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 no CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. they advanced, in alliance with the Persians, to the very walls of Constantinople and plundered the suburbs. The siege itself was in vain, the Avans retired, and never afterward played an important part in the history of the empire. The deliverance of the capital from these bar- barians is still commemorated by the Church in the use of the "Avadiffto^ 'T/xvo?, which was com- posed to celebrate it. The consequences of the incursions of the Slav tribes were much more permanent than those produced by any other barbarous nation. The first Slavs who attacked the empire, after having seized Dacia, were subdued by the Great Jus- tinian. Nevertheless Slavs continued to move forward till they entered even Greece itself. From this time onward, sometimes as allies, sometimes as enemies, sometimes as subjects, and sometimes as prisoners, the Slavs scattered themselves over the empire, and at last took permanent possession of the settlements in which they are still to be found. From the sixth to the eighth century Slav invasions of Greece were frequent, and it is upon this fact that Fallmerayer based his famous theory to the effect that the Hellenes are extinct and that Hellas is now peopled by a Slav population.