[BRIEF NOTE] The Aromanians and the Principality of Pindus

[rfmcdonald]

Visiting Wikipedia this afternoon, I came across an interestingly detailed article on the Aromanians, a sub-population of the Vlachs, Balkan speakers of Romance languages. The Romanians are far and away the most significant of the Vlach peoples, speakers of Romanian dominating the two independent states of Romania and Moldova. In comparison, the Aromanian population--concentrated in Greece, Albania, and Macedonia--has likely never exceeded a half-million and is now much smaller thanks to enforced assimilation and emigration in the 19th and 20th centuries. Nonetheless, as late as the Second World War there were enough Aromanians in the western Greek highlands to support a Principality of Pindus under Italian protection. Wikipedia's account of the life of the ephemeral state's leader, one Alkiviadis Diamandi, caught my attention: the man's remarkable career took him from schoolteacher to prince and then, finally, into the ranks of those people who managed to disappear after the Second World War.