The Coming of the Serb
Prior to their incursion into the Balkan Peninsula during the seventh century, the Serbians[1] lived as a patriarchal people in the country now known as Galicia. Ptolemy, the ancient Greek geographer, describes them as living on the banks of the River Don, to the north-east of the sea of Azov. They settled mostly in those Balkan territories which they inhabit at the present day, namely, the present kingdom of Serbia, Old Serbia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Dalmatia, Batchka, Banat, Croatia, Sirmia and Istria. The ancient inhabitants of those regions, Latins, Illyrians, Thracians, Greeks and Albanians, were easily driven by the newcomers toward the Adriatic coast. Their Emperor, Heraclius (A.D. 610–641), unable to oppose an effective resistance, ceded to the Serbians all the provinces which they had occupied, and peace was thus purchased. The pagan and uncultured Serbian tribes now came into constant intercourse with the civilized Byzantines, and soon were converted to Christianity; for it is an almost invariable fact that when one people conquers or subjects another people, the more civilized of the two, whether the vanquished or the victorious, must necessarily impose its civilization and customs on the more barbarous. But the Serbians only embraced Christianity to any large extent with the beginning of the ninth century, when the two brothers Cyrillos and Methodius—the so-called Slavonic apostles—translated and preached the teaching of Christ in the ancient Slav language, then in common use among all southern Slavs of that time.