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 chap, xlii] OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 371 magistrate ; but their experience was too narrow, their passions too headstrong, to compose a system of equal law or general defence. Some voluntary respect was yielded to age and valour; but each tribe or village existed as a separate re- public, and all must be persuaded where none could be com- pelled. They fought on foot, almost naked, and, except an unwieldy shield, without any defensive armour ; their weapons of offence were a bow, a quiver of small poisoned arrows, and a long rope, which they dexterously threw from a distance, and entangled their enemy in a running noose. In the field, the Sclavonian infantry was dangerous by their speed, agility, and hardiness ; they swam, they dived, they remained under water, drawing their breath through a hollow cane ; and a river or lake was often the scene of their unsuspected ambus- cade. But these were the achievements of spies or stragglers ; the military art was unknown to the Sclavonians ; their name was obscure, and their conquests were inglorious. 16 I have marked the faint and general outline of the Scla- T heh- vonians and Bulgarians, without attempting to define their imoada intermediate boundaries, which were not accurately known or respected by the Barbarians themselves. Their importance was measured by their vicinity to the empire ; and the level country of Moldavia and Walachia was occupied by the Antes, 17 a Sclavonian tribe, which swelled the titles of Jus- tinian with an epithet of conquest. 18 Against the Antes he erected the fortifications of the lower Danube ; and laboured to secure the alliance of a people seated in the direct channel of northern inundation, an interval of two hundred miles between the mountains of Transylvania and the Euxine sea. But the 1B For the name and nation, the situation and manners of the Slavonians, see the original evidence of the vith century, in Procopius (Goth. 1. ii. c. 26, 1. iii. c. 14), and the emperor Mauritius or Maurice (Stratagemat. 1. ii. c. 5, apud Mascou, Annotat. xxxi. [p. 272 sqq., ed. Scheffer]). The stratagems of Maurice have been printed only, as I understand, at the end of Seheffer's edition of Arrian's Tactics, at Upsal, 1664 (Fabric. Bibliot. Grcee. 1. iv. c. 8, torn. iii. p. 278), a scarce, and hitherto, to me, an inaccessible book. [The Strategikon is a work of the sixth century, but not by Maurice. In the Ms. preserved at Florence it is ascribed to Urbicius.] 17 Antes eorum fortissimi. . . Taysis qui rapidus et vorticosus in Histri fluenta furens devolvitur (Jornandes, c. 5, p. 194, edit. Murator. Procopius, Goth. 1. iii. c. 14, et de iEdific. 1. iv. c. 7). Yet the same Procopius mentions the Goths and Huns as neighbours, yeiTovovvra, to the Danube (de jEdific. 1. iv. c. 1). 18 The national title of Anticus, in the laws and inscriptions of Justinian, was adopted by his successors, and is justified by the pious Ludewig (in Vit. Justinian, p. 515). It had strangely puzzled the civilians of the middle age.