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 THE BYZANTINES. Ill In the older works on the history of Greece before the time of the Osmans, the history of Athens from the year 529 to the time of Basilios II. is almost a blank. In the year 1835 the celebrated Fallmerayer, at the time the best instructed man about New Greek matters, received some documents from the contents of which he tried to prove that Athens, about the time of Justinian I., had been over- whelmed by masses of the Slavic army and had been devastated ; that the Athenians had then left the city and had retired to Salamis, where they had spent four hundred years in exile, during which time the monumental splendor of Athens had been destroyed and the city transformed into a wood of olive-trees; that in the year 746 these woods, together with what little had been left of the city, had been consumed by fire. This view has been held with a certain tenacity for some years in the world of learning. Researches made since, however, have furnished conclusive evidence of the spuriousness of the documents. Not only that, but historical facts have now been estab- lished to prove the uninterrupted existence of the city of Athens during the whole of the Middle Ages. Napoleon, on December 26th, 1805, without