villages and towns, with the lands appertaining to them; and one city was selected, within it, as a place of general meeting, where the prætor* decided causes, and where all affairs, both public and private, were discussed. Maritime Dalmatia consisted of three Conventus, which were called from the chief towns, the Scardonitan, the Salonitan, and the Naronitan. The jurisdiction of the Proprætor, or Legatus Augustalis, does not appear to have extended throughout the whole of Dalmatia, but merely over the maritime portion; the inland district either having its own governor, or being under the præfect of Pannonia. The title too of the governor varied at different periods. At the beginning of the third century, Apronianus and Dio Cassius Coccejus were styled præsides; and the same designation was given to Tarquinius, who ruled the country in the reign of Diocletian. In process of time, the city of Salona became distinguished as the capital of the province; and great favour was shown to it, from having been the first seat of a Roman colony in Dalmatia. From that circumstance, as well as from the wealth it possessed, and the desire of obtaining possession of so important a city, the attacks of the barbarous hordes, which assailed the empire in the fifth century, were directed against Salona; and being at length destroyed, in 639, it ceased to be a city; and the title of capital of Dalmatia was afterwards transferred to Zara. This was at the beginning of the ninth century, when the country had become Slavonic, and, with the exception of the maritime towns, independent of the Byzantine empire; which has already been mentioned in the History of Dalmatia. † *This title is still retained in Dalmatia. (B.) THE SLAVONIANS IN THE MOREA. A singular fact has been established by Fallmerayer, in his History of the Morea during the middle ages", that this part of Greece was in the possession of Slavonians, from the sixth to the eighth, or even ninth, century; which accounts for the many Slavonic names of places still found there, and explains in a satisfactory manner the origin of the name Morea. A common notion is, that it was so called from the number of its mulberry trees; (though it was not more noted for them than many other parts of the Byzantine empire ;) but it is far more reasonable to derive the name of that sea-girt peninsula from móré, “the sea;" especially as the Byzantine writers never used it, and always retained that of Peloponnesus; since they would not have objected to its adoption, had it been a Greek word, and their only reason for rejecting it must have been its barbaric origin. I ought properly to leave this, and the whole subject of the Slavonians, to one, who, from his intimate knowledge of it, is so much more capable of doing it justice, and who will shortly give the world the benefit of his researches; but the imperfect remarks I offer may perhaps induce those who are interested in the question, to seek for fuller information from a better, and more copious, source, in the forthcoming work of Count Valerian Krasinski, on the Slavonic races. I have been indebted to him for much information on the subject; and the following is a summary of his observations on the History of Fallmerayer, relative to the Morea. *Two volumes, 1830-36, in German. "The most remarkable part of it is his decided opinion that the modern Greek population (of the Morea), is not composed of the descendants of the countrymen of Miltiades, Socrates, and Plato, but that they are derived from the Slavonic hordes; a statement which created a considerable outcry amongst the Philhellenes, but one to which no conclusive refutation appears to have been offered. "It is well known that the Slavonians, who had begun to make frequent inroads into the Greek Empire, under Justinian I., were conquered, during the second part of the sixth century, by the Asiatic nation of the Avars, who had been induced by the Court of Byzantium to attack the Slavonians. The Avars, however, became more formidable enemies of the Greek empire, than the Slavonians had been; and these last, now marching under the banners of the Khan, as the vanguard of the Avars, penetrated to the very walls of Constantinople. "The whole of the Peloponnesus was devastated by the Slavonians, with the exception of the Acro-Corinthus, with its two sea-ports, (Cenchrea, and Lecheum,) Patras, Modon, Coron, Argos with the adjacent country, Anapli in the present district of Praslo, Vitylos on the western slope of the Taygetus, and the highlands of Maina. The rest of the Peloponnesus was reduced to a complete desert, and the inhabitants, who had not perished, or been dragged into captivity, fled either to the above-mentioned strong places, or to the islands of the Archipelago. "It may, however, be objected that, although the present Morea was completely devastated, like many other provinces of the empire, it does not follow that it was re-peopled by a Slavonic population, like Thrace, Mœsia, and some other countries, where the inhabitants even now speak a Slavonic dialect; and, since those of the Morea use the Romaic, or modern Greek idiom, that it is more natural to suppose, that the ancient inhabitants of the Peloponnesus returned to their own soil, when the flood of barbarism had rolled back. "But this objection may be met by the remark that many localities in the Morea, described by Pausanias, and even by Procopius, have disappeared, and that a great number, bearing Slavonic names, have replaced them. Who, indeed, can doubt that such names, as Vostitza, Goritza*, Slavitza, Veligosti, and others †, are Slavonic, and not Hellenic? and how can local names be given except by the inhabitants of a country? Besides, the inhabitants from whose language the names were derived, must have remained a considerable time on the spot, when the names continue in use, after the people themselves have disappeared, as a nation, from the country, where the places named by them are situated. "This is the case in the Morea, as well as in the north of Germany; where, too, the names of many towns are Slavonic, though the inhabitants of the country have been entirely Germanised; as, for instance, Leipsic‡, Kamenz §, Rostock, &c. "The existence of the Slavonians in the north of Germany is a known historical fact; and there is also sufficient historical evidence to prove, that the Morea was no less Slavonic; which is readily obtained from an attentive perusal of the Byzantine writers. Cedrenus, Theophanes, and the Patriarch Nicephorus, who wrote in the eighth *Formerly Mantinea. "Lipetsk, from lipa, linden tree." § "From Kamen, 'stone.' † See below. "A purely Slavonic word, signifying 'flowing asunder.'" century, call the country, from the Danube to the highland of Arcadia and Messenia, Sclabinia*, the country of the Slavi;' and Constantine Porphyrogenitus says †, that, at the time of Constantine Copronymus (749-75), the whole of the Peloponnesus was slavonised and barbarised. The same imperial writer‡ says, that in the reign of Michael III. (842-67), an army was sent, under the command of the Protospatar Theoctistes, to conquer the 'Sclaves' of the Peloponnesus; and that they were all conquered, with the exception of the Milingi and Eseritæ, who inhabited Lacedæmonia and Elis. It does not therefore appear that further evidence is required, to prove that the Morea was, at that time, entirely inhabited by the Slavonians. "Fallmerayer has established the precise date of their conquest of that country, having obtained the information, as he observes, by a miracle of St. Peter, in the following manner. In a letter, addressed by the Patriarch of Constantinople, Nicholas, to the Emperor Alexius Comnenus, in 1081, he quotes a bull of the Emperor Nicephorus I., elevating the Archbishopric of Patras to the dignity of a metropolitan see, and subjecting to its jurisdiction the three bishoprics of the Peloponnesus, on account of the personal assistance, which St. Peter gave the inhabitants of Patras, when besieged by the Avars § (Slavonians) of the Peloponnesus, two hundred and eighteen years after *Or Sclavinia, the b being pronounced v. † In his Thematibus, part ii. thema 6. De Administrando Imperio, part ii. chap. 50. § This confusion of the Avars and Slavonians has been noticed by many writers; and was owing to their having for a long time fought under the same banners. See above, Vol. I. pp. 15, 16. and 157. note. |