[525] The Avars, during an incursion made in 616, carried off 270,000 captives of both sexes from the vicinity of the city; Nicephorus CP., p. 16.
[526] The largest reservoir, now called the “Bendt of Belgrade,” about ten miles N.W. of CP. is more than a mile long. The water is conveyed, as a rule, through subterranean pipes, and there is no visible aqueduct within six miles of the city. The so-called “Long Aqueduct” is about three-quarters of a mile in length.
[527] Evagrius, iii, 38; Procopius, De Aedific., iv, 9; Chron. Paschal., an. 512, etc.
[528] In modern Hindostan somewhat of a parallel might be traced, but very imperfectly. After the third century Gothic must also have become a familiar language at CP.
[529] The partial survival of the Latin language in the East during these centuries is proved, not merely by the body of law, inscriptions, numismatics, etc., but by the fact that some authors who must have expected to be read generally at Constantinople, chose to write in that tongue, especially Ammianus (“Graecus et miles,” his own words), Marcellinus Comes, and Corippus.
[530] This vulgar dialect has probably never been committed to writing. Specimens crop up occasionally, particularly in Jn. Malala, also in Theophanes, i, p. 283 (De Boor). See Krumbacher, op. cit., p. 770, et seq. The cultured Greeks, however, even to the end of the Empire, always held fast to the language of literary Hellas in her prime; see Filelfo, loc. cit.
[531] It is worthy of remark that assumption of the aspirate was in the period of best Latinity a vulgar fault decried by Romans of refined speech:
Chommoda dicebat, si quando commoda vellet
Dicere, et hinsidias Arrius insidias....
Ionios fluctus, post quam illuc Arrius isset,