She answered: “How canst thou wish to take me for thy wife when thou thyself hast baptised me and called me daughter? for with the Christians this is unlawful and thou thyself knowest it.”
And the emperor said: “Thou hast deceived me, Olga,” and he gave her many presents of gold and silver, and silk and vases and let her depart, calling her daughter.
Olga
She returned to her home, going first to the patriarch to ask his blessing on her house and saying unto him: “My people are heathen and my son, too; may God preserve me from harm!”
And the patriarch said: “My faithful daughter, thou hast been baptised in Christ, thou hast put on Christ, Christ shall preserve thee as he preserved Enoch in the first ages, and Noah in the Ark, as he preserved Abraham from Abimelech, Lot from the Sodomites, Moses from Pharaoh, David from Saul, the three young men from the fiery furnace, and Daniel from the lions; thus shall he preserve thee from the enemy and his snares!” Thus the patriarch blessed her and she returned in peace to her own land and came to Kiev.
Olga lived with her son Sviatoslav and she repeatedly tried to induce him to be baptised, but he would not listen to her, for if any one then wished to be baptised it was not forbidden, but people mocked at him. And Olga often said, “My son, I have learned wisdom and rejoice; if thou knewest it, thou too wouldst rejoice.” But he paid no heed to her, saying: “How should I alone adopt a strange faith, my droujina (followers, men-at-arms) would mock at me.” She said: “If thou art baptised, all will do likewise,” but he would not listen to his mother and persisted in the heathen customs, not knowing that who does not hearken to his mother shall fall into misfortune, for it is written, he that does not hearken to his father or mother, let him die the death.[5] And he was angered against his mother. However, Olga loved her son Sviatoslav, and said: “God’s will be done! If God wills to have mercy on my race and on the Russian land, he will put into their hearts to turn to God, even as He did unto me.” And having thus said, she prayed for her son and for the people night and day, and she brought up her son until he was grown to be a man.
SVIATOSLAV; THE VICTORY OF NORTH OVER SOUTH
[964-971 A.D.]
Sviatoslav assumed the reins of government in 964, and he ruled only till 972, but this short period was filled with warlike expeditions. He crushed the power of the Volga Bulgarians and of the Chazars, and he incorporated the Viatitchi in the empire—thus destroying the danger ever menacing from the east, and uniting all the Slavs under one dominion. In 968 he marched—at the instigation of the Greek emperor, who furnished him the means—with an army of sixty thousand men against the Bulgarians of the Danube, conquered Pereiaslavl (the location of which is unknown) and Durostorus (the modern Silistria), and began to form the project of erecting for himself a new empire on the ruins of the Bulgarian power, when tidings reached him of a raid of the Petchenegs against Kiev and of the imminent danger to his mother and children who were beleaguered in that town. Leaving garrisons in the conquered towns he hurried back by forced marches and drove the Petchenegs back into the steppe. He divided his Russian dominions among his three young sons, giving Kiev to Iaropolk, the land of the Drevlians to Oleg, and Novgorod to Vladimir; while he himself went back to Bulgaria, for “Pereiaslavl is dear to him, where all good things meet, fine stuffs, wine, fruits, and gold from Greece, silver and horses from Bohemia and Hungary, furs, wax, honey, and slaves from Russia.”