filtered down into Greece. Southern Thrace in the east and Albania in the
west were comparatively little affected, and in these districts the
indigenous population maintained itself. The coasts of the Aegean and the
great cities on or near them were too strongly held by the Greeks to be
affected, and those Slavs who penetrated into Greece itself were soon
absorbed by the local populations. The still stronger Slavonic stream,
which moved westwards and turned up north-westwards, overran the whole
country down to the shores of the Adriatic and as far as the sources of
the Save and Drave in the Alps. From that point in the west to the shores
of the Black Sea in the east became one solid mass of Slavs,
and has remained so ever since. The few Slavs who were left north of the
Danube in Dacia were gradually assimilated by the inhabitants of that
province, who were the descendants of the Roman soldiers and colonists,
and the ancestors of the modern Rumanians, but the fact that Slavonic
influence there was strong is shown by the large number of words of
Slavonic origin contained in the Rumanian language.

[Illustration: THE BALKAN PENINSULA ETHNOLOGICAL]

Place-names are a good index of the extent and strength of the tide of
Slav immigration. All along the coast, from the mouth of the Danube to the
head of the Adriatic, the Greek and Roman names have been retained though
places have often been given alternative names by the Slavonic settlers.
Thrace, especially the south-eastern part, and Albania have the fewest
Slavonic place-names. In Macedonia and Lower Moesia (Bulgaria) very few
classical names have survived, while in Upper Moesia (Serbia) and the
interior of Dalmatia (Bosnia, Hercegovina, and Montenegro) they have
entirely disappeared. The Slavs themselves, though their tribal names were
known, were until the ninth century usually called collectively S(k)lavini
([Greek: Sklabaenoi]) by the Greeks, and all the inland parts of the