Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/156

 136 THE DECLINE AND FALL were dignified with the high and invidious title of basileiis, or emperor. But this friendship was soon disturbed : after the death of Simeon, the nations were again in arms ; his feeble A.D. 950, &c. successors were divided -- and extinguished ; and, in the begin- ning of the eleventh century, the second Basil, who was bom in the purple, deserved the appellation of conqueror of the Bulgari- ans.^*^ His avarice was in some measure gratified by a treasure of four hundred thousand pounds sterling (ten thousand pounds weight of gold) which he found in the palace of Lychnidus. His cruelty inflicted a cool and exquisite vengeance on fifteen thousand captives who had been guilty of the defence of their 22 [In A.D. 963 Shishman of Trnovo revolted, and founded an independent king- dom in Macedonia and Albania. Thus there were now two Bulgarian kingdoms and two tsars.] 23 [The kingdom of Eastern Bulgaria had been conquered first by the Russians and then by the Emperor Tzimisces (see below, p. 161), but Western Bulgaria sur- vived, and before 980, Samuel, son of Shishman, came to the throne. His capital was at first Prespa, but he afterwards moved to Ochrida. His aim was to recover Eastern Bulgaria and conquer Greece ; and for thirty-five years he maintained a heroic struggle against the Empire. Both he and his great adversary Basil were men of iron, brave, cruel, and unscrupulous ; and Basil was determined not merely to save Eastern, but to conquer Western, Bulgaria. In the first war (976-986) the Bulgarians were successful. Samuel pushed southward and, after repeated attempts which were repulsed, captured Earissa in Thessaly and pushed on to the Isthmus. This was in A.D. 986. To cause a diversion and relieve Greece, Basil marched on Sophia, but was caught in a trap, and having endured immense losses escaped with difficulty. After this defeat Eastern Bulgaria was lost to the Empire. (The true date of the capture of Larissa and the defeat of Basil, a.d. 986, has been established, against the old date 981, by the evidence of the Strategikon of Kekaumenos, — for which see above, vol. 5, p. 505. Cp. Schlumberger, L'epop^e Byzantine, p. 636. On this first Bulgarian war, see also the Vita Niconis, ap. Martene et Durand, ampl. Coll. 6, 837 sq(/. ; and a contemporary poem of John Geometres, Migne, P. G. vol. 106, p. 934, and cp. p. 920, a piece on the Cometopulos, i.e. Samuel, with a pun on Kon)j-7)5, " comet".) There was a cessation of hostilities for ten years. The second war broke out in A.D. 996. Samuel invaded Greece, but retiu-ning he was met by a Greek army in the plain of the Spercheios north of Thermopylae, and his whole host was destroyed in a night surprise. In A.D. 1000 Basil recovered Eastern Bulgaria, and in the following year South-western Macedonia (Vodena, Berrcea). Again hostilities languished for over ten years ; Basil was occupied in the east. In A.D. 1014, the third war began ; on July 29 Nicephorus Xiphias gained a brilliant victory over the Bulgarian army at Bielasica (somewhere in the neighbourhood of the river Strumica) ; Samuel escaped to Prilep, but died six weeks later. The struggle was sustained weakly under Gabriel Roman (Samuel's son) and John Vladislav, his murderer and successor, last Tsar of Ochrida, who fell, besieging Durazzo, in 1018. The Bulgarians submitted, and the whole Balkan peninsula was once more imperial. If Samuel had been matched with a less able antago- nist than Basil, he would have succeeded in effecting Nvhat was doubtless his great aim, the union of all the Slavs south of the Danube into a great empire. For a fuller account of these wars see Finlay, vol. ii. ; and for the first war, Schlum- berger, op. cit., chap. X. JireJfek, Gesch. der Bulgaren, p. 192-8, is remarkably brief. There is a fuller study of the struggle bv RaJSki in the Croatian tongue (1875)-]