[100-540 A.D.]
The wild people who dwelt or wandered in the plains of Russia, Lithuania, and Poland might be reduced, in the age of Justinian, under the two great families of the Bulgarians and the Slavonians. According to the Greek writers, the former, who touched the Euxine and the lake of Mæotis, derived from the Huns their name or descent; and it is needless to renew the simple and well-known picture of Tatar manners. They were bold and dexterous archers, who drank the milk and feasted on the flesh of their indefatigable horses; whose flocks and herds followed, or rather guided, the motions of their roving camps; to whose inroads no country was remote or impervious, and who were practised in flight, though incapable of fear.
The nation was divided into two powerful and hostile tribes, who pursued each other with fraternal hatred. They eagerly disputed the friendship or rather the gifts of the emperor; and the distinction which nature had fixed between the faithful dog and the rapacious wolf was applied by an ambassador who received only verbal instructions from the mouth of his illiterate prince. The Bulgarians, of whatsoever species, were equally attracted by Roman wealth; they assumed a vague dominion over the Slavonian name, and their rapid marches could only be stopped by the Baltic Sea, or the extreme cold and poverty of the north. But the same race of Slavonians appears to have maintained, in every age, the possession of the same countries. Their numerous tribes, however distant or adverse, used one common language (it was harsh and irregular), and were known by the resemblance of their form, which deviated from the swarthy Tatar and approached without attaining the lofty stature and fair complexion of the German.
Forty-six hundred villages were scattered over the provinces of Russia and Poland, and their huts were hastily built of rough timber, in a country deficient both in stone and iron. Erected, or rather concealed, in the depth of forests, on the banks of rivers or the edge of morasses, we may, not perhaps without flattery, compare them to the architecture of the beaver; which they resembled in a double issue to the land and water for the escape of the savage inhabitant—an animal less cleanly, less diligent, and less social than that marvellous quadruped. The fertility of the soil, rather than the labour of the natives, supplied the rustic plenty of the Slavonians. Their sheep and horned cattle were large and numerous, and the fields which they sowed with millet and panic, afforded, in the place of bread, a coarse and less nutritive food. The incessant rapine of their neighbours compelled them to bury this treasure in the earth; but on the appearance of a stranger it was freely imparted, by a people whose unfavourable character is qualified by the epithets of chaste, patient, and hospitable. As their supreme god, they adored an invisible master of the thunder. The rivers and the nymphs obtained their subordinate honours, and the popular worship was expressed in vows and sacrifice.
The Slavonians disdained to obey a despot, a prince, or even a magistrate; but their experience was too narrow, their passions too headstrong, to compose a system of equal law or general defence. Some voluntary respect was yielded to age and valour; but each tribe or village existed as a separate republic, and all must be persuaded where none could be compelled. They fought on foot, almost naked, and, except an unwieldy shield, without any defensive armour; their weapons of offence were a bow, a quiver of small poisoned arrows, and a long rope, which they dexterously threw from a distance, and entangled their enemy in a running noose. In the field the Slavonian infantry were dangerous by their speed, agility, and hardiness: they swam, they dived, they remained under water, drawing their breath through a hollow cane; and a river or lake was often the scene of their unsuspected ambuscade. But these were the achievements of spies and stragglers; the military art was unknown to the Slavonians; their name was obscure, and their conquests were inglorious.
[540-565 A.D.]
The level country of Moldavia and Wallachia was occupied by the Antes (or Antai), a Slavonian tribe, which swelled the titles of Justinian with an epithet of conquest. Against the Antes he erected the fortifications of the lower Danube; and laboured to secure the alliance of a people seated in the direct channel of northern inundation, an interval of two hundred miles between the mountains of Transylvania and the Euxine Sea. But the Antes wanted power and inclination to stem the fury of the torrent; and the light-armed Slavonians, from a hundred tribes, pursued with almost equal speed the footsteps of the Bulgarian horse.[23] The payment of one piece of gold for each soldier procured a safe and easy retreat through the country of the Gepidæ, who commanded the passage of the upper Danube.
The hopes or fears of the barbarians, their intestine union or discord, the accident of a frozen or shallow stream, the prospect of harvest or vintage, the prosperity or distress of the Romans—were the causes which produced the uniform repetition of annual visits, tedious in the narrative and destructive in the event. The same year, and possibly the same month, in which Ravenna surrendered was marked by an invasion of the Huns or Bulgarians,[24] so dreadful that it almost effaced the memory of their past inroads. They spread from the suburbs of Constantinople to the Ionian Gulf, destroyed thirty-two cities or castles, erased Potidæa which Athens had built and Philip had besieged, and repassed the Danube, dragging at their horses’ heels 120,000 of the subjects of Justinian. In a subsequent inroad they pierced the wall of the Thracian Chersonesus, extirpated the habitations and the inhabitants, boldly traversed the Hellespont, and returned to their companions, laden with the spoils of Asia. Another party, which seemed a multitude in the eyes of the Romans, penetrated without opposition from the straits of Thermopylæ to the Isthmus of Corinth; and the last ruin of Greece has appeared an object too minute for the attention of history.
The works which the emperor raised for the protection but at the expense of his subjects served only to disclose the weakness of some neglected part; and the walls, which by flattery had been deemed impregnable, were either deserted by the garrison or scaled by the barbarians. Three thousand Slavonians, who insolently divided themselves into two bands, discovered the weakness and misery of a triumphant reign. They passed the Danube and the Hebrus, vanquished the Roman generals who dared to oppose their progress, and plundered with impunity the cities of Illyricum and Thrace, each of which had arms and numbers to overwhelm their contemptible assailants.