Mountain"--rose into being. Diocletian, the famous divider of the
Roman Empire, was born there, and the city became the capital of the
district to which it gave the name. The triumvirs placed the
border-line of the Eastern and Western divisions at Skodra, or
Scutari, as the Europeans call it. Under the early empire, the land
was perpetually changing from East to West, but when the Western
division fell under the weight of barbarian invasions Ǔin 476 A.D.,
it was finally incorporated in the East. This was a momentous
decision, for the manners and habits of the people still remain tinged
with Eastern life, and in the ninth century it secured their adhesion
to the Eastern Church, which influences their policy to the present
time. The principality of Dioclea, or Zeta, as it soon became called,
was one of the confederate Serb states formed by Heraclius in 622
A.D., to act as a buffer state against the inroads of the Avars. Each
state was ruled by a Župan or Prince who owed allegiance to the Grand
Župan, the head of the heptarchy. But the confederation was very
loose, the rival chieftains fighting amongst one another for the
supremacy, for the Serb race has ever been noted for its lack of unity
and corresponding love of freedom. The famous Bulgarian Czar Samuel,
_circa_ 980, who had overrun the rest of the Serb states, and made for
himself a great empire, found that he was powerless to conquer the
warlike John Vladimir of the Zeta; and again, nearly a century later,
in 1050, we find the Zeta Župa so powerful that their Prince assumes
the title of King of Servia, and is confirmed in his right by Gregory
VII., the famous Pope Hildebrand. Dissensions then broke out again,
and for the next hundred years the land owned the sway of the Greek
Empire. The two most celebrated Serb kings--Stefan Nemanja (1143) and
Stefan Dušan (1336-1356)--both ascended to the head of the
confederation from the principality of the Zeta. The latter raised the
Serb kingdom to its zenith, and formed an ephemeral empire which bears