from Macedon to the Peloponnesos gravitating toward them, what might
they not do? No more serious danger had ever threatened the Empire of
the East. They rushed to rescue Bulgaria from the very enemy they had
invited to overthrow it. After a prolonged struggle, and in spite of
the wild courage displayed by Sviatoslaf, he was driven back, and
compelled to swear by Perun and Volos never again to invade Bulgaria.
If they broke their vows, might they become "as yellow as gold, and
perish by their own arms." But this was for Sviatoslaf the last
invasion of any land. The avenging Pechenegs were waiting in ambush
for his return. They cut off his head and presented his skull to their
Prince as a drinking cup (972).

It seems scarcely necessary to call attention to the fact that the
transforming energy in this early period of Russian history was not in
the native people; but that the Slav, in the hands of his Norse rulers,
was as clay in the hands of the potter. In the treaty of peace signed
at Kief (945) by the victorious Igor, of the fifty names recorded by
Nestor only three were Slavonic and the rest Scandinavian. There can
be no doubt which was the dominant race in this the heroic age of
Russia.

So we have seen a weaker people submitting to the rule of a stronger,
not by conquest, like Spain under the Visigoths; not overrun and
overridden as Britain by the Angles and Saxons and Gaul by the Franks;
but, in recognition of its own helplessness, voluntarily becoming
subject to the control of strangers.

And we see at the same time the brilliant, restless Norseman, with no
plan of establishing a racial dominion, but simply in the temporary
enjoyment of his own warlike and robber instincts, engrafting himself