_The Arrival of the Slavs in the Balkan Peninsula_, A.D. 500-650


The Balkan peninsula, which had been raised to a high level of security
and prosperity during the Roman dominion, gradually relapsed into
barbarism as a result of these endless invasions; the walled towns, such
as Salonika and Constantinople, were the only safe places, and the country
became waste and desolate. The process continued unabated throughout the
three following centuries, and one is driven to one of two conclusions,
either that these lands must have possessed very extraordinary powers of
recuperation to make it worth while for invaders to pillage them so
frequently, or, what is more probable, there can have been after some time
little left to plunder, and consequently the Byzantine historians'
accounts of enormous drives of prisoners and booty are much exaggerated.
It is impossible to count the number of times the tide of invasion and
devastation swept southwards over the unfortunate peninsula. The emperors
and their generals did what they could by means of defensive works on the
frontiers, of punitive expeditions, and of trying to set the various
hordes of barbarians at loggerheads with each other, but, as they had at
the same time to defend an empire which stretched from Armenia to Spain,
it is not surprising that they were not more successful. The growing
riches of Constantinople and Salonika had an irresistible attraction for
the wild men from the east and north, and unfortunately the Greek citizens
were more inclined to spend their energy in theological disputes and their
leisure in the circus than to devote either the one or the other to the
defence of their country. It was only by dint of paying them huge sums of
money that the invaders were kept away from the coast. The departure of
the Huns and the Goths had made the way for fresh series of unwelcome
visitors. In the sixth century the Slavs appear for the first time. From
their original homes which were immediately north of the Carpathians, in