The Aromânians: an ethnos and language with a 2000-year history

Abstract

The Aromânians are one of the small ethnic groups in Bulgaria: an ancient Balkan people which, as a result of migration and the vicissitudes of history, dispersed across the Balkan Peninsula, creating diasporas in Macedonia, Greece, Albania, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania. In the course of migration, the Aromânians preserved traditional trades, the majority employed in nomadic sheep and horse breeding, which eventually evolved into transhumant and Alpine. Another part practiced trade, crafts, industry and inn-keeping. All are Eastern Orthodox Christians. The Romanian origin of the Aromânian language is undisputed and universally acknowledged; however, scholars are divided over the question of the origins of the Aromânians. The existing theories may be classified in two groups: the first group, the Aromânians are descended from Roman colonists (legionnaires, veterans, administration) from the Balkan provinces of the Roman Empire; the second holds that they are Thracians, Illyrians, Paeonians, Epirotes and other Balkan peoples Romanized during the military campaign of the Roman consul, Paullus Aemilius, in 168 B.C.E., who routed the Macedonian phalanxes of the last Macedonian king, Perseus, in the battle at Pydna. Scholars also acknowledge another undisputable fact; at the time the Aromânians first attracted academic interest, in the late 18th and early 19th century, they were a relatively compact group in the mountainous regions of present-day northwestern Greece, southwestern Macedonia, Thessaly and Epirus. and southeastern Albania.