Forest land, however, is not inexhaustible; when what has
been reaped from it is not made up for by dunging, or by allowing it to
lie fallow—in short, when the soil is merely worked out—it can no longer
support the growing population, and compels migration or expansion at
the cost of the neighbourhood.
been reaped from it is not made up for by dunging, or by allowing it to
lie fallow—in short, when the soil is merely worked out—it can no longer
support the growing population, and compels migration or expansion at
the cost of the neighbourhood.
Cambridge Medieval History - v2 - Rise of the Saracens and Foundation of the Western Empire
c.
2000.
For while the zones of the beech and yew extend
fairly straight from the Baltic to the Black Sea, the boundary of the
hornbeam forms an extended curve embracing Polesie. The reason for
this curve is the temperate climate of Polesie which results from the
enormous marshes and is favourable to the hornbeam, which cannot
withstand great fluctuations of temperature. And this curve must have
been there before the rise of the Old Balto-Slavonic language, other-
wise the Balto-Slavs living without the limit of the beech and yew could
not have possessed a word for the hornbeam. According to a tradition
the Goths in their migration from the Vistula to the Pontus about the
end of the second century a. d. came to a bottomless marshland, obviously
on the upper Niemen and Pripet, where many of them perished. At
that time the impassable morasses of Polesie had already existed for
centuries, though their enormous depths may first have become marsh-
land in historic times owing to the activity of the beaver—which raises
dams of wood in order to maintain a uniform water level; and, as
floating leaves and other remains of plants stuck in the dams, a gradually
thickening layer of peat was formed from them and the land became
continually more marshy. It follows that though the curve of the
hornbeam boundary may have been a little smaller in prehistoric times
than it is now, it cannot have been greater, and there can be no objection
to the argument from the four tree-boundaries.
Polesie—a district rather less than half as large as England—is a
triangle, of which the towns Brest Litovsk, Mohilev, and Kiev are roughly
speaking the apices. It was once a lake having the form of a shallow
dish with raised sides, and before its recent drainage seventy-five per cent,
of it was nothing but marsh, covered to half its extent partly with pine
groves and partly with a mixed forest, but otherwise treeless. The upper
layer consists of peat extending to eighteen feet in depth, and here
and there under the peat is a layer of iron ore about two inches thick.
Enormous morasses traversed by a thick and intricate network of streams
alternate with higher-lying sandy islets. The flow of water is impeded,
because the subsoil is impervious, the gradient of the rivers is slight, and
the bed of the lower Pripet is confined by high banks. The morasses
are covered with reeds and rushes—less often with sweet flags on sandy
ground—the surface of the streams with water-lilies and the like, which
so hinder their flow that they constantly have to change their course.
Between reeds and rushes there are places with reed-grass—and
less often with soft grass—which the peasants mow standing up to
the waist in water, or from a boat. Only the higher-lying places—
small oases difficult to get at—can be cultivated.
The average temperature throughout the year is over 43° Fahr. ;
January mean 20° Fahr. , July mean 65^° Fahr. The average fall of
moisture is 16-24 inches i depth of snow seven inches at the most; snow
remains not quite three months (from the middle of December nearly
cb. xiv. 27—2
## p. 420 (#452) ############################################
420 Anthropology. Ethnology. Society
to the middle of March), often only for two or three weeks. The
Pripet is frozen from the middle of November to the middle of January;
it is navigable for 220 to 300 days. Notwithstanding the soft mild
climate, the land is unhealthy: the putrefying marsh develops mias-
matic gases causing epidemic lung and throat diseases, and the loathsome
elf-lock {plica polonica); and the swarms of gnats cause intermittent
fever. But since draining, the weakly breed of men and beasts has
visibly improved.
This anomalous land has developed a singular people. The present
population does not even now reach half a million; so that the entire Old
Slav race in Polesie cannot have amounted to more than a few hundred
thousand souls. The inhabitants of Polesie are White Russians, but
those of the southern tract are black-haired mongoloid Little Russians
who emigrated from the South to escape the advance of the Altaian
mounted nomads. The White Russian is of middle stature, the recruit
being on an average 5 ft. 4 ins. high. (Old skeletons measure 5 ft. 4$ ins.
to 5 ft. 5$ ins. , so that the marsh has had a degenerating effect. In
healthier districts outside Polesie the Slavs become taller and stronger;
in the sixth century, according to Procopius, they were "all of con-
siderable height and remarkable strength. 11) Their skin is white, flaxen
hair predominates (57 per cent. ), their eyes are grey or sky-blue.
According to Procopius the South Slavs were reddish (inripvOpoi), but
most of them are now dark and black- or brown-haired, and in large
districts we find slavised black-haired Roumanians. Marco Polo (Italian
text) calls the Russians la gente molto Mia. . . e sono bianchi e biondi, and
Ibrahim ibn Ia'qub in the tenth century marks as exceptional the dark
and black hair of the Bohemians. This fact is due to an admixture of
alien dark races.
The broadest rivers, the greatest seas, the highest mountains, the
most terrible deserts can be overcome; the treacherous marsh alone is
invincible. Here the inhabitants of two places can see each other
and yet be as distant as Europe is from America. Before the drainage
many places in Polesie could be reached only by enormous detours, and
others were accessible only over the ice in the depth of winter. Thus
the Slavs in their original home were divided into small groups which had
very little intercourse during the greater part of the year. But in a low
grade of civilisation the stranger is an enemy, and they had no kind of
political, territorial, or social cohesion. Still later, when they came into
contact with the East Romans, they were—according to Procopius—
"not ruled by one man but lived from the earliest times in 'democracy,'
and so they deliberated in common on all their affairs—good and bad. "
"Mauricius " attests that they were "kingless and hostile to one another,"
and never cared to form large bands; in this sense we must understand
the further assertion that they were "free and by no means easily moved
to let themselves be enslaved or dominated" by their like. The more
## p. 421 (#453) ############################################
Common Names. Family. House-Community 421
easily were they enslaved by a foreign yoke: "they yield to the first
comer,'" reports Pseudo-Caesarius. The only organic wholes were formed
by small groups of villages—in Polesie sometimes by single villages—
under patriarchal government. There could be no thought of social
distinctions, as differences of rank did not exist.
Probably the Slavs, like the Germans, had no collective name before
they spread from Polesie: for, failing the notion of a State, they had
likewise no notion of a people. The name Slavs is correctly Slovene
(sing. Slovenin) and is probably a nomen topicum—meaning roughly
"inhabitants of Slovy"—belonging originally only to one populous
tribe1. The East Romans came into contact at first with a part of
this tribe and thus named all other Slav tribes north of the Danube
Sklawenoi, Sthlawoi1; nevertheless, for a time they distinguished from
them the Antai of South Russia who spoke the same language with them.
As with all Indo-Europeans, the Slav family was originally patri-
archal; there is no trace of a matriarchate. The marriage bond was
first loosened later among the individual Slav peoples under the yoke
of the nomads. The wife bought or carried off by force was at
first the property of the husband. This was usual from the earliest
times, and is still presupposed in certain old ceremonial customs (e. g.
mock-abduction by previous arrangement). The rich might live in
polygamy, but the mass of the people were monogamic. The isolation
of the little villages in Polesie made the marriage bond all the closer.
The conjugal fidelity of the Slavs was universally marvelled at, and
according to "Mauricius," St Boniface, and others, their wives were so
extraordinarily honourable that many thought it unseemly to outlive
their husbands, and voluntarily put an end to their lives.
Until recently it was generally believed that the ancient Slavs lived
in house-communities {Zadrugas), that is, that after the father's death
the sons did not divide the inheritance, but continued to live together
under the direction of a house-elder. The modern Servo-Croatian
Zadrugas were taken for survivals of Old Slavonic custom; and this
seemed more likely, because the White Russians in Polesie—where the
original home of the Slavs has just been discovered—also live in Zadrugas,
and moreover traces of this mode of life remain not only among the
other Slav peoples, but even among the German and many other
peoples. But the Servian Zadruga turned out to be a consequence
1 Hence Slovyene (North Russia, near Novgorod), Slovene (Bulgaria), Slovintzi
(Pomerania), Slovatzi (North Hungary), Sloventzi (Austrian Alps).
2 Hence comes Arabic-Persian Qaqldb, Latin Sclaveni, Sclavi. The Teutons named
the Slavs Vinithos or Venethi*, rendered approximately by Tacitus Veneti, late Latin
Venethae, Venedae, (ierman Wenden. Shakhmatov has proved that the Slavs inherited
this name from their former rulers, the Keltic Venedi, who occupied the district of
the Vistula about the third and second centuries b. c. Jordanes harmonised the
Teutonic name with the Greek, so that he took Vinidae as collective name and
Ante* and Svlavini as branch names.
## p. 422 (#454) ############################################
422 Village-Community. Agriculture. Cattle-breeding
of the originally East-Roman system of taxation—the KawiKov, hearth-
tax—in accordance with which each separate hearth formed the unit of
taxation. To be sure the Old Servian laws directed the married son to
detach himself from his father, but under the dominion of the Turk he
remained—often only outwardly—in the undivided household in order
to pay only one hearth-tax as before. But the hearth-tax occurs also
among the Altaian conquerors; and it was also not unknown to some
Teutonic peoples. As a matter of fact there exists no free people where
society is based on the communistic household. A 'priori indeed other
causes of its origin are also conceivable: e. g. seigniorial prohibition of
division, and especially insufficiency of land and over-population after
the peasant-holdings have become by successive divisions too small for
further subdivision. And of all places this might best be assumed of
Polesie—a country so poor in cultivable land. But in the sixth century
Procopius states: "They live scattered far apart in wretched huts and
very frequently change the place of their dwellings. '" Communistic
households do not exist under such conditions.
The house-community, Zadruga, must be distinguished from the
Russian village-community {Mir or Obshtchina) which has also been long
regarded as of ancient Slavonic origin. It disposes of the whole of the
land and soil of the village, periodically taking possession of all the
peasant-holdings and allotting them afresh. But it has been recently found
that these village-communities too came into existence very late, in
consequence of the capitation-tax introduced by Peter the Great in
1719. For the payment of this tax the villein-village was collectively
liable, and, as soon as the number of able-bodied men materially altered
through births and deaths, all the land of the village was to be re-
distributed in equal parts among the existing inhabitants. These
periodical redistributions were not legally established before 1781'.
They were rightly estimated by Fustel de Coulanges: "Far from
being collective ownership, the Mir is collective serfdom. "
In agriculture and diet the ancient Slavs entirely differed from the
Germans. The latter lived chiefly on milk and meat and were cattle-
rearers, leaving the agriculture to be done by women, old men, and
serfs. But Polesie is entirely unsuited to cattle: milch cows cannot
live on reeds and rushes, and grass grows only in oases and gives poor
nourishment. Even now, when the marshes have been drained, the
peasant's cow is a miserable animal, giving very little milk and chiefly
retained for draught purposes. Still more wretched was his horse, and
there are hardly any sheep. The pig thrives better, but it does not live
in clover, for there is but little sweet calamus and other roots, the nut-
giving beech does not grow at all, and the acorn-bearing oak only here
and there. According to the Arabian geographer of the ninth century,
the Slavs who were subject to a fciwwiz-drinking and therefore mounted-
1 Kovalevsky, Modern Customs, pp. 94 f. ; Sergyeevich, Vremia.
## p. 423 (#455) ############################################
Occupations. National Character 423
nomad king had only a few pack-horses—only eminent men had riding-
horses, and they occupied themselves with swine-rearing as other peoples
with sheep. It is therefore evident that the horses belonged not to
the Slavs but to their Altaian masters, and that the Slavs in Russia
then had no domestic animals except swine. The same is reported
by Constantine Porphyrogenitus a hundred years later. "The Ros
(Scandinavian rulers of the Russian Slavs) strive to live at peace with
the Patzinaks (mounted nomads of the Pontus steppe) for they buy from
them cattle, horses, and sheep. . . as none of these animals are found
in Russia11 (i. e. in the Russian Slav land). Hence milk as a common
article of diet was unknown to the ancient Slavs, so that they had no
words of their own for cattle, heavy plough, milk, curd and such-like, but
had to borrow from German and Altaian sources.
Polesie is rather more favourable to agriculture; though only the
dry islets are cultivable. Even now, after the drainage, very little
grain is produced. In the enormous sea of forest and marsh the little
fields escaped the notice of observers, so that the Arabian geographer
could say that the Slavs mostly lived among trees, having no vines and
no cornfields. The scantiness of cultivable land forced the Slavs to,
a very intensive tillage of the soil with the hand-hoe or by yoking
themselves to their excellently constructed hook-ploughs. Of course there
was no wealth of grain in Polesie itself, but the manna-grass (glyceria
Jluitans), which is sweeter and still more nutritious than millet, grows
there wild in abundance in standing water and wet meadows. It was still
exported in the nineteenth century, and it probably served the ancient
Slavs as food. For clothing and oil, flax and hemp were cultivated.
Polesie was rich in big game—aurochs, elk, wild boar, bear, wolf—
and in fur-coated animals—beaver, otter, fox, sable, marten, ermine,
squirrel, etc. But imperfect weapons and the difficulty of the country
made hunting not very productive, so that there was little game as
food. On the other hand, there was all the more fishing, and the
natural abundance was increased by damming the flowing water with
weirs. Bee-keeping played an important part among all Slav peoples
from the earliest times. The intoxicating Med, fermented from honey,
was to the Slavs what wine and beer are to other peoples.
The isolating marsh hinders intercourse; the White Russian is
above all a husbandman and fisherman. Void of all enterprise, he
leaves others to trade with the fruits of his labour and they drain
him to the last farthing. Drunkenness is his only hateful quality;
otherwise he has very attractive traits. He is thrifty almost to
avarice, cautious in the management of his affairs, and shews an en-
durance that harmonises little with his slender physique. He is in no
way aggressive but rather dreamy, confiding, not at all malicious, good
tempered, not without dignity, very hospitable, and a lover of amuse-
ment. The dance, song, and music are his natural element. On summer
## p. 424 (#456) ############################################
424 National Strength and Weapons. Heathenism
evenings the village youths assemble in the streets and often promenade
the whole night long singing in chorus their melancholy lyric songs.
The White Russian has remained true to the ancient Slav character.
According to Procopius, the Slavs were not malignant or villainous,
but harmless and naive; "Mauricius " says, " They are hardened to heat,
frost, wet, nakedness, and hunger, and are well-disposed to strangers. '"
According to Adam of Bremen (died 1075) there was no more hospitable
and kindly people than the Slavs of Pomerania. The variety of musical
instruments among the Slavs struck the Arabian geographer of the ninth
century, and all Slav peoples are still very musical.
The bottomless marshes of the Pripet were no sufficient protection
from sudden raids and attacks; in winter the nomads could penetrate
over the ice on their fleet horses far into the land, and in summer the
pirates could use the rivers up to their sources. Defence was hopeless.
This made the Old Slavs exceptionally unwarlike, and shy as the beast
of the forest. In summer, when suddenly attacked, they had to dis-
appear like frogs into the water or into the woods; in winter they
had to take refuge behind the shelter of their numerous stockades.
According to Procopius they fought without armour but with little
shields and darts, some even without coat and cloak and with only an
apron about their loins. But not even this wretched equipment was
really Slavonic; it must have been borrowed from some German
people, probably the warlike Heruli who fought in the same way.
Polesie is a land of exuberant fancy. A remarkable autumnal still-
ness is peculiar to its sea of marsh, a stillness not disturbed even by
the humming of a gnat and only broken now and then by the gentle
rustling of the rushes. To the fisherman as he glides at night in his
punt over the smooth silver water it is as impressive as its contrast, the
surging of the sea of reeds and the roaring of the forest in the storm-
wind. This produced in the inhabitant an uncontrolled imagination \
which made him people the world of nature with spirits. To-day he
still personifies sun, moon, fire, wood, marsh, will-o'-the-wisp, spring
and all else that is perceivable. But joy and sorrow, every illness,
Sunday, every holiday, are also spirits. His house, stable, barn,
threshing-floor have their own goblins, each with wife and children.
To this must be added ancestor-worship. On certain days the father
says at the evening meal " Holy ancestors, we invite you to come to us
and eat of all that God has given to us, in which this house is rich—
Holy ancestors, I pray you come, fly to us. " Kneeling with bread and
salt in his hands he prays to the spirit of the house and its wife and
children, beseeching its favour and deliverance from all evil. The Polesian
has only obscure ideas of a future life, but he has most definite knowledge
of the wicked dead and their appearance as werewolves and vampires. So
superstitious is he that he harbours in his mind a copious code of secret
expedients for scaring away all evil spirits, and at every step he is
## p. 425 (#457) ############################################
Cosmogony. Burial 425
careful not to provoke a spirit. Still he cannot know everything; this
is possible only for particular wizards of both sexes who have inter-
course with the spirits of evil and whose help is sought in need and
richly rewarded.
The world is the work of God, the creator of all good and useful
beings and things, and of the devil who made the mountains, marshes,
beasts of prey, poisonous plants, illnesses, etc. God breathed into man
a good spirit, the devil an evil one. The Polesian is very much in the
dark about the godhead itself: "God knows how many gods there are. "
The Christian saints are to him smaller, special gods; thus St Elias is
god of thunder, George of cattle and game, Nicolas of fields, Cosmas
and Damian of smiths. They stroll about in the world amusing them-
selves by playing all sorts of pranks on mankind. Noteworthy is the
cult of fire, namely of the hearth-fire, which must never be allowed to go
out and is transferred to any newly-occupied house. The White Russian
heathenism (with a very thin varnish of Christianity) goes back to the
earliest Slavs, and clear traces of it are still found among all the Slav
peoples. It is identical with the Shamanism of the Altaians, with this
difference—that what constituted the belief of large masses in Polesie
was among the mounted nomads a Shaman mystery of which the mass
of the people took no notice, observing only the hocus-pocus of the
wizards. The attention of observers was mostly attracted by the fire-
worship, and thus the Arabian geographer of the ninth century calls
both the Slavs and the Altaian-Magyars fire-worshippers. According
to Procopius the Slavs believed in one single chief god, denied Fate,
and worshipped rivers, nymphs, and other Saifiopta. No traces of
mythology have survived; the later-mentioned gods and their worship
belong to the individual Slav peoples.
Many Slav peoples burned the bodies of the dead, others—among
them the Polesians—buried them. But the burning of bodies must be
attributed to the influence of foreign conquerors, namely the Germans.
As a matter of fact the Norman Ros likewise burned the bodies of the
dead together with their self-destroyed widows (Ibn Fadlan), and the
widows of the Heruli also hanged themselves on their husbands' burial-
mounds.
Polesie is still the most backward district of backward Russia. As
a consequence and at the same time as a cause of the slender needs of I
the people we see no division of labour. The Slav had to make for
himself his few utensils; and in these, judging by the buried remains
which are very poor in metal articles, he displayed remarkable taste in
form and ornament. He could only supply the external market with
raw products—costly furs, wax, and honey—but it is not likely that
he brought them to the market, for he himself was offered wholesale
as a captured slave.
In our first volume it was shewn how the salt-desert zone of the
## p. 426 (#458) ############################################
426 Place in History. Early Eocpansion
Asiatic Background developed the wild mounted nomad. Here we have
a second example of the great natural law that a people is and remains
what its land of origin has made it. Just as the mounted nomad is the
son and product of the arid salt-deserts, the Slav is the son and product
of the marsh. The Slav and the mounted nomad, like the lands of their
origin, are diametrical extremes, and the murderous irony of fate made
\them neighbours. The one was a soft anvil, the other a hammer hard
as steel. A second not less weighty hammer (the Germans) came into
play, and the anvil was beaten flat.
Dry and tolerably fertile forest land contains so much cultivable soil
that it cannot easily be over-peopled: so here men form societies, and
States arise. But primitive man cannot wrest a foot of land from the
marsh; on the contrary, he extends it by making dams, transforming
small streams into great fish-ponds. Thus, as the cultivable oases
become smaller, the population huddles closer together. Dry forest
land makes its inhabitants stronger, but the marsh has a degenerating
influence.
Forest land, however, is not inexhaustible; when what has
been reaped from it is not made up for by dunging, or by allowing it to
lie fallow—in short, when the soil is merely worked out—it can no longer
support the growing population, and compels migration or expansion at
the cost of the neighbourhood. But the unwarlike inhabitants of the
marshland can conquer nothing, and can only spread gradually where
they meet with no resistance. This is upon the whole the difference
(between the expansion of the Germans and that of the Slavs. The
Germanic migration was eruptive as a volcano, the Slavonic a gradual
percolation, like that of a flood rolling slowly forward. Some Germanic
people or other leave their home: in the search for a new home they
rouse their neighbours, and they in turn rouse theirs, and so it goes
on ■until a hemisphere is thrown into commotion, strong States fall to
pieces, mighty peoples perish, and even the Roman Empire quakes.
And the Slavs? They have occupied and thickly populated immeasur-
able regions unnoticed by the annalists, and even now we ask in vain
how this could have taken place so noiselessly, and whence have come
the countless millions of Slavs.
The occupation by the Slavs of the district surrounding Polesie is
prehistoric. They moved northward after the Baltic peoples had
abandoned their original home in the hornbeam zone and retired
towards the Baltic Sea; eastward over the Oka and to the sources of the
Oskol; southward to Kiev—further southwards they could not maintain
themselves permanently, as fifteen centuries ago the grass steppe reached
as far as Kiev and consequently served the mounted nomads as a camping
ground up to that point. Towards the south-west the Slavs reached
the Carpathians, and in the west they spread across the Vistula In the
time of the Romans the Vistula was regarded as the eastern frontier of
the Germans.
## p. 427 (#459) ############################################
The Waterways. The Pontus Steppe 427
This expanded Slavia has indeed the most manifold varieties of
climate and soil, yet it forms a contrast to its little nucleus Polesie,
the cradle of the Slavs. The latter scattered the inhabitants and
isolated them in small villages, whereas the water-network of all the
rest of Russia connects even the most distant peoples. It would indeed
be easier to go from Lake Ladoga to the Black Sea than from many
a Polesian village to the next.
The whole of Russia forms an enormous plain, so that there is nothing
to hinder the icy north winds. The Sea of Azov and the northern part
of the Caspian are ice-locked; the winter is terribly cold in the south,
and the south winds bring burning hot summer days to the distant
north. Thus the climate is everywhere the same and thoroughly conti-
nental in its extreme severity. In the northern region of the expanded
Slav territory the Valdai hills are the watershed of the Baltic, Black,
and Caspian Seas. The river basins of the Lovat, Volga, Don, Dnieper,
Dwina are however so entangled and, in consequence of the slight
gradients, their streams are navigable so far up-stream, that it is only
necessary to drag a boat on land over the low narrow watersheds in
order to reach the Black Sea or the Caspian from the Baltic by the
Ladoga Sea. Similarly, from the Memel-Niemen basin the Dnieper
can be reached, from the Dnieper the Volga or the Don, from
the Don the Volga, or the Volga from the Dwina. A thousand years
ago Russia was even better watered, but since this time many rivers
mentioned by the chroniclers as formerly navigable have been dried
up by reckless disforesting. This network of rivers, as if created for
primitive commerce, is the most magnificent on the face of the earth,
and in spite of its inhospitable climate it would certainly have nurtured
the highest civilisation, had not its southern entrances been situated in
the grass steppe by the Black and Caspian Seas, the domain of the
mounted nomads, the arch-enemies and stiflers of all growing civilisation.
Fifteen hundred years ago the Pontus steppe was still grass steppe
as far as the northern limit of the black earth (on the Dnieper as far as
Kiev), not till later was it divided by the advance of the forest into a
northern tree steppe, and a southern grass steppe zone. The Don
divides the Pontus steppe transversely: as a rule one people dwelt west
of the Don to the mouth of the Danube, and another east of the Don
to the Caucasus. Towards the Caspian Sea the steppe becomes very
salt, and in further curving round the Caspian it passes into the Central
Asiatic steppe and desert zone, the ancient domain of the mounted nomads.
So often as these were stirred by internal commotion, the hordes that
were from neolithic times onward driven out sought refuge and a new
home in the Pontus steppe. As early as the Iliad "mare-milking"
(imrTifioKyol) mounted nomads were known there. At the time of
Herodotus the Scythians had dwelt for centuries west of the Don, and
the Sarmatae east of it, enjoying a long interval of peace, during which
## p. 428 (#460) ############################################
428 The Pontus Steppe. Commerce
the Asiatic background remained in equilibrium and no new horde broke
into the Pontus steppe. The wildness of the Scythians gradually de-
creased and numerous Greek colonies covered the coasts of the Pontus
and the Maeotis (the Sea of Azov), becoming flourishing emporia,
especially for an enormous export of grain to Greece. This probably
caused the Scythians to transplant wholesale agricultural peoples under
their subjection. Herodotus includes various peoples, nomads and
husbandmen, evidently not of the same origin, under the name Scythian;
the latter sowed grain "not for food, but for sale," and there can be no
doubt that among them were Slav nations also.
Into this motley of peoples the Hellenic colonies brought the most
promising seeds of culture, and seemed likely to send out a stream
of civilisation to the west of Europe, as well as one to the north-
east. But the Asiatic nomads were on the move, and the still wild
Sarmatae were pushed on from the east, crossed the Don, drove out
and in part subjugated the Scythians, and had conquered even the
western part of the Pontus steppe before the end of the second
century b. c. Amid these storms the Hellenic colonies, and with them
the seeds of civilisation, perished. During the second or third century a. d.
the Sarmatian hordes were driven out by the German Goths and Heruli.
The Gothic dominion lasted over two centuries, and is the only non-
nomadic episode in the history of the steppe. The Goths were the most
magnificent German people, and their influence on the Slavs must have
been enormous. But about 375 the Goths were forced to make way for
the Huns; and the steppe remained in nomad hands for fourteen centuries
continuously. In succession came Huns, Bulgars, Avars, Chazars,
Magyars, Patzinaks, Cumans, Mongols. Like the buran, the furious
tempest of the steppe, each of these hordes drove its predecessor in
wild flight into the civilised lands of Europe, extirpated the Slavonic
peasantry which had settled in the grass steppe, and passed over the
tree steppe plundering and murdering so that the Slavs were forced
to leave this zone too and to withdraw into the marshes of Polesie.
Regular commerce was impossible, for on the banks of the rivers,
especially in the dangerous rapids of the Dnieper over which the boats
had to be carried on land, the nomad lurked in the tall grass and
killed the crews and took their wares. Nevertheless, as the Southerner
and the Oriental eagerly sought the raw products of the north—wax,
honey, and especially strong slaves and pretty female slaves as well as
costly furs—reckless Scandinavian pirate merchants found a rich market
for these wares, which they had to take to the Euphrates and elsewhere
by the roundabout way of the Dwina to the Volga and the Caspian or
by Ladoga and the Volkhov, while the Dnieper route stood open only
at times and was always extremely dangerous. The greatness of this
plunder-commerce is shewn by the finding of Oriental coins in Russia—
11,077 pieces in one place—Scandinavia, Iceland, Greenland, and
## p. 429 (#461) ############################################
Slave-hunts 429
wherever else the Northmen went. Quite 100,000 coins have been
secured, and many more have been kept secret and melted, or lie still
in the bosom of the ground, so that Jacob's estimate—a million—is
certainly much too low.
The oldest written history of the Slavs can be shortly summarised—
myriads of slave-hunts and the enthralment of entire peoples. The Slav
was the most prized of human goods. With increased strength outside
his marshy land of origin, hardened to the utmost against all privation,
industrious, content with little, good-humoured, and cheerful, he filled
the slave markets of Europe, Asia, and Africa. It must be remembered
that for every Slavonic slave who reached his destination, at least ten
succumbed to inhuman treatment during transport and to the heat of
the climate. Indeed, Ibrahim (tenth century), himself in all probability
a slave-dealer, says: "And the Slavs cannot travel to Lombardy on
account of the heat which is fatal to them. " Hence their high price.
The Arabian geographer of the ninth century tells us how the
Magyars in the Pontus steppe dominated all the Slavs dwelling near
them. The Magyars made raids upon the Slavs and took their prisoners
along the coast to Eerkh where the Byzantines came to meet
them and gave Greek brocades and such wares in exchange for the
prisoners. The Slavs had a method of fortification, and their chief resort
was the fortresses in winter and the forest in summer. The Ros (Vikings,
Norse pirates) lived on an island (probably the old commercial town
Ladoga between the Ladoga and Ilmen lakes). They had many towns,
and were estimated at 100,000 souls. They made war on the Slavs by
ship and took them as prisoners to Khazaran and Bulgar (the emporia
of the Chazars and Bulgars on the Volga). The B6s had no villages,
their sole occupation was trading with sable and other skins. A hundred
to two hundred of them at a time would come into Slav-land and take
by force the objects that suited them. Many of the Slavs came to them
and became their servants for the sake of safety.
We see then the Slav surrounded on the north by pirates, on the
south by mounted nomads, and hunted and harried like the beast of the
forest. Jordanes1 words, "Instead of in towns they live in marshes and
forests,11 cover the most terrible national martyrdom in the history of
the world. The "fortifications "—simple ramparts—mentioned by the
Arabian geographer were not impregnable; indeed, the strongest fortifi-
cations of Europe and Asia were stormed by the nomads and Northmen.
"Mauricius " states: "Settled in places very hard of access, forests, rivers,
lakes, they provide their dwellings with several exits with a view to
accidents, and they bury everything that is not absolutely necessary. . . .
When they are suddenly attacked they dive under the water, and lying
on their backs on the bottom they breathe through a long reed, and
thus escape destruction, for the inexperienced take these projecting
reeds for natural; but the experienced recognise them by their cut
## p. 430 (#462) ############################################
430 Slavs in German Slavery
and pierce the body through with them or pull them out, so that the
diver must come to the surface if he will not be stifled. 11 As late as
1768 parts of the revolting peasants surrounded by the Polish army
rescued themselves from the Dnieper by breathing through reeds for
more than half a day.
This terrible existence must have further shattered and dissolved
Slavdom, already weakened in Polesie. Even partially regular tillage
was impossible in districts exposed to constant attacks. Cornfields
would have betrayed them, so that they could only be placed far out
of reach. Breeding of horses, oxen or sheep, as well as milk food could
not be thought of, for cattle were the most coveted booty of the nomads,
and what they did not take would have been carried off by the pirates.
Even in their original home the Slavs were limited to grain and fish, and
they remained so in their wider home.
Even by the ninth century this encircling of the Slavs by the pirates
was very old. The Germanic inhabitants of the Baltic districts made
a practice of piracy from the earliest times, and very early land-peoples
also appear as masters of the Slavs. As we have already seen, they
had been enslaved in pre-Christian times by the Keltic Venedi. The
Venedi in course of time became fused with Slavs into one Slavic
people, thenceforth called Wends by the Germans. The first known of
their Germanic conquerors were the Bastarnae who, coming from the
lower Oder, were in the third century B. C. already in occupation of the
Slav lands north of the Carpathians as far as the mouth of the Danube.
According to Polybius and Dio Cassius they were a numerous, daring,
bibulous people of powerful stature and terrifying appearance who knew
neither agriculture nor navigation, and disdained cattle-rearing because
they cared only for warlike pursuits. On their expeditions their wives
and children followed the army in wagons, and their horsemen fought
with foot-soldiers among them. They fell into various clans and divisions
under little kings (reguli), one of whom stood at the head as leader of
the war-band. But a numerous people without agriculture and cattle-
rearing cannot live only on plunder and cannot live alone in a land;
it needs another more numerous people of serfs, among whom it settles
as a dominating class. But north of the Carpathians such a people
could only be the Slavs. Thus arose the oldest known Slavo-Germanic
State. The second Germanic people from whose influence the Slavs
could not escape was the ferocious Heruli situated by the Black Sea
east of the Goths and the Don, for the same weapons and the same
burial customs are found among them as among the Slavs. The third
people were the Goths.
According to the oldest Gothic tradition (given by Jordanes) King
Ermanarich (died 373) overcame the Slavs (Veneti) "who, notwith-
standing that they were despised as warriors, nevertheless being strong
in numbers attempted at first a stout resistance. 11 His great-nephew
## p. 431 (#463) ############################################
Slavs in German Slavery 431
Vinithar attacked the South-Russian Slavs, the Antae, and after one
reverse overcame first them and then the Huns, who had come to their
help, in two battles, but fell in the third. It is certainly strange that
a tribe of the Slavs, who were despised as warriors not only by the
Germans but also by the Byzantines, could defeat even in one battle
a German leader before whom the Huns themselves recoiled. Still, it
is a fact that the Antae were successful warriors, and later in the sixth
century possessed the whole region from the Dniester to the Don, which
was formerly held by the Goths. It is astonishing that the Byzantine
sources of the sixth century distinguish the Antae from all the
remaining Slavs, but at the same time emphasise the fact that they
spoke the same language. And the name"Avrat is not Slavonic. The
military superiority of the Antae is, as Kunik has shewn, to be traced
back to a non-Slavonic conquering folk, the Antae, who overcame certain
Slav stocks and ruled them long and powerfully as a superior warlike
class1. This folk then became Slavised, and, as was the case with many
such despotisms both German and nomadic, it too fell apart into small
States, which however still negotiated common concerns in general
meetings, and proceeded as one body in external affairs. We hear the
same of the Bastarnae. In the tenth and eleventh centuries we find in
the former abodes of the Antae of the Pontus steppe the Slavonic
Tiwertzi and Ulichi whose names are equally non-Slavonic. How
could they have maintained themselves against the nomads here where
they were daily exposed to the inroads of all the Asiatic hordes, if they
were pure Slavs without a Germanic or Altaian warrior-stratum?
Still less could the Slavs resist the pressure of foreign conquerors
after the Scandinavian Vikings had renewed their attacks. Leaving
their families behind them, these appeared at first in small bands of
one to two hundred men as well-organised followers (vaeringjar) of a
sea-king, and always returned home after selling their plunder. At
important points on their route they established trading stations, and
in the course of time these became fortified settlements surrounded by
a subjected Finnish, Baltic, or Slavonic population. Hence a regulated
government was developed, no longer exclusively resting on plunder.
From the word vaeringjar came the name of a people Varangians,
Bdpayyot. The Varangians gradually extended their sway over the whole
of Russia—over Kiev about the year 855—covered it with originally
independent towns (gurSdr)1, and finally formed these little States into
a single empire of the Ros* (Russians). In brief, trading Scandinavian
1 On the other hand, cf. HruiSevgkyj, i. pp. 175 ff. , 577 ff.
2 Hence Russia was called by the Scandinavians Gartariki, i. e. the kingdom of
many forts.
8 This name too is Swedish, for which Esthonian has Rats. In Old Swedish
Rof>er, Ko|>in is the name of a strip of coast in Sweden. Ro)>smenn = rower,
seafarer, and this word, like Varangians, became the name of a people.
## p. 432 (#464) ############################################
432 Slavs in Mounted-nomad Slavery
sea-robbers got possession of the Russian network of waterways, over-
came the Finns and Slavs, and the Scandinavian dynasty of the house
of Rurik (= Old Norse: Hroerekr) created the powerful Russian State.
As in the North Germano-Slavic, so in the South Nomado-Slavic
States were formed. A nomadic milk-feeding horde dominated a
Slavic vegetarian peasant class. A similar state of affairs lasted till
yesterday in Ferghana, the former Khanate of Khokand, where the
vegetarian Tadjiks languished from the earliest times in the basest
nomadic servitude. The same thing can be also traced back far into
ancient times in East Europe on the western border of the steppe
zone. So we find it as early as Ephorus (fourth century B. C. ).
A horde of Sarmatae, the Iazygians, migrated into Central Hungary
where (c. a. d. 337) the serfs of the Sarmatae, the Sarmatae Limigantes,
revolted against their lords, the Sarmatae Arcaragantes or Sarmatae
Liberi, and repulsed them1. Here we have a similar double stratum to
that which Ephorus mentions, and because the Tabula Peutingeriana
(about the third century a. d. ) mentions the Venedi Sarmatae and
the Lupiones Sarmatae next to the pure nomadic wagon-inhabiting
Sarmatae Hamaxobii, Sarmatae Vagi, many assume that these serfs of
the Sarmatae, the Limigantes, were Slavs'. The oldest explicit informa-
tion concerning a Nomado-Slavic State on the lower Danube is to be
found in Pseudo-Caesarius of Nazianzus of the sixth—probably even the
fourth—century a. d. , viz. that of the galactophagous Phisonitae or
Danubians (Phison according to Marquart is equivalent to Dunn/Am)
and the vegetarian Slavs*.
The best account we have is of the similar Avaro-Slavk State. The
dominating Avar nomad class was absorbed as a nation and language
by the subjugated Slavs, but even after the destruction of the Avar
Empire it survived socially with Slav names, as is shewn by the remark-
able passage in the Arabian geographer of the ninth century: "The
seat of their prince lies in the middle of the Slav land. . . . This prince
possesses mares, whose milk. . . is his only food'. '" As mare-milkers he
and the dominating class were mounted nomads and, as the date proves,
of Avar origin. This information alone destroys our former conceptions
of the character of the Slav States north of the middle Danube and the
Carpathians, and compels us to assume that nomadic States extended far
into the territory of the Baits and even as far as the Baltic. The sea-
farer Wulfstan at the end of the ninth century says of the Eastland
(Prussia, east of the mouth of the Vistula): "Their king and the richest
men drink mares' milk but the poor and the slaves drink mead8. '"
1 Mullenhoff, n. p. 377. s Niederk, n. pp. 127 ff.
3 Mullenhoff, u. p. 367. Peisker, Beziehungen, 125 [311].
4 Harkavy, p. 266. Marquart, p. 468; Tumanskii, p. 136, where the passage
runs: The food of their princes is milk.
6 Alfred the Great, by T. Bosworth, p. 22. Adam of Bremen (§ 138) says that
## p. 433 (#465) ############################################
The Robber-peoples around 433
Naturally the activity of the nomads was not uniform over this
immense region; it was greater at their base, the steppe, among the
South Russian Slavs, of whom in 952 the Emperor Constantine Porphy-
rogenitus says that they reared no horses, oxen or sheep—and consequently
must have been vegetarians—although at that time they had already
been for a century under the powerful sway of Scandinavian Ros.
Thus we see how Slavdom was influenced on all sides by plundering
peoples. All so-called Slav States of which we have sufficient informa-
tion turn out to be either Germanic or Altaian foundations. And unless we
do violence to all German,Byzantine,and Oriental evidence of the political
and military incapacity of the Slavs, we must not represent the remaining
Slav States as of Slav origin merely because there is no express statement
of their Germanic or Altaian origin. The strongest proof of this is the
remarkable fact that all titles of rank in Slavic (except voyevoda, duke)
are partly from Germanic, partly from Altaian sources.
Between Germanic and Altaic oppressors the Slavs were crushed for /
centuries; and yet they became the most numerous people of Europe
because of the enormous size of their territory and because their tyrants
were neither numerous nor united. The robbers could not follow the in-
dividual Slavs into the forest thickets and the marshes, so that from them
thewastes left by massacre were peopled anew. Besides this, the impetuosity
of the two robber-peoples periodically languished. We know this of the
Vikings from their activity in Europe. England, France, Spain, Italy
suffered terribly from them, but for long intervals they were quiet, and
after a single defeat the enemy often did not return for a long time.
Their might was also broken from time to time in their own land, and
then the afflicted peoples enjoyed a healing respite. This was less the
case with Russia, where a few dozen robbers won decisive victories
and where the Northmen only had no serious opponents but their like.
It was the same with the mounted nomad. His first appearance
was terrible beyond description; but his fury exhausted itself on the
numerous battle-fields, and when his ranks were thinned he had to call
out his Slav serfs to fight on his behalf. Thus he led masses of Slavs into
the steppe where they revived and increased until once again a new and
vigorous wild horde forced its way in from Asia and repeated the
destruction.
The primitive German was as savage in war as the mounted nomad,
but far superior in character and capacity for civilisation. The German
with one leap into civilisation so to speak from a plunderer becomes a
founder of brilliant and well-ordered States, bringing to high perfection
the intellectual goods which he has borrowed. On the other hand the
the ancient Prussians ate horse-flesh, and drank the milk of their mares (kumiz) to
intoxication. Helmold (twelfth century) (Chronica Slavorum, i. i. ) gives similar
information.
C. MED. H. VOL.
fairly straight from the Baltic to the Black Sea, the boundary of the
hornbeam forms an extended curve embracing Polesie. The reason for
this curve is the temperate climate of Polesie which results from the
enormous marshes and is favourable to the hornbeam, which cannot
withstand great fluctuations of temperature. And this curve must have
been there before the rise of the Old Balto-Slavonic language, other-
wise the Balto-Slavs living without the limit of the beech and yew could
not have possessed a word for the hornbeam. According to a tradition
the Goths in their migration from the Vistula to the Pontus about the
end of the second century a. d. came to a bottomless marshland, obviously
on the upper Niemen and Pripet, where many of them perished. At
that time the impassable morasses of Polesie had already existed for
centuries, though their enormous depths may first have become marsh-
land in historic times owing to the activity of the beaver—which raises
dams of wood in order to maintain a uniform water level; and, as
floating leaves and other remains of plants stuck in the dams, a gradually
thickening layer of peat was formed from them and the land became
continually more marshy. It follows that though the curve of the
hornbeam boundary may have been a little smaller in prehistoric times
than it is now, it cannot have been greater, and there can be no objection
to the argument from the four tree-boundaries.
Polesie—a district rather less than half as large as England—is a
triangle, of which the towns Brest Litovsk, Mohilev, and Kiev are roughly
speaking the apices. It was once a lake having the form of a shallow
dish with raised sides, and before its recent drainage seventy-five per cent,
of it was nothing but marsh, covered to half its extent partly with pine
groves and partly with a mixed forest, but otherwise treeless. The upper
layer consists of peat extending to eighteen feet in depth, and here
and there under the peat is a layer of iron ore about two inches thick.
Enormous morasses traversed by a thick and intricate network of streams
alternate with higher-lying sandy islets. The flow of water is impeded,
because the subsoil is impervious, the gradient of the rivers is slight, and
the bed of the lower Pripet is confined by high banks. The morasses
are covered with reeds and rushes—less often with sweet flags on sandy
ground—the surface of the streams with water-lilies and the like, which
so hinder their flow that they constantly have to change their course.
Between reeds and rushes there are places with reed-grass—and
less often with soft grass—which the peasants mow standing up to
the waist in water, or from a boat. Only the higher-lying places—
small oases difficult to get at—can be cultivated.
The average temperature throughout the year is over 43° Fahr. ;
January mean 20° Fahr. , July mean 65^° Fahr. The average fall of
moisture is 16-24 inches i depth of snow seven inches at the most; snow
remains not quite three months (from the middle of December nearly
cb. xiv. 27—2
## p. 420 (#452) ############################################
420 Anthropology. Ethnology. Society
to the middle of March), often only for two or three weeks. The
Pripet is frozen from the middle of November to the middle of January;
it is navigable for 220 to 300 days. Notwithstanding the soft mild
climate, the land is unhealthy: the putrefying marsh develops mias-
matic gases causing epidemic lung and throat diseases, and the loathsome
elf-lock {plica polonica); and the swarms of gnats cause intermittent
fever. But since draining, the weakly breed of men and beasts has
visibly improved.
This anomalous land has developed a singular people. The present
population does not even now reach half a million; so that the entire Old
Slav race in Polesie cannot have amounted to more than a few hundred
thousand souls. The inhabitants of Polesie are White Russians, but
those of the southern tract are black-haired mongoloid Little Russians
who emigrated from the South to escape the advance of the Altaian
mounted nomads. The White Russian is of middle stature, the recruit
being on an average 5 ft. 4 ins. high. (Old skeletons measure 5 ft. 4$ ins.
to 5 ft. 5$ ins. , so that the marsh has had a degenerating effect. In
healthier districts outside Polesie the Slavs become taller and stronger;
in the sixth century, according to Procopius, they were "all of con-
siderable height and remarkable strength. 11) Their skin is white, flaxen
hair predominates (57 per cent. ), their eyes are grey or sky-blue.
According to Procopius the South Slavs were reddish (inripvOpoi), but
most of them are now dark and black- or brown-haired, and in large
districts we find slavised black-haired Roumanians. Marco Polo (Italian
text) calls the Russians la gente molto Mia. . . e sono bianchi e biondi, and
Ibrahim ibn Ia'qub in the tenth century marks as exceptional the dark
and black hair of the Bohemians. This fact is due to an admixture of
alien dark races.
The broadest rivers, the greatest seas, the highest mountains, the
most terrible deserts can be overcome; the treacherous marsh alone is
invincible. Here the inhabitants of two places can see each other
and yet be as distant as Europe is from America. Before the drainage
many places in Polesie could be reached only by enormous detours, and
others were accessible only over the ice in the depth of winter. Thus
the Slavs in their original home were divided into small groups which had
very little intercourse during the greater part of the year. But in a low
grade of civilisation the stranger is an enemy, and they had no kind of
political, territorial, or social cohesion. Still later, when they came into
contact with the East Romans, they were—according to Procopius—
"not ruled by one man but lived from the earliest times in 'democracy,'
and so they deliberated in common on all their affairs—good and bad. "
"Mauricius " attests that they were "kingless and hostile to one another,"
and never cared to form large bands; in this sense we must understand
the further assertion that they were "free and by no means easily moved
to let themselves be enslaved or dominated" by their like. The more
## p. 421 (#453) ############################################
Common Names. Family. House-Community 421
easily were they enslaved by a foreign yoke: "they yield to the first
comer,'" reports Pseudo-Caesarius. The only organic wholes were formed
by small groups of villages—in Polesie sometimes by single villages—
under patriarchal government. There could be no thought of social
distinctions, as differences of rank did not exist.
Probably the Slavs, like the Germans, had no collective name before
they spread from Polesie: for, failing the notion of a State, they had
likewise no notion of a people. The name Slavs is correctly Slovene
(sing. Slovenin) and is probably a nomen topicum—meaning roughly
"inhabitants of Slovy"—belonging originally only to one populous
tribe1. The East Romans came into contact at first with a part of
this tribe and thus named all other Slav tribes north of the Danube
Sklawenoi, Sthlawoi1; nevertheless, for a time they distinguished from
them the Antai of South Russia who spoke the same language with them.
As with all Indo-Europeans, the Slav family was originally patri-
archal; there is no trace of a matriarchate. The marriage bond was
first loosened later among the individual Slav peoples under the yoke
of the nomads. The wife bought or carried off by force was at
first the property of the husband. This was usual from the earliest
times, and is still presupposed in certain old ceremonial customs (e. g.
mock-abduction by previous arrangement). The rich might live in
polygamy, but the mass of the people were monogamic. The isolation
of the little villages in Polesie made the marriage bond all the closer.
The conjugal fidelity of the Slavs was universally marvelled at, and
according to "Mauricius," St Boniface, and others, their wives were so
extraordinarily honourable that many thought it unseemly to outlive
their husbands, and voluntarily put an end to their lives.
Until recently it was generally believed that the ancient Slavs lived
in house-communities {Zadrugas), that is, that after the father's death
the sons did not divide the inheritance, but continued to live together
under the direction of a house-elder. The modern Servo-Croatian
Zadrugas were taken for survivals of Old Slavonic custom; and this
seemed more likely, because the White Russians in Polesie—where the
original home of the Slavs has just been discovered—also live in Zadrugas,
and moreover traces of this mode of life remain not only among the
other Slav peoples, but even among the German and many other
peoples. But the Servian Zadruga turned out to be a consequence
1 Hence Slovyene (North Russia, near Novgorod), Slovene (Bulgaria), Slovintzi
(Pomerania), Slovatzi (North Hungary), Sloventzi (Austrian Alps).
2 Hence comes Arabic-Persian Qaqldb, Latin Sclaveni, Sclavi. The Teutons named
the Slavs Vinithos or Venethi*, rendered approximately by Tacitus Veneti, late Latin
Venethae, Venedae, (ierman Wenden. Shakhmatov has proved that the Slavs inherited
this name from their former rulers, the Keltic Venedi, who occupied the district of
the Vistula about the third and second centuries b. c. Jordanes harmonised the
Teutonic name with the Greek, so that he took Vinidae as collective name and
Ante* and Svlavini as branch names.
## p. 422 (#454) ############################################
422 Village-Community. Agriculture. Cattle-breeding
of the originally East-Roman system of taxation—the KawiKov, hearth-
tax—in accordance with which each separate hearth formed the unit of
taxation. To be sure the Old Servian laws directed the married son to
detach himself from his father, but under the dominion of the Turk he
remained—often only outwardly—in the undivided household in order
to pay only one hearth-tax as before. But the hearth-tax occurs also
among the Altaian conquerors; and it was also not unknown to some
Teutonic peoples. As a matter of fact there exists no free people where
society is based on the communistic household. A 'priori indeed other
causes of its origin are also conceivable: e. g. seigniorial prohibition of
division, and especially insufficiency of land and over-population after
the peasant-holdings have become by successive divisions too small for
further subdivision. And of all places this might best be assumed of
Polesie—a country so poor in cultivable land. But in the sixth century
Procopius states: "They live scattered far apart in wretched huts and
very frequently change the place of their dwellings. '" Communistic
households do not exist under such conditions.
The house-community, Zadruga, must be distinguished from the
Russian village-community {Mir or Obshtchina) which has also been long
regarded as of ancient Slavonic origin. It disposes of the whole of the
land and soil of the village, periodically taking possession of all the
peasant-holdings and allotting them afresh. But it has been recently found
that these village-communities too came into existence very late, in
consequence of the capitation-tax introduced by Peter the Great in
1719. For the payment of this tax the villein-village was collectively
liable, and, as soon as the number of able-bodied men materially altered
through births and deaths, all the land of the village was to be re-
distributed in equal parts among the existing inhabitants. These
periodical redistributions were not legally established before 1781'.
They were rightly estimated by Fustel de Coulanges: "Far from
being collective ownership, the Mir is collective serfdom. "
In agriculture and diet the ancient Slavs entirely differed from the
Germans. The latter lived chiefly on milk and meat and were cattle-
rearers, leaving the agriculture to be done by women, old men, and
serfs. But Polesie is entirely unsuited to cattle: milch cows cannot
live on reeds and rushes, and grass grows only in oases and gives poor
nourishment. Even now, when the marshes have been drained, the
peasant's cow is a miserable animal, giving very little milk and chiefly
retained for draught purposes. Still more wretched was his horse, and
there are hardly any sheep. The pig thrives better, but it does not live
in clover, for there is but little sweet calamus and other roots, the nut-
giving beech does not grow at all, and the acorn-bearing oak only here
and there. According to the Arabian geographer of the ninth century,
the Slavs who were subject to a fciwwiz-drinking and therefore mounted-
1 Kovalevsky, Modern Customs, pp. 94 f. ; Sergyeevich, Vremia.
## p. 423 (#455) ############################################
Occupations. National Character 423
nomad king had only a few pack-horses—only eminent men had riding-
horses, and they occupied themselves with swine-rearing as other peoples
with sheep. It is therefore evident that the horses belonged not to
the Slavs but to their Altaian masters, and that the Slavs in Russia
then had no domestic animals except swine. The same is reported
by Constantine Porphyrogenitus a hundred years later. "The Ros
(Scandinavian rulers of the Russian Slavs) strive to live at peace with
the Patzinaks (mounted nomads of the Pontus steppe) for they buy from
them cattle, horses, and sheep. . . as none of these animals are found
in Russia11 (i. e. in the Russian Slav land). Hence milk as a common
article of diet was unknown to the ancient Slavs, so that they had no
words of their own for cattle, heavy plough, milk, curd and such-like, but
had to borrow from German and Altaian sources.
Polesie is rather more favourable to agriculture; though only the
dry islets are cultivable. Even now, after the drainage, very little
grain is produced. In the enormous sea of forest and marsh the little
fields escaped the notice of observers, so that the Arabian geographer
could say that the Slavs mostly lived among trees, having no vines and
no cornfields. The scantiness of cultivable land forced the Slavs to,
a very intensive tillage of the soil with the hand-hoe or by yoking
themselves to their excellently constructed hook-ploughs. Of course there
was no wealth of grain in Polesie itself, but the manna-grass (glyceria
Jluitans), which is sweeter and still more nutritious than millet, grows
there wild in abundance in standing water and wet meadows. It was still
exported in the nineteenth century, and it probably served the ancient
Slavs as food. For clothing and oil, flax and hemp were cultivated.
Polesie was rich in big game—aurochs, elk, wild boar, bear, wolf—
and in fur-coated animals—beaver, otter, fox, sable, marten, ermine,
squirrel, etc. But imperfect weapons and the difficulty of the country
made hunting not very productive, so that there was little game as
food. On the other hand, there was all the more fishing, and the
natural abundance was increased by damming the flowing water with
weirs. Bee-keeping played an important part among all Slav peoples
from the earliest times. The intoxicating Med, fermented from honey,
was to the Slavs what wine and beer are to other peoples.
The isolating marsh hinders intercourse; the White Russian is
above all a husbandman and fisherman. Void of all enterprise, he
leaves others to trade with the fruits of his labour and they drain
him to the last farthing. Drunkenness is his only hateful quality;
otherwise he has very attractive traits. He is thrifty almost to
avarice, cautious in the management of his affairs, and shews an en-
durance that harmonises little with his slender physique. He is in no
way aggressive but rather dreamy, confiding, not at all malicious, good
tempered, not without dignity, very hospitable, and a lover of amuse-
ment. The dance, song, and music are his natural element. On summer
## p. 424 (#456) ############################################
424 National Strength and Weapons. Heathenism
evenings the village youths assemble in the streets and often promenade
the whole night long singing in chorus their melancholy lyric songs.
The White Russian has remained true to the ancient Slav character.
According to Procopius, the Slavs were not malignant or villainous,
but harmless and naive; "Mauricius " says, " They are hardened to heat,
frost, wet, nakedness, and hunger, and are well-disposed to strangers. '"
According to Adam of Bremen (died 1075) there was no more hospitable
and kindly people than the Slavs of Pomerania. The variety of musical
instruments among the Slavs struck the Arabian geographer of the ninth
century, and all Slav peoples are still very musical.
The bottomless marshes of the Pripet were no sufficient protection
from sudden raids and attacks; in winter the nomads could penetrate
over the ice on their fleet horses far into the land, and in summer the
pirates could use the rivers up to their sources. Defence was hopeless.
This made the Old Slavs exceptionally unwarlike, and shy as the beast
of the forest. In summer, when suddenly attacked, they had to dis-
appear like frogs into the water or into the woods; in winter they
had to take refuge behind the shelter of their numerous stockades.
According to Procopius they fought without armour but with little
shields and darts, some even without coat and cloak and with only an
apron about their loins. But not even this wretched equipment was
really Slavonic; it must have been borrowed from some German
people, probably the warlike Heruli who fought in the same way.
Polesie is a land of exuberant fancy. A remarkable autumnal still-
ness is peculiar to its sea of marsh, a stillness not disturbed even by
the humming of a gnat and only broken now and then by the gentle
rustling of the rushes. To the fisherman as he glides at night in his
punt over the smooth silver water it is as impressive as its contrast, the
surging of the sea of reeds and the roaring of the forest in the storm-
wind. This produced in the inhabitant an uncontrolled imagination \
which made him people the world of nature with spirits. To-day he
still personifies sun, moon, fire, wood, marsh, will-o'-the-wisp, spring
and all else that is perceivable. But joy and sorrow, every illness,
Sunday, every holiday, are also spirits. His house, stable, barn,
threshing-floor have their own goblins, each with wife and children.
To this must be added ancestor-worship. On certain days the father
says at the evening meal " Holy ancestors, we invite you to come to us
and eat of all that God has given to us, in which this house is rich—
Holy ancestors, I pray you come, fly to us. " Kneeling with bread and
salt in his hands he prays to the spirit of the house and its wife and
children, beseeching its favour and deliverance from all evil. The Polesian
has only obscure ideas of a future life, but he has most definite knowledge
of the wicked dead and their appearance as werewolves and vampires. So
superstitious is he that he harbours in his mind a copious code of secret
expedients for scaring away all evil spirits, and at every step he is
## p. 425 (#457) ############################################
Cosmogony. Burial 425
careful not to provoke a spirit. Still he cannot know everything; this
is possible only for particular wizards of both sexes who have inter-
course with the spirits of evil and whose help is sought in need and
richly rewarded.
The world is the work of God, the creator of all good and useful
beings and things, and of the devil who made the mountains, marshes,
beasts of prey, poisonous plants, illnesses, etc. God breathed into man
a good spirit, the devil an evil one. The Polesian is very much in the
dark about the godhead itself: "God knows how many gods there are. "
The Christian saints are to him smaller, special gods; thus St Elias is
god of thunder, George of cattle and game, Nicolas of fields, Cosmas
and Damian of smiths. They stroll about in the world amusing them-
selves by playing all sorts of pranks on mankind. Noteworthy is the
cult of fire, namely of the hearth-fire, which must never be allowed to go
out and is transferred to any newly-occupied house. The White Russian
heathenism (with a very thin varnish of Christianity) goes back to the
earliest Slavs, and clear traces of it are still found among all the Slav
peoples. It is identical with the Shamanism of the Altaians, with this
difference—that what constituted the belief of large masses in Polesie
was among the mounted nomads a Shaman mystery of which the mass
of the people took no notice, observing only the hocus-pocus of the
wizards. The attention of observers was mostly attracted by the fire-
worship, and thus the Arabian geographer of the ninth century calls
both the Slavs and the Altaian-Magyars fire-worshippers. According
to Procopius the Slavs believed in one single chief god, denied Fate,
and worshipped rivers, nymphs, and other Saifiopta. No traces of
mythology have survived; the later-mentioned gods and their worship
belong to the individual Slav peoples.
Many Slav peoples burned the bodies of the dead, others—among
them the Polesians—buried them. But the burning of bodies must be
attributed to the influence of foreign conquerors, namely the Germans.
As a matter of fact the Norman Ros likewise burned the bodies of the
dead together with their self-destroyed widows (Ibn Fadlan), and the
widows of the Heruli also hanged themselves on their husbands' burial-
mounds.
Polesie is still the most backward district of backward Russia. As
a consequence and at the same time as a cause of the slender needs of I
the people we see no division of labour. The Slav had to make for
himself his few utensils; and in these, judging by the buried remains
which are very poor in metal articles, he displayed remarkable taste in
form and ornament. He could only supply the external market with
raw products—costly furs, wax, and honey—but it is not likely that
he brought them to the market, for he himself was offered wholesale
as a captured slave.
In our first volume it was shewn how the salt-desert zone of the
## p. 426 (#458) ############################################
426 Place in History. Early Eocpansion
Asiatic Background developed the wild mounted nomad. Here we have
a second example of the great natural law that a people is and remains
what its land of origin has made it. Just as the mounted nomad is the
son and product of the arid salt-deserts, the Slav is the son and product
of the marsh. The Slav and the mounted nomad, like the lands of their
origin, are diametrical extremes, and the murderous irony of fate made
\them neighbours. The one was a soft anvil, the other a hammer hard
as steel. A second not less weighty hammer (the Germans) came into
play, and the anvil was beaten flat.
Dry and tolerably fertile forest land contains so much cultivable soil
that it cannot easily be over-peopled: so here men form societies, and
States arise. But primitive man cannot wrest a foot of land from the
marsh; on the contrary, he extends it by making dams, transforming
small streams into great fish-ponds. Thus, as the cultivable oases
become smaller, the population huddles closer together. Dry forest
land makes its inhabitants stronger, but the marsh has a degenerating
influence.
Forest land, however, is not inexhaustible; when what has
been reaped from it is not made up for by dunging, or by allowing it to
lie fallow—in short, when the soil is merely worked out—it can no longer
support the growing population, and compels migration or expansion at
the cost of the neighbourhood. But the unwarlike inhabitants of the
marshland can conquer nothing, and can only spread gradually where
they meet with no resistance. This is upon the whole the difference
(between the expansion of the Germans and that of the Slavs. The
Germanic migration was eruptive as a volcano, the Slavonic a gradual
percolation, like that of a flood rolling slowly forward. Some Germanic
people or other leave their home: in the search for a new home they
rouse their neighbours, and they in turn rouse theirs, and so it goes
on ■until a hemisphere is thrown into commotion, strong States fall to
pieces, mighty peoples perish, and even the Roman Empire quakes.
And the Slavs? They have occupied and thickly populated immeasur-
able regions unnoticed by the annalists, and even now we ask in vain
how this could have taken place so noiselessly, and whence have come
the countless millions of Slavs.
The occupation by the Slavs of the district surrounding Polesie is
prehistoric. They moved northward after the Baltic peoples had
abandoned their original home in the hornbeam zone and retired
towards the Baltic Sea; eastward over the Oka and to the sources of the
Oskol; southward to Kiev—further southwards they could not maintain
themselves permanently, as fifteen centuries ago the grass steppe reached
as far as Kiev and consequently served the mounted nomads as a camping
ground up to that point. Towards the south-west the Slavs reached
the Carpathians, and in the west they spread across the Vistula In the
time of the Romans the Vistula was regarded as the eastern frontier of
the Germans.
## p. 427 (#459) ############################################
The Waterways. The Pontus Steppe 427
This expanded Slavia has indeed the most manifold varieties of
climate and soil, yet it forms a contrast to its little nucleus Polesie,
the cradle of the Slavs. The latter scattered the inhabitants and
isolated them in small villages, whereas the water-network of all the
rest of Russia connects even the most distant peoples. It would indeed
be easier to go from Lake Ladoga to the Black Sea than from many
a Polesian village to the next.
The whole of Russia forms an enormous plain, so that there is nothing
to hinder the icy north winds. The Sea of Azov and the northern part
of the Caspian are ice-locked; the winter is terribly cold in the south,
and the south winds bring burning hot summer days to the distant
north. Thus the climate is everywhere the same and thoroughly conti-
nental in its extreme severity. In the northern region of the expanded
Slav territory the Valdai hills are the watershed of the Baltic, Black,
and Caspian Seas. The river basins of the Lovat, Volga, Don, Dnieper,
Dwina are however so entangled and, in consequence of the slight
gradients, their streams are navigable so far up-stream, that it is only
necessary to drag a boat on land over the low narrow watersheds in
order to reach the Black Sea or the Caspian from the Baltic by the
Ladoga Sea. Similarly, from the Memel-Niemen basin the Dnieper
can be reached, from the Dnieper the Volga or the Don, from
the Don the Volga, or the Volga from the Dwina. A thousand years
ago Russia was even better watered, but since this time many rivers
mentioned by the chroniclers as formerly navigable have been dried
up by reckless disforesting. This network of rivers, as if created for
primitive commerce, is the most magnificent on the face of the earth,
and in spite of its inhospitable climate it would certainly have nurtured
the highest civilisation, had not its southern entrances been situated in
the grass steppe by the Black and Caspian Seas, the domain of the
mounted nomads, the arch-enemies and stiflers of all growing civilisation.
Fifteen hundred years ago the Pontus steppe was still grass steppe
as far as the northern limit of the black earth (on the Dnieper as far as
Kiev), not till later was it divided by the advance of the forest into a
northern tree steppe, and a southern grass steppe zone. The Don
divides the Pontus steppe transversely: as a rule one people dwelt west
of the Don to the mouth of the Danube, and another east of the Don
to the Caucasus. Towards the Caspian Sea the steppe becomes very
salt, and in further curving round the Caspian it passes into the Central
Asiatic steppe and desert zone, the ancient domain of the mounted nomads.
So often as these were stirred by internal commotion, the hordes that
were from neolithic times onward driven out sought refuge and a new
home in the Pontus steppe. As early as the Iliad "mare-milking"
(imrTifioKyol) mounted nomads were known there. At the time of
Herodotus the Scythians had dwelt for centuries west of the Don, and
the Sarmatae east of it, enjoying a long interval of peace, during which
## p. 428 (#460) ############################################
428 The Pontus Steppe. Commerce
the Asiatic background remained in equilibrium and no new horde broke
into the Pontus steppe. The wildness of the Scythians gradually de-
creased and numerous Greek colonies covered the coasts of the Pontus
and the Maeotis (the Sea of Azov), becoming flourishing emporia,
especially for an enormous export of grain to Greece. This probably
caused the Scythians to transplant wholesale agricultural peoples under
their subjection. Herodotus includes various peoples, nomads and
husbandmen, evidently not of the same origin, under the name Scythian;
the latter sowed grain "not for food, but for sale," and there can be no
doubt that among them were Slav nations also.
Into this motley of peoples the Hellenic colonies brought the most
promising seeds of culture, and seemed likely to send out a stream
of civilisation to the west of Europe, as well as one to the north-
east. But the Asiatic nomads were on the move, and the still wild
Sarmatae were pushed on from the east, crossed the Don, drove out
and in part subjugated the Scythians, and had conquered even the
western part of the Pontus steppe before the end of the second
century b. c. Amid these storms the Hellenic colonies, and with them
the seeds of civilisation, perished. During the second or third century a. d.
the Sarmatian hordes were driven out by the German Goths and Heruli.
The Gothic dominion lasted over two centuries, and is the only non-
nomadic episode in the history of the steppe. The Goths were the most
magnificent German people, and their influence on the Slavs must have
been enormous. But about 375 the Goths were forced to make way for
the Huns; and the steppe remained in nomad hands for fourteen centuries
continuously. In succession came Huns, Bulgars, Avars, Chazars,
Magyars, Patzinaks, Cumans, Mongols. Like the buran, the furious
tempest of the steppe, each of these hordes drove its predecessor in
wild flight into the civilised lands of Europe, extirpated the Slavonic
peasantry which had settled in the grass steppe, and passed over the
tree steppe plundering and murdering so that the Slavs were forced
to leave this zone too and to withdraw into the marshes of Polesie.
Regular commerce was impossible, for on the banks of the rivers,
especially in the dangerous rapids of the Dnieper over which the boats
had to be carried on land, the nomad lurked in the tall grass and
killed the crews and took their wares. Nevertheless, as the Southerner
and the Oriental eagerly sought the raw products of the north—wax,
honey, and especially strong slaves and pretty female slaves as well as
costly furs—reckless Scandinavian pirate merchants found a rich market
for these wares, which they had to take to the Euphrates and elsewhere
by the roundabout way of the Dwina to the Volga and the Caspian or
by Ladoga and the Volkhov, while the Dnieper route stood open only
at times and was always extremely dangerous. The greatness of this
plunder-commerce is shewn by the finding of Oriental coins in Russia—
11,077 pieces in one place—Scandinavia, Iceland, Greenland, and
## p. 429 (#461) ############################################
Slave-hunts 429
wherever else the Northmen went. Quite 100,000 coins have been
secured, and many more have been kept secret and melted, or lie still
in the bosom of the ground, so that Jacob's estimate—a million—is
certainly much too low.
The oldest written history of the Slavs can be shortly summarised—
myriads of slave-hunts and the enthralment of entire peoples. The Slav
was the most prized of human goods. With increased strength outside
his marshy land of origin, hardened to the utmost against all privation,
industrious, content with little, good-humoured, and cheerful, he filled
the slave markets of Europe, Asia, and Africa. It must be remembered
that for every Slavonic slave who reached his destination, at least ten
succumbed to inhuman treatment during transport and to the heat of
the climate. Indeed, Ibrahim (tenth century), himself in all probability
a slave-dealer, says: "And the Slavs cannot travel to Lombardy on
account of the heat which is fatal to them. " Hence their high price.
The Arabian geographer of the ninth century tells us how the
Magyars in the Pontus steppe dominated all the Slavs dwelling near
them. The Magyars made raids upon the Slavs and took their prisoners
along the coast to Eerkh where the Byzantines came to meet
them and gave Greek brocades and such wares in exchange for the
prisoners. The Slavs had a method of fortification, and their chief resort
was the fortresses in winter and the forest in summer. The Ros (Vikings,
Norse pirates) lived on an island (probably the old commercial town
Ladoga between the Ladoga and Ilmen lakes). They had many towns,
and were estimated at 100,000 souls. They made war on the Slavs by
ship and took them as prisoners to Khazaran and Bulgar (the emporia
of the Chazars and Bulgars on the Volga). The B6s had no villages,
their sole occupation was trading with sable and other skins. A hundred
to two hundred of them at a time would come into Slav-land and take
by force the objects that suited them. Many of the Slavs came to them
and became their servants for the sake of safety.
We see then the Slav surrounded on the north by pirates, on the
south by mounted nomads, and hunted and harried like the beast of the
forest. Jordanes1 words, "Instead of in towns they live in marshes and
forests,11 cover the most terrible national martyrdom in the history of
the world. The "fortifications "—simple ramparts—mentioned by the
Arabian geographer were not impregnable; indeed, the strongest fortifi-
cations of Europe and Asia were stormed by the nomads and Northmen.
"Mauricius " states: "Settled in places very hard of access, forests, rivers,
lakes, they provide their dwellings with several exits with a view to
accidents, and they bury everything that is not absolutely necessary. . . .
When they are suddenly attacked they dive under the water, and lying
on their backs on the bottom they breathe through a long reed, and
thus escape destruction, for the inexperienced take these projecting
reeds for natural; but the experienced recognise them by their cut
## p. 430 (#462) ############################################
430 Slavs in German Slavery
and pierce the body through with them or pull them out, so that the
diver must come to the surface if he will not be stifled. 11 As late as
1768 parts of the revolting peasants surrounded by the Polish army
rescued themselves from the Dnieper by breathing through reeds for
more than half a day.
This terrible existence must have further shattered and dissolved
Slavdom, already weakened in Polesie. Even partially regular tillage
was impossible in districts exposed to constant attacks. Cornfields
would have betrayed them, so that they could only be placed far out
of reach. Breeding of horses, oxen or sheep, as well as milk food could
not be thought of, for cattle were the most coveted booty of the nomads,
and what they did not take would have been carried off by the pirates.
Even in their original home the Slavs were limited to grain and fish, and
they remained so in their wider home.
Even by the ninth century this encircling of the Slavs by the pirates
was very old. The Germanic inhabitants of the Baltic districts made
a practice of piracy from the earliest times, and very early land-peoples
also appear as masters of the Slavs. As we have already seen, they
had been enslaved in pre-Christian times by the Keltic Venedi. The
Venedi in course of time became fused with Slavs into one Slavic
people, thenceforth called Wends by the Germans. The first known of
their Germanic conquerors were the Bastarnae who, coming from the
lower Oder, were in the third century B. C. already in occupation of the
Slav lands north of the Carpathians as far as the mouth of the Danube.
According to Polybius and Dio Cassius they were a numerous, daring,
bibulous people of powerful stature and terrifying appearance who knew
neither agriculture nor navigation, and disdained cattle-rearing because
they cared only for warlike pursuits. On their expeditions their wives
and children followed the army in wagons, and their horsemen fought
with foot-soldiers among them. They fell into various clans and divisions
under little kings (reguli), one of whom stood at the head as leader of
the war-band. But a numerous people without agriculture and cattle-
rearing cannot live only on plunder and cannot live alone in a land;
it needs another more numerous people of serfs, among whom it settles
as a dominating class. But north of the Carpathians such a people
could only be the Slavs. Thus arose the oldest known Slavo-Germanic
State. The second Germanic people from whose influence the Slavs
could not escape was the ferocious Heruli situated by the Black Sea
east of the Goths and the Don, for the same weapons and the same
burial customs are found among them as among the Slavs. The third
people were the Goths.
According to the oldest Gothic tradition (given by Jordanes) King
Ermanarich (died 373) overcame the Slavs (Veneti) "who, notwith-
standing that they were despised as warriors, nevertheless being strong
in numbers attempted at first a stout resistance. 11 His great-nephew
## p. 431 (#463) ############################################
Slavs in German Slavery 431
Vinithar attacked the South-Russian Slavs, the Antae, and after one
reverse overcame first them and then the Huns, who had come to their
help, in two battles, but fell in the third. It is certainly strange that
a tribe of the Slavs, who were despised as warriors not only by the
Germans but also by the Byzantines, could defeat even in one battle
a German leader before whom the Huns themselves recoiled. Still, it
is a fact that the Antae were successful warriors, and later in the sixth
century possessed the whole region from the Dniester to the Don, which
was formerly held by the Goths. It is astonishing that the Byzantine
sources of the sixth century distinguish the Antae from all the
remaining Slavs, but at the same time emphasise the fact that they
spoke the same language. And the name"Avrat is not Slavonic. The
military superiority of the Antae is, as Kunik has shewn, to be traced
back to a non-Slavonic conquering folk, the Antae, who overcame certain
Slav stocks and ruled them long and powerfully as a superior warlike
class1. This folk then became Slavised, and, as was the case with many
such despotisms both German and nomadic, it too fell apart into small
States, which however still negotiated common concerns in general
meetings, and proceeded as one body in external affairs. We hear the
same of the Bastarnae. In the tenth and eleventh centuries we find in
the former abodes of the Antae of the Pontus steppe the Slavonic
Tiwertzi and Ulichi whose names are equally non-Slavonic. How
could they have maintained themselves against the nomads here where
they were daily exposed to the inroads of all the Asiatic hordes, if they
were pure Slavs without a Germanic or Altaian warrior-stratum?
Still less could the Slavs resist the pressure of foreign conquerors
after the Scandinavian Vikings had renewed their attacks. Leaving
their families behind them, these appeared at first in small bands of
one to two hundred men as well-organised followers (vaeringjar) of a
sea-king, and always returned home after selling their plunder. At
important points on their route they established trading stations, and
in the course of time these became fortified settlements surrounded by
a subjected Finnish, Baltic, or Slavonic population. Hence a regulated
government was developed, no longer exclusively resting on plunder.
From the word vaeringjar came the name of a people Varangians,
Bdpayyot. The Varangians gradually extended their sway over the whole
of Russia—over Kiev about the year 855—covered it with originally
independent towns (gurSdr)1, and finally formed these little States into
a single empire of the Ros* (Russians). In brief, trading Scandinavian
1 On the other hand, cf. HruiSevgkyj, i. pp. 175 ff. , 577 ff.
2 Hence Russia was called by the Scandinavians Gartariki, i. e. the kingdom of
many forts.
8 This name too is Swedish, for which Esthonian has Rats. In Old Swedish
Rof>er, Ko|>in is the name of a strip of coast in Sweden. Ro)>smenn = rower,
seafarer, and this word, like Varangians, became the name of a people.
## p. 432 (#464) ############################################
432 Slavs in Mounted-nomad Slavery
sea-robbers got possession of the Russian network of waterways, over-
came the Finns and Slavs, and the Scandinavian dynasty of the house
of Rurik (= Old Norse: Hroerekr) created the powerful Russian State.
As in the North Germano-Slavic, so in the South Nomado-Slavic
States were formed. A nomadic milk-feeding horde dominated a
Slavic vegetarian peasant class. A similar state of affairs lasted till
yesterday in Ferghana, the former Khanate of Khokand, where the
vegetarian Tadjiks languished from the earliest times in the basest
nomadic servitude. The same thing can be also traced back far into
ancient times in East Europe on the western border of the steppe
zone. So we find it as early as Ephorus (fourth century B. C. ).
A horde of Sarmatae, the Iazygians, migrated into Central Hungary
where (c. a. d. 337) the serfs of the Sarmatae, the Sarmatae Limigantes,
revolted against their lords, the Sarmatae Arcaragantes or Sarmatae
Liberi, and repulsed them1. Here we have a similar double stratum to
that which Ephorus mentions, and because the Tabula Peutingeriana
(about the third century a. d. ) mentions the Venedi Sarmatae and
the Lupiones Sarmatae next to the pure nomadic wagon-inhabiting
Sarmatae Hamaxobii, Sarmatae Vagi, many assume that these serfs of
the Sarmatae, the Limigantes, were Slavs'. The oldest explicit informa-
tion concerning a Nomado-Slavic State on the lower Danube is to be
found in Pseudo-Caesarius of Nazianzus of the sixth—probably even the
fourth—century a. d. , viz. that of the galactophagous Phisonitae or
Danubians (Phison according to Marquart is equivalent to Dunn/Am)
and the vegetarian Slavs*.
The best account we have is of the similar Avaro-Slavk State. The
dominating Avar nomad class was absorbed as a nation and language
by the subjugated Slavs, but even after the destruction of the Avar
Empire it survived socially with Slav names, as is shewn by the remark-
able passage in the Arabian geographer of the ninth century: "The
seat of their prince lies in the middle of the Slav land. . . . This prince
possesses mares, whose milk. . . is his only food'. '" As mare-milkers he
and the dominating class were mounted nomads and, as the date proves,
of Avar origin. This information alone destroys our former conceptions
of the character of the Slav States north of the middle Danube and the
Carpathians, and compels us to assume that nomadic States extended far
into the territory of the Baits and even as far as the Baltic. The sea-
farer Wulfstan at the end of the ninth century says of the Eastland
(Prussia, east of the mouth of the Vistula): "Their king and the richest
men drink mares' milk but the poor and the slaves drink mead8. '"
1 Mullenhoff, n. p. 377. s Niederk, n. pp. 127 ff.
3 Mullenhoff, u. p. 367. Peisker, Beziehungen, 125 [311].
4 Harkavy, p. 266. Marquart, p. 468; Tumanskii, p. 136, where the passage
runs: The food of their princes is milk.
6 Alfred the Great, by T. Bosworth, p. 22. Adam of Bremen (§ 138) says that
## p. 433 (#465) ############################################
The Robber-peoples around 433
Naturally the activity of the nomads was not uniform over this
immense region; it was greater at their base, the steppe, among the
South Russian Slavs, of whom in 952 the Emperor Constantine Porphy-
rogenitus says that they reared no horses, oxen or sheep—and consequently
must have been vegetarians—although at that time they had already
been for a century under the powerful sway of Scandinavian Ros.
Thus we see how Slavdom was influenced on all sides by plundering
peoples. All so-called Slav States of which we have sufficient informa-
tion turn out to be either Germanic or Altaian foundations. And unless we
do violence to all German,Byzantine,and Oriental evidence of the political
and military incapacity of the Slavs, we must not represent the remaining
Slav States as of Slav origin merely because there is no express statement
of their Germanic or Altaian origin. The strongest proof of this is the
remarkable fact that all titles of rank in Slavic (except voyevoda, duke)
are partly from Germanic, partly from Altaian sources.
Between Germanic and Altaic oppressors the Slavs were crushed for /
centuries; and yet they became the most numerous people of Europe
because of the enormous size of their territory and because their tyrants
were neither numerous nor united. The robbers could not follow the in-
dividual Slavs into the forest thickets and the marshes, so that from them
thewastes left by massacre were peopled anew. Besides this, the impetuosity
of the two robber-peoples periodically languished. We know this of the
Vikings from their activity in Europe. England, France, Spain, Italy
suffered terribly from them, but for long intervals they were quiet, and
after a single defeat the enemy often did not return for a long time.
Their might was also broken from time to time in their own land, and
then the afflicted peoples enjoyed a healing respite. This was less the
case with Russia, where a few dozen robbers won decisive victories
and where the Northmen only had no serious opponents but their like.
It was the same with the mounted nomad. His first appearance
was terrible beyond description; but his fury exhausted itself on the
numerous battle-fields, and when his ranks were thinned he had to call
out his Slav serfs to fight on his behalf. Thus he led masses of Slavs into
the steppe where they revived and increased until once again a new and
vigorous wild horde forced its way in from Asia and repeated the
destruction.
The primitive German was as savage in war as the mounted nomad,
but far superior in character and capacity for civilisation. The German
with one leap into civilisation so to speak from a plunderer becomes a
founder of brilliant and well-ordered States, bringing to high perfection
the intellectual goods which he has borrowed. On the other hand the
the ancient Prussians ate horse-flesh, and drank the milk of their mares (kumiz) to
intoxication. Helmold (twelfth century) (Chronica Slavorum, i. i. ) gives similar
information.
C. MED. H. VOL.
