§ 2.

CHAP. I. On a small scale, deriving their principal support from cattle. 1 The great extent of the Sclavonian colonies in Macedonia, at the end of the seventh century, is testified by the number that the Emperor Justinian II. was able to transport into Asia. On one occasion, a colony of upwards of a hundred and fifty thousand souls was settled on the shores of the Hellespont, collected from the tribes established in Thrace and the neighbourhood of Thessalonica. 2

In order to understand correctly how far the diminution of the Greek and Roman races might proceed in the countries between the Adriatic and the Danube, while a numerous population of subject people continued to inhabit the country, it is only necessary to compare it with the rapid extinction of the Goths in Italy, and of the Vandals in Africa, about the same period. In the Cis-Danubian provinces, neither the Greek nor the Roman element appears to have impregnated the whole mass of the inhabitants and both peoples, were always in the position of dominant races-liable consequently to that incessant diminution that sooner or later inevitably destroys all privileged orders. The progress of depopulation in the Roman empire is, however, attested from an earlier period by numerous laws, many of which prove the rapid diminution, in the members of the municipalities forcing the government to adopt regulations for the purpose of keeping every class of society in its own sphere. and place. The steady diminution of the Greek race, from the time of Justinian I. to that of Leo. III. the Isaurian, is testified by the whole history of the period;

1 Institutions Militaires de l'Empereur Leon le Philosophe, traduites par Joly de Maizeroy, tome ii. p. 117. Tactica, c. xviii. § 99. Imp. Mauricii Ars Militaris, p. 272, (edit. Scheffer.) The spirit of the warlike Sclavonians, at the period they poured their conquering armies into the Eastern Empire, is described in Menander, Corpus Hist. Byzantinæ, p. 406, edit. Bonn; p. 165, edit. Paris.

2 Theophanes, p. 304, 305, 364. Thirty thousand troops were raised in this colony shortly after its establishment.

3 Codex Justinianeus, x. 32; xviii. xix. xx. xxi. 1.

Even he who quitted his

DIMINUTION OF THE GREEK RACE.

13

§ 2.

and it is evident that this diminution was more immediately CHAP. I. dependent on political causes, connected with a vicious administration of the government, and on moral ones arising out of a corrupt state of society, than on the desolation produced by foreign invaders. The utter extermination of the Illyrian and Thracian nations may have been completed by the repeated ravages of the northern barbarians; but it could not have been effected unless these people had been weakened and decimated by bad administration and social degradation, otherwise their assailants could not have so outnumbered them as to effect their extermination. The same causes which operated in exterminating the Thracian and Illyrian races were at work on the Greek population, though operating with less violence. The maritime cities and principal towns, both in Thrace and Illyria, were in great part inhabited by Greeks; and from these the rural population was repulsed, as was repulsed, as a hostile band, when it appeared before their walls in a state of poverty, in order to seek refuge and food during the ravages of the barbarians. The citizens, in such cases, had always so many drains on their resources, to which interest compelled them to attend, that humanity only extended to the circle of their immediate neighbours. But when the Sclavonians colonised the wasted lands, the new population proved better able to protect themselves against the evils of war, from their previous rude habits of life, and from the artless method in which they pursued their agricultural occupations. The Sclavonians, therefore, soon became the sole and permanent possessors of the greater part of the territories once inhabited by the

civil position as tax-payer to the fisc, to serve in the army, was ordered to be brought back to his estate, (law xvii.)-"Qui derelicta curia militaverit, revocetur ad curiam." No words could declare more strongly the decrease in the numbers of the tax-payers, nor mark more clearly that the treasury, not the army, gave its character and laws to the Eastern Roman empire. Modern nations, having reached the same crisis in their government, might study Byzantine history for lessons in politics.

CHAP. I. Illyrians and the Thracians.

§ 3.

For some centuries, the Sclavonians seem to have advanced into the Hellenic territory in the same manner in which they had possessed themselves of the country to the north; but the circumstances were somewhat changed by the greater number of towns they met with, and by the comparatively flourishing condition maintained by that large portion of the Greek population engaged in commerce and manufactures under the Byzantine government. Though the Sclavonians occupied extensive territories in Greece without apparently encountering much serious opposition, still their progress was arrested at many points by a dense population, living under the protection of walled towns and imperial officers. It is, however, quite impossible to trace the progress of the Sclavonians on the Hellenic soil in any detail; and we learn only from a casual notice that it is probable their first great hostile irruptions into the Peloponnesus were made under the shelter of the Avar power, towards the end of the sixth century. Whether any colonies had previously settled in the peninsula as agriculturists, or whether they at that time formed populous settlements in northern Greece, is a mere matter of conjecture. The passage of the ecclesiastical historian Evagrius, in which the Avar invasion of Greece is mentioned, has been the object of much criticism. 1

SECT. III.-THE SCLAVONIANS IN THE PELOPONNESUS.

It will assist our means of estimating the true extent of the Sclavonian colonisation of Greece, and the influence they were enabled to exercise in the country, if we pass in review the principal historical notices that have been preserved relating to their settlements, particularly in the Peloponnesus, the citadel of the Hellenic population.

1 Geschichte Griechenlands, von J. W. Zinkeisen, p. 697.

FIRST SCLAVONIAN COLONY IN PELOPONNESUS.

15

A. D.

The ravages by which the barbarians prepared the way for the Sclavonians to colonise Greece as early as the 589-746. reign of Justinian have been noticed. The cotemporary Byzantine historian, Menander, records that about the year 581 the Sclavonians had acquired so great a degree of power that they ravaged Thrace with an army of their own amounting to a hundred thousand men, and extended their devastations into Greece.1 About this time they were in hostile collision with the Chagan of the Avars, to whom they had formerly paid tribute. Many Sclavonian tribes, however, continued to be subject to the Avar power, and to furnish auxiliaries to their armies.2 A few years afterwards another cotemporary historian, Evagrius, notices an invasion of the Avars into Greece in the following words: "The Avars penetrated twice as far as the long wall of Thrace. Singidon, Auchialos, all Greece, and many cities and fortresses, were taken and plundered; everything was laid waste with fire and sword, for the greater part of the imperial army was stationed at the time in Asia." These words, unsupported by other evidence, would certainly not lead us to infer that any part of Greece had been then settled by either Avars or Sclavonians, even were we assured that the Sclavonians composed the bulk of the Avar army. But this careless mention of Greece, by Evagrius, in connection with the

Excerpta ex Menandri Historia, p. 327 and 404, edit. Bonn.

2 Ibid., p. 334.-The conquest of the Antæ, a numerous Sclavonian race, is mentioned, p. 285. See Schafarik's Slarische Alterthümer, i. 68. The importance of the Sclavonian colonies in Macedonia, and their wars with the Greeks and the Byzantine government during the interval between 589 and 746, are noticed by the following authorities-Tafel, De Thessalonicâ, &c., p. lviii., xci; and the authorities he quotes. Theophanes, p. 288, 304, 305. The Patriarch Nicephorus mentions the Sclavonians as united in great numbers with the Avar armies, p. 13, 24. Ephræmius, 69, edit. Bonn.

3 Evagrius, Hist. Eccles., 1. vi. § 10. This took place before the year 591, as the Emperor Maurice concluded peace with Persia in that year. Those who witnessed the complete desolation of Greece after the war of independence against the Turks, and the civil wars that followed the assassination of Capodistrias, can alone understand to what extent it is possible for barbarians to desolate a country. The Avars probably understood the art as well as the Turks and Greek Palikari. I have myself ridden through the streets of Tripolitza, Corinth, Megara, Athens, Thebes, and Livadea, when hardly a single

§ 3.

CHAP. I. plundering incursions of the Avars, receives some historical value, and becomes united with the annals of the Sclavonian colonies in the Peloponnesus, by a passage in a synodal letter of the Patriarch Nikolaos to the Emperor Alexius I. The Patriarch mentions that the Emperor Nicephorus I., about the year 807, raised Patras to the rank of a Metropolitan see, on account of the miraculous interposition of the apostle St Andrew in destroying the Avars who then besieged it. "These Avars," says the Patriarch, "had held possession of the Peloponnesus for two hundred and eighteen years, and had so completely separated it from the Byzantine empire that no Byzantine official dared to put his foot in the country." The Patriarch thus dates the establishment of the Avars in the Peloponnesus from the year 589; and the accurate conformity of his statement with the passage quoted from Evagrius, allows it to be inferred that he had some official record of the same invasion before his eyes, which recorded that the Avar invasion of Greece, mentioned by the ecclesiastical historian, extended into the Peloponnesus, and described its consequences in some detail. The circumstance that the Patriarch speaks of Avars, who in his time had been long extinct, instead of Sclavonians, who, at the time he wrote, continued to form a considerable portion of the population of Greece, seems to prove

house had escaped being levelled with the ground. No living soul was to be seen in the streets, through which the fallen walls of the houses rendered it difficult to penetrate, and no cattle could be found in the surrounding country. I have visited villages in which bread had not been made for a fortnight, the whole of the inhabitants living on herbs; and I have seen cargoes of the coppercooking vessels of the peasantry exported to Trieste, to obtain food for a few days. The consequence was, that two-thirds of the population perished.

Nikolaos III., called the Grammarian, occupied the Patriarchal chair from A.D. 1084 to 1111. Leunclavius, Jus Græco-Romanum, tom. i. 278. Le Quien, Oriens Christianus, tom. ii. 179. A Greek MS. in the library of Turin, quoted by Fallmerayer, Fragmente aus dem Orient, ii. 413, perhaps confirms the testimony of the Patriarch; but the coincidence in the mode of expressing the chronology leads to the conclusion that the writer of the chronicle in this passage copied the synodal letter of the Patriarch. He, however, takes particular notice of the ravages of the Avars in Attica and Euboea, which he must have derived from another source, so that he may have seen the same original authority as the Patriarch.