Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/152

 132 THE DECLINE AND FALL by chance or malice from the signification of glory to that of servitude. 1^ Among these colonies, the Chrobatians/- or Croats, who now attend the motions of an Austrian army, are the de- scendants of a mighty people, the conquerors and sovereigns of Croats or Dalmatia. The maritime cities, and of these the infant republic ofDaimatia. of Ragusa, implorcd the aid and instructions of the Byzan- ' ' tine court : they were advised by the magnanimous Basil to reserve a small acknowledgment of their fidelity to the Roman empire, and to appease, by an annual tribute, the wrath of these irresistible barbarians. The kingdom of Croatia was shared by eleven Zoupans, or feudatory lords ; and their united forces were numbered at sixty thousand horse and one hundred thousand foot. A long sea-coast, indented with capacious harbours, covered with a string of islands, and almost in sight of the Italian shores, disposed both the natives and strangers to the practice of navigation. The boats or brigantines of the Croats were constructed after the fashion of the old Liburnians ; one hundred and eighty vessels may excite the idea of a respectable navy ; but our seamen will smile at the allowance of ten, or twenty, or forty, men for each of these ships of war. They were gradually converted to the more honourable service of commerce ; yet the Sclavonian pirates were still frequent and dangerous ; and it was not before the close of the tenth century that the freedom and sovereignty of the Gulf were effectually vindicated rightly rejected by Schafarik, who investigates the name at great length (Slawische Alterthiimer, ii. p. 25 sqq.). The original form of the name was Slovan6 or Sloven^. The form "Sclavonian," which is still often used in English books, ought to be discarded (as Gibbon suggests) ; the guttural does not belong to the word, but was inserted by the Greeks, Latins, and Orientals (2/tAaj3o?, Sclavus, Saklab, Sakalib^, &c.). By the analogy of other names similarl}' formed, Schafarik shows convincingly that the name was originally local, meaning " the folk who dwelled in Slovy," cp. p. 43-45. The discovery of this hypothetical Slovy is another question. In the Chronicle of Nestor, Slovene is used in the special sense of a tribe about Novgorod, as well as in the general sense of Slav.] "This conversion of a national into an appellative name appears to have arisen in the viiith century, in the Oriental France [i.e. East Francia, or Franconia : towards the end of the eighth century, cp. Schafarik, op. cit., ii. p. 325-6] ; where the princes and bishops were rich in Sclavonian captives, not of the Bohemian (exclaims Jordan) but of Sorabian race. From thence the word was extended to general use, to the modern languages, and even to the style of the last Byzantines (see the Greek and Latin Glossaries of Ducange). The confusion of the SepjSAoi, or Servians, with the Latin Serfi was still more fortunate and familiar (Constant. Porphyr. de Administrando Imperio, c. 32, p. 99). [Serb is supposed to have been the oldest national name of the Slavs, on the evidence of Procopius (B. G. iii. 14), who saj's that the Slavs and Antas had originally one name, 27ropoi, which is fre- quently explained as = Srbs. Schafarik, op. cit., i. p. 93-99.] 12 The emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, most accurate for his own times, most fabulous for preceding ages, describes the Sclavonians of Dalmatia (c. 29-36).