THE present paper will seek to present a synthesis of the sixth- and seventh-century activities of the Bulgars in the Balkans, and by bringing into apposition, in such a manner as has not been done before, certain historical and archaeological evidence, to suggest — for much historical discussion 'suggest' is a more fitting word than 'prove' — the extreme probability of the occupation of Corinth by the Onogur Bulgars in the middle of the seventh century. The fifteenth-century Greek ecclesiastic, Isidore, Metropolitan of Kiev (1437-1442), a prominent figure in the Councils of Ferrara and Florence, declares in a petition which he addressed about 1429 to the Patriarch of Constantinople, in behalf of the then Metropolitan of Monemvasia, that the Onogur Bulgars took Corinth without a struggle. This statement has never been taken seriously, but it seems to me that the weight of the evidence, which we shall examine as we proceed, is entirely in favor of the fundamental truth of Isidore's statement, although he has, to be sure, erred in both the time and circumstances of the Bulgaric occupation of Corinth. We shall find it worthwhile in the pages that follow to detail certain of the more important facts concerning the early Bulgars, together with some peoples related to them, both in their homeland and in the Balkans; to show from the learned studies of Professor Gyula Moravcsik of Budapest that the so-called Danube Bulgars were Onogurs; to outline the history of the first Hunnic (or rather Bulgaric), Slavic, and Avaric attacks upon the Balkan provinces of the Byzantine Empire and to depict the political circumstances under which they occurred; to deal with both the legends and facts in the career of the Bulgaric prince Kovrat, with the assistance of an instructive paper by Professor Gregoire; to consider, for what it may be worth, the pertinent evidence in the Chronicle of Monemvasia and in a well known Scholium of Arethas of Caesarea; to fit into the now known flow of events some important archaeological evidence from the seventh century at Corinth, erroneously interpreted by the archaeologists; and, finally, to show that our combined historical and archaeological evidence now points, it seems to me, to an Onoguric occupation of Corinth in the seventh century, to which fact, whatever his errors, Isidore of Kiev is obviously alluding. Isidore writes:

And now two sacks of Corinth were witnessed during the period of Roman domination over the Peloponnesus, one in the days of Justinian the Great, who on this account later fortified the Isthmus [and the other as a consequence of the Fourth Crusade], for in Justinian's time three Scythian tribes, called the Kutrigurs, Utigurs, and Onogurs [Kottigaroi, Outtigaroi kai Ounigaroi], having crossed the Danube, one of these tribes ravaged upper Moesia, Pannonia, and Dalmatia and the regions right up to the Ionian Sea in a single expedition, while the Utigurs ravaged all Thrace and the Hellespontine Chersonese and all the territories on this side of the Hebrus to the very walls of the city of Constantine, and these Belisarius checked, outwitting and crushing them, but the

503 
 

Onogurs laying waste to Macedonia, Thessaly, Greece, and everything within Thermopylae, and pillaging even as far as Corinth, they straightway took the city without a single blow. [1]

The word 'Hun’ is very generally and very carelessly used in both Byzantine and western sources, and may have, in fact, some twenty different meanings, referring to such diverse peoples as Avars, Bulgars (in general), Burugundi, Cumans, Goths, Hungarians (Magyars), Kutrigurs, Lombards, Onogurs, Ottomans, Sabirs, Seljuks, Turks (in general), Utigurs, and Uz. [7] The Huns and Bulgars were cousins, but not brothers: the Huns were eastern Turks, while the Bulgars were western Turks, and spoke a language distinct from the common Turkish of the Huns. One cannot hope to differentiate too closely among the various Bulgar peoples, for all the Bulgar tribes and nations were of mixed racial stock, and the very name Bulgar, according to the great philologist J. Nemeth, is of Turkish origin, and meant 'mixed,' [8] and so denoted 'ein Volk, das sich aus verschiedenen Elementen zusammengesetzt hatte. [9] There have been, however,

504 

other interpretations of the word Bulgar and other attempts to depict the obscure history which lies behind it. [10]

If the Huns, properly speaking, are to be distinguished from the Bulgars, the Hungarians must be kept apart from both of them. This is not always easy, for Moravcsik has shown in some detail how close relations were between the Hungarians and the Onogur Bulgars. The linguistic evidence has, of course, proved the Finno-Ugrian origin of the Hungarians (or Magyars), but early in their history they had come in close contact with Bulgaro-Turks, i.e., especially the Onogurs, perhaps in the Ugric lands in western Siberia, east of the Urals, where they joined the Bulgaro-Turks in the fifth century in the westward movement which brought both groups of peoples to the northern and eastern shores of the Black Sea. From the Bulgaro-Turkish On-ogur, 'ten arrows,’ comes the name Hungarian [11] — the Onogurs and Magyars had long lived together as almost a single nation — the name 'Hungarian' was fastened upon the Magyars by the Slavs, for they had once been part of the Onogur nation, and the Slavs continued to call them 'Onogurs' (Ugri, Ungari). Although the Magyars, a very mixed people, were not originally of Turkish stock, they were or became close relatives of the Onogurs. The Magyars maintained, from the middle of the fifth to the middle of the seventh century, very close, indeed symbiotic, relations with the Onogur Bulgars, which explains the markedly Bulgaro-Turkish imprint apparent upon the Magyar language and early social organization. [12]

The Onogurs established themselves in the northern-Caucasus region, between the Don and the Kuban (6 Xeyoftevos Ko00ts 7rora/z6s), about the middle of the fifth century. [13] They remained in their new homes near the Kuban throughout the sixth century, and they formed the basis of the power of Old Great Bulgaria (o legomenoV koufiV potamoV), on Lake Maeotis, a barbarian empire established along the northeastern outposts of the Byzantine Empire by the great Onogur Kovrat in the early seventh century. [14] When Great Bulgaria fell before the advance of the Khazars in the later seventh century, some of the Onogurs, and other peoples who dwelt with them, became subject to the Khazars and paid tribute to them, while other Onogurs moved into the Danube region, presumably under Kovrat's famous son Asparuch. [15] Here the Onogurs became known as the Danube Bulgars. (It is conceivable that there were certain groups of Kutrigurs now dwelling with them.) The Onogurs furnished the most numerous and strongest tribes in the new Bulgaria, for an eighth-century Byzantine source, describing the events of 713 when the Emperor Philip Bardanes fell from power, dwells on the depredations in Thrace perpetrated by the Empire's dangerous new neighbors, who are specifically named the 'Onogur Bulgars' (h . . . efodoV tou geitniazontoV eqnoV Ounnogourwn Boulgarwn . . . ). [16] Part of the Onogurs remained behind, however, in their now old home between the Crimea and the Caucasus, for the episcopal list of the 'eparchy of Gothia' (eparcia GotqiaV), contained in the so-called 'Notitia of the Isaurians,' provides for a 'Bishop of the Onogurs' (o [episkopoV o] 'Onogourwn), [17] a missionary suffragan of the Crimean Gothic Metropolitan. [18] This list, which some scholars have dated between 733 and 746, has been recently connected by Vernadsky with the mission which Constantine the

505 

Philosopher, later known as St Cyril (the Apostle to the Slavs), undertook to Khazaria in A.D. 861 or 862, and Vernadsky believes that part of the Onoguric peoples must have still been in the region east of the Sea of Azov as late as the second half of the ninth century. The list of bishoprics constituting the Gothic province is contained, as we have stated, in the so-called 'Notitia of the Isaurians,' which has been the subject of much learned discussion, but whether the Gothic list should be dated in the eighth or the ninth century, and whatever the dates and sources of other sections of the Notitia, and whether the Gothic list itself represents a real or merely an imaginary or desired organization, we seem to have here valid evidence of the presence of the Onogurs in the Crimean region, and this at a period considerably later than their establishment on the Danube. [19]

According to Theophanes and the Patriarch Nicephorus, whose accounts are derived from some common source, the Danube Bulgars appeared in Thrace, to remain, in the year 679. [20] The Bulgars had not been nomads, however, as Professor Feher has amply demonstrated, but even before the fifth century, long before their settlement in the Balkans, the Bulgars had been 'un peuple etabli, s'occupant d'elevage en grand et d'agriculture. [21] Before 679, very likely, Bulgars had occupied the Dobrudja and built the fortifications at Garac, between the Sereth and the Pruth, just above the points where the rivers flow into the Danube; at Nicolicel, just south of the delta of the Danube; and upon sites even far into Moesia. [22] Old Great Bulgaria had been established early in the seventh century by Kovrat (Kubrat) along the shores of Lake Maeotis and in the region of the Kuban. Kovrat was the ruler (kurioV) of the Onogurs or Onogunduri, according to the Patriarch Nicephorus (ed. de Boor, p. 24); and Theophanes (ed. de Boor, I, 356) attributes to him lordship over 'the Onogundurs, Bulgars, and Kutrigurs' (oi Ounnogoundouroi, Boulgaroi kai Kotragoi). [23] Kovrat died in 642, the second year of the reign (641-668) of the Emperor Constans II (Constantine III); both Theophanes and Nicephorus tell the story of his leaving behind five sons who separated despite his admonition that they should remain together and preserve the unity of his realm. Of these alleged five sons only two seem to have been historical figures, but the whole legend seems to have arisen from the dissolution of Kovrat's Great Bulgaria between the Don and the Kuban into five groups of peoples. The first son Baian remained near the Kuban when, just after the middle of the seventh century, the Khazars reduced him to the position of a tribute-paying ally, and it is in this group of Onogurs that Moravcsik would see one of the chief constituent elements in the later Magyars. [24] The third son, Asparuch ('Asparouc), is also an historical figure. Upon the appearance of the Khazars he moved westward across the Don, the Dnieper, and the Dniester, with perhaps less than half the Onogurs, and settled in the Danube region in 679-680, and the history of modern Bulgaria was thus begun. [25] For seven centuries Bulgaria remained a formidable neighbor to Byzantium, until it fell before the Ottoman advance and became a Turkish province (1389-1396), and such it remained for almost five hundred years. [26] The other three sons of Kovrat are probably mythical figures. Kotragos, the second son, is said to have been the leader of the Kutrigurs, but since the Kutrigurs were so named long before the

506 

time of Kotragos, he must have received the name from them rather than they from him, but in any event he seems to belong to legend rather than to history. [27] The fourth and fifth sons are nameless, and that is probably just as well. The fourth son is said to have gone into Pannonia and become subject to the dread Avars — at the beginning of the ninth century the great Khan Krum united the Bulgars in Pannonia with those under the khanate at Pliska — while the fifth is said to have gone into Italy. [28] Moravcsik has, however, ingeniously found the five groups of peoples into which the realm of Kovrat appears to have broken: 1) the Onogurs, or cousins of the Onogurs, under Baïan, who remained on the Kuban, whence came, Moravcsik thinks, the Hungarians of a later period; 2) the Onogurs under Asparuch, who became known as the Danube Bulgars; 3) the Kutrigurs, over whom Kovrat had once ruled; 4) the later Volga-Bulgars, who survived until the appearance of the Mongols; and 5) the Bashkirs, who were a part of the Hungarian people. [29] This theory suggests that the Onogur tribes of Turkish origin, true Bulgars, went west to the Danube under Asparuch, while that part of the Onogurs of Finno-Ugrian origin remained by the Kuban and became subject to the Khazars just after the middle of the seventh century. The two groups of Onogurs had been, although close relatives, essentially different peoples; the ease with which they separated now becomes more intelligible; and, if MoravcsikY theory is true, the beginnings of Magyar history become a bit clearer. The Hungarians would now feel, less and less, the Onogur influence, but their chiefs, after Baian, remained still of Onogur-Bulgar descent; however, the Finno-Ugrian character of the people now became intensified, and they became Magyars, a name itself of Finno-Ugrian origin. [30]

The raids of Bulgars and other new barbarians upon the Byzantine Empire became increasingly dangerous from the first years of Justinian's reign, and the contemporary historians Procopius and John Malalas, among others, are unhappy witnesses to the severity of their depredations. [31] In 527 Bulgars, Slavs, and western Antae ravaged Illyricum and Thrace, perhaps the first historically certain attack by the Slavs, in force and in large numbers, upon the Empire (although for generations there had probably been a persistent infiltration into the northern Balkan provinces). [32] Two years later, in 529-530, a Bulgaric horde invaded Scythia and Lower Moesia, and ravaged Thrace; [33] another attack, in the next year, was driven back by Mundus, the Byzantine commander in Illyricum, who destroyed their army, captured much booty, and sent one of their chieftains in chains to the capital. [34] 'Peace was then restored in Thrace, and fear seized the barbarians.' [35] In the fourth year of Justinian's reign Chilbudius was appointed from the Emperor's own household, to the office of magister militum in Thrace (QrakhV strathgoV), 'and was assigned to guard the river Ister [Danube], being ordered to keep watch, so that the barbarians of that region could no longer cross the river, since the Huns and Antae and Sclaveni had already made the crossing many times and done irreparable harm to the Romans.' [36] Chilbudius held the barbarians back beyond the Danube for three years, and often carried the war across the river to them, 'and killed and enslaved the barbarians there,'

507 

but rendered over confident by his exploits, in 533-534 he crossed the Danube with a small force, and the Slavs defeated and killed him. [37] A half dozen years later, in 539-540, Procopius informs us that 'a mighty Hunnic [Bulgaric] army crossing the Danube River fell as a scourge upon all Europe. . . . For from the Ionian Gulf these barbarians plundered everything in order as far as the suburbs of Byzantium. They captured thirty-two fortresses in Illyricum, and they carried by storm the city of Cassandria. . . . ' [38] They pillaged Illyricum and Thessaly in another invasion (540), turned the fortified pass at Thermopylae, and 'destroyed almost all the Greeks except the Peloponnesians,' for the walls of the Isthmus checked their advance any further south. [39] The disasters led Justinian to organize the vast series of fortifications throughout all the northern provinces of the Balkan peninsula, and in various other strategic places to the south, such as Thermopylae and Corinth: new forts were constructed, old ones were reconstructed, and they numbered, in all, some six hundred. [40] Not long after the Bulgaric depredations of 540, the (western) Antae and certain groups of the Slavs became hostile to each other, and in an ensuing battle the Antae were defeated by their fellow Slavs. Justinian sought to divide and rule. He proposed to settle the Antae, an Eastern Slavic people, led, it is now suggested, by a Sarmatian ruling clan, [41] in the abandoned Trajanic city and region of Turris, on the left bank of the lower Danube, where as foederati they might be employed against the Bulgars. [42] Justinian seems thus to have removed the Antae from among his barbarian enemies, [43] and in 545 the eunuch Narses, with a number of Heruli under him intended for the army in Italy, met and defeated a great horde of Slavs, who had crossed the Danube and were pillaging Thrace. [44] Two or three years later, in 548-549, the Slavs again crossed the Danube; they 'spread desolation throughout the whole of Illyricum as far as Epidamnus [Durazzo], killing or enslaving all who came their way'; and the imperial commanders, with fifteen thousand men at their disposal, lacked courage enough 'to get close to the enemy.' [45] In 549-550 about three thousand Slavs crossed the Hebrus River (the modern Maritza), divided into two parts, one ravaging Illyricum and the other Thrace, and defeated the Byzantine commanders, although the latter had caught them thus divided. The coastal city of Topirus in Thrace, opposite the island of Thasos, and but twelve days' distance from the capital, was stormed by the invaders, whose terrible cruelties Procopius recounts in gruesome detail. [46] In the summer of 550, or 551, a great body of Slavs appeared again on Roman soil: 'they had come with the intention of capturing by siege both Thessalonica itself and the cities around it,' but the formidable reputation of the Byzantine general Germanus, who was then in Sardica, and whom Justinian directed to defend Thessalonica, caused the Slavs to abandon their ambitious plan and, instead, to harass Dalmatia. [47] Procopius, writing his Secret History about this time, gives us a depressing, even if much exaggerated, summary of conditions in the Balkans: 'Illyricum and Thrace, from the Ionian Sea to the suburbs of Byzantium, were overrun almost every year since Justinian's accession to the throne by Huns, Sclavenes, and Antae, who dealt atrociously with the inhabitants. In every

508 

invasion I suppose that about 200,000 Roman subjects were killed or enslaved; the whole land became a sort of Scythian desert — ‘[48] but the invasions of the Balkans were just beginning: 'Ce n'etait la qu'un prelude' (Dvornik).

The contemporary historian Agathias describes in stirring fashion the movement of the Bulgars known as the Kutrigurs under a chieftain named Zabergan in the winter of 558-559. The Kutrigurs, who got along badly with the Utigurs, who dwelt near them, sought wealth and adventure in the Byzantine empire, to which the Utigurs were bound by an alliance which Justinian had negotiated with them. Crossing the frozen Danube, the Kutrigurs under Zabergan made their way unchallenged through the provinces of Scythia and Moesia, and in Thrace they divided into three groups in order to pillage a larger area. The first group, under Zabergan himself, planned an attack upon Constantinople, but they were foiled and turned back by the courage and imagination of the veteran Belisarius; the second group tried to occupy the Thracian Chersonese, but were defeated by the Byzantine commander, Germanus; and the third group, sent into Greece, plundered Macedonia and Thessaly, but were stopped by the garrison at Thermopylae. When the Kutrigurs were at last forced to withdraw beyond the Danube, Justinian incited the hostile Utigurs against them; the Utigurs soon disappear from history, while the Kutrigurs had already fallen under Avaric domination. [49]

From the close of Justinian's reign (565) until the reign of the great soldier Heraclius (610-641) the history of the Balkan provinces is a tedious chronicle of death and destruction in which the Avars figure with most prominence. In 567 they helped the Lombards destroy the kingdom of the Gepids, and seized their lands, in Pannonia, for themselves (568), whereupon the Lombards were obliged to seek their fortunes in Italy. [50] The Avars retained some hold upon this region, together with territories farther east, for almost two centuries and a half, until the famous campaigns of Charlemagne (791-799). Avaric envoys from the Caucasus had first waited upon Justinian in 558 and received costly gifts from him, and had thereafter defeated, in his behalf and their own, the Onogurs and Zali (exepolemwqhsan OunigouriV, eita ZaloiV, Ounnikw fulw); made the Kutrigurs their subjects; crushed the Sabirs; invaded the land of the Antae; and swept, in the middle 560's, up to the Elbe and menaced the Frankish kingdom of Austrasia. [51] In 565 the Emperor Justin II haughtily refused to continue the tribute which Justinian had paid them. [52] But Baïan, the Khagan (caganoV) of the Avars, did not abate his claim to tribute, for it had previously been paid to the Utigurs and Kutrigurs, and to other peoples as well, and he insisted to the imperial government that, since Sirmium had been a possession of the Gepids, it now rightfully belonged to the Avars. In 568 he laid siege to Sirmium, 'and he ordered ten thousand Huns, who are called Kutrigurs [Bulgars] to cross the river Save and to ravage Dalmatia,’ with the remark that, if they lost their lives in the undertaking/ he would feel no sense of loss.' [53] The Byzantine troops which were to dissuade Baïan from giving further offense to the government were defeated, and peace was finally made in 573, the reluctant Justin II, whose stubborn refusal to treat with the Avars had prolonged hostilities through

509 

several years, now having no alternative but to pay the tribute. [54] Justin's co-ruler Tiberius Constantine, in 574-575, accepted as the amount to be paid each year the not inconsiderable sum of 80,000 pieces of gold (ogdohkonta ciliadeV eiV etoV ekaston vomismatwn), [55] for which he hoped to find among the Avars forces that he might employ against the Persians in the eastern provinces and against the Slavs in the Balkans. [56] Perhaps Tiberius had not miscalculated entirely for in 578, as we shall note again, when one hundred thousand Slavs ravaged Thrace and descended into Greece, the Avars assisted the Byzantine government against them, while Tiberius was himself occupied with an offensive against the Persians. [57] But Baïan now had the Emperor at a great disadvantage, and he pressed for the peaceful surrender of Sirmium, and when he was answered with a refusal, a period of three years of Avaric hostility and depredation against the empire was begun (579-582), in which the Balkan provinces suffered severely, and which ended in victory for the Avars: Baïan received Sirmium, and the tribute was resumed, with the payment of some 240,000 nomismata, presumably, to cover the three-year period during which it had fallen into arrears (triwn etwn parwchmenwn crusion), [58] We owe most of what we know of these crucial years of Avaro-Byzantine history to the contemporary annalist Menander Protector, whose so-called Legationes furnish us with a succinct, intelligible, and apparently reliable account of the events we have just described. [59]

In the year 578, as we have already noted, when Tiberius Constantine was in his fourth year as Caesar and co-ruler with Justin II, a horde of some hundred thousand Slavs, according to Menander, gathered in Thrace, which they ravaged, together with 'many other places’. [60] They apparently forced the pass of Thermopylae, because they 'plundered Greece.' [61] Tiberius, of course, was occupied with the Persians in the east, and the Balkan provinces were in the gravest peril (579-80), but Baïan, the khagan of the Avars, when appealed to by Tiberius, entered the stricken provinces as their defender, for he bore much animus against the Slavs himself, and was pleased to assail them, and to relieve them of the booty they had accumulated. [62] The opportunity was too good for Baïan not to take advantage of the Emperor also; he now secured Sirmium which he had long coveted, together with three years' tribute (580-82), as we have seen, for Tiberius was loathe to add a prolonged struggle with the Avars to the other troubles that harassed him beyond endurance. [63] An inscription from Sirmium (Mitrovitza), which dates almost surely from the Avaric wars of 579-582, contains the pitiful appeal: 'Lord Christ, help the city and smite the Avar and watch over Romania and the writer. Amen.' [64]

The late sixth-century historian Evagrius, of Syrian Epiphania, declares that 'the Avars, having twice made inroads as far as the so-called Long Wall, besieged and enslaved Singidunum [Belgrade, which Justinian had restored and heavily fortified], Anchialus, and indeed all Greece [kai thn 'Ellada pasan], together with other cities and garrisons, destroying and burning everything, while most of the armed forces were engaged in the East.' [65] The contemporary historian John of Ephesus (507-586) has also left a lugubrious account of these years and these events, which, like the passage we have just noted from Evagrius, is

510 

often quoted in the present connection: In the third year of the reign of the Emperor Tiberius (581), declares John of Ephesus, the accursed Slavs invaded the Empire, traversed all Greece, pillaged Thrace and Thessaly, took many towns and fortified places, and settled into the country as though it were their own. This went on for four years [581-584], during which time they moved about as they liked. Tiberius was fighting the Persians in the east. The Slavs ravaged and burned everything up to the outer walls of the capital; drove off the imperial herds and those of less exalted owners; and even as John was writing, in the year 584, Slavs (and Avars) lived without fear in the Balkan provinces. They had enriched themselves by rapine; they had gold and silver and horses; and their armed hordes had learned to fight better than the Romans. [66] How many Slavs were able to remain behind, after about 580, in permanent settlements in Greece has been a much-disputed question since the early nineteenth century, [67] but the numbers must have been not entirely inconsiderable. The Miracula S. Demetrii also furnishes evidence of the Avaro-Slavic devastation, at this time, of Illyricum and Thrace, and the more northern Balkan provinces would seem to have lost large numbers of their Greek inhabitants. [68] These attacks of Slavs and Avars apparently began in 578-579, and continued in force until about 584-585, during which time the ethnographic character of northern Greece must have been permanently altered by a process of violent Slavonization, for in the course of the invasion of 578-585, according to the Miracula, the Greek natives of Illyricum and Thrace were transported north of the Danube, to the region around Sirmium, where they were 'mixed with Bulgars, Avars, and other peoples,' although they were returned to their homes, some sixty years later, about 640-641, by the Bulgaric Khan Kovrat, after he had defeated the Avars, and the once great empire of Bai'an had dissolved. The Greeks, together with Bulgars and others, were now resettled in the plain of Monastir and elsewhere, as the author of the Miracula informs us, as 'a new people' (alloV neoV . . . laoV). [69]

Much of the Slavonization of the Balkans and of Greece itself was undoubtedly brought about by a process of peaceful penetration, unknown numbers of Slavs coming at unknown times and under unknown circumstances. It is not possible to say how numerous and how important the permanent Slavic settlements were in Greece following Kovrat's settlement in 640, but a century later, in 746-747, a great plague resulted in large numbers of Slavs being brought into Greece, and even scholars, like Professor Zakythinos, who have been very loath to see Slavic settlements in Greece proper before the time of Constantine V (741-775) acknowledge that after 746 there are permanent Slavic settlements to be found in lands once dear to the gods and heroes of classical antiquity. Possibly it was Constantine V himself who peopled the open country with Slavs, after the fashion of Heraclius' alleged settling the Croats and Serbs in Illyricum, but the cities still remained pretty much untouched, and the Slavs in continental Greece and the peninsula tended their flocks and tilled the soil, and paid the imposts laid upon them by the imperial government. They came, that is, but they had not conquered. They erected no states in Greece that we know of, although late in the eighth century a Slavic prince such as Akamir ('AkamhroV), lord of Belzetia

511 

in southern Thessaly, was powerful enough apparently to plot the rescue of the five sons of Constantine V, exiled to Athens by the Empress Irene, with the ambitious hope, it is said, of setting one of these last Isaurians upon their father's throne. [70] But such a display of Slavic enterprise was very rare in Greece, and Akamir is one of the few Slavic princes (in Greece) whose names are preserved in the records. There are two classic texts for the Slavonization of Greece, supplied by Constantine Porphyrogenitus and the tenth-century scholiast on Strabo's Geography, and we cite them solely that the reader may not be disappointed at not finding them somewhere in this article. Porphyrogenitus says that 'all the [open] country [cora] was slavonized and became barbarian, when the fatal pestilence ravaged all the world [in the year 746], when Constantine V Copronymus wielded the scepter of the Roman Empire,’ [71] and the scholiast on Strabo says that 'the Scythian Slavs now hold all Epirus and almost all Greece, together with the Peloponnesus and Macedonia.' [72] It must be remembered, however, in the present connection, that Constantine V could help restore the population of Constantinople, decimated by the plague, by the transportation of Greeks to the capital 'from the islands and Greece and the lower regions', (ek twn nhswn kai 'ElladoV kai twn katwtikwn merwn). [73] The population of Greece was far from exterminated by plagues, its cities far from destroyed by earthquakes, and the racial characteristics of the Greek people far from submerged in Slavism. Professor C. S. Coon has written, indeed, of the ethnography of present day Greece: 'It is my personal reaction to the living Greeks that their continuity with their ancestors of the ancient world is remarkable. . . . ' [74] Be this as it may, the strength of Greek culture was enormous. In the Tactica attributed to Leo the Wise occurs an interesting passage on the Slavs. When the Slavs had lived in their own country beyond the Danube, they had been free, refusing to serve another or submit to his leadership; when they had crossed the Danube, however, and were obliged to submit to discipline, they preferred subjection to a ruler of their own race (fuli), rather than to accept the rule and laws of Byzantium. A numerous people, our informant calls them, patient and hardy, they easily endured privation. The Emperor Basil I, with help from heaven (and from the Church), prevailed upon them to give up their ancient ways, and having made Greeks of them (graikwsaV), subjected them to rulers after the Byzantine fashion, converted them to Christianity, 'and freed them from servitude to their own rulers, and taught them to fight against peoples hostile to the Byzantines.' [75] Nevertheless, there were, through generations, plagues and famines, earthquakes, wars, and barbarians. The historical picture of the Balkans and of Greece is never a simple black-and-white drawing: rather it is a canvas crowded with too many figures, painted with bright colors and dull ones, and marred by too much confusion. The Avars created their full share of confusion in the sixth and seventh centuries, and we must return to them.

When the Emperor Maurice came to the throne in August of 582, the ravages of the Avars began again or simply continued, and Thrace suffered until the tribute was renewed and increased, but since Maurice was constantly occupied

512 

with the Persians, Baïan continued to seek his advantage amid the trials and troubles which harassed the Byzantine state. The Slavs were again pushed into the Balkan provinces, sought to lay siege to Thessalonica (586), and some of them reached the Long Wall. According, indeed, to a notice in the twelfth-century Chronicle of Michael the Syrian, Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch (1166-1199), the Slavs even took the city of Corinth. [76] In any event the Avars pillaged Moesia, but the government now turned with surprising energy to the defense of the northern provinces, and the Slavs were driven from Thrace, and the Avars hurled back beyond the Danube, after being defeated in a battle at Adrianople (587). [77] At long last, in 591, peace was made with Persia, and Maurice, free to deal with the Avars and Slavs, placed his ablest commander Priscus in charge of sufficient troops to meet the hordes of Baïan (592). There now began a decade of bitter warfare during which Priscus, except for a period in which he was relieved of his command (596-598), was charged with the onerous task of carrying the war into the Avaric lands beyond the Danube. [78] Baïan is said to have set a hundred thousand Slavs, apparently already in the peninsula, to undertake the capture of the great city of Thessalonica, which escaped only by the miraculous intervention of St Demetrius (597), [79] and in the years that followed Thessalonica owed its salvation more than once to the unfailing vigilance of its militant patron. On the other side of the peninsula, Dalmatia was threatened by the Slavs, and Pope Gregory wrote, in July of 600, to Bishop Maximus of Salona of the terrible anxiety he felt in behalf of the bishop and his flock. Gregory also mentioned that the Slavs were finding their way into Italy. [80]

Other Byzantine successes were achieved, with or without celestial assistance, and in 600 a truce was arranged between the Avars and the imperial government, which neither side intended to keep, but according to which the Danube was declared to be the boundary separating their respective lands, and another tribute of 20,000 pieces of gold was to be paid to the Avars. [81] But the war was renewed in the following year, and Priscus now crossed the Danube in force, carried the war to Baïan, diminished his strength in five fierce encounters, and finally thrust the Avars beyond the river Theiss. Avaric power seemed to have been reduced to the point of dissolution when the victorious Priscus was once more relieved of his command by the Emperor Maurice, early in 602, and the mutiny, some months later, of part of the army on the Danube resulted in the fall and death of Maurice in November of 602. [82]

The wretched rule of the tyrant Phocas prolonged the period of Avaric strength in the Balkans and moved the Persians to renewed attacks upon the eastern possessions of the Empire. [83] Although the great Heraclius succeeded Phocas in October of 610, the fragmentation of imperial authority in the eastern provinces, once begun, proved impossible to check. A decade of disaster followed; the story is too well known to bear retelling here. Syria and Palestine fell to the Persians; Asia Minor was overrun, Chalcedon becoming a Persian outpost; and Egypt, the granary of the capital, passed under Persian control when Alexandria was captured (618-619). [84] The Danube frontier could not be maintained, and the apparent powerlessness of the imperial government made inevitable further

513 

irruptions of the Slavs and Avars. The new Avaric Khagan, a son of the redoubtable Baïan, was looking upon the walls of Constantinople on 5 June 617, and the environs of the capital were pillaged, especially the suburb of Blachernae. [85] But the zeal and courage of Heraclius entirely justified his elevation to the imperial throne. He planned and prepared for months and years, with the aid of the Patriarch Sergius, for those great campaigns which were to destroy for ever the power of the Sassanids and Persia (622-629). Chosroes II, whom the world had come to look upon in the second decade of the century as a Cyrus or Darius or at least a Shapur, now experienced an anxiety which gradually mounted into desperation, as he contemplated the effects and the possibilities of Heraclius' brilliant offensive. In an effort to divert the Emperor's attention and to deflect some of his blows, Chosroes effected, in 626, a military rapprochement with the Avars, who advanced once more to the walls of Constantinople in June of this year, but the Avaric attacks upon the capital were repulsed (29 July-7 August 626), and the Khagan abandoned the last Avaric siege of the great city, [86] and prayers of thanksgiving were offered up within the walls which had withstood the assault, for the Panagia of Blachernae had not abandoned her people during those days of direst peril. [87] For almost sixty years the Avars had been an almost annual menace to the Balkan provinces, but after 626 their decline was rapid, [88] and other enemies, most notably the Arabs, came to occupy the chief attention of the Byzantine Emperor and the Empire.

After 626 the Slavs and Bulgars were also free of subjection to the Avars, who were now contained by the forces of the famous Samo (623-658), Frankish ruler of the new Slavic empire in the west, [89] and by those of Kovrat, Khan of the Bulgars in the east, the latter being allied withHeraclius from 635-636. [90] Heraclius was, of course, unable to drive the Slavic peoples from his northern Balkan provinces, where they had settled in permanent habitations from the time of the Emperors Maurice and Phocas. Moreover, there is a legend to the effect that he settled the Croats and Serbs, apparently the same people, in Dalmatia, Illyricuni, and Pannonia, in order to help the imperial government to hold the Avars in check. [91] This legend may be true.

It is now time to deal with some other texts, more difficult to work with than Menander and Evagrius, concerning the Avaro-Slavic attacks upon Greece, for they gave rise to much controversy in the nineteenth century, 'and the report was long believed that the Avars occupied the Peloponnesus for 218 years [i.e. about 587-805], so that no Roman durst enter it.' [92] Thus a synodal letter of the Patriarch Nicholas III Grammaticus (1084-1111), addressed in 1084 to the Emperor Alexius I Comnenus, and dealing with the rights of metropolitans over suffragan bishoprics, declares that the Emperor Nicephorus I (802-811) granted metropolitical authority to the archiepiscopal see of Patras over certain bishoprics, because of the miraculous intervention of St Andrew, chief of the Apostles and patron saint of Patras, after the catastrophic success of the Avars had wrenched the whole of the Peloponnesus from Roman control for two hundred and eighteen years, 'so that no Roman could even set foot in the Peloponnesus,' but in a single hour the Avars were crushed when St Andrew appeared,

514 

and the whole territory was thus restored to Roman rule. [93] This happened in 805 or, possibly, in 807. We have a detailed account of St Andrew's raising of the siege of Patras in Constantine Porphyrogenitus, and it is not often that such a good story is so well told: While Nicephorus I was Emperor, the Slavs in the Peloponnesus planned and executed an attack upon their Greek neighbors. They laid siege to the city of Patras, 'having with them both Africans and Saracens.' The inhabitants of the city soon felt the effects of hunger and thirst. Since, however, the governor (strathgoV) of the province (Qema) was then in the castle of Corinth (en kastrw Korinqou) [94] and had been informed of the irruption of the Slavs, the Patrenses expected immediate aid from him, and so sent a scout to discover whether he was already on his way to assist them. If the governor was on his way, the scout was to let the besieged know by inclining his banner as he returned; otherwise he was to hold the banner up high, so that the Patrenses need not continue to look for help from that quarter. The scout departed. He was soon returning with his banner held aloft, for he had not seen the governor coming with help for the imperilled city. By the will of God, however, and at the intercession of St Andrew the Apostle, his horse stumbled; the banner was abruptly lowered; the Patrenses believed that help was coming, and so they made a sortie from their walls against the Slavs. Help was indeed coming, for St Andrew was now seen clearly, mounted on horseback, charging upon the barbarians, who were overwhelmed with terror, and fled pell mell from the city they had hoped to take. St Andrew had saved Patras. Three days later the governor arrived; he was told of the exploit of the Apostle, and rendered a full account thereof to the Emperor Nicephorus. The Emperor ordered that the Slavs should be assigned to the (now) metropolitan Church of Patras, and promulgated a decree to this effect (dedwkwV peri eutwn kai siggilion). Constantine Porphyrogenitus, however, now goes out of his way to declare that there was no written record of these events — having just mentioned the imperial 'seal,' which was apparently still extant in the eleventh century, for the Patriarch Nicholas III alludes to it and some later confirmations of it — the elders of Patras had simply informed their children of that eventful day, so that each generation might know of the miracle thus wrought by the Apostle, and might not forget the benefits which God had bestowed upon them by his intercession. [95] The letter of the Patriarch Nicholas III states, as we have seen, that St Andrew's activity brought immediately to an end 218 years of Avaric domination in the Peloponnesus; this was an important text for Fallmerayer, and he dated the Avaro-Slavic destruction of ancient Greece from 588-589, [96] which thus accorded with St Andrew's appearance at Patras and the Byzantine recovery of the whole region in the year 807. [97] (As a result of his contentions Fallmerayer met a shower of abuse from the newspapers during a stay in Athens, and, what was more serious for him, certain diplomatic circles took a dim view of an historian who, in the years following the peace of Adrianople, declared the Greeks, as Slavs, to be close cousins of the Russians. [98]) Zinkeisen soon disputed Fallmerayer's general view, but he did not venture to impugn the validity of the Patriarch Nicholas's evidence so much as to assert that the passing of persons

515 

and things Hellenic was achieved by a process of general liquidation rather than of quick destruction. [99] The great Greek nationalist historian Const. Paparrigopoulo next sought to show that the letter of the Patriarch Nicholas was based upon the historian Evagrius. [100] It obviously stems, however, from the historical record or tradition, to which we shall come in a moment, of which the Chronicle of Monemvasia and an intriguing Scholium, written in 932, of Arethas of Caesarea are a part. [101] The views of these early scholars still retain a peculiar interest, but they have become, by and large, rather a part of the history of scholarship than of scholarly history. We have seen something of the extent and character of the great Avaro-Slavic irruption of 578-585, described by Menander Protector, Evagrius, John of Ephesus, and others, an event of high importance for the subsequent history of Greece. Although we may, and perhaps truly, claim to understand the nature and effects of the barbarian irruptions into the Balkan provinces and Greece rather better today than our predecessors in the nineteenth century, we must inevitably entertain grave misgivings on the score of any reconstruction of events that we may be able to make on the basis of the confused medley of facts at our disposal. The problem of the Peloponnesus remains especially baffling. Interest in the alleged Avaro-Slavic occupation of the Peloponnesus, and settlement therein, has in no way diminished with the passing of the years, and it has been treated in several recent studies. [102] One of the chief sources, concerning which much doubt is still entertained, is the now almost famous, but apparently misnamed, Chronicle of Monemvasia. The text of this chronicle now survives in three or four versions. The earliest known version was published in 1749 from a manuscript in the library of the University of Turin by Giuseppe Passini and his colleagues Rivautella and Berta. [103] The Turin text (designated T) was republished in 1884 by Sp. P. Lampros, who also edited two other versions of the Chronicle which he discovered in two manuscripts in monasteries on Mt Athos, which manuscripts are designated by the names of the monasteries to which they belonged. One of these texts is called the Koutloumousiac, i.e., of Kutlumus (K), which supplies a text very similar to the Turin manuscript (T), while the other Athonite text (from the monastery of Iveron), known as the Iberitikon (7), is a more detailed version of the original source, and does not extend in its content beyond the first decade of the ninth century. The I text is apparently complete in itself, however, and not a broken fragment; it ends, as it was presumably intended to end, with a doxology. [104] All three texts were republished, with some emendations, by Professor N. A. Bees in 1909. [105] The manuscript in Turin and that in Kutlumus furnish us with versions of the Chronicle obviously written between 1340, the date of the last event mentioned in T and K, and the sixteenth century, the date, by and large, of the manuscripts themselves. [106] In 1912 Professor Lampros published a fourth version from a manuscript in the Gregorian College in Rome (designated R). A dozen paper pages, from the sixteenth (or fifteenth) century, prefixed to a thirteenth-century manuscript on parchment, contain the last third of the Chronicle (on pp. 11 r f.). [107] We have, then, these four versions of the Chronicle, three of which (T, K, and R) are much the same, although R possesses

516 

only the material in the last third of T and K. The remaining text, I, stands apart from the other three; and, as we have noted, it is the most complete of the four versions for the period which it covers.

There has been some controversy concerning the Iberitikon. Professor Lampros asserted that I belonged to an older tradition than T, K, and R, having been based upon some earlier collection of historical materials, [108] while Professor Bees was formerly inclined to assign its redaction to the Peloponnesian family of the Likinioi in the fifteenth century. [109] Professor S. B. Kougeas, having discovered that a lengthy passage in the Chronicle) largely dealing with the alleged Avaro-Slavic occupation of the Peloponnesus, was almost word for word the same as a scholium written by Arethas of Caesarea in 932, came to the conclusion that the Chronicle (version I) was written during or immediately after the reign of Nicephorus II Phocas (963-969). [110] Before we proceed any farther, it may be well to say just a word about Arethas of Caesarea, who has been the subject of considerable interest in late years. He was born in Patras, perhaps about 850, and became, rather early in the tenth century, Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia. He had been, like many of his learned contemporaries, a student of Photius, and possessed an intelligent interest in classical literature and theology. He was also, be it noted again for future reference, a native of Patras. [111]

The text of the Iberitikon, or I version of the so-called Chronicle of Monemvasia, is the one upon which chief dependence must be placed for such information as this work supplies us for the alleged Avaro-Slavic invasion of, and settlement in, the Peloponnesus. A common source seems to lie behind the Chronicle of Monemvasia (especially version I), the Scholium of Arethas, the letter of the Patriarch Nicholas III, and, conceivably, the Monemvasiote petition of 1429. [112] Lampros, however, has called attention to the division of the material in versions T and K into three parts: 1) the history of the Avars up to the reign of Maurice; 2) the description of the attack of the Avars and Slavs upon the Peloponnesus, together with their conversion to Christianity by the Emperor Nicephorus I and some notices concerning the church of Patras until Nicephorus' time; and 3) the notices concerning the metropolitan churches of Monemvasia and Lacedaemonia. Of the three parts possessed by both T and K, R has only the third part, and I has only the first two parts. There is a very definite break here, suggesting, as Lampros says, ta duo prwta sunaphrtisan en palaioterioV cronoiV to olon, that these two first parts had previously constituted the whole, the third part of T and K and the material in R being obviously a later addition. The I version thus seems to represent, without doubt, the older form of the so-called Chronicle. [113] Most scholars have discarded the Chronicle of Monemvasia as a source of dubious value, and, even since Kougeas has thrust its date back into the tenth century, have regarded it as being untrustworthy in its record of an Avaro-Slavic occupation of the Peloponnesus. Professor Peter Charanis, however, has recently asserted that, since the publication by Kougeas (in 1912) of the Scholium of Arethas written in 932, Vhich confirms, as far as it goes, almost word for word what the chronicle has to say . . . , there remains virtually nothing

517 

in the chronicle that cannot be confirmed by other sources, and it can now be affirmed in unmistakable and unambiguous terms that the Chronicle of Monemvasia is absolutely trustworthy and constitutes one of the most precious sources of the history of the Byzantine Empire.' [114] The present writer believes that this extreme and categorical statement is unwarranted; [115] he does, however, agree with Charanis to the extent of seeing an historical substance of some importance, at least, in the so-called Chronicle of Monemvasia. It is, however, ludicrous to believe in an Avaro-Slavic domination of the Peloponnesus that endured for 218 years. The Scholium of Arethas and the Chronicle are derived, as we have noted, from a common source, a written chronicle, presumably, itself based upon Menander Protector, Evagrius, Theophanes, and Theophylact Simocatta, together with at least one unknown source, which we may call, for convenience, Q. [116] It is from Q that the statement comes that the Avars took possession of the Peloponnesus, settled in it, and prolonged their rule over it for 218 years, obeying neither the Roman emperor or any other person. [117] It is, therefore, from Q that the '218 years' passed, in one way or another, into our unknown chronicle, whence it passed into Arethas, the Chronicle of Monemvasia, the letter of the Patriarch Nicholas III, and into the works of Fallmerayer and our modern literature. But what was the nature of Q? This we do not know, but I think that something may be suggested as to its provenience, if not as to its nature. Arethas, who knows Q, most likely indirectly through our assumed chronicle, was a native of Patras. The Patriarch Nicholas III employs the statement emanating from Q in his assertion of the metropolitical rights of Patras. The Avaric or Avaro-Slavic domination of the western Peloponnesus is said to have come to an end, after 218 years, with the Byzantine reconquest of Patras. Clearly the place to look for Q is Patras. Q could, of course, be a life of the Apostle St Andrew, patron and savior of Patras. It is also barely conceivable that Q could be a chrysobull, genuine or spurious, whereby Nicephorus I was said to have raised Patras to metropolitan rank, [118] and to have extended its authority, as indicated by Arethas, the Chronicle of Monemvasia, and the Patriarch Nicholas III. Q could be a forgery of ecclesiastical origin, perpetrated by or in behalf of the Metropolitan of Patras. One immediately recalls, in the west, how Constantine the Great bestowed the patrimony of St Peter upon Pope Sylvester as well as other 'pious forgeries,' like the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, in which ambitious churchmen in the eighth and ninth centuries sought to give legal effect to actual or desired conditions. This is submitted merely as a bare possibility. Nothing is here affirmed beyond the high probability that Q must be associated with Patras, but we still do not know the nature of Q — nor, of course, the extent of its trustworthiness. Charanis should not regard such a source as 'absolutely trustworthy.' The Chronicle of Monemvasia seems, in fact, to be a medley of some fact and some fiction. It should be used with caution.

Both the Chronicle and the Scholium of Arethas contain, in more or less parallel accounts, a description of the Avaric or Avaro-Slavic invasions — in the time of the Emperor Maurice — of Thrace, Macedonia, Thessaly, Epirus, the island of Euboea, and Attica, after which the Avars 'launched an attack on

518 

the Peloponnesus, seized it, and driving out and destroying the Greek peoples of noble lineage, they themselves settled down in the land.' [119] The Chronicle expressly states, concerning the Avars, that 'those who could escape their bloodstained hands fled, some to one place, some to another.' [120] All the Greeks, therefore, in the (western) Peloponnesus, according to the Chronicle, either fled or were killed. This is absurd. However, the natives of Patras fled to Rhegium in Calabria; the Argives went to the island called Orobe [but Euboea was already devastated]; and the Corinthians are declared to have sought refuge on the island of Aegina. The Laconians abandoned their native soil, and some sailed off to Sicily, 'and they are still there in a place called Demena, and are called Demenitae instead of Lacedaemonians [Demenitai anti Lakedaimonitwn katonomazomenoi], and they still preserve their native Laconian speech.' Other Laconians discovered an inaccessible place on the seashore, where they built a strong city which they called Monemvasia because it had but one approach from the land [i.e., monh embasiV], and they settled in this city with their own bishop. [121] 'Thus the Avars occupied the Peloponnesus, settled there, and prolonged their rule over the land for two hundred and eighteen years, subject neither to the Roman Emperor nor to anyone else, that is to say from the 6096th year of the Creation, which is the sixth year of the reign of Maurice (A.D. 587-588), until the year 6313, which is the fourth year of the reign of the elder Nicephorus (A.D. 805-806) . . . ,' [122] 'Only the eastern part of the Peloponnesus from Corinth to Cape Malea, because it is rugged and inaccessible [which, for the most part, it is not] remained free from the Slavs, [123] and the Emperor continued to send a governor to this region.' One of these governors, a man from Lesser Armenia, who belonged to the family of the Skleroi, becoming embroiled with the Slavs, conquered them and destroyed them completely [. . . sumbalwn tw Sqlabhnw eqnei polemikoV eile te kai hfanise], and thus made possible the restoration of their own lands to the original inhabitants. [124] When the Emperor Nicephorus was informed of Skleros' victory over the Slavs, he was overjoyed, and immediately planned the re-establishment of the cities and churches destroyed by the barbarians, 'and to make Christians of the barbarians themselves' [whom Skleros had already 'destroyed completely']. Nicephorus resettled the Patrenses, who had so long lived in Rhegium in Calabria, in their ancient city of Patras, together with their pastor Athanasius: Patras and its churches were thus reconstructed while Tarasius (died 18 February 806) was still Patriarch of Constantinople. Lacedaemon was also rebuilt and was repeopled with Kapheroi, Thracesians, Ar-meniacs, and others assembled from diverse places. Reorganized as a bishopric, Lacedaemon was made suffragan to the new Metropolitan of Patras. [125]

It has been claimed that Navarino, scene of one of the most memorable events in the modern history of Greece, preserves to this day the name and memory of the Avars in Messenia: this is apparently an erroneous derivation ([N] Avarinos), but in any event the name Navarino is of Slavic origin (*Avorbno, [a place of] 'maples'?), and is one of hundreds of such place names, recently treated for us by Professor Max Vasmer, which testify to the presence of the Slavs both in continental Greece and the Morea. [126]

519 

The raising of Patras to metropolitan status, as described by Arethas, the Chronicle, and the Patriarch Nicholas III, would be a most important change in the ecclesiastical organization of Greece. It would break the predominant position of the Church of Corinth, but this would probably make little difference to the Corinthians, if we could follow our sources to the point of believing that they fled en masse to the island of Aegina. About two years, however, after the date of this alleged Avaro-Slavic invasion of the Peloponnesus, and the occupation of Corinth, Pope Gregory the Great, in February 591, wrote the Archbishop Anastasius of Corinth of his elevation to the Holy See, [127] and some four years later, in July 595, we find Gregory writing to John, Anastasius' successor as Archbishop of Corinth. [128] Although Pope Gregory seems well informed concerning the affairs of the Church of Corinth, and holds up to opprobrium the Archbishop Anastasius, whose conduct he had had investigated by one Secundinus, he does not mention the disaster which our sources declare to have fallen upon the city: if Corinth had been taken by the Avars, Gregory would have known it; if he had known it, he would not have failed to mention it; we are, therefore, forced to the conclusion that Arethas and the Chronicle are not here dealing with fact, but have deviated into fancy. It was apparently very easy for a Roman 'to set foot in the Peloponnesus,' in the very decade following the alleged Avaro-Slavic invasion of 588. [129] We may follow the history of the Corinthian Church in after years a bit farther, but a mere list of names, dates, and unrelated facts do not supply the materials from which intelligible — or at least reliable — history can be written. Thus we know that Stephen, Bishop of Corinth, was present at the Sixth Oecumenical Council held in Constantinople in 680-681, [130] but Corinth was apparently not represented at Nicaea at the Seventh (787), [131] although the Metropolitan Hilarion of Corinth appears at the famous ninth session of the Eighth Oecumenical Council (12 February 870), [132] and his signature appears among those who subscribed to the acts of the Council. [133] However, despite the continuance of Corinth as a metropolitan center, in the ecclesiastical sense, Patras does seem to have been elevated to metropolitan rank during the reign of the Emperor Nicephorus I, [134] and there are reasons for believing that Athens was also made a metropolis about the same time, for the Abbot Hilduin of St Denis, who was writing about the year 835, and could have got his information from the Byzantine embassies sent to the court of Louis the Pious in 824 and 827, [135] says that Athens was made a metropolis during the patriarchate of Tarasius (784-806). [136] Even a superficial comparison of what is said concerning the freeing of Patras from the Slavs in the accounts of Constantine Porphyrogenitus on the one hand and Arethas and the Chronicle of Monemvasia on the other reveals some serious discrepancies, which the reader will doubtless have noted, and so it seems best to acknowledge that we do not have precise knowledge of what led to the elevation of the see of Patras to metropolitan rank, although the fact was attested by imperial sigillia apparently still extant in the time of the Patriarch Nicholas III. The new status of Patras was probably necessitated by the ecclesiastical reorganization of Greece, of which the similar elevation of Athens was also a part. There is very likely some truth in the account furnished

520 

us by Arethas and the author of the Monemvasiote Chronicle, but it stands rather like wreckage cast upon the shore, and the historian should not seek in this case, any more than the beachcomber, to reproduce the lines of the ship from the battered remains of the pilot-house and the quarter-deck.

To most modern historians, therefore, this story of the Avaro-Slavic occupation of the Peloponnesus has been unconvincing. Professor Zakythinos has very recently refused to place any credence in it, and, years ago, Gregorovius wrote: 'The barbarians never possessed Corinth and Patras, Nauplion and Argos, Chalcis, Thebes, and Athens. There always maintained themselves, in these places, Byzantine authority and the Greek people.' [137] It has been recently asserted, however, that archaeological evidence confirms, to some extent, the statements in the Chronicle of Monemvasia, especially as to the Greek abandonment of Corinth. Some very important finds of apparently non-Byzantine origin, such as buckles, weapons, ornaments and the like, have been made in two graves which were discovered some years ago in a square tower below the west entrance to Acrocorinth, and the same sorts of things have been found on various other sites in and around Corinth. These buckles, weapons and ornaments date from the first half of the seventh century, and are exactly like those familiar from similar graves of the same era which have been excavated at Keszthely, on the western end of Lake Balaton, in Hungary. [138]

It has been suggested that the finds at Corinth are from the graves of Kutrigur (i.e., Bulgar) warriors, whom the Avars might have forced to precede them in battle, or might have sent on an advance raid, as Menander describes the Khagan Baïan doing in a great campaign. [139] In any event these graves do not seem to be those of Avars (often difficult to tell from Kutriguric graves in Hungary), and no evidence seems to be forthcoming of Avaric burials at Corinth. [140]

The evidence then points to the Corinthian graves as containing the bodies of Bulgaric warriors. Horvath has identified them as Kutrigurs, although it seems better to me to regard them as Onogurs, since Isidore of Kiev obviously preserves a reminiscence of a Peloponnesian tradition to precisely this effect, which he may have found in a literary source no longer extant, but which he has, unfortunately, carelessly adapted to his argument in the Monemvasiote petition of 1429. [141] In any event, in the time from which these graves date, the Onogur prince Kovrat ruled over the Kutrigurs as well as over the Onogurs, and some of his people were apparently settled in the plain of Monastir. There is another text in the petition of 1429 relating to the fall of Corinth, which we had best consider at this point, both because of its great interest and because Professor Zakythinos has irrelevantly associated it with the Avaro-Slavic or Onoguric attacks upon Corinth.

The text in question is cited by Isidore from the act of the Holy Synod of 1397, whereby Maine and Zemena were to be taken from Monemvasia and restored to Corinth (the Praxis of Corinth): the synodal act itself quotes this text, however, from an 'old manuscript,’ produced at the Synod in 1397, and said to date back to the elevation of Monemvasia to metropolitan rank (which would make the 'old manuscript' no older than 1261): 'The most holy metropolis

521 

of Corinth,' runs the tenor of the old manuscript, 'having fallen by siege, and its inhabitants having been scattered everywhere, the then Bishop of Monemvasia — for this was previously a bishopric of Corinth [as the Greek taktika amply testify] — displaying every zeal, not only saved some of the Corinthians and settled them in the Peloponnesus, but also, having summoned many others of the inhabitants, he settled them there in various places [egkatesoeire tauth], and thus again did he colonize the Peloponnesus.' [142] The old manuscript attributes these events to the Fourth Crusade. [143] The whole picture is not easy to reconcile with what we know of Moreote history following the Fourth Crusade, which may have led Zakythinos, nodding for a moment, to associate this statement with the alleged Avaro-Slavic attack upon Corinth. [144] Corinth fell to Geoffrey I de Ville-hardouin in 1210, after a five years' siege; the Greeks had already removed the treasure of the Corinthian Church to Argos (which also fell in 1212); it is quite probable that some Corinthians did flee to Monemvasia in 1210, but the city of Corinth was far from being abandoned, and remained through the thirteenth century a rather active commercial center. [145] Monemvasia did not fall to the Latins until 1248, but its Bishop was never in any position, during the years preceding, to 'colonize the Peloponnesus,' which was almost entirely in Latin hands. After 1261, however, when Monemvasia was recovered by Michael VIII Palaeologus, and raised to metropolitan rank, the Metropolitan of Monemvasia would be in a position to help decolonize' the Peloponnesus. It is to the beginning years of the Greek Reconquista, then, that the 'old manuscript' refers; it has nothing to do with Avars and Bulgars, of course, and it has nothing directly to do with the Fourth Crusade. [146] The text in question has carried us six centuries from our subject, but some brief comment upon it has seemed necessary.

The finds made in the two Corinthian graves, which we had been discussing before the preceding digression, seem to me to indicate a Bulgaric attack upon the city in the first half of the seventh century, and the historical record and numismatics may allow us to fix this attack, and perhaps a brief period of occupation, about the middle of the century, very likely in the late 640's. Professor Gregoire has recently made Kovrat, the Onogur Khan, the subject of a most interesting paper. [147] Gregoire has demonstrated, again, that Kovrat (or Kubrat) led the Croats — and Serbs — against the Avars, and is the eponymous hero from whom the Croats derived their name (Crobatoi); he has now established beyond much doubt that the Kouver (Kouber) of the Acta or Miracula S. Demetrii Martyris is the Onogur Kovrat, as Th. Uspenskii and Lubor Niederle had already asserted, and that the Onogurs and their Khan were very active in the northern Balkan provinces of the Empire, [148] as we have already had ample occasion to observe. Kovrat had negotiated an alliance in 635-636, when he struck at the Avars, with the Emperor Heraclius, whom he had known since 619: we are expressly told that this Bulgaro-Byzantine alliance lasted until Heraclius's death in 641. [149] In fact, it led Kovrat to support Heraclius's widow, the Empress Martina, against Constantine III and his son Constans II. Thus, previously the ally of the Byzantine government, Kovrat became an enemy in 641-642, a threat to Constantinople and to Thessalonica. [150]

It was some time after 641-642 that a detachment of Onogur Bulgars, whether

522 

under, conceivably, one of the sons of Kovrat, or under some other lieutenant, attacked and captured Corinth. It is the remains of these warriors, their weapons and ornaments, that have been discovered, I believe, in the graves at Corinth, marked as Nos. II and III by Miss Davidson. [151] Isidore of Kiev's statement possesses archaeological confirmation. It was also at the time of the Onogur occupation of Corinth, apparently, that the Corinthians were, for the most part, dispersed, and presumably settled in various places in the Peloponnesus. Numismatic evidence, as we shall see, suggests that the Onogurs could not have held Corinth much more than fifteen years or so, if indeed they held the city that long. If the present reconstruction of events is acceptable, we may believe that the Onogurs were expelled from Corinth by the Emperor Constans II. Constans is known to have made an expedition, in 657-658, 'into Sclavinia, and he took many prisoners, and subdued the land.' [152] M. Brehier states, simply and truly, 'On ignore dans quelle region eut lieu cette expedition. On suppose qu'elle degagea Thessalonique.' [153] It is tempting to believe that in Theophanes' reference to the expedition of 657-658 'Sclavinia' means the Peloponnesus, as Hopf, Zakythinos and others have tried to interpret the word in another passage in Theophanes. [154] I do not succumb to the temptation, but I believe it to be most likely that one effect of part, at least, of the military preparations of 657-658 was the relief of Corinth, which must have suffered so much from its capture by the Onogurs and its recapture by the Byzantines that it may have ceased to exist as an inhabited community. The archaeological evidence suggests that Corinth was deserted some time in the first half of the seventh century, but the numismatic evidence enables us, I think, to fix the date of the virtual abandonment of Corinth precisely in the reign of Constans II. Coins of Constans II which have been found at Corinth are more numerous than those of any other emperor since the reign of Justin II (d. 578); this is quite intelligible if he or some of his commanders actually made an appearance here; following Constans II there is a very sudden falling off in the numbers of Byzantine coins recovered, and those of Constans' own successor, Constantine IV (668-685), are very rare; in fact, 'the reigns of the eighteen emperors who ruled between the years 668 (the first year of Constantine IV) and 829 (the last year of Michael II) have yielded only sixteen coins [up to 1937].' [155] Coins from the first half of the seventh century have thus been found in rather large numbers, but chiefly on Acrocorinth (they are rare in the lower town), indicating that this period was one of danger in Corinth, and that the inhabitants dwelt within the protection of the precipitous heights of the citadel. In the lower town, however, coins are found from the first half of the ninth century, but rarely, it is striking to note, in the upper town, suggesting that, contrary to the account in Constantine Porphyrogenitus, there was no military commandant and garrison on Acrocorinth in 805-807 at the time of St Andrew's defeat of the Slavs. There is thus some reason to believe that Acrocorinth was not the location of a garrison command in the late eighth and earlier ninth centuries, but, from the reappearance of the coins, was re-established as such in the time of Leo VI (886-912), 'the remnants of the Byzantine buildings destroyed by the Slavs [or, as I think, by the Bulgars] furnishing the necessary

BELT BUCKLES FROM ATHENS.
The second and third buckles of the top row (American Agora Collection, inventory numbers and B509 respectively), which are the same as some of the buckles found at Corinth, are regarded in the present study as Bulgaric. (The photograph was taken by Miss Alison Frantz.)

523 

materials.' [156] Following the expulsion of the Onogur Bulgars Corinth was a deserted village.

We may pursue, just a bit farther, the belief that Constans II expelled the Onogurs from what was left of Corinth, and that the expedition of 657-658, which may have also driven the Slavs (and Bulgars?) from Thessalonica, included a plan, which was successfully executed, to regain Corinth. Two years later, in 660, Constans II left Constantinople for the last time, for his great enterprise in southern Italy and Sicily. In 660-661, however, before his departure for the west, Constans II lived for a considerable time in Thessalonica and Athens (662), the two places where he might check up on the final results of the expedition of two years before. [157]

Certain buckles found at Corinth seem to me to be peculiarly interesting in the present connection, for I believe them to be the buckles which fitted on the 'Bulgarian belts' referred to in two very important contemporary texts. These belts were worn, as we shall see, by Byzantine soldiers in the time of Constans II — one of those barbarian fashions so obnoxious to Roman patriots from the time of the first Augustus — and they were also, a fortiori, worn by the Bulgars. Buckles like those in the graves at Corinth have been found with suspicious regularity along the entire route of Constans II. The latter, as is well known, fought with the Lombards in Italy; plundered Rome (as Johannes Diaconus tells us) for twelve days; and thereafter went on to Sicily, where he was finally murdered, in Syracuse, on 15 July 668. [158] Bulgaric buckles, let us call them so for the moment, have been found not only in Corinth, but also in Thessalonica, in Athens (one of the two Athenian buckles bearing a Christian monogram), and at Aphiona on the island of Corfu. [159] Similar buckles have been found in Lombard graves in Italy, and others, with a Christian monogram, very like the one in Athens, have also been found in Sicily, at Taormina and at Syracuse. [160] Taormina is not far north of Syracuse, and it lies on the coast road from Messina, a road much used by the soldiers of the Emperor Constans II, who lived himself at Syracuse. The Emperor's route, then, from Constantinople to Tarentum — for our sources all mention that he hugged the shore — lay through Thessalonica, Athens, Corinth, and Corfu, thence into southern Italy, and finally into eastern Sicily: in all these places we find Bulgaric buckles. [161] Indeed, aside from the buckles found, as we have noted, in graves in Hungary, and an occasional find in the Crimea, near the old homeland of the Bulgars, the buckles found along the route of Constans II include, perhaps, most of the examples thus far known to us, for the rare discovery of such a buckle in southern Spain or in a German grave will be explained by the tricks of fortune to which any little object is so easily exposed. It remains, however, to answer the questions why these buckles should be regarded as Bulgaric if Byzantine soldiers wore them, and why they should be so comparatively numerous along the route travelled by Constans II. Two important contemporary texts, which have not yet, as far as I know, been brought into connection with these buckles of much-disputed origin, will help answer the first question, after which we may proceed to the second.

A Vienna papyrus from the Fayum in Egypt (P. Erzherzog Rainer, inv. no.

524 

gr. 2132 [347]) contains the receipt of a Byzantine commander (strathlathV) named Cyril, confirming the delivery of a certain number of 'Bulgarian belts' (boulgarik[ou karta]lamiou), which would imply, I should think, the accompaniment of 'Bulgarian buckles.' [162] This papyrus is to be dated in the early seventh century; it must, of course, antedate the Arabic occupation of Egypt (641). It comes, in other words, from almost exactly the same period as the buckles found at Corinth, and it was not without some astonishment that I learned that a buckle similar to those found at Corinth was actually discovered in the Egyptian Fayum. [163] Furthermore, Professor Moravcsik supplies us with a text from the Tactica of the Pseudo-Maurice, also be to assigned to the end of the sixth or the early seventh century (again, be it observed, the same date as the Corinthian buckles) : the Pseudo-Maurice prescribes the wearing by foot-soldiers of 'simple belts, and not Bulgarian belts, and military cloaks' (zwnaria de lita kai ou boulgarika, sagia). [164]

Thus we find a Byzantine military writer condemning the use of Bulgarian belts and a Byzantine military commander purchasing them, the latter in the restricted area of the Fayum, where one of the buckles under discussion has been found. Professor Hans Zeiss, as we have had occasion more than once to observe in our notes, believes that all these buckles are of Byzantine origin; although some of them may well be of Byzantine manufacture, their origin appears to have been Bulgarian, if there is truth in the suggestion that these buckles go with the 'Bulgarian belts' mentioned in the Erzherzog Rainer Papyrus and in the Tactica of the Pseudo-Maurice. If the Greeks wore Bulgarian belts, so, a fortiori, did the Bulgars : if the French export perfume, they also use it. However, these buckles are so peculiarly numerous along the route of the Emperor Constans II, to seek the answer to the second question asked above, because Constans was in direct contact with the Bulgars at Thessalonica, possibly at Athens, and finally at Corinth, where he left behind him also, as a memento of his presence, the unusually large number of his coins which the archaeologists have found there, and some of the buckles found in Lombard graves in central and southern Italy and in other graves in Sicily are buckles acquired by Byzantine soldiers in this campaign against the Bulgars in Greece. We must remember, too, that Constans II had an especial reason for hating the Onogur Bulgars, for their Khan Kovrat, as we have seen, had sought to aid the widow of Heraclius to exclude him from the throne in 641-642. 1 should never have suggested a Bulgaric occupation of Corinth on the archaeological evidence alone; this evidence gains in significance, nevertheless, when it is put into its place in the pattern of known historical events. The Corinthian graves are those of soldiers (weapons were found with them) ; Miss Davidson and Dr Horvath have believed them not to be Byzantine. The historical record, in my opinion, confirms their belief. (My reasons for believing in the Bulgaric occupation of Corinth would not be invalidated, however, if the Corinthian graves were actually those of Byzantine soldiers wearing the apparel of which the Pseudo-Maurice disapproved — but this seems in any event not to be the case.) These graves are not, however, Avaric, as Miss Davidson has stated; nor do they seem to be those of Kutrigur

525 

Bulgars, as Horvath has thought; I know of no historical evidence that would indicate the likelihood of a Kutrigur attack upon Corinth as late as the 640's. Professor Gregoire has shown once more that the Onogur Bulgars were in the plain of Monastir, in continental Greece, just before the middle of the seventh century. After the death of Heraclius there was every reason for an Onogur attack, from that convenient location, upon what was, presumably, the chief city of the Peloponnesus, and every reason for Constans II to take the field in person against those who had made themselves his personal enemies. If, as Isidore of Kiev declares, 'the Onogurs took Corinth without a single blow,' [165] we may believe that these graves date from the more violent Byzantine expulsion of the Onogurs in 657-658. Be that as it may, from the obscure annals of the early mediaeval history of Greece, Isidore preserves for us the dim memory of the Onoguric occupation of Corinth, and it is my hope that this paper may have shown that there is every reason for believing him.

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

[Back]

1. The text is in Sp. P. Lampros, Duo anaforai mhtropolitou MonembasiaV proV ton patriarchn, in the NeoV 'Ellhnomnhmon (hereafter cited as Neos Hellen.), XII (1915), 286: . . . Ounigaroi de Makedonian kai Qettalian kai  'Ellada kai ta entoV Qermopulwn lhisamenoi panta kai mecri Korinqou fqasanteV, eilon paracrhma thn polin kai autoboei. The document in which this text occurs is the second of two petitions addressed to the Patriarch Joseph II of Constantinople; it was published by Lampros from a fifteenth-century manuscript, Cod. Palatin. gr. 226, 115r-133v (on which see Giovanni Mercati, Scritti d'Isidoro il cardinale Ruteno, e codici a lui appartenuti che si conservano nella Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana [Studi e Testi, 46, Rome, 1926], pp. 7-8). The claims of the archiepiscopal see of Monemvasia to metropolitical authority over the bishopric of Maine (and that of Zemena) are asserted in this document in opposition to those of the Metropolitan of Corinth (cf. Neos Hellen., XII, 274 ff., 280-282, 288 ff., et passim, 308-309). The latter claimed that the suffragan sees had been taken from him under conditions of emergency in the past, but should now be restored to him, for the necessity which had attached them to Monemvasia in the past no longer obtained, and that Corinthian rights were being violated by the continued submission of Maine to Monemvasia. The situation is as follows: In 1395 Corinth had been reoccupied by the Greeks, under the Despot Theodore I Palaeologus of Mistra (cf. K. M. Setton, Catalan Domination of Athens, 1311-1388, [Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1948], pp. 198-199), and the Metropolitan Theognostus of Corinth had promptly reclaimed the ancient (Corinthian) suffragan sees of Maine and Zemena, the latter being the modern Zemeno, to the west of Corinth. The Holy Synod had ruled, in 1397, that, upon the death of the Metropolitan Acacius of Monemvasia, the two sees in dispute should return to Corinth. Acacius died in 1413, but his successor, Cyril, reopened the case, and enlisted the services of Isidore, who prepared the two petitions for him, from the second of which comes the text quoted above. Isidore's venture into Corinthian history 'in the days of Justinian the Great' preserves, I think, something of an early historical tradition, which he has obviously and perhaps deliberately muddled, like some of his other references, but the circumstantial exactitude of which is noteworthy, and may be derived from a literary source no longer extant, for it is quite apparent that Isidore read widely in the preparation of his brief. The occupation of Corinth by the Onogurs was, of course, irrelevant to any consideration of the elevation of Monemvasia to metropolitan rank (one of the important issues); in the seventh century Monemvasia was a very insignificant bishopric; the Greek taktika show Monemvasia subject to Corinth from the beginning to the tenth century until, almost, the time of the Fourth Crusade. Although Isidore argues that when Monemvasia fell into the hands of Geoffrey II de Villehardouin in 1248, it was 'then a metropolis and not a bishopric' (Neos Hellen., xn, p. 288,11.11-12), he is still in error, although he may not have known it, but Monemvasia was almnost certainly made a metropolis by Michael VIII Palaeologus in 1261 (Franz Dolger, Regesten d. Kaiserurkunden d. oström.

526 

Reiches, pt. 3 [1932], no. 1897a, p. 39; V. Laurent, in the Echos d'Orient, XXIX [1930], 185; and St. Binon, ibid., XXXVII [1938], 277-278). Be all this as it may, however, Isidore insists, most energetically, that the establishment of Monemvasia as a metropolitan see, together with its jurisdiction over Maine, was unconnected with the disasters which had befallen Corinth when it was captured by the Onogurs in the seventh century ('in the days of Justinian the Great') and, later, when it was captured by the so-called Fourth Crusaders (in 1210). Concerning the date of the two petitions in question, with the second and longer and more important of which we are alone concerned, Cardinal Mercati has written: 'While the petitions, written in the person of a Metropolitan of Monemvasia, are from about the year 1429 and consequently addressed to Joseph II, who died in Florence toward the end of the Council, and was Patriarch from 21 May 1416 to 10 June 1439, the petitioner is one who, not a native of the Peloponnesus, had held the episcopacy for about 16 years or from about 1413 [Neos Hellen., XII, 277]. The time is revealed from the fact that in the petitions recent patriarchal orders are contested, especially a synodal "sigillion" first issued thirty-two years before, under the Patriarch Antonius (1391-1397), whereby the bishoprics of Maine and Zemena were ordered restored to Corinth, i.e., the PraxiV tou Karinqou of the year 1397, fortunately extant and printed in the Acta et diplomata graeca medii aevi sacra et profana [eds. F. Miklosich and Jos. Miiller], II [1862], 287-292. Hence, the first and principal date — the year 1429 — which reveals the other dates . . . ' (Scritti d’Isidore, p. 9). The petition was written for the Metropolitan by Isidore, later Metropolitan of Kiev (1437-1442), who Mercati believes was a native of the Peloponnesus, although he was educated in Constantinople (op. cit., pp. 10-14, cf. 59, 102-103). In the passage quoted above Isidore has confused the Bulgar (Kutrigur) attacks upon the empire in 558-559 under Zabergan [on which see, infra, p. 508] with, as I think, an Onogur attack upon Corinth almost a century later, and has thus produced a sort of historical contaminatio, both episodes in the drama, however, being true. Isidore 'of Kiev’ became a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church (18 December 1439), was very active in the service of Pope Nicholas V, and died in Rome on 23 April 1463 (see Adolf Ziegler, Die Union des Konzils von Florenz in der russischen Kirche [Wiirzburg, 1938], esp. pp. 56 ff.).

2. Cf. V. N. Zlatarski, Istoriya na Bulgarskata Dtirzhava, vol. I, part 1 (Sofia, 1918), pp. 45 ff.; Karl Hopf, 'Griechenland im Mittelalter und in der Neuzeit,' in J. S. Ersch and J. G. Gruber, Allgemeine Encyklopadie der Wissenschaften und Kunste, LXXXV (1867), 78 ff.

3. John of Antioch (saec. VII), fragm. 95, in Excerpta de insidiis (ed. Carl de Boor, Berlin, 1905), p. 135; Zlatarski, Istoriya, I, 1, p. 43; Hopf, op. cit., LXXXV, 78.

4. Marcellinus Comes, Chron., MGH., AA, XI, 95, 96, 103, 104; Theophanes, Chronographia (ed. C. de Boor, I [Berlin, 1883]), 143,217-218, 219, 233. See Julius [Gyula] Moravcsik, 'Zur Geschichte der Onoguren,' Ungarische Jahrbiicher, X (Berlin and Leipzig, 1930), 69; Steven Runciman, First Bulgarian Empire (London, 1930); and A. A. Vasiliev, 'Slavs in Greece,' Vizantiiskii Vremennik, v (1898), 407.

5. Among recent works, see especially Denis A. Zakythinos, Oi Sklaboi en 'Elladi (Athens, 1945; hereafter commonly cited as Slavs in Greece), pp. 20 ff.; Zakythinos does not, however, believe in Slavic settlements in Greece at so early a date; he discusses individual Slavic tribes and peoples in some detail (pp. 29 ff.). There are learned and sensible summaries and evaluations of older points of view in the work of the learned Czech historian Lubor Niederle, Manuel de l’antiquite slave [abridgement of his Slovanske Starozitnosti, 'Slavic Antiquities,' 1902-1924] (Paris, 1923-1926), I, 42 ff., 59 ff., 98 ff. Cf. V. N. Zlatarski, Istoriya, I, 1, pp. 7 ff., et alibi, and his article, published posthumously, on 'Die Besiedelung der Balkanhalbinsel durch die Slaven,' Revue Internationale des etudes balkaniques, II, 4 (1936), 358-375, esp. 363-364 (without refs. to sources); one may read with profit N. Iorga, 'Epoque et caractere de 1'etablissement des Slaves dans la Peninsule des Balcans,' Revue historique du Sud-est europeen, VII (1930), 1-17 (a lively and instructive address; does not touch upon Greece); Fr. Dvornik, Les Slaves, Byzance et Rome au IXe siecle (Paris, 1926), pp. 2-5; A. A. Vasiliev, Hist. Byz. Emp., I (1928), 113, 137-138, 140, 143, and particularly his older study 'Slavs in Greece' (in Russian), in the Vizantiiskii Vremennik, V (1898), 404-438, 626-670; and Maximilian Braun, Die Slawen auf dem Balkan bis zur Befreiung von der turkischen Herrschafl (Leipzig, 1941).

The name Slav (Sklabhnoi) first appears as such in the Greek sources at the end of the first quarter of the sixth century, in the second dialogue of the Pseudo-Caesarius of Nazianzus (Caes., Dial. II, Interrogatio CX, in PG 38, col. 985), on which note J. Peisker, in Cambr. Med. Hist., II, 432; J. B. Bury, The Bulgars in the Balkans in the Seventh Century

527 

Later Roman Empire, II (1923), 292 ff.; Const. Amantos, in the Proceedings [Praktika] of the Academy of Athens, VII (1932), 331 ff., and Max Vasmer, 'Die Slaven in Griechenland,’ in the Abhandlungen d. preuss. Akad. d. Wissenschaften, Philos.-hist. Kl., XII (Berlin, 1941), pp. 11-12. Bury, Vasiliev, Vasmer, Zakythinos, and most scholars today reject as groundless the old theory of Pavel J. Safarik, Slawische Alterthumer (trans. M. von Aehrenfeld, and ed. Heinrich Wuttke, Leipzig, 1843-1844), I 213 ff., 245-249, and II, 159-162, and of the Bulgarian historian M. S. Drinov, The Slavic Occupation of the Balkan Peninsula (in Russian, Moscow, 1873), that the Slavs had begun to settle in the Balkan peninsula in the third, and even in the later second, century A.D., a theory which Const. J. Jirecek (in his earlier work), Geschichte der Bulgaren (Prague, 1876), p. 94, supported, asserting that Slavic inroads began in the third century, 'and continued for some four hundred years,’ In his earlier work Lubor Niederle also accepted for the most part the theory of Safarik and Drinov (Slov. Starozitnosti, ii [1906], 174 ff.), although he subsequently abandoned it as untenable (Manuel, I, 59). Safarik, however, put the expansion of the Slavs into the Peloponnesus as late as the period between 746, the year of the famous plague, and 799, the year of the Slavic prince Akamir's attempt to rescue the five Isaurian princes exiled by the Empress Irene to Athens (Slawische Alterthumer, II, 192-193).

Although chiefly concerned, of course, with Bulgaro-Turkish history, there is much recent bibliography concerning the Slavs also in the first volume of Moravcsik's Byzantinoturcica, and numerous other works are mentioned in the notes to the present study, although the bibliography is too vast to seek to make notices of it anything like complete. (See, infra, especially note 102.) There is a rather full bibliography of works published between 1918 and 1942 by Bulgarian scholars dealing with their own history, in Ivan Dujcev, 'Die bulgarische Geschichtsforschung wahrend des letzten Vierteljahrhunderts,' in the Sudost-Forschungen, 1942-1943 (?), pp. 546-573, with numerous notices of works dealing with the First Bulgarian Empire (pp. 550-557). (I have read an undated offprint of Dujcev's article very kindly loaned to me by Professor Robert L. Wolff.)

6. S. Demetrii Martyris Ada, II, cap. 5, 198 (PG 116, col. 1368A): A. Tougard, De l'histoire profane dans les actes grecs des Bollandistes (Paris, 1874), Thessalonique, 113 (p. 190).

7. Gyula Moravcsik, Byzantinoturcica, II; Sprachreste der Tiirkvolker in den byzantinischen Quellen (Budapest, 1943), pp. 199-204; American Slavic and East European Review (hereafter cited as Am. Slav. Rev.), V, nos. 14-15 (1946), 36-37; cf. C. A. Macartney, Early Hungarian Historical Sources (Budapest, 1940), p. 223.

8. Nemeth, 'La provenance du nom bulgar,’ Symbolae grammaticae in honorem Ioannis Rozwadowski, II (Cracow, 1927), 217-222 (ref. from Moravcsik); bibliography in Moravcsik, Byzantinoturcica, I; Die byzantinischen Quellen der Geschichte der Turkvolker (Budapest, 1942), pp. 52 ff. Cf. K. H. Menges, in Byzantion, XVII (1944-45), 271.

9. Moravcsik, 'Zur Geschichte der Onoguren,’ Ung. Jahrb., X, 68-69, 70.

10. A. D. Keramopoulos, The Greeks and Their Northern Neighbors, Athens, 1945, summarized in Stilpon P. Kyriakidis, Bulgars and Slavs in Greek History (both works in Greek, Thessalonica, 1946), pp. 7-16, and ff., derives the name Bulgars from burgarii, bourgarioi, i.e., those who maintain the forts, burgi, bourgoi, purgoi along the northern boundaries of the Balkan provinces, and elsewhere in the empire, first mentioned in Greek in an inscription dated A.D. 202, found between Philippopolis and Tatar Pazardzik (and last published in Wilhelm Dittenberger's Sylloge inscriptionum graecarum, 3 ed., vol. II [1917], no. 880,1. 51, p. 593). The burgarii received land for cultivation from the government, and provided therefor, along the northern borders, protection against maurauding bands and brigands, but they were servi, i.e., qui corporibus serviunt, rather than milites (cf. Codex Theodosianus, XII, 19, 2). A medley of barbarian peoples were settled as bourgarioi (cf. Isidore, Etym., IK, 4, 28, in PL 82, 351B), sometimes on special terms as foederati, in the frontier provinces, and they caused two regions in which they were particularly numerous to be called Bourgariai, according to Keramopoulos (and doubted by Kyriakidis, op. cit., pp. 16 ff.); by a not uncommon metabole Bourgarioi is said to have become Boulgaroi, Bulgars, and Bourgaria is said to have become Boulgaria, Bulgaria. Those peoples in the Balkans who happened to live further from the Greek-speaking provinces, as the Serbs and Croats, and so did not hear themselves called Bourgarioi by the Greeks, did not so call themselves, and preserved or acquired other names, whereas the Bulgars, the most prominent ethnic group (although Keramopoulos denies them any real ethnic homogeneity) having common boundaries with the Greeks in 'Bulgaria,’ land of the Bourgarioi, living in and around forts or in the fundi

528 

limitrophi (ta stratiwtotopia), came to call themselves by the name applied to them by the Greeks. The garrison existence of so many 'Bulgars,' in isolated military colonies, without women, led to their being bougres and practicing bougrerie (cf. DuCange, Gloss. lat., I [reimpr. 1937], p. 772, s.v. Bulgari). This theory seems to explain an embarrassing reference or two to Bulgaria before the seventh century, as when John of Nikiu speaks of the rebel Vitalianus, in the time of the Emperor Anastasius, retreating into 'the province of Bulgaria' (Chron., LXXXIX, 75, trans. R. H. Charles, London and Oxford, 1916, p. 130, on which cf., infra, note 31). However, since John of Nikiu wrote towards the end of the seventh century, we had best assume that he is referring to the political geography of his own time. Keramopoulos' theory is rejected by Const. I. Amantos, History of the Byzantine Empire (in Greek), II (Athens, 1947), 429-430, but it is given very serious consideration by Kyriakidis, in his Bulgars and Slavs in Greek History. D. Detschew derives the word Bulgar from what he believes to be the East Germanic *Bulgareis, meaning homines pugnaces ('Der ostgermanische Ursprung des bulgarischen Volksnamens,' Zeitschrift f. Ortsnamenforschung, II [1927], esp. pp. 199-201, 212-216).

11. Gyula Nemeth, 'On ogur, het magyar, Dentumogyer,' in Korosi Csoma-Archivum, I (April, 1921), 148-155, cited by Johann Melich, 'Uber den Ursprung des Namens Ungar', Archiv fur slavische Philologie, XXXVIII (1923), 244-250, on which see also Joseph Schnetz, 'Onogoria,' ibid., XL (1925), 157-160.

12. Moravcsik, Ung. Jhrb., X (1930), 60, 81 ff., 84 ff., 86-89; Am. Slav. Rev., V, nos. 14-15 (1946), 29-30; Byzantinoturcica, II, refs. infra; Macartney, Early Hungarian Historical Sources, p. 218.

Onogur, in Greek 'Onogouroi, whence Ouggoi, Hungarians (the word Magyar is of Finno-Ugrian origin): Moravcsik, Byzantinoturcica, u, 189-190, 194-196, cf. 199 ff. (Ounnoi), and cf. 270 (s.v. Tourkoi-3. 'Ungarn'). The Onogurs first appear in Byzantine historiography in a fragment of Priscus where they are declared to have sent an embassy, together with the Saragurs and the Ogurs, about 463 to Constantinople, after they had been driven out of their homes by the Sabirs, themselves hard pressed by the Avars (from the History of Priscus, 14, in Excerpta de legationibus [ed. Carl de Boor, Berlin, 1903], pars II, p. 586, and cf. Suidas, sub verbo 'AbariV, Lex. ed. Ada Adler, I [Leipzig, 1928], p. 4, on which texts see Moravcsik, Ung. Jhrb., X, 54 ff., Byzantinoturcica, I, 301, cf. 320). The three peoples had moved westward towards the Empire from western Siberia; had first met the Byzantines in the region north of the Caucasus; and had despatched their embassies from the Greek cities lying along the eastern shores of the Maeotis (Moravcsik, Ung. Jhrb., X, 59-60, 65). For some two centuries, from the late fifth to the late seventh century, the Onogurs in large numbers remained in their new homes, north of the Caucasus, east of Maeotis, near the river Kuban, their nearest neighbors being the Sabirs and Alans (Ung. Jhrb., X, 65).

13. Theophanes, Chron. (ed. de Boor), I, 356-357. Nicephorus, Hist. (ed. de Boor), pp. 33-34.

14. Theophanes (ed. de Boor), I, 357. The belief of Zlatarski, Istoriya, I, 1, pp. 87, 89, 91-92, accepted by Steven Runciman, First Bulgarian Empire, pp. 15-16, that the Utigurs formed the basis of Old Great Bulgaria must be abandoned in the light of Moravcsik's researches. (Although Great Bulgaria lay in the Kuban region, contrary to the contentions of certain Bulgarian nationalist historians, Henri Gregoire has again demonstrated that Kovrat was active in the Balkans and in continental Greece a generation before the final settlement of the Bulgars on the Danube in 679 [on which see infra]: I accept, although with some misgivings, the identification, long ago made by Jirecek, of the Kurt in the list of Bulgaric khans with the Kovrat of the Byzantine writers [on which also see infra]. Cf. Jul. Koulakovskii, Istoria Vizantii, III [Kiev, 1915], 376 ff.)

15. The locus classicus, describing all these events is, of course, Theophanes (ed. de Boor), I , 356-358. (Moravcsik has assembled Theophanes' references to the Bulgars [Byzantinoturcica, I , 335-336]). Despite the heroic efforts of Moravcsik and numerous other scholars to get at the historical facts in Theophanes, the latter's notices on the early Bulgars remain a confused medley of traditions that do not fit together with much consistency.

16. Agathon Diaconus (a contemporary source and an excellent one), Epilogus (on the Emperor Philip Bardanes and the sixth Oecumenical Council), in J. D. Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio [hereafter cited as 'Mansi'], XII (Florence, 1766), col. 193 B; cf. the accounts in Theophanes, Chron. (ed. de Boor), I, pp. 382-383, and in the Patriarch Nicephorus, Chron. (ed. de Boor), pp. 48-49, on which texts see Moravcsik, Ung. Jhrb., X, 66-68, and Am. Slav. Rev., V, nos. 14-15 (1946), 41, 43. The 'Onogouroi and the Outigouroi are thought by some scholars to be the same people (cf. Moravcsik, Byzantinoturcica, II, 190, 205), and cf. the important notes of B. von Arnim, 'Tur-

529 

kotatarische Beitrage: Zur Gesch. d. Onoguren u. Urbulgaren,' Zeitschr. f. slav. Philologie, X (1933), 343-349. On the deacon Agathon, see Fr. Dvornik, Les Legendes de Constantin et de Methode vues de Byzance (Prague, 1933), pp. 54-55.

17. Geras. I. Konidares Ai mhtropoleiV kai arciepiskopai tou oikoumenikou patriarceiou kai h taxiV autwn, in Texte u. Forschungen zur byzant.-neugriechischen Philologie (ed. N. A. Bees), no. 13 (Athens, 1934), p. 100.

18. See Moravcsik, Ung. Jhrb., X (1930), 64-65, 81. A. A. Vasiliev, The Goths in the Crimea (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1936), pp. 97, 98, 100.

19. The apparently misnamed 'Notitia of the Isaurians' is preserved in MS. Paris. 1555A, fols. 23V-27V (from the 14th century), ed. Konidares, pp. 89-103, on which note Moravcsik, Byzantinoturcica, I, p. 284, not. episc. A; ibid., II, 189-190, with refs. cited; Vasiliev, The Goths in the Crimea, pp. 103-104; and especially G. Vernadsky, 'Byzantium and South Russia,’ Byzantion, XV (1940-1941), 70, 72, and cf. E. Honigmann, 'Studies in Slavic Church History/ ibid., XVII (1944-1945), 133, and V. Laurent, in Etudes Byzantines, I (Bucharest, 1943-1944), pp. 58 ff., who sees small historical value in the Notitia in question. Cf. Dvornik, Les Legendes, pp. 160 ff., 165-166.

20. Theophanes, Chronographia (ed. de Boor), I, 356-359; Nicephorus, Opuscula historica (ed. de Boor, Leipzig, 1880), pp. 33-35. See V. N. Zlatarski, Istoriya, I, 1, pp. 96 ff. On the attack of the Emperor Constantine IV Pogonatus upon the Bulgars in 679-680, its subsequent failure and the consequent rout of the Byzantines, and the Bulgar movement in force across the Danube and up to the Balkan Mts. (681), see Geza Feher's valuable study of Les Monuments de la culture protobulgare et leurs relations hongroises (Budapest, 1931), pp. 12, 18, 24, 164, and the acute study of the texts and the demonstration (contrary to V. N. Zlatarski's view) that the Bulgars in 679-681 had actually subjugated rather than merely combined with the so-called 'seven Slavic tribes' in Iv. Dujcev, 'Protobulgares et Slaves: Sur le probleme de la formation de l’Etat bulgare/ Annales de l’Institut Kondakov, X (1938), 145-154. Ju. Trifonov has shown that there is some reason for setting Asparuch's victory over the Byzantines in the spring of 681 and the peace towards the end of the same year, which would make the beginning date of the First Bulgarian Empire 681, and not 679 (for which see Dujcev, Sudost-Forschungen, 1942-1943, p. 552).

21. Geza Feher, op. cit. (note 20 above), pp. 36-37, 158, 162, 164, 169-170.

22. Feher, op. cit., pp. 13-18 ff., and maps on pp. 19 and 21. On the early Bulgarian remains in the region of Pliska-Aboba-Madara, see Iwan Welkov, 'Die Hauptstatten d. altbulgarischen Kultur,' Bulgaria, Jahrbuch 1948-1944, pp. 328 ff., a semi-popular account, and especially the Materialy dlja bolgarskikh drevnostei Aboba-Pliska, by Th. Uspenskii, K. Shkorpil et al., Izv. Russ. Arkh. Inst. Konstant., X (1905).

23. See Moravcsik, Ung. Jhbr., X, 72-73, 75, 78-80, and Byzantinoturcica, II, p. 144 (KobratoV), pp. 96 ff. (Boulgaroi), p. 147 (Kotragoi), pp. 189 ff. ('Onogoundouroi, 'Onogouroi) The Onogundurs and the Onogurs are the same people, and the Kotragi are the Kutrigurs (Moravcsik, locis citatis). Cf. Josef Marquart [Markwart], Osteuropdische und ostasiatische Streifzuge . . . Studien zur Gesch. des 9. und 10. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1903), pp. 503-506, and the philological study of Gyula Nemeth, 'Die Herkunft der Namen Kobrat und Esperuch,’ in Korosi Csoma-Archivum, II (1932), 440-447 (concerning the notices on Kovrat and Asparuch in Moravcsik's Byzantinoturcica, II, 144, 78 [then in manuscript]).

24. Moravcsik, Ung. Jhrb., X, 84 ff.

25. Moravcsik, Ung. Jhrb., X, 71 ff., and bibliography in Byzantinoturcica, I, 52 ff.

26. Cf. the succinct sketch by Georg Stadtmuller, 'Die Bulgaren und ihre Nachbarvolker in der Geschichte,’ in Bulgaria, Jahrbuch 1940-1941, pp. 169 ff., 174 ff.

27. Moravcsik, Ung. Jhrb., X, 75 ffr, 79-80; cf. Vasiliev, The Goths in the Crimea, pp. 57 ff., dealing with Procopius, De bello gothico, IV, 4-5 (on the Utigurs and Kutrigurs). Ant. Keramopoulos, The Greeks and Their Northern Neighbors, pp. 46 ff., cited by Stilpon P. Kyriakidis, Bulgars and Slavs in Greek History, pp. 12-13, regards all this material in Theophanes and Nicephorus as a ‘genealogical myth.’

28. Theophanes, Chron. (ed. de Boor), I, 357-358; Nicephorus, Hist. (ed. de Boor), pp. 33-34.

29. Moravcsik, Ung. Jhrb., X, 84 ff. (The Bashkirs are now a partly Mongolized people living especially in the Kazan district and the southern Urals [C. S. Coon, The Races of Europe, New York, 1939,

530 

pp. 577, 578-579].) The contrary view concerning the Bashkirs, which claimed they have nothing to do with the Hungarians, was put forth by Gyula Meszaros, Magna Ungaria (Budapest, 1910), pp. 43 ff., on which see Nandor Fettich, Die Metallkunst der landnehmenden Ungarn (Budapest, 1937), pp. 176-177; C. A. Macartney, The Magyars in the Ninth Century (Cambridge, England, 1930), pp. 156-173 (learned and interesting); and cf. Josef Marquart, Osteuropdische u. ostasiatische Streifzuge, pp. 69, 515.

30. Moravcsik, Ung. Jhrb., X, 85-87; quite a different view in Feher, Les Monuments de la culture protobulgare, p. 163 (Feher had not yet seen Moravcsik's study).

31. The references to barbarian, especially Bulgaric, attacks upon the Empire in Procopius and John Malalas are collected in Moravcsik, Byzantinoturcica, I, 306-308 (Procopius), 186-187 (Malalas). The Empire had, of course, been menaced in the preceding generation, and Evagrius, Eccl. Hist. (eds. J. Bidez and L. Parmentier, London, 1898, p. 100) remarks on the general destruction wrought early in Zeno's reign by the Huns, 'once called the Massagetae,' who crossed the Danube 'with none to prevent them,’ and also refers to the part played by the Huns in Vitalianus' attempt to wrest the Empire from Anastasius, an episode described in a half dozen other important sources, and to the irruption of the Sabirs in 515 (ibid., III, 43, p. 145). Cf. John Malalas, Chronogr., lib. XVI (Bonn, pp. 402-406); John of Antioch, in Carl de Boor, Excerpta de insidiis, pp. 143-147; and note Zlatarski, Istoriya, I, 1, p. 47, and Moravcsik, Ung. Jhrb., X, 69. John of Nikiu speaks of Vitalianus, in the course of his uprising against Anastasius, as withdrawing into 'the province of Bulgaria' (Chron., LXXXIX, 75, trans. R. H. Charles, p. 130), a text of which Gantscho Tzenoff, Gesch. d. Bulgaren u. d. anderen Siidslaven, Berlin and Leipzig, 1935, pp. VI, 121, vigorously avails himself (and seems especially designed for his astonishing views, on which see, infra, note 148).

32. Procopius, Historia arcana, 18 (ed. Haury, III, 114); Jordanes, Romana, 388, on which texts, see, however, Lubor Niederle, Slov. Starozitnosti, II (1906), 190-192, and Manuel de l’antiquite slave, I (1923), 48, 61-62, where the troublesome text of Procopius, Bell. goth., III 40 (ed. Haury, II, 475 ff.), is discussed, and cf. Lampros Greek ed. of F. Gregorovius Geschichte der Stadt Athen im Mittelalter, I, 147-148; Zlatarski, Istoriya, I, 1, p. 51; and Fr. Dvornik, Les Slaves, Byzance et Rome au IXe siecle, pp. 2-3; Max Vasmer, Die Slaven in Griechenland, p. 12. See also L. Hauptmann, Byzantion, IV (1927-1928), esp. pp. 144 ff.

33. John Malalas, Chronogr., lib. XVIII (Bonn., pp. 437-438; PG 97, col. 645), who calls them 'Huns,' and Theophanes, Chronogr., A.M. 6031 (ed. C. de Boor, I [1883], 217-218; PG 108, 48Q), who calls them 'Bulgars.'

34. John Mal., ibid., lib. XVIII (Bonn, p. 451; PG 97, 661). The 'Huns' came 'with a great multitude of different barbarians' (meta pollou plhqouV diaforwn barbarwn). Cf. Zlatarski, I, 1, p. 54.

35. John Mal., loc. cit.: . . . kai ek toutou foboV kateice ta barbara eqnh.

36. Procopius, Bell. Goth., III, 14, 2 (trans. H. B. Dewing, Loeb Classical Library, IV 263).

37. Procopius, loc. cit. (Loeb, IV, 264); cf. Zakythinos, Slavs in Greece, p. 6.

38. Procop., Bell. pers., II, 4, 4-5 (Dewing, Loeb, II, 287): . . . mega . . . strateuma Ounnikon . . . .

39. Procop., ibid., II, 4, 10-11 (Loeb, II, 289).

40. Procop., De aeficiis, IV, 1-3, 4 ff. (trans. H. B. Dewing and G. Downey, Loeb, VII, 219 ff.); J. B. Bury, Later Roman Empire, II (1923), 308-310; Niederle, Manuel, I, 62; and cf. P. Skok, 'De l’importance des listes toponomastiques de Procope pour la connaissance de la latinite balkanique,' Revue Internationale des etudes balkaniques, III (1937), 47-58.

41. See the learned and suggestive article of George Vernadsky, 'On the Origins of the Antae,' in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, LIX (1939), 56-66.

42. Procop., Bell. Goth., III, 14, 7 and 32-33 (Loeb, IV, 265, 273-274).

43. Cf. Bury, Later Roman Empire, II, 297.

44. Procop., ibid., III, 13, 24-25 (Loeb, IV, 261, 263).

45. Procop., ibid., III, 29, 1-3 (Loeb, IV, 399, 401).

46. Procop., III, 38, 1-3, and 9 ff. (Loeb, V, 21, 23 ff.).

47. Procop., III, 40, 1-8 (Loeb, V, 37 ff.); Zakythinos, Slavs in Greece, p. 7.

48. Procop., Hist, arcana, 18, 20, trans. Bury, Later Roman Empire, II, 310; cf. Ch. Diehl and Georges Margais, Le Monde oriental de 395 a 1081 (Hist. generale: Hist, du moyen Age, t. III, Paris, 1944), pp. 72-73; K. Hopf, loc. cit., LXXXV, 79.

49. On Zabergan and the Kutrigurs, see esp. Agathias Scholasticus, Hist., V, 11-13, 20, 23 ff. (PG 88,

531 

cols. 1561, 1564-65, 1581, 1584, 1589 ff.; Hist. Graeci Minores, II (1871), 365-366 ff.) Menander Protector, De legationibus barbarorum ad Romanos, 1 ff. (PG 113, cols. 792 ff.; ed. Carl de Boor, Excerpta de legationibus, pars II, pp. 442 ff.), and De legationibus Romanorum ad gentes, I (PG 113, cols. 849, 852; ed. de Boor, op. cit., pars I, p. 170). John Malalas, Chronogr., lib. XVIII (Bonn, p. 490; PG 97, col. 709); Theophanes, Chronogr., A.M. 6051 (PG 108, cols. 509, 512; ed. C. de Boor, I, 233). Bury, II, 304-308; J. Peisker, in Cambr. Med. Hist., II (1913), 535-536; Charles Kadlec, in Cambr. Med. Hist., IV (1923), 184-185; and esp. Josef Marquart, Osteuropdische und ostasiatische Streifzilge: Studien zur Gesch. des 9. u. 10. Jahrhunderts, pp. 504-505, and V. N. Zlatarski, Istoriya na Btilgarskata Dtirzhava, I, 1, 30-32 ff., 61 ff.

The Utigurs pass out of the ken of the Byzantine historians after the sixth century; the attempt to see in them the important Onogurs, or to believe in the absorption of the Utigurs by the Onogurs, is dangerous. On the Utigurs and the no less difficult problem of the Kutrigurs, and the latter's relations with the Onogurs or 'Danube Bulgars,' see Moravcsik, 'Zur Gesch. d. Onoguren,' Ung. Jhrb., X (1930), 75-80.

50. Menander, Legat. ad Rom., 11-12 (PG 113, 812-813; ed. Carl de Boor, op. cit., pp. 454-456); Ernst Stein, Studien zur Gesch. d. byzant. Reiches, vornehmlich unter den Kaisern Justinus II u. Tiberius Constantinus (Stuttgart, 1919), pp. 7-9, 119; Zakythinos, Slavs in Greece, pp. 7-8.

51. Menander, Legat. ad Rom., 1-4 (PG 113, cols. 792-793, 796; ed. de Boor, pp. 442-444), and cf. Legat. ad gent., 1 (PG 113, 849, 852; ed. de Boor, p. 170). Bury, Later Roman Empire, II (1923), 315; Moravcsik, Byzantinoturcica, I, 255. In 562 the Avars sent a second embassy to Justinian, as described by Menander, ed. de Boor, pp. 443-444.

52. Men., Legat. ad Rom., 5 (PG 113, cols. 797, 800; ed. de Boor, op. cit., pars II, pp. 444-446).

53. Men., Legat. ad Rom., 13-14 (PG 113, 813D, 816-817, 820 A; ed. de Boor, op. cit., pp. 456-458, quotations on p. 458), and Legat. ad gent., 9 (PG 113, 889, 892; ed. de Boor, pars I, pp. 195 ff.). Baian sent an ambassador to Constantinople with his demands: wste to Zirmion oi endoqhnai kai ta sunhqh crhmata, atina oi Kotraghroi kai Outigouroi proV 'Ioustinianou ekomizonto BasilewV, oia dh autou amfw tw fulw toutw kaqelontoV . . . (ed. de Boor, p. 196).

54. Menander, Legat. ad Rom., 17-19 (PG 113, 820D-821; ed. de Boor, op. cit., pars II, pp. 459-460, and cf. Men., Excerpta de Sententiis (ed. Boissevain, Berlin, 1906), fragms. 21 [p. 21] and 28 [p. 23]).

55. Cf. Men., Legat. ad Rom., 30 (PG 113, 840 C; ed. de Boor, Excerpta de legal., pars II, p. 471).

56. Cf. Stein, Studien, pp. 11-13, 71-72, 104, 105-106.

57. Menander, Legat. ad gent., 15 (ed. de Boor, op. cit., pars I, pp. 208-210).

58. Menander, Legat. ad gent., 20 [21 in PG], in PG 113, 925D; ed. de Boor, op. cit., pars I, pp. 220-221, and Legat. ad Rom., 30-32 (PG 113, 840 ff.; ed. de Boor, pars II, pp. 471-477; Stein, Studien, pp. 109-113, 115-116; Diehl and Margais, Le Monde oriental de 395 a 1081, pp. 131-132; Moravcsik, Byzantinoturcica, I, 256.

59. Men., Legat. ad Rom., 5, 10-15, 17-19, 30-32 (PG 113, cols. 797, 800; 812-813, 816-817, 820, 820-821, 840-841, 844-845, 848-849; ed. de Boor, op. cit., pars II, pp. 444-446; 454-459; 459-460; 471-477), and Legat. ad gent., 9, 15 [16 in PG], 20 [21 in PG], in PG 113, 889, 892; 908-909; 925, 928; ed. de Boor, op. cit., pars I, pp. 195-198; 208-210; 220-221. On Menander, note K. Krumbacher, Gesch. d. byz. Litt., 1897, pp. 243-244, and especially Moravcsik, Byzantinoturcica, I, 254-257.

60. Men., Legat. ad Rom., 24 (PG 113, 836B; ed. de Boor, pars II, p. 469): kata de to tetarton etoV Tiberiou Kwnstantinou KaisaroV BasileiaV en th Qrakh xunhnecqh to Sklauhnwn eqnoV mecri pou ciliadwn ekaton Qrakhn kai alla polla lhisasqai.

61. Men., Legat. ad gent., 15 [16 in PG] in PG 113, 908A; ed de Boor, pars I, p. 208; . . . keraizomenhV thV  'ElladoV upo Sklabhnwn . . . The contemporary historian John of Ephesus, Hist, eccl., in, 25 (trans. J. M. Schonfelder, Die Kirchengeschichte d. Johannes v. Ephesus, Munich, 1862, pp. 119-120), says that, when the Emperor Tiberius succeeded Justin, he was threatened on all sides, and was especially beset by the accursed tribes of Slavs and Avars, who gave him no rest (I have not had access to E. W. Brooks' edition of John of Ephesus' history). Note, however, Zakythinos, Slavs in Greece, pp. 19-20, who believes the Slavic attacks were chiefly upon northern Greece, against which see Marquart, Osteuropdische u. ostasiatische Streifzilge, pp. 243-245. There are some important notices in John of Biclar and in Isidore of Seville: John of Biclar (late 6th century), Chronica (ed. Mommsen, MGH, Auct. Antiquiss., XI [1894]), ad ann. 576 (?): 'Sclavini in Thracia multas urbes Romanorum pervadunt,

532 

quas depopulatas vacuas reliquere' (p. 214); ad ann. 577 (?): 'Avares Thracias vastant et regiam urbem a muro longo obsident' (p. 215); ad ann. 579 (?): 'Avares a finibus Thraciae pelluntur et partes Graeciae atque Pannoniae occupant' (p. 215). Isidore of Seville, Chronicon, in PL 83, 1056A: 'Heraclius dehinc quintum agit imperii annum [i.e., 615]. Cuius initio Sclavi Graeciam Romanis tulerunt.' Cf. H. Gregoire, Byzantion, XVII, 109-110; Lubor Niederle, Manuel, I (1923), 108-109, and Slovanske Starozitnosti, II (1906), 205-208, 434-435; K. Hopf, 'Griechenland im Mittelalter', loc. cit., LXXXV, 103-104.

62. Menander, Legat. ad gent., 15 [16 in PG], in PG 113, 908-909; ed.de Boor, op. cit., pars I, pp. 208-210.

63. See supra, p. 508, and cf. Stein, Studien, pp. 105-106, 112-113.

64. J. Brunsmid, 'Eine griechische Ziegelinschrift aus Sirmium,' Eranos Vindobonensis (Vienna, 1893), pp. 331-333; Moravcsik, Byzantinoturcica, I, 165; Zakythinos, Slavs in Greece, p. 26; R. L. Wolff, in SPECULUM, XXIII (1948), 6.

65. Evagrius, Hist, eccl., VI, 10 (eds. J. Bidez and L. Parmentier, London, 1898, p. 228; PG 86, 2860A), an important text for Fallmerayer; cf. Procopius (on the fortifications of Singidunum), De aedificiis, IV, 5, 12-16; and cf. the Chronicle of Monemvasia [on which see infra], text I, in Byzantis (in Greek), I (1909), pp. 64-65, 80. Zakythinos, Slavs in Greece, pp. 18-19, insists that 'Hellas' in Evagrius means only the northern region, 'between Singidunum and Anchialus,' which is also the view of Karl Hopf and Const. Amantos. For an archaeological notice of the Avaro-Slavic irruptions into northern Greece, see G. A. Soteriu, 'Anaskafai NeaV 'Agxialou, in the Proceedings [Praktika] of the Archaeological Society [of Athens], 1935, pp. 62-64.

66. John of Ephesus, Hist, eccl., VI, 25, trans. J. M. Schonfelder, Die Kirchengeschichte d. Johannes v. Ephesus, p. 255; also trans. R. Payne Smith (Oxford, 1860), pp. 432-433. Cf. Vasiliev, Viz. Vremennik, V, 409-410; Stein, Studien, pp. 105-106; O. Tafrali, Thessalonique des origines au XIVe siecle (Paris, 1919), pp. 98-99; Diehl and Margais, op. cit., p. 132; Max Vasmer, Die Slaven in Griechenland pp. 12-13; Gregoire, in Byzantion, XVII, 109.

67. Cf. J. P. Fallmerayer, Gesch. d. Halbinsel Morea, I (1830), 166-193, who dates from these events the beginnings of the 'Ausmordung' of the Greek people; J. W. Zinkeisen, Gesch. Griechenlands, I (Leipzig, 1832), 684-689 ff.; K. Hopf, loc. cit., LXXXV, 89 ff.; F. Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Athen im Mittelalter, I (1889), 82-83, trans, into Greek by Sp. P. Lampros, I (1904), 149; and there is a rather complete summary of the older views and literature in L. Niederle, Slov. Starozitnosti, II (1906), 205-216.

68. Acta S. Demetrii, II, cap. 5, 195 (PG 116, cols. 1361B, 1364A; cf., ibid., II, capp. 1-2, cols. 1325 ff.); A. Tougard, De Vhistoire profane dans les actes grecs des Bollandistes [Paris, 1874], Thessalonique, chap. 110, p. 186, on which see Gregoire, Byzantion, XVII [1944-45], 108 ff.

69. Acta S. Demetrii, II, cap. 5, 195-196 (PG 116, 1364-1365); Tougard, op. cit., chaps. 110-111, pp. 186, 188, 190; and cf. Fr. Dvornik, Les Slaves, Byzance et Rome, p. 15; and Gregoire, Byzantion, XVII [1944-45], 108, 110-111.

70. Theophanes, Chronogr., AA.M. 6290-91, ed. C. de Boor, I (1883), 473-474, and cf. Gregorovius, op. cit., I, 130-131, trans. Lampros, I, 196-198.

71. Const. Porphyr., De Them