"Many are the peoples that crossed the land over which Romania extends today. They left their mark in ancient Dacia, Moesia and Thrace, in the Greek colonies, Roman provinces, and Byzantine themes. The indigenous populations blended with the newcomers and produced a Romance language enameled with many Greek words on the coast and Slavic words in the plains. It is in this region of the Balkans, according to historical sources, that the enigmatic Scythians, the lost Khazars, the agile Avars, the Cumans and the Pechenegs and other peoples with such exotic names came and went. Romanians and Aromanians, or Wallachians, who drove their flocks down to Dalmatia and the Istria peninsula, moved from one region to another and settled down. The Black Sea did not soften Romanian winters. Close to the seashore, in Muntenia, the steppe begins. I heard an expression that renders well a certain attitude toward the South: 'to promise the sea and its salt,' i.e. the moon and the stars, and perhaps more, if it is true that continental peoples skimp over promises more than Mediterranean ones." Mediterranean Vade-mecum
by Predrag Matveyevich
