Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 1.djvu/51

Rh perly belonged, was a long but narrow tract between the Save and the Adriatic. The best part of the seacoast, which still retains its ancient appellation, is a province of the Venetian state, and the seat of the little republic of Ragusa. The inland parts have assumed the Sclavonian names of Croatia and Bosnia; the former obeys an Austrian governor, the latter a Turkish pasha ; but the whole country is still infested by tribes of barbarians, whose savage independence irregularly marks the doubtful limit of the christian and mahometan power.

After the Danube had received the waters of the Teyss and the Save, it acquired, at least among the Greeks, the name of Ister. It formerly divided Maesia and Dacia ; the latter of which, as we have already seen, was a conquest of Trajan, and the only province beyond the river. If we enquire into the present state of those countries, we shall find that, on the left hand of the Danube, Temeswar and Transylvania have been annexed, after many revolutions, to the crown of Hungary ; whilst the principalities of Moldavia and Walachia acknowledge the supremacy of the Ottoman porte. On the right hand of the Danube, Msesia, which during the middle ages was broken into the barbarian kingdoms of Servia and Bulgaria, is again united in Turkish slavery.

The appellation of Roumeha, which is still bestowed by the Turks on the extensive countries of Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece, preserves the memory of their ancient state under the Roman empire. In the time of the Antonines, the martial regions of Thrace, from the mountains of Haemus and Rhodope to the Bos- phorus and the Hellespont, had assumed the form of a province. Notwithstanding the change of masters and