The Balkans | Page 6

on Constantinople under a certain Zabergan, which was brilliantly defeated by the
veteran Byzantine general Belisarius. The Avars were a nomad tribe, and the horse was
their natural means of locomotion. The Slavs, on the other hand, moved about on foot,
and seem to have been used as infantry by the more masterful Asiatics in their warlike
expeditions. Generally speaking, the Avars, who must have been infinitely less numerous
than the Slavs, were settled in Hungary, where Attila and the Huns had been settled a
little more than a century previously; that is to say, they were north of the Danube,
though they were always overrunning into Upper Moesia, the modern Serbia. The Slavs,
whose numbers were without doubt very large, gradually settled all over the country
south of the Danube, the rural parts of which, as a result of incessant invasion and retreat,
had become waste and empty. During the second half of the sixth century all the military
energies of Constantinople were diverted to Persia, so that the invaders of the Balkan
peninsula had the field very much to themselves. It was during this time that the power of
the Avars reached its height. They were masters of all the country up to the walls of
Adrianople and Salonika, though they did not settle there. The peninsula seems to have
been colonized by Slavs, who penetrated right down into Greece; but the Avars were
throughout this time, both in politics and in war, the directing and dominating force.
During another Persian war, which broke out in 622 and entailed the prolonged absence
of the emperor from Constantinople, the Avars, not satisfied with the tribute extorted
from the Greeks, made an alliance against them with the Persians, and in 626 collected a
large army of Slavs and Asiatics and attacked Constantinople both by land and sea from
the European side, while the Persians threatened it from Asia. But the walls of the city
and the ships of the Greeks proved invincible, and, quarrels breaking out between the

Slavs and the Avars, both had to save themselves in ignominious and precipitate retreat.
After this nothing more was heard of the Avars in the Balkan peninsula, though their
power was only finally crushed by Charlemagne in 799. In Russia their downfall became
proverbial, being crystallized in the saying, 'they perished like Avars'. The Slavs, on the
other hand, remained. Throughout these stormy times their penetration of the Balkan
peninsula had been peacefully if unostentatiously proceeding; by the middle of the
seventh century it was complete. The main streams of Slavonic immigration moved
southwards and westwards. The first covered the whole of the country between the
Danube and the Balkan range, overflowed into Macedonia, and filtered down into Greece.
Southern Thrace in the east and Albania in the west were comparatively little affected,
and in these districts the indigenous population maintained itself. The coasts of the
Aegean and the great cities on or near them were too strongly held by the Greeks to be
affected, and those Slavs who penetrated into Greece itself were soon absorbed by the
local populations. The still stronger Slavonic stream, which moved westwards and turned
up north-westwards, overran the whole country down to the shores of the Adriatic and as
far as the sources of the Save and Drave in the Alps. From that point in the west to the
shores of the Black Sea in the east became one solid mass of Slavs, and has remained so
ever since. The few Slavs who were left north of the Danube in Dacia were gradually
assimilated by the inhabitants of that province, who were the descendants of the Roman
soldiers and colonists, and the ancestors of the modern Rumanians, but the fact that
Slavonic influence there was strong is shown by the large number of words of Slavonic
origin contained in the Rumanian language.
[Illustration: THE BALKAN PENINSULA ETHNOLOGICAL]
Place-names are a good index of the extent and strength of the tide of Slav immigration.
All along the coast, from the mouth of the Danube to the head of the Adriatic, the Greek
and Roman names have been retained though places have often been given alternative
names by the Slavonic settlers. Thrace, especially the south-eastern part, and Albania
have the fewest Slavonic place-names. In Macedonia and Lower Moesia (Bulgaria) very
few classical names have survived, while in Upper Moesia (Serbia) and the interior of
Dalmatia (Bosnia, Hercegovina, and Montenegro) they have entirely disappeared. The
Slavs themselves, though their tribal names were known, were until the ninth century
usually called collectively S(k)lavini ([Greek: Sklabaenoi]) by the Greeks, and all the
inland parts of the peninsula were for long termed by them 'the S(k)lavonias' ([Greek:
Sklabiniai]).
During the seventh century, dating from the defeat of the Slavs and Avars before the