The Balkans | Page 4

modern Wallachia and Transylvania, This trans-Danubian territory did not remain
attached to the empire for more than a hundred and fifty years; but within the river line a
vast belt of country, stretching from the head of the Adriatic to the mouths of the Danube
on the Black Sea, was Romanized through and through. The Emperor Trajan has been
called the Charlemagne of the Balkan peninsula; all remains are attributed to him (he was
nicknamed the Wallflower by Constantine the Great), and his reign marked the zenith of

Roman power in this part of the world. The Balkan peninsula enjoyed the benefits of
Roman civilization for three centuries, from the first to the fourth, but from the second
century onwards the attitude of the Romans was defensive rather than offensive. The war
against the Marcomanni under the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, in the second half of this
century, was the turning-point. Rome was still victorious, but no territory was added to
the empire. The third century saw the southward movement of the Germanic peoples,
who took the place of the Celts. The Goths invaded the peninsula, and in 251 the
Emperor Decius was killed in battle against them near Odessus on the Black Sea (the
modern Varna). The Goths reached the outskirts of Thessalonica (Salonika), but were
defeated by the Emperor Claudius at Naissus (Nish) in 269; shortly afterwards, however,
the Emperor Aurelian had definitively to relinquish Dacia to them. The Emperor
Diocletian, a native of Dalmatia, who reigned from 284 to 305, carried out a
redistribution of the imperial provinces. Pannonia and western Illyria, or Dalmatia, were
assigned to the prefecture of Italy, Thrace to that of the Orient, while the whole centre of
the peninsula, from the Danube to the Peloponnese, constituted the prefecture of Illyria,
with Thessalonica as capital. The territory to the north of the Danube having been lost,
what is now western Bulgaria was renamed Dacia, while Moesia, the modern kingdom of
Serbia, was made very much smaller. Praevalis, or the southern part of Dalmatia,
approximately the modern Montenegro and Albania, was detached from that province
and added to the prefecture of Illyria. In this way the boundary between the province of
Dalmatia and the Balkan peninsula proper ran from near the lake of Scutari in the south
to the river Drinus (the modern Drina), whose course it followed till the Save was
reached in the north.
An event of far-reaching importance in the following century was the elevation by
Constantine the Great of the Greek colony of Byzantium into the imperial city of
Constantinople in 325. This century also witnessed the arrival of the Huns in Europe
from Asia. They overwhelmed the Ostrogoths, between the Dnieper and the Dniester, in
375, and the Visigoths, settled in Transylvania and the modern Rumania, moved
southwards in sympathy with this event. The Emperor Valens lost his life fighting against
these Goths in 378 at the great battle of Adrianople (a city established in Thrace by the
Emperor Hadrian in the second century). His successor, the Emperor Theodosius,
placated them with gifts and made them guardians of the northern frontier, but at his
death, in 395, they overran and devastated the entire peninsula, after which they
proceeded to Italy. After the death of the Emperor Theodosius the empire was divided,
never to be joined into one whole again. The dividing line followed that, already
mentioned, which separated the prefecture of Italy from those of Illyria and the Orient,
that is to say, it began in the south, on the shore of the Adriatic near the Bocche di
Cattaro, and went due north along the valley of the Drina till the confluence of that river
with the Save. It will be seen that this division had consequences which have lasted to the
present day. Generally speaking, the Western Empire was Latin in language and character,
while the Eastern was Greek, though owing to the importance of the Danubian provinces
to Rome from the military point of view, and the lively intercourse maintained between
them, Latin influence in them was for a long time stronger than Greek. Its extent is
proved by the fact that the people of modern Rumania are partly, and their language very
largely, defended from those of the legions and colonies of the Emperor Trajan.

Latin influence, shipping, colonization, and art were always supreme on the eastern
shores of the Adriatic, just as were those of Greece on the shores of the Black Sea. The
Albanians even, descendants of the ancient Illyrians, were affected by the supremacy of
the Latin language, from which no less than a quarter of their own meagre vocabulary is
derived; though driven southwards by the Romans and northwards by the Greeks, they
have remained in their mountain fastnesses to this day, impervious to any