THE WALLACIIS. 59
mentioned, gave great trouble to the empire, and assisted largely in weakening it. These were the Wallachs. Whether they were of Slavic origin or of Gaelic or Welsh origin, whether they were the aboriginal inhabitants of the country who had come under the influence of the elder Eome, and had acquired so many Latin words as to overlay their language and to retain little more than the grammatical forms and mould of their own language, or whether they were the de- scendants of the Latin colonists of Dacia with a large mixture of other peoples, are all questions which have been much controverted. It is remarkable that while no people living on the south of the Balkans appear to be mentioned as Wal- lachs until the tenth century, when Anna Comnena mentions Tbewaiiachs ^ village Called Ezeban, near Mount Kissavo, occu- iuMacedouia. pj^^ ^y tlicm,^ almost Suddenly we hear of them as a great nation to the south of the Balkans. They spoke a language which differed little from Latin. Thessaly during the twelfth century is usually called Great Wallachia. The French chroniclers speak of it as Blaquie la Grant. In this they followed the Byzantine writers, who call it McyaXrj BAax«. Besides the Wallachs in Thessaly, whose descend- ants are now called Kutzo-Wallachs, there were the Wallachs in Dacia, the ancestors of the present Eoumanians, and Mavro- AVallachs in Dalmatia. Indeed, according to the Hungarian and Byzantine writers, there were during the twelfth century a series of Wallachian peoples, extending from the Theiss to the Dniester. Whether the Wallachs in Thessaly were rela- tions of the Wallachs to the north of the Danube may be doubted. The word Wallach is used by the Byzantine writ- ers as equivalent to shepherd, and it may be that the com- mon use of a dialect of Latin by all the Wallachs is the only bond of union among the peoples bearing that name. They were all occasionally spoken of by the Byzantine writers as descendants of the Eomans. As the districts which they usu- ally occupied were the mountains or least accessible of the plains, there is reason to believe that they were the descend-
- Anna Com. p. 245, ed. Bonn.