Ovo mora biti jedan od razloga zašto su naši stari Cincare stalno smatrali Grcima.
I kad pitate neke starije beograđane, pripadnike starih porodica, a koji nisu ovako etnografski obrazovani, svi će vam reći zar Cincari nisu Grci?
Vise o ovome... Citati iz knjige
Istorija Makedonije, A. Vakalopulosa:
1) Α good number of these Macedonians settled abroad spoke Vlach, a language in its own right, of Latin origin and akin to the other Romance languages of Western Europe and Rumania. These are the people called Koutsovlachs. Apart from their mother tongue they also speak Greek. These Vlach-speaking inhabitants of Western and Central Macedonia and of Thessaly probably represent native populations who have been Latinized, but who have marked Greek feelings and are known by the name Ἑλληνόβλαχοι.
Most of the information about the Koutsovlachs who had settled in Serbian and other Yugoslav territories I have taken from the book of D. Popović (a Koutsovlach himself from Kruševo) about the
Cincars (Koutsovlachs). Living as he does in Yugoslavia, Popović is well disposed to that nation, though he displays a marked antipathy towards the Greeks. Yet in spite of this, he is forced to recognise the identity of feeling between Koutsovlachs and Greeks. Thus he writes that the Koutsovlachs are very proud of their Greek ancestry, that they often refer to their glorious Greek past and record the names of the great figures of ancient Greece and the Fathers of the Church. In the Greek struggles for freedom and particularly during the War of Independence the activities of the Koutsovlachs cannot be separated from that of the other Greeks.
Though living in a foreign land, the heart of every Koutsovlach, like any other Greek, was orientated towards Greece, and he followed with sympathy and enthusiasm the dramatic moments of her history. Popović mentions a liqueur-maker who had put on his firm's labels the name 'Karaiskakis' (one of the Greek leaders in the War of Independence) with a portrait of the hero besides the name. Such great benefactors of Hellenism as Pangas, Averov, Sinas, Tositsas, Stournaras, who have founded notable cultural institutions or have made great donations to Greece, are of Koutsovlach origin. From the lands where they have established themselves and made their fortune such men have frequently demonstrated their feelings of gratitude and donated money for a variety of socially benevolent works, especially the foundation and upkeep of educational and ecclesiastical establishments. Α number of their foundations survive to this day.
So interwoven were the identities of Greek and Koutsovlach that in countries outside Greece their neighbours hardly knew to which of the two peoples the foreign immigrants belonged. Even their descendants often did not know whether their forefathers had been Greek or Koutsovlach.
2) In Veles of modern Yugoslavia were established alarge number of Greek merchants most probably of Koutsovlach origin, who formed an association. Its brazen emblem depicts the River Vardar spanned by a bridge, and inscribed around the inner circumference are the words
'Σύστημα τῶν πραγματευτῶν Ρωμαίων ἐν Βελισᾷ Κιοπρουλοῦ' and on the outer
'Corpo Greco mercantile in Velissa'. The Koutsovlach families of Kragujevac came mostly from Gópesi and Pisodéri, with 15 of them from Sélitsa and Siátista.
3) At Zemun (Semlin) ... The Vlach-speakers called themselves Greco-Vlachs or Macedonian Vlachs, and their community seal bore the words
'Κοινότης τῶν Ρωμαίων καὶ Μακεδονοβλάχων'. The Greek-Koutsovlach community at Novi Sad called itself
Communitas Hellenica or Graeca.
4) In Hungary emigrants enjoyed almost a monopoly of the livestock-trade, handling cattle, sheep, pigs, horses and other animals. Indeed in Srem, Banat and Batska 'Greek' and 'livestock-dealer' had become virtually synonymous terms, and
every dairyman, even though he might be a Serb, was called a 'Greek'.
5) Α list of the inhabitants of the cities of Srem — north-west of Belgrade between the Danube and the Sava — (Zemun, Karlowitz, Bukovar, Mitrovitsa, etc.) shows that in 1736/37 a considerable number of Western Macedonians were living in that region. Even today the main road passing through the villages of Srem is called 'the Greek road'.