The
Pripet is frozen from the middle of November to the middle of January;
it is navigable for 220 to 300 days.
Pripet is frozen from the middle of November to the middle of January;
it is navigable for 220 to 300 days.
Cambridge Medieval History - v2 - Rise of the Saracens and Foundation of the Western Empire
The
Blues proclaimed Leontius emperor, and he was crowned by the
patriarch.
As the Arabs were preparing to reconquer Africa, there was little
fighting in Asia Minor during Leontius' reign. In 697 the Caliph's son.
Walld, invaded the Empire from Melitene, and the patrician Sergius,
who commanded in Lazica, betrayed that country to the Arabs.
Further invasions were prevented by a plague and famine; and in 698
the Romans entered the district of Antioch and gained an unimportant
victory.
In 697 Leontius sent the whole fleet under John the patrician to
recover Africa, which had for the second time fallen into the hands' of
the Arabs; and John, having expelled the enemy from Carthage and the
other fortified towns on the coast, reported his success to the Emperor
and remained in Carthage for the winter. But early in 698, when a
larger armament arrived from the east, he was unable to withstand it.
and, abandoning his conquests, returned for reinforcements. When he
reached Crete however, the crews renounced their allegiance and pro-
claimed Apsimar, drungarius (vice-admiral) of the Cibyrrhaeots, emperor
under the imperial name of Tiberius. They then sailed to Constantinople,
which was suffering from plague, and after a short resistance the besiegers
were admitted through the gate of Blachernae at the N. W. corner by
the treachery of the custodians, and plundered the capital like a con-
quered city. Leontius was deprived of his nose and sent to a monastery,
and his friends and officers were flogged and banished and their property
was confiscated (end of 698).
The new Emperor, as a sailor, gave special attention to the defence
of the Empire on the sea side, restoring the sea-wall of Constantinople,
and settling the Mardaites on the Pamphylian coast. He further re-
peopled Cyprus by sending back the inhabitants whom Justinian had
removed (699). Military operations also were conducted with consider-
able success, which must be ascribed to an innovation which Tiberius
immediately after his accession introduced by appointing his brother
Heraclius, who as a general shewed himself not unworthy of his name,
commander-in-chief of all the Asiatic themes, and charging him with the
custody of the Cappadocian frontier. In 701 the Romans made a
successful raid as far as Samosata, and in 704 Heraclius killed or
captured the whole of an Arab force which was besieging Sisium in
Cilicia. On the other hand Walld raided Roman territory in 699, his
brother 'Abdallah took Theodosiopolis in 700, in 703 Mopsuestia was
occupied and Armenia Quarta betrayed to the Arabs, and in 705 the
Caliph's son, Maslama, took two fortresses, and a Roman army was
defeated in Armenia.
Meanwhile Justinian was living in Cherson, a place which, whik
acknowledging the supremacy of the Emperor, was not governed by an?
## p. 411 (#443) ############################################
705-706] Restoration of Justinian 411
imperial official, and enjoyed a large measure of republican freedom.
Here he made no secret of his intention to seek restoration, and the
citizens, fearing the Emperor's vengeance, determined either to kill him
or to send him to Constantinople. He had however friends in the town,
who informed him of their purpose, and, fleeing to Dora, in the south-
east of the Crimea, he asked to be allowed to visit the Khan of the
Chazars, who ruled in the neighbourhood. The Khan granted the
request, received him with honour, and gave him his sister in marriage,
to whom in memory of the wife of Justinian I he gave the name of
Theodora. He then settled at Phanagoria.
Tiberius in alarm promised the Khan many gifts if he sent him either
Justinian himself or his head; and the Khan, agreeing to this, sent him
a guard under pretence of protection, while instructing his representative
at Phanagoria and the governor of Bosporus to kill him as soon as
orders should be received. Of this Theodora was informed by a slave of
the Khan and told Justinian, who sent for the two officials separately
and strangled them. Sending Theodora back to her brother, he embarked
on a fishing-boat and sailed to Symbolum near Cherson, where he took
his friends from the city on board, one of whom bore the Georgian name
of Varaz Bakur. He then asked the aid of the Bulgarian ruler, Tervel,
promising him liberal gifts and his daughter in marriage. To this he
agreed; and, accompanied by Tervel himself and an army of Bulgarians
and Slavs, Justinian advanced to Constantinople (705). Here the citizens
received him with insults; but after three days he found an entrance with
a few followers by an aqueduct, and the defenders, thinking the walls
were undermined, were seized with panic and made no resistance. Tiberius
fled across the Propontis to Apollonia, but was arrested and brought
back, while Heraclius was seized in Thrace and hanged on the walls with
his chief officers. Tervel was invited into the city, seated by Justinian's
side as Caesar, and dismissed with abundance of presents, while Varaz
Bakur was made a proto-patrician and Count of Obsequium. Tiberius
and Leontius were exhibited in chains all over the city, and then brought
into the circus, where Justinian sat with a foot on the neck of each, while
the people, playing on the names "Leontius1' and "Apsimar," cried,
"Thou hast trodden upon the asp and the basilisk (kinglet), and upon
the lion and the dragon hast thou trampled. " They were then taken to
the amphitheatre and beheaded. Of the rest of Justinian's enemies
some were thrown into the sea in sacks, and others invited to a banquet
and, when it was over, arrested and hanged or beheaded; but Theodosius
the son of Tiberius was spared, and afterwards became celebrated as
bishop of Ephesus. Callinicus was blinded and banished to Rome, and
Cyrus, a monk of Amastris, made patriarch (706). On the other hand
6000 Arab prisoners were released and sent home. As soon as his throne
was secure, Justinian fetched his wife, who had in the meantime borne
him a son, whom he named Tiberius and crowned as his colleague.
## p. 412 (#444) ############################################
412 Reconciliation with the Pope [706-711
One of the first objects to which the restored Emperor turned his
attention was the establishment of an understanding with Rome as to the
Trullan synod. Having learned that coercion was useless, he tried
another plan. He sent the Acts to John VII, asking him to hold a
synod and confirm the canons which he approved and disallow the
rest; but John, fearing to give offence, sent them back as he received
them. His second successor, Constantine, however consented to come to
Constantinople and discuss the matter (710). Landing seven miles from
the capital, he was met and escorted into the city by the child Tiberius
and the senators and patriarch; and Justinian, who was then at Nicaea,
met him at Nicomedia, and, prostrating himself before him, kissed his
feet. A satisfactory compromise (of what nature we do not know) was
made, and the Pope returned to Rome (Oct. 711).
In the time of Tiberius the Arabs had never been able to cross the
Taurus; but with the removal of Heraclius Asia Minor was again laid
open to their ravages. A raid by Hisham the son of 'Abd-al-Malik in
706 produced no results: but in 707 Maslama, accompanied by Maimun
the Mardaite, advanced to Tyana (June). A rash attack by Maimun
cost him his life; and the Caliph Walid sent reinforcements under
his son, 'Abbas. All the winter the Arabs lay before Tyana, which
was stoutly defended; and Justinian, who had fallen out with Tervel and
required the Asiatic troops in Europe, sent an army mostly of rustics to
its relief. The generals however quarrelled, and the rabble was easily
routed by the Arabs, who pressed the siege of Tyana until it surrendered
(27 Mar. 708). The inhabitants were removed to Arab territory. Maslama
then raided the country to the north-east as far as Gazelon near Amasia,
while 'Abbas after defeating a Roman force near Dorylaeum, which he
took, advanced to Nicomedia and Heraclea Pontica, while a small detach-
ment of his army entered Chrysopolis and burnt the ferry-boats. In 709
Maslama and 'Abbas invaded Isauria, where five fortresses were taken;
but at sea the Romans captured the admiral Khalid, whom however
Justinian sent to the Caliph, and attacked Damietta in Egypt. In 710
an unimportant raid was made by WalTd's son, 'Abd-al-'AzIz: but in
711 Maslama took Camacha, as well as Taranta and two other fortresses
in Hexapolis1, which was now annexed; and, as Sisium was the same year
occupied by Othman, the frontier was advanced to the Sarus. On the other
hand a Roman army sent to recover Lazica, where Phasis only remained
in Roman hands, after besieging Archaeopolis was compelled to retreat.
After a defeat by the Bulgarians (708) and the restoration of peace,
Justinian turned his energies to exacting vengeance from the Chersonites,
who had now accepted a Chazar governor. In 710 he collected ships of
all kinds, for the equipment of which he raised a special contribution
from all the inhabitants of the capital, and sent them to Cherson under the
patrician Stephen Asmictus, whose orders were to kill the ruling men
1 "Khspolis" (Michael, p. 462) is a corruption of Hexapolis.
## p. 413 (#445) ############################################
7io-7ii] Rebellion of Philippines 413
with all their families and establish Elijah the spatharius (military
chamberlain) as governor. With him was sent a certain Vardan, who
in spite of his Armenian name (probably derived from his mother's family)
was son of the patrician Nicephorus of Pergamum who had commanded in
Africa and Asia under Constans, and, having been banished to Cephallenia
by Tiberius and recalled by Justinian, was to be again exiled to Cherson.
The city was unable to resist, the chief magistrate, Zoilus, and forty of
his principal colleagues with their families and the Tudun (the Chazar
governor), were sent in chains to Justinian, seven others were roasted over
a fire, twenty drowned in a boat filled with stones, and the rest beheaded.
The children were however spared for slavery; and Justinian, furious at
this, ordered the fleet to return (Oct. ),
Off Paphlagonia the fleet was almost destroyed by a storm; but he
threatened to send another to raze Cherson and the neighbouring places
to the ground and kill every living person in them. The citizens then
strengthened their defences and obtained the help of the Khan, while
Elijah and Vardan made common cause with them. Justinian sent 300
men under George, the public logothete, John the praefect, and
Christopher, turmarch of the Thracesii, with orders to replace the
Tudun and Zoilus in their positions, and bring Elijah and Vardan
to Constantinople (711). The citizens, pretending to accept these
terms, admitted the small force; but immediately shut the gates,
killed George and John, and handed the rest over to the Chazars, and
the Tudun having died on the way, the Chazars avenged him by killing
them. The Chersonites then proclaimed Vardan emperor, and he
assumed the Greek name of Philippicus. Justinian, more enraged than
ever, had Elijah's children killed in their mother's arms and compelled
her to marry her negro cook, while he sent another fleet with powerful
siege-engines under the patrician Maurus Bessus with the orders which
he had before threatened to give. Philippicus fled to the Chazars, and
Maurus took two of the towers of the city, but, Chazar reinforcements
having arrived, was unable to do more, and, afraid to return, declared
for Philippicus and asked the Khan to send him back, which he did on
receiving security in money for his safety. The fleet then sailed for
Constantinople. Justinian's suspicions had been aroused by the delay;
and, thinking himself safer in the territory of the Obsequian theme,
commanded by Varaz Bakur, he took with him the troops of that
theme, some of the Thracesii, and 3000 Bulgarians sent by Tervel, and,
having crossed the Bosporus and left the rest in the plain of Damatrys
about ten miles east of Chalcedon, proceeded with the chief officers and
the Thracesian contingent to the promontory of Sinope, which the fleet
would pass. After a time he saw it sail by, and immediately returned
to Damatrys. Meanwhile Philippicus had entered Constantinople with-
out opposition. The Empress Anastasia took the little Tiberius to the
church of the Virgin at Blachernae, where he sat with amulets hung
CH. XIII.
## p. 414 (#446) ############################################
414 Reign of Philippicus [711-713
round his neck, holding a column of the altar with one hand and. a piece
of the cross with the other. Maurus and John Struthus the spatharwi
had been sent to kill him; and, when they entered the church, Maurus
was delayed by Anastasia's entreaties, but John transferred the amulet;
to his own neck, laid the piece of the cross on the altar, and carried the
child to a postern-gate of the city, and cut his throat. Varaz Bakur.
thinking Justinian's cause desperate, had left the army and fled, but he
was caught and killed. Elijah was sent with a small force against
Justinian himself, whose soldiers on a promise of immunity deserted their
master, and Elijah cut off his head and sent it to Philippicus, who sent
it to Rome (end of 711).
The new Emperor was a ready and plausible speaker, and had a
reputation for mildness; but he was an indolent and dissolute man,
who neglected public affairs and squandered the money amassed bv
his predecessors. Accordingly no better resistance was offered to the
Arabs. In 712 Maslama and his nephews, 'Abbas and Marwan, entered
Roman territory from Melitene and took Sebastia, Gazelon, and Amask
whence Marwan advanced to Gangra, while Walid ibn Hisham took
Misthia in Lycaonia and carried off many of the inhabitants of the
country. In 713 'Abd-al-'Aziz again raided as far as Gazelon, while
Yazid invaded Isauria, and 'Abbas took Antioch in Pisidia and
returned with numerous captives. Meanwhile Philippicus for some
unknown reason expelled the Armenians from the Empire, and they
were settled by the Arabs in Armenia Quarta and the district of
Melitene (712). In Europe also the Bulgarians advanced to the gates
of Constantinople (712).
There was however one subject on which Philippicus shewed a
misplaced energy. Having been educated by Stephen, the pupil of
Macarius, he was a fervent Monothelete, and even before entering the
city he ordered the picture of the sixth synod to be removed from the
palace and the names of those condemned in it restored to the diptychs.
Cyrus, who refused to comply with his wishes, was deposed and confined
in a monastery, and a more pliant patriarch found in the deacon John
(early in 712), who was supported by two men afterwards celebrated.
Germanus of Cyzicus and Andrew of Crete. Shortly afterwards the Acts
preserved in the palace were burnt, and a condemnation of the synod and
the chief Dithelete bishops was issued, while many prominent men who
refused to sign this were exiled. At Rome the document was con-
temptuously rejected, the Romans retaliated by placing a picture of the
six synods in St Peter's and abandoning the public use of the EmperorV
name; and Peter, who was sent to Rome as duke, was attacked and
forced to retire (713).
An emperor without hereditary claim to respect, who could not
defend the Empire from invasion and wantonly disturbed the peace of
the Church, was not likely to reign long; but the fall of Philippicus w&>
## p. 415 (#447) ############################################
713-715] Accession of Anastasius II 415
eventually brought about by a plot. A portion of the Obsequian
theme, which had been the most closely attached to Justinian, had been
brought to Thrace to act against the Bulgarians, whose ravages still
continued; and, trusting to the support of these soldiers and of the
Green faction, George Buraphus, Count of Obsequium, and the patrician
Theodore Myacius, who had been with Justinian at his return from
exile, made a conspiracy against the Emperor. After some games in
the circus, in which the Greens were victorious, he had given a banquet
in the baths of Zeuxippus, returned to the palace and gone to sleep,
when an officer of the Obsequian theme and his men rushed in, carried
him to the robing room of the Greens, and put out his eyes (3 June 713).
The conspirators were however not ready with a new emperor: and, as
the other soldiers were not inclined to submit to their dictation, they
were unable to gain control of affairs; and on the next day, which was
Whit Sunday, Artemius, one of the chief imperial secretaries, was chosen
emperor and crowned, taking in memory of the last civilian emperor
the name of Anastasius. George and Theodore were requited as they
had served Philippicus, being blinded on 10 and 17 June respectively
and banished to Thessalonica.
The ecclesiastical policy of the late Emperor was immediately
reversed, the sixth synod being proclaimed at the coronation, and the
picture soon afterwards restored. Anastasius wrote to assure the Pope
of his orthodoxy; and John, who under Philippicus had from fear of
offending either Emperor or Pope sent no synodical to Rome, wrote to
the Pope to explain that he had always been an adherent of the synod.
He therefore retained the see till his death, when he was succeeded by
Germanus (11 Aug. 715), who had also abandoned Monotheletism.
Anastasius was a great contrast to his predecessor. A capable man
of affairs, he set himself to place the Empire in a state of defence and
appoint the best men to civil and military posts: but in the condition
to which affairs had been brought by the frenzy of Justinian and the
indolence of Philippicus a stronger ruler than tbis conscientious public
servant was needed. In 714 Maslama raided Galatia, 'Abbas took
Heraclea (Cybistra) and two other places, and his brother Bishr wintered
in Roman territory. On the other hand an Arab general was defeated
and killed. In the anarchic state of the Empire however Walld
wished to send out something more than raiding expeditions; and
Anastasius, hearing reports of this, sent Daniel the praefect on an
embassy with instructions to find out what was going on; and on his
reporting that a great expedition was being prepared ordered all who
were unable to supply themselves with provisions for three years to leave
Constantinople, while he set himself to build ships, fill the granaries,
repair the walls, and provide weapons of defence.
In 715 a fleet from Egypt came, as in 655, to Phoenix to cut wood
for shipbuilding; and Anastasius chose the fastest ships and ordered
## p. 416 (#448) ############################################
416 Deposition of Anastasius [715-716
them to meet at Rhodes under a certain John, who also held the offices
of public logothete and deacon of St Sophia. Some of the Obsequian
theme, whom it was probably desired to remove from the neighbourhood
of the capital, were sent on board; and, when John gave the order to
sail to Phoenix, these refused to obey, cast off allegiance to Anastasius,
and killed the admiral. Most of the fleet then dispersed, but the
mutineers sailed for Constantinople. On the way they landed at
Adramyttium, and, not wishing to be a second time defeated by the
absence of a candidate for the throne, chose a tax-cdllector named
Theodosius, whom, though he fled to the hills to escape, they seized and
proclaimed emperor. Anastasius, leaving Constantinople in a state of
defence, shut himself up in Nicaea, where he could watch the disaffected
theme: but the rebels rallied to their cause the whole theme with the
Gotho-Greek irregulars of Bithynia, collected merchant-ships of all
kinds, and advanced by land and sea to Chrysopolis (Sept. ). The
fighting lasted six months, after which on the imperial fleet changing
its station they crossed to Thrace and were admitted by treachery
through the gate of Blachernae. The houses were then pillaged, and
the chief officials and the patriarch arrested and sent to Anastasius, who,
thinking further resistance useless, surrendered on promise of safety and
was allowed to retire as a monk to Thessalonica (5 Mar. 716)1.
Meanwhile the Arab preparations were going on with none to hinder.
Even when the civil war was ended, there was little hope of effectual
resistance from the crowned tax-gatherer and his mutinous army; and.
if the Empire was to be saved, it was necessary that the government
should be in the hands of a soldier. The Obsequian theme, though
from its proximity to the capital it had been able to make and unmake
emperors, was the smallest of the three Asiatic themes; and the other
two were not likely to pay much regard to its puppet-sovereign. The
larger of these, the Anatolic, was commanded by Leo of Germanicea,
whose family had been removed to Mesembria in Thrace when Germanicea
was abandoned. When Justinian returned, Leo met him with 500 sheep
and was made a spatharius. Afterwards he was sent to urge the Alans
of the Caucasus to attack the Abasgi, who were under Arab protection,
and in spite of great difficulties he was successful: moreover, though he
seemed to be cut off from the Empire, by his courage, presence of mind.
and cunning (not always accompanied by good faith) he effected not
only his own return but that of 200 stragglers from the army which
had invaded Lazica. This exploit made him a marked man, and he
was chosen by Anastasius for the command of the Anatolic theme: on
that Emperor's overthrow both he and the Armenian Artavazd, who
commanded the Armeniacs, refused to recognise Theodosius.
Late in 715 Maslama, who had been appointed to lead the expedition
1 I take Leo's term in the xP°v°ypo(petov ascribed to Nicephorus as dating froE
this time.
## p. 417 (#449) ############################################
715-717] Leo and the Arabs 417
against Constantinople, took the Fortress of the Slavs, which commanded
the passes of the Taurus, and returned to Epiphania for the winter;
and in 716 he sent his lieutenant Sulaiman in advance, intending to
follow with a larger army, while Omar was appointed to command the
fleet. Sulaiman penetrated without opposition to Amorium, which, as
it had then no garrison and was on bad terms with Leo because of
his rejection of Theodosius, he expected easily to take. The Arabs
moreover knew Leo to be a likely candidate for the crown and hoped
to use him as they had used Sapor: accordingly, as Amorium did not
immediately fall, they proclaimed him emperor, and the citizens were in-
duced by the hope of escaping capture to do the same. Sulaiman having
promised thatj if Leo came to discuss terms of peace, he would raise the
siege, Leo came with 300 men, and the Arabs surrounded him to prevent
his escape; but Leo, who as a native of a town which had only been in
Roman hands for ten years since 640 (he was probably born a subject of
the Caliph), was well acquainted with the Arab character and could
perhaps speak Arabic, induced some officers whom he was entertaining
to believe that he would go and see Maslama himself, while he conveyed
a message to the citizens to hold out, and finally escaped on the pretext
of a hunting expedition. Soon afterwards the Arabs became tired of
lying before Amorium and forced Sulaiman to raise the siege; whereupon
Leo threw 800 men into the city, removed most of the women and
children, and withdrew to the mountains of Pisidia, where he was safe
from attack by Maslama, who had now entered Cappadocia and, in hope
of gaining Leo's support, refrained from plundering the country. To him
Leo sent an envoy to say that he had wished to come and see him,
but treachery had deterred him from doing so. From this envoy
Maslama heard of the garrisoning of Amorium; but this made him the
more desirous of securing Leo; and he promised, if he came, to make
satisfactory terms of peace. Leo pretended to agree, but protracted
negotiations till Maslama, unable for reasons of commissariat to remain
in Anatolic territory, had reached Acroinus (Prymnessus) in the Obsequian
district, and then, having previously come to an understanding with
Artavazd, to whom he promised his daughter in marriage (which, as he
had no son, implied an assurance of the succession), started for Constan-
tinople, while Maslama passed into Asia, where he wintered. The fleet
was however less successful, for the Romans landed in Syria and burnt
Laodicea, while the Arabs had only reached Cilicia. Meanwhile Leo
made his way to Nicomedia, where Theodosius' son, who had been made
Augustus, and some of the chief officers of the palace, fell into his power.
The Obsequians were unable to organise serious resistance, and Theodosius
after consulting the Senate and the patriarch sent Germanus to Leo, and
on receiving assurance of safety abdicated. Leo made a formal entry by
the Golden Gate and was crowned by the patriarch (25 Mar. 717).
Theodosius and his son took orders and ended their days in obscurity.
C. MED. H. VOL. II. CH. XIII. 27
## p. 418 (#450) ############################################
418
CHAPTER XIV.
THE EXPANSION OF THE SLAVS.
The Slavs, numbering at present about one hundred and fifty million
souls, form with the Baits (the Letts, Lithuanians, Prussians) the Balto-
Slavonic group of the Indo-European family. Their languages have
much in common with German on the one hand and with Iranian
on the other. The differentiation of Balto-Slavonic into Old Baltic
and Old Slavonic, and then of Old Slavonic into the separate Slavonic
languages was caused partly by the isolation of the various tribes
from one another, and partly by mutual assimilation and the influence
of related dialects and unrelated languages. Thus it is not a
matter of genealogy only, but is partly due to historical and political
developments. ■
Until lately the place where the Old Balto-Slavonic branched off"
from the other Indo-European languages and the place of origin of
the Slavs were matters of dispute. But in 1908 the Polish botanist
Rostafiriski put forward from botanical geography evidence from which
we can fix the original home of the Balto-Slavs (and consequently
that of the Germans too, for the Baits could only have originated in
immediate proximity to the Germans). The Balto-Slavs have no ex-
pressions for beech (fagus sylvatica), larch (lariw europaea), and yew
(taxus baccata), but they have a word for hornbeam (carpinus bettdus).
Therefore their original home must have been within the hornbeam zone
but outside of the three other tree-zones, that is within the basin of the
middle Dnieper (v. map). Hence Polesie—the marshland traversed by the
Pripet, but not south or east of Kiev—must be the original home of the
Slavs. The North Europeans (ancestors of the Kelts, Germans, and Balto-
Slavs) originally had names for beech and yew, and therefore lived north
of the Carpathians and west of a line between Konigsberg and Odessa
The ancestors of the Balto-Slavs crossed the beech and yew zone and
made their way into Polesie; they then lost the word for beech, while
they transferred the word for yew to the sallow (Slav, iva, salix caprea)
and the black alder (Lithuan. yeva, rhamnus Jrangula), both of which
have red wood. It is not likely that the tree-zones have greatly shifted
## p. 419 (#451) ############################################
Original Home. Soil and Climate 419
since, say, b. 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.
Blues proclaimed Leontius emperor, and he was crowned by the
patriarch.
As the Arabs were preparing to reconquer Africa, there was little
fighting in Asia Minor during Leontius' reign. In 697 the Caliph's son.
Walld, invaded the Empire from Melitene, and the patrician Sergius,
who commanded in Lazica, betrayed that country to the Arabs.
Further invasions were prevented by a plague and famine; and in 698
the Romans entered the district of Antioch and gained an unimportant
victory.
In 697 Leontius sent the whole fleet under John the patrician to
recover Africa, which had for the second time fallen into the hands' of
the Arabs; and John, having expelled the enemy from Carthage and the
other fortified towns on the coast, reported his success to the Emperor
and remained in Carthage for the winter. But early in 698, when a
larger armament arrived from the east, he was unable to withstand it.
and, abandoning his conquests, returned for reinforcements. When he
reached Crete however, the crews renounced their allegiance and pro-
claimed Apsimar, drungarius (vice-admiral) of the Cibyrrhaeots, emperor
under the imperial name of Tiberius. They then sailed to Constantinople,
which was suffering from plague, and after a short resistance the besiegers
were admitted through the gate of Blachernae at the N. W. corner by
the treachery of the custodians, and plundered the capital like a con-
quered city. Leontius was deprived of his nose and sent to a monastery,
and his friends and officers were flogged and banished and their property
was confiscated (end of 698).
The new Emperor, as a sailor, gave special attention to the defence
of the Empire on the sea side, restoring the sea-wall of Constantinople,
and settling the Mardaites on the Pamphylian coast. He further re-
peopled Cyprus by sending back the inhabitants whom Justinian had
removed (699). Military operations also were conducted with consider-
able success, which must be ascribed to an innovation which Tiberius
immediately after his accession introduced by appointing his brother
Heraclius, who as a general shewed himself not unworthy of his name,
commander-in-chief of all the Asiatic themes, and charging him with the
custody of the Cappadocian frontier. In 701 the Romans made a
successful raid as far as Samosata, and in 704 Heraclius killed or
captured the whole of an Arab force which was besieging Sisium in
Cilicia. On the other hand Walld raided Roman territory in 699, his
brother 'Abdallah took Theodosiopolis in 700, in 703 Mopsuestia was
occupied and Armenia Quarta betrayed to the Arabs, and in 705 the
Caliph's son, Maslama, took two fortresses, and a Roman army was
defeated in Armenia.
Meanwhile Justinian was living in Cherson, a place which, whik
acknowledging the supremacy of the Emperor, was not governed by an?
## p. 411 (#443) ############################################
705-706] Restoration of Justinian 411
imperial official, and enjoyed a large measure of republican freedom.
Here he made no secret of his intention to seek restoration, and the
citizens, fearing the Emperor's vengeance, determined either to kill him
or to send him to Constantinople. He had however friends in the town,
who informed him of their purpose, and, fleeing to Dora, in the south-
east of the Crimea, he asked to be allowed to visit the Khan of the
Chazars, who ruled in the neighbourhood. The Khan granted the
request, received him with honour, and gave him his sister in marriage,
to whom in memory of the wife of Justinian I he gave the name of
Theodora. He then settled at Phanagoria.
Tiberius in alarm promised the Khan many gifts if he sent him either
Justinian himself or his head; and the Khan, agreeing to this, sent him
a guard under pretence of protection, while instructing his representative
at Phanagoria and the governor of Bosporus to kill him as soon as
orders should be received. Of this Theodora was informed by a slave of
the Khan and told Justinian, who sent for the two officials separately
and strangled them. Sending Theodora back to her brother, he embarked
on a fishing-boat and sailed to Symbolum near Cherson, where he took
his friends from the city on board, one of whom bore the Georgian name
of Varaz Bakur. He then asked the aid of the Bulgarian ruler, Tervel,
promising him liberal gifts and his daughter in marriage. To this he
agreed; and, accompanied by Tervel himself and an army of Bulgarians
and Slavs, Justinian advanced to Constantinople (705). Here the citizens
received him with insults; but after three days he found an entrance with
a few followers by an aqueduct, and the defenders, thinking the walls
were undermined, were seized with panic and made no resistance. Tiberius
fled across the Propontis to Apollonia, but was arrested and brought
back, while Heraclius was seized in Thrace and hanged on the walls with
his chief officers. Tervel was invited into the city, seated by Justinian's
side as Caesar, and dismissed with abundance of presents, while Varaz
Bakur was made a proto-patrician and Count of Obsequium. Tiberius
and Leontius were exhibited in chains all over the city, and then brought
into the circus, where Justinian sat with a foot on the neck of each, while
the people, playing on the names "Leontius1' and "Apsimar," cried,
"Thou hast trodden upon the asp and the basilisk (kinglet), and upon
the lion and the dragon hast thou trampled. " They were then taken to
the amphitheatre and beheaded. Of the rest of Justinian's enemies
some were thrown into the sea in sacks, and others invited to a banquet
and, when it was over, arrested and hanged or beheaded; but Theodosius
the son of Tiberius was spared, and afterwards became celebrated as
bishop of Ephesus. Callinicus was blinded and banished to Rome, and
Cyrus, a monk of Amastris, made patriarch (706). On the other hand
6000 Arab prisoners were released and sent home. As soon as his throne
was secure, Justinian fetched his wife, who had in the meantime borne
him a son, whom he named Tiberius and crowned as his colleague.
## p. 412 (#444) ############################################
412 Reconciliation with the Pope [706-711
One of the first objects to which the restored Emperor turned his
attention was the establishment of an understanding with Rome as to the
Trullan synod. Having learned that coercion was useless, he tried
another plan. He sent the Acts to John VII, asking him to hold a
synod and confirm the canons which he approved and disallow the
rest; but John, fearing to give offence, sent them back as he received
them. His second successor, Constantine, however consented to come to
Constantinople and discuss the matter (710). Landing seven miles from
the capital, he was met and escorted into the city by the child Tiberius
and the senators and patriarch; and Justinian, who was then at Nicaea,
met him at Nicomedia, and, prostrating himself before him, kissed his
feet. A satisfactory compromise (of what nature we do not know) was
made, and the Pope returned to Rome (Oct. 711).
In the time of Tiberius the Arabs had never been able to cross the
Taurus; but with the removal of Heraclius Asia Minor was again laid
open to their ravages. A raid by Hisham the son of 'Abd-al-Malik in
706 produced no results: but in 707 Maslama, accompanied by Maimun
the Mardaite, advanced to Tyana (June). A rash attack by Maimun
cost him his life; and the Caliph Walid sent reinforcements under
his son, 'Abbas. All the winter the Arabs lay before Tyana, which
was stoutly defended; and Justinian, who had fallen out with Tervel and
required the Asiatic troops in Europe, sent an army mostly of rustics to
its relief. The generals however quarrelled, and the rabble was easily
routed by the Arabs, who pressed the siege of Tyana until it surrendered
(27 Mar. 708). The inhabitants were removed to Arab territory. Maslama
then raided the country to the north-east as far as Gazelon near Amasia,
while 'Abbas after defeating a Roman force near Dorylaeum, which he
took, advanced to Nicomedia and Heraclea Pontica, while a small detach-
ment of his army entered Chrysopolis and burnt the ferry-boats. In 709
Maslama and 'Abbas invaded Isauria, where five fortresses were taken;
but at sea the Romans captured the admiral Khalid, whom however
Justinian sent to the Caliph, and attacked Damietta in Egypt. In 710
an unimportant raid was made by WalTd's son, 'Abd-al-'AzIz: but in
711 Maslama took Camacha, as well as Taranta and two other fortresses
in Hexapolis1, which was now annexed; and, as Sisium was the same year
occupied by Othman, the frontier was advanced to the Sarus. On the other
hand a Roman army sent to recover Lazica, where Phasis only remained
in Roman hands, after besieging Archaeopolis was compelled to retreat.
After a defeat by the Bulgarians (708) and the restoration of peace,
Justinian turned his energies to exacting vengeance from the Chersonites,
who had now accepted a Chazar governor. In 710 he collected ships of
all kinds, for the equipment of which he raised a special contribution
from all the inhabitants of the capital, and sent them to Cherson under the
patrician Stephen Asmictus, whose orders were to kill the ruling men
1 "Khspolis" (Michael, p. 462) is a corruption of Hexapolis.
## p. 413 (#445) ############################################
7io-7ii] Rebellion of Philippines 413
with all their families and establish Elijah the spatharius (military
chamberlain) as governor. With him was sent a certain Vardan, who
in spite of his Armenian name (probably derived from his mother's family)
was son of the patrician Nicephorus of Pergamum who had commanded in
Africa and Asia under Constans, and, having been banished to Cephallenia
by Tiberius and recalled by Justinian, was to be again exiled to Cherson.
The city was unable to resist, the chief magistrate, Zoilus, and forty of
his principal colleagues with their families and the Tudun (the Chazar
governor), were sent in chains to Justinian, seven others were roasted over
a fire, twenty drowned in a boat filled with stones, and the rest beheaded.
The children were however spared for slavery; and Justinian, furious at
this, ordered the fleet to return (Oct. ),
Off Paphlagonia the fleet was almost destroyed by a storm; but he
threatened to send another to raze Cherson and the neighbouring places
to the ground and kill every living person in them. The citizens then
strengthened their defences and obtained the help of the Khan, while
Elijah and Vardan made common cause with them. Justinian sent 300
men under George, the public logothete, John the praefect, and
Christopher, turmarch of the Thracesii, with orders to replace the
Tudun and Zoilus in their positions, and bring Elijah and Vardan
to Constantinople (711). The citizens, pretending to accept these
terms, admitted the small force; but immediately shut the gates,
killed George and John, and handed the rest over to the Chazars, and
the Tudun having died on the way, the Chazars avenged him by killing
them. The Chersonites then proclaimed Vardan emperor, and he
assumed the Greek name of Philippicus. Justinian, more enraged than
ever, had Elijah's children killed in their mother's arms and compelled
her to marry her negro cook, while he sent another fleet with powerful
siege-engines under the patrician Maurus Bessus with the orders which
he had before threatened to give. Philippicus fled to the Chazars, and
Maurus took two of the towers of the city, but, Chazar reinforcements
having arrived, was unable to do more, and, afraid to return, declared
for Philippicus and asked the Khan to send him back, which he did on
receiving security in money for his safety. The fleet then sailed for
Constantinople. Justinian's suspicions had been aroused by the delay;
and, thinking himself safer in the territory of the Obsequian theme,
commanded by Varaz Bakur, he took with him the troops of that
theme, some of the Thracesii, and 3000 Bulgarians sent by Tervel, and,
having crossed the Bosporus and left the rest in the plain of Damatrys
about ten miles east of Chalcedon, proceeded with the chief officers and
the Thracesian contingent to the promontory of Sinope, which the fleet
would pass. After a time he saw it sail by, and immediately returned
to Damatrys. Meanwhile Philippicus had entered Constantinople with-
out opposition. The Empress Anastasia took the little Tiberius to the
church of the Virgin at Blachernae, where he sat with amulets hung
CH. XIII.
## p. 414 (#446) ############################################
414 Reign of Philippicus [711-713
round his neck, holding a column of the altar with one hand and. a piece
of the cross with the other. Maurus and John Struthus the spatharwi
had been sent to kill him; and, when they entered the church, Maurus
was delayed by Anastasia's entreaties, but John transferred the amulet;
to his own neck, laid the piece of the cross on the altar, and carried the
child to a postern-gate of the city, and cut his throat. Varaz Bakur.
thinking Justinian's cause desperate, had left the army and fled, but he
was caught and killed. Elijah was sent with a small force against
Justinian himself, whose soldiers on a promise of immunity deserted their
master, and Elijah cut off his head and sent it to Philippicus, who sent
it to Rome (end of 711).
The new Emperor was a ready and plausible speaker, and had a
reputation for mildness; but he was an indolent and dissolute man,
who neglected public affairs and squandered the money amassed bv
his predecessors. Accordingly no better resistance was offered to the
Arabs. In 712 Maslama and his nephews, 'Abbas and Marwan, entered
Roman territory from Melitene and took Sebastia, Gazelon, and Amask
whence Marwan advanced to Gangra, while Walid ibn Hisham took
Misthia in Lycaonia and carried off many of the inhabitants of the
country. In 713 'Abd-al-'Aziz again raided as far as Gazelon, while
Yazid invaded Isauria, and 'Abbas took Antioch in Pisidia and
returned with numerous captives. Meanwhile Philippicus for some
unknown reason expelled the Armenians from the Empire, and they
were settled by the Arabs in Armenia Quarta and the district of
Melitene (712). In Europe also the Bulgarians advanced to the gates
of Constantinople (712).
There was however one subject on which Philippicus shewed a
misplaced energy. Having been educated by Stephen, the pupil of
Macarius, he was a fervent Monothelete, and even before entering the
city he ordered the picture of the sixth synod to be removed from the
palace and the names of those condemned in it restored to the diptychs.
Cyrus, who refused to comply with his wishes, was deposed and confined
in a monastery, and a more pliant patriarch found in the deacon John
(early in 712), who was supported by two men afterwards celebrated.
Germanus of Cyzicus and Andrew of Crete. Shortly afterwards the Acts
preserved in the palace were burnt, and a condemnation of the synod and
the chief Dithelete bishops was issued, while many prominent men who
refused to sign this were exiled. At Rome the document was con-
temptuously rejected, the Romans retaliated by placing a picture of the
six synods in St Peter's and abandoning the public use of the EmperorV
name; and Peter, who was sent to Rome as duke, was attacked and
forced to retire (713).
An emperor without hereditary claim to respect, who could not
defend the Empire from invasion and wantonly disturbed the peace of
the Church, was not likely to reign long; but the fall of Philippicus w&>
## p. 415 (#447) ############################################
713-715] Accession of Anastasius II 415
eventually brought about by a plot. A portion of the Obsequian
theme, which had been the most closely attached to Justinian, had been
brought to Thrace to act against the Bulgarians, whose ravages still
continued; and, trusting to the support of these soldiers and of the
Green faction, George Buraphus, Count of Obsequium, and the patrician
Theodore Myacius, who had been with Justinian at his return from
exile, made a conspiracy against the Emperor. After some games in
the circus, in which the Greens were victorious, he had given a banquet
in the baths of Zeuxippus, returned to the palace and gone to sleep,
when an officer of the Obsequian theme and his men rushed in, carried
him to the robing room of the Greens, and put out his eyes (3 June 713).
The conspirators were however not ready with a new emperor: and, as
the other soldiers were not inclined to submit to their dictation, they
were unable to gain control of affairs; and on the next day, which was
Whit Sunday, Artemius, one of the chief imperial secretaries, was chosen
emperor and crowned, taking in memory of the last civilian emperor
the name of Anastasius. George and Theodore were requited as they
had served Philippicus, being blinded on 10 and 17 June respectively
and banished to Thessalonica.
The ecclesiastical policy of the late Emperor was immediately
reversed, the sixth synod being proclaimed at the coronation, and the
picture soon afterwards restored. Anastasius wrote to assure the Pope
of his orthodoxy; and John, who under Philippicus had from fear of
offending either Emperor or Pope sent no synodical to Rome, wrote to
the Pope to explain that he had always been an adherent of the synod.
He therefore retained the see till his death, when he was succeeded by
Germanus (11 Aug. 715), who had also abandoned Monotheletism.
Anastasius was a great contrast to his predecessor. A capable man
of affairs, he set himself to place the Empire in a state of defence and
appoint the best men to civil and military posts: but in the condition
to which affairs had been brought by the frenzy of Justinian and the
indolence of Philippicus a stronger ruler than tbis conscientious public
servant was needed. In 714 Maslama raided Galatia, 'Abbas took
Heraclea (Cybistra) and two other places, and his brother Bishr wintered
in Roman territory. On the other hand an Arab general was defeated
and killed. In the anarchic state of the Empire however Walld
wished to send out something more than raiding expeditions; and
Anastasius, hearing reports of this, sent Daniel the praefect on an
embassy with instructions to find out what was going on; and on his
reporting that a great expedition was being prepared ordered all who
were unable to supply themselves with provisions for three years to leave
Constantinople, while he set himself to build ships, fill the granaries,
repair the walls, and provide weapons of defence.
In 715 a fleet from Egypt came, as in 655, to Phoenix to cut wood
for shipbuilding; and Anastasius chose the fastest ships and ordered
## p. 416 (#448) ############################################
416 Deposition of Anastasius [715-716
them to meet at Rhodes under a certain John, who also held the offices
of public logothete and deacon of St Sophia. Some of the Obsequian
theme, whom it was probably desired to remove from the neighbourhood
of the capital, were sent on board; and, when John gave the order to
sail to Phoenix, these refused to obey, cast off allegiance to Anastasius,
and killed the admiral. Most of the fleet then dispersed, but the
mutineers sailed for Constantinople. On the way they landed at
Adramyttium, and, not wishing to be a second time defeated by the
absence of a candidate for the throne, chose a tax-cdllector named
Theodosius, whom, though he fled to the hills to escape, they seized and
proclaimed emperor. Anastasius, leaving Constantinople in a state of
defence, shut himself up in Nicaea, where he could watch the disaffected
theme: but the rebels rallied to their cause the whole theme with the
Gotho-Greek irregulars of Bithynia, collected merchant-ships of all
kinds, and advanced by land and sea to Chrysopolis (Sept. ). The
fighting lasted six months, after which on the imperial fleet changing
its station they crossed to Thrace and were admitted by treachery
through the gate of Blachernae. The houses were then pillaged, and
the chief officials and the patriarch arrested and sent to Anastasius, who,
thinking further resistance useless, surrendered on promise of safety and
was allowed to retire as a monk to Thessalonica (5 Mar. 716)1.
Meanwhile the Arab preparations were going on with none to hinder.
Even when the civil war was ended, there was little hope of effectual
resistance from the crowned tax-gatherer and his mutinous army; and.
if the Empire was to be saved, it was necessary that the government
should be in the hands of a soldier. The Obsequian theme, though
from its proximity to the capital it had been able to make and unmake
emperors, was the smallest of the three Asiatic themes; and the other
two were not likely to pay much regard to its puppet-sovereign. The
larger of these, the Anatolic, was commanded by Leo of Germanicea,
whose family had been removed to Mesembria in Thrace when Germanicea
was abandoned. When Justinian returned, Leo met him with 500 sheep
and was made a spatharius. Afterwards he was sent to urge the Alans
of the Caucasus to attack the Abasgi, who were under Arab protection,
and in spite of great difficulties he was successful: moreover, though he
seemed to be cut off from the Empire, by his courage, presence of mind.
and cunning (not always accompanied by good faith) he effected not
only his own return but that of 200 stragglers from the army which
had invaded Lazica. This exploit made him a marked man, and he
was chosen by Anastasius for the command of the Anatolic theme: on
that Emperor's overthrow both he and the Armenian Artavazd, who
commanded the Armeniacs, refused to recognise Theodosius.
Late in 715 Maslama, who had been appointed to lead the expedition
1 I take Leo's term in the xP°v°ypo(petov ascribed to Nicephorus as dating froE
this time.
## p. 417 (#449) ############################################
715-717] Leo and the Arabs 417
against Constantinople, took the Fortress of the Slavs, which commanded
the passes of the Taurus, and returned to Epiphania for the winter;
and in 716 he sent his lieutenant Sulaiman in advance, intending to
follow with a larger army, while Omar was appointed to command the
fleet. Sulaiman penetrated without opposition to Amorium, which, as
it had then no garrison and was on bad terms with Leo because of
his rejection of Theodosius, he expected easily to take. The Arabs
moreover knew Leo to be a likely candidate for the crown and hoped
to use him as they had used Sapor: accordingly, as Amorium did not
immediately fall, they proclaimed him emperor, and the citizens were in-
duced by the hope of escaping capture to do the same. Sulaiman having
promised thatj if Leo came to discuss terms of peace, he would raise the
siege, Leo came with 300 men, and the Arabs surrounded him to prevent
his escape; but Leo, who as a native of a town which had only been in
Roman hands for ten years since 640 (he was probably born a subject of
the Caliph), was well acquainted with the Arab character and could
perhaps speak Arabic, induced some officers whom he was entertaining
to believe that he would go and see Maslama himself, while he conveyed
a message to the citizens to hold out, and finally escaped on the pretext
of a hunting expedition. Soon afterwards the Arabs became tired of
lying before Amorium and forced Sulaiman to raise the siege; whereupon
Leo threw 800 men into the city, removed most of the women and
children, and withdrew to the mountains of Pisidia, where he was safe
from attack by Maslama, who had now entered Cappadocia and, in hope
of gaining Leo's support, refrained from plundering the country. To him
Leo sent an envoy to say that he had wished to come and see him,
but treachery had deterred him from doing so. From this envoy
Maslama heard of the garrisoning of Amorium; but this made him the
more desirous of securing Leo; and he promised, if he came, to make
satisfactory terms of peace. Leo pretended to agree, but protracted
negotiations till Maslama, unable for reasons of commissariat to remain
in Anatolic territory, had reached Acroinus (Prymnessus) in the Obsequian
district, and then, having previously come to an understanding with
Artavazd, to whom he promised his daughter in marriage (which, as he
had no son, implied an assurance of the succession), started for Constan-
tinople, while Maslama passed into Asia, where he wintered. The fleet
was however less successful, for the Romans landed in Syria and burnt
Laodicea, while the Arabs had only reached Cilicia. Meanwhile Leo
made his way to Nicomedia, where Theodosius' son, who had been made
Augustus, and some of the chief officers of the palace, fell into his power.
The Obsequians were unable to organise serious resistance, and Theodosius
after consulting the Senate and the patriarch sent Germanus to Leo, and
on receiving assurance of safety abdicated. Leo made a formal entry by
the Golden Gate and was crowned by the patriarch (25 Mar. 717).
Theodosius and his son took orders and ended their days in obscurity.
C. MED. H. VOL. II. CH. XIII. 27
## p. 418 (#450) ############################################
418
CHAPTER XIV.
THE EXPANSION OF THE SLAVS.
The Slavs, numbering at present about one hundred and fifty million
souls, form with the Baits (the Letts, Lithuanians, Prussians) the Balto-
Slavonic group of the Indo-European family. Their languages have
much in common with German on the one hand and with Iranian
on the other. The differentiation of Balto-Slavonic into Old Baltic
and Old Slavonic, and then of Old Slavonic into the separate Slavonic
languages was caused partly by the isolation of the various tribes
from one another, and partly by mutual assimilation and the influence
of related dialects and unrelated languages. Thus it is not a
matter of genealogy only, but is partly due to historical and political
developments. ■
Until lately the place where the Old Balto-Slavonic branched off"
from the other Indo-European languages and the place of origin of
the Slavs were matters of dispute. But in 1908 the Polish botanist
Rostafiriski put forward from botanical geography evidence from which
we can fix the original home of the Balto-Slavs (and consequently
that of the Germans too, for the Baits could only have originated in
immediate proximity to the Germans). The Balto-Slavs have no ex-
pressions for beech (fagus sylvatica), larch (lariw europaea), and yew
(taxus baccata), but they have a word for hornbeam (carpinus bettdus).
Therefore their original home must have been within the hornbeam zone
but outside of the three other tree-zones, that is within the basin of the
middle Dnieper (v. map). Hence Polesie—the marshland traversed by the
Pripet, but not south or east of Kiev—must be the original home of the
Slavs. The North Europeans (ancestors of the Kelts, Germans, and Balto-
Slavs) originally had names for beech and yew, and therefore lived north
of the Carpathians and west of a line between Konigsberg and Odessa
The ancestors of the Balto-Slavs crossed the beech and yew zone and
made their way into Polesie; they then lost the word for beech, while
they transferred the word for yew to the sallow (Slav, iva, salix caprea)
and the black alder (Lithuan. yeva, rhamnus Jrangula), both of which
have red wood. It is not likely that the tree-zones have greatly shifted
## p. 419 (#451) ############################################
Original Home. Soil and Climate 419
since, say, b. 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.
