The Balkans | Page 5

the shores of the peninsula very early; Macedonia
and Dalmatia were the parts where it was first established, and it took
some time to penetrate into the interior. During the reign of Diocletian
numerous martyrs suffered for the faith in the Danubian provinces, but
with the accession of Constantine the Great persecution came to an end.
As soon, however, as the Christians were left alone, they started
persecuting each other, and during the fourth century the Arian
controversy re-echoed throughout the peninsula.
In the fifth century the Huns moved from the shores of the Black Sea to
the plains of the Danube and the Theiss; they devastated the Balkan
peninsula, in spite of the tribute which they had levied on
Constantinople in return for their promise of peace. After the death of
Attila, in 453, they again retreated to Asia, and during the second half
of the century the Goths were once more supreme in the peninsula.
Theodoric occupied Singidunum (Belgrade) in 471 and, after
plundering Macedonia and Greece, settled in Novae (the modern
Svishtov), on the lower Danube, in 483, where he remained till he
transferred the sphere of his activities to Italy ten years later. Towards
the end of the fifth century Huns of various kinds returned to the lower
Danube and devastated the peninsula several times, penetrating as far
as Epirus and Thessaly.

3
The Arrival of the Slavs in the Balkan Peninsula, A.D. 500-650
The Balkan peninsula, which had been raised to a high level of security
and prosperity during the Roman dominion, gradually relapsed into
barbarism as a result of these endless invasions; the walled towns, such
as Salonika and Constantinople, were the only safe places, and the
country became waste and desolate. The process continued unabated
throughout the three following centuries, and one is driven to one of
two conclusions, either that these lands must have possessed very
extraordinary powers of recuperation to make it worth while for
invaders to pillage them so frequently, or, what is more probable, there

can have been after some time little left to plunder, and consequently
the Byzantine historians' accounts of enormous drives of prisoners and
booty are much exaggerated. It is impossible to count the number of
times the tide of invasion and devastation swept southwards over the
unfortunate peninsula. The emperors and their generals did what they
could by means of defensive works on the frontiers, of punitive
expeditions, and of trying to set the various hordes of barbarians at
loggerheads with each other, but, as they had at the same time to defend
an empire which stretched from Armenia to Spain, it is not surprising
that they were not more successful. The growing riches of
Constantinople and Salonika had an irresistible attraction for the wild
men from the east and north, and unfortunately the Greek citizens were
more inclined to spend their energy in theological disputes and their
leisure in the circus than to devote either the one or the other to the
defence of their country. It was only by dint of paying them huge sums
of money that the invaders were kept away from the coast. The
departure of the Huns and the Goths had made the way for fresh series
of unwelcome visitors. In the sixth century the Slavs appear for the first
time. From their original homes which were immediately north of the
Carpathians, in Galicia and Poland, but may also have included parts of
the modern Hungary, they moved southwards and south-eastwards.
They were presumably in Dacia, north of the Danube, in the previous
century, but they are first mentioned as having crossed that river during
the reign of the Emperor Justin I (518-27). They were a loosely-knit
congeries of tribes without any single leader or central authority; some
say they merely possessed the instinct of anarchy, others that they were
permeated with the ideals of democracy. What is certain is that
amongst them neither leadership nor initiative was developed, and that
they lacked both cohesion and organisation. The Eastern Slavs, the
ancestors of the Russians, were only welded into anything approaching
unity by the comparatively much smaller number of Scandinavian
(Varangian) adventurers who came and took charge of their affairs at
Kiev. Similarly the Southern Slavs were never of themselves able to
form a united community, conscious of its aim and capable of
persevering in its attainment.
The Slavs did not invade the Balkan peninsula alone but in the

company of the Avars, a terrible and justly dreaded nation, who, like
the Huns, were of Asiatic (Turkish or Mongol) origin. These invasions
became more frequent during the reign of the Emperor Justinian I
(527-65), and culminated in 559 in a great combined attack of all the
invaders on Constantinople under a certain Zabergan, which was
brilliantly defeated by the veteran