Patrick Comerford
The English words ‘Greek’ and ‘Greece’ do not exist in the Greek language. Greeks call themselves Hellene (Έλληνας, Hellinas), know the country as Hellas or Helláda (Ελλάδα), and know the Greek language as Ελληνικά (Elliniká). Why, even a Greek coffee is ένας ελληνικός (enas hellenikós).
The term ‘Greek’ comes not from Greek but from the ancient Latin word Graecus, derived from a small tribe (Graikoi) that the Romans may have encountered first in Epirus. In Greek mythology, Graecus (Γραικός, Graikos) was the son of Pandora II and Zeus. His mother was the daughter of Deucalion and Pyrrha, and sister of Helen. The label stuck in Western languages, including English. But it was never adopted by Greeks or in Greece.
Instead, Greeks refer to Greek people as Έλληνας (Hellinas, masculine singular) or Ελληνίδα (Ellinida, feminine singular).
Another word, but one only used among Greeks for themselves and seldom used in conversation with people who do not speak Greek is Ρωμιός (Romios), from Rome, meaning Byzantium. It is not used that often, but it has the vibe of the core of Greek identity, and it is sometimes used to refer to traditions and the traditional understanding of what it is to be Greek, Greek-born, with in-born Greek values and understandings.
The word romiosini comes from the Byzantine idea that Greeks are descendants of the Roman empire, as in the Eastern Roman or Byzantine empire. It means more than just being Greek; it describes resilience, freedom, and survival through hard times and foreign rule. The words Ρωμιός (Romios) and Ρωμιοσύνη (Romiosini) are probably more appropriate to use when describing the emotions Greeks share and how they feel in the face of adversity or even foreign interference.
No two Greeks have the same definition of these terms. The meanings and understandings of Romiosini are tied up with identity and soul, it is both but it is neither. It is about Greek-ness, yet not about identity with the Greek State, which is less than 200 years old. It is Hellenic and it is Byzantine. If foreigners find it difficult to understand, then Greeks find it difficult to describe.
The word has its roots in being part of the Roman Empire. But not the Empire of Rome. It is eastern Rome or the Empire of Byzantium, it is the New Rome that is Constantinople, Κωνσταντινόπουλος (Konstantinopoulos), or simply ‘the City’.
The history of modern Greece, from the end of Ottoman rule to the 21st century fiscal crises, is one great unfolding drama and catastrophe, punctuated by coups, revolutions, invasions, civil wars, the tyranny of the colonels, and the tension of being both Western and Eastern, of being both Balkan and Anatolian.
Greeks of my generation learned to speak two languages, formal Καθαρεύουσας (Katharevoussa) and popular or domestic Δημοτική (Dhimotikí) – all at one and the same time … and at different times. At school and in churches, in songs and in placenames, Greeks learn how two words can mean the one thing: water is both ύδωρ (idor) and νερό (nero), bread is both άρτος (artos) and ψωμί (psomí).
Ireland is Ireland, England is England, but Greece is not defined by the cartographer’s limitations or lines drawn on the maps of Europe. Greece is Ἑλλάς (Hellas), but Romiosini is defined in hearts and in souls. Politics, parties and geographical boundaries can change, but Romiosini endures.
When Constantine founded Byzantium as the new capital of his empire, the word Hellene became associated with a pagan past, although Greek became the official language. From then on, the Roman and Greek cultures were virtually fused in the East.
After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Greeks were defined by the Turkish terms Rumlar and Rum millet. In time, Greek identity was largely defined by Orthodoxy. A unique intertwining and blending of language and religion shaped that identity, that fused a Hellenistic identity that claimed Classical Athens and a Greek Orthodoxy focussed on Byzantium and Constantinople.
Greeks today remember that Byzantium flourished while Western Europe was living in poverty, ignorance and violence.
The 20th century poet Kostis Palamas defended the use of the words Roman instead of Hellene and Romanism instead of Hellenism, of the use of the terms Romios and Romiosini.
For Crete’s greatest writer, Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba exhibits all the characteristics of a character with all the marks of Romiosini.
Yiannis Ritsos (1909-1990), the poet of the Greek Left and of the resistance, saw the memory and emotion, the identity and the energy in these concepts that evade translation alive in Greek memory, and expressed it in his great long poem Romiosini.
For Ritsos, Greeks fall into one of two groups: the educated middle class, who want to forget the memory of the 400 years of Turkish oppression and identify with the ancient Greeks; and the peasant and working class, whose memory goes back through the Turkish occupation to Byzantium. Greeks in the first group think of themselves as Hellenes, those in the second group are Romoii, and Ritsos sees himself as a Romios, embracing the living language that expresses this.
Romiosini expresses and is the suffering and the experience German occupation, the Civil War, and the betrayal of the Resistance. But it goes back from the ballads the klephts sang in the War of Independence to the Byzantine poems and the Homeric songs.
In the 1960s, Mikis Theodorakis provided a choral setting that made this the classic anthem of Greek identity and of resistance to the colonels. It is one of his earliest works with nine songs drawing on the lyrics of Ritsos. In one of the earliest recordings, these songs and poems were interpreted by the legendary singer Grigoris Bithikotsis (Γρηγόρης Μπιθικώτσης).
This poem and this choral setting shatter the barriers of space and time and they recover the memories of past sufferings that shape identity from the debris of Greek history.
There are nine songs in all:
1, These trees (Αυτά τα δέντρα)
2, All are thirsty (Όλοι διψάνε)
3, When they shake the hand (Όταν σφίγγουν το χέρι)
4, So many years (Τόσα χρόνια)
5, They got enslaved (Μπήκαν στα σίδερα)
6, Tree after tree (Δέντρο το δέντρο)
7, Who would say it (Ποιος να το πει)
8, Soon the bells will ring (Θα σημάνουν οι καμπάνες)
9, They travelled to heaven (Τραβήξανε ψηλά)
When Greeks use the word Romiosini, it means more than being Greek, yet it is impossible to describe in English the emotional dimensions of this word. It conveys culture, resistance, place, tradition, dance, character, wilfulness, language, history, tradition, identity, dance and song.
It is the spirit stands up in the face of adversity, catastrophe, trauma and the tide and tempest of the world.
It is freedom and resistance, it is democracy and revolution, it is a way of being Greek but more than Greek.
And in recent days I have returned again to listening this interpretation by Mikis Theodorakis of the poem by Ritsos. The original references are to resistance to the Ottoman Turks. But this became one of the songs that symbolised the resistance to the colonels’ junta, and today it sings of resistance to everyone who would try to deny the Greekness of Greeks.
Γιάννη Ρίτσου, «Τη Ρωμιοσύνη μην την κλαις»
Τη ρωμιοσύνη μην την κλαις
εκεί που πάει να σκύψει
με το σουγιά στο κόκκαλο
με το λουρί στο σβέρκο
Νά τη πετιέται απο ξαρχής
κι αντριεύει και θεριεύει
και καμακώνει το θεριό
με το καμάκι του ήλιου
This is a poor effort to translate this deeply moving and emotional poem and song:
Don’t dare cry for Greece
There where she is forced to stoop,
Stabbed by a knife in her back
Bent by a yoke on her neck.
Yet see her rise from the blow,
Grow with strength and with fury,
And see her strike back at the beast
With the harpoon of the sun.
Words in this series:
1, Neologism, Νεολογισμός.
2, Welcoming the stranger, Φιλοξενία.
3, Bread, Ψωμί.
4, Wine, Οίνος and Κρασί.
5, Yogurt, Γιαούρτι.
6, Orthodoxy, Ορθοδοξία.
7, Sea, Θᾰ́λᾰσσᾰ.
8,Theology, Θεολογία.
9, Icon, Εἰκών.
10, Philosophy, Φιλοσοφία.
11, Chaos, Χάος.
12, Liturgy, Λειτουργία.
13, Greeks, Ἕλληνες or Ρωμαίοι.
14, Mañana, Αύριο.
15, Europe, Εὐρώπη.
16, Architecture, Αρχιτεκτονική.
17, The missing words.
18, Theatre, θέατρον, and Drama, Δρᾶμα.
19, Pharmacy, Φᾰρμᾰκείᾱ.
20, Rhapsody, Ραψῳδός.
21, Holocaust, Ολοκαύτωμα.
22, Hygiene, Υγιεινή.
23, Laconic, Λακωνικός.
24, Telephone, Τηλέφωνο.
25, Asthma, Ασθμα.
26, Synagogue, Συναγωγή.
27, Diaspora, Διασπορά.
28, School, Σχολείο.
29, Muse, Μούσα.
30, Monastery, Μοναστήρι.
31, Olympian, Ολύμπιος.
32, Hypocrite, Υποκριτής.
33, Genocide, Γενοκτονία.
34, Cinema, Κινημα.
35, autopsy and biopsy
36, Exodus, ἔξοδος
37, Bishop, ἐπίσκοπος
38, Socratic, Σωκρατικὸς
39, Odyssey, Ὀδύσσεια
40, Practice, πρᾶξις
41, Idiotic, Ιδιωτικός
42, Pentecost, Πεντηκοστή
43, Apostrophe, ἀποστροφή
44, catastrophe, καταστροφή
45, democracy, δημοκρατία
46, ‘Αρχή, beginning, Τέλος, end
47, ‘Αποκάλυψις, Apocalypse
48, ‘Απόκρυφα, Apocrypha
49, Ἠλεκτρον (Elektron), electric
50, Metamorphosis, Μεταμόρφωσις
51, Bimah, βῆμα
52, ἰχθύς (ichthýs) and ψάρι (psari), fish.
53, Τὰ Βιβλία (Ta Biblia), The Bible
54, Φῐλοξενῐ́ᾱ (Philoxenia), true hospitality
55, εκκλησία (ekklesia), the Church
56, ναός (naos) and ἱερός (ieros), a church
57, Χριστούγεννα (Christougenna), Christmas
58, ἐπιφάνεια (epipháneia), θεοφάνεια, (theopháneia), Epiphany and Theophany
59, Ζέφυρος (Zéphuros), the West Wind
60, Αύριο (Avrio), Tomorrow
61, καλημέρα (κaliméra), ‘Good Morning’, and καλαμάρι, κalamári, ‘squid’
62, Ελευθερία ή θάνατος, ‘Freedom or Death’
63, Ποδόσφαιρο, ‘Football’
64, καφές (coffee), Φραπές (frappé)
65, Odyssey (η Οδύσσεια) and Odysseus (Ὀδυσσεύς)
66, Cosmopolitan, Κοσμοπολίτης
67, Εἰρήνη (Eirene), Peace
68, Ρωμιοσύνη (Romiosini)
Series to be continued
