The Balkans | Page 4

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 of the civilizations to which they have been exposed.

Christianity spread to