges were designed to transform regions of ethnically mixed settlement into the homogeneous societies that so appealed to the nationalist imagination. The effects on some regions were dramatic. Between 1912 and 1915, the Greek population of (Greek) Macedonia increased by around a third; the Muslim and Bulgarian population declined by 26 and 13 per cent respectively. The Greek population of Western Thrace fell by 80 per cent; the Muslim population of Eastern Thrace rose by a third. The implications were distinctly ominous for the many multi-ethnic communities elsewhere in Europe."