Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/171

 OF THE EOMAN EMPIRE 151 ness. To the south they followed the course of the Bovysthenes, and approached with that river the neighbourhood of the Euxine Sea. The tribes that dwelt, or wandered, in this ample circuit were obedient to the same conqueror, and insensibly blended into the same nation. The lanouan-e of Russia is a dialect of the Sclavonian ; but, in the tenth century, these two modes of speech were different from each other ; and, as the Sclavonian prevailed in the South, it may be presumed that the original Russians of the North, the primitive subjects of the Varangian chief, were a portion of the Fennic race.*^* With the emigration, union, or dissolution of the wandering tribes, the loose and in- definite picture of the Scythian desert has continually shifted. But the most ancient map of Russia affords some places which still retain their name and position ; and the two capitals, Novo- gorod ''^ and Kiow,'"^ are coeval Avith the first age of the monarchy. Novogorod had not yet deserved the epithet of great, nor the alliance of the Hanseatic league, which diffused the streams of opulence and the principles of freedom. Kiow could not yet boast of three hundred churches, an innumerable people, and a degree of greatness and splendour, which was compared v/ith Constantinople by those who had never seen the residence of the Caesars. In their origin, the two cities were no more than camps or fairs, the most convenient stations in which the bar- barians might assemble for the occasional business of war or trade. Yet even these assemblies announce some progress in the arts of society ; a new breed of cattle was imported from the southern provinces ; and the spirit of commercial enterprise per- •^ [There were peoples of Finnic race in Livonia and Ingria, between Novgorod and the Baltic ; and east of Novgorod the Finnic circle reached down to the Oka, south of Moskowa. The most southerly of these peoples were the Muromians, whose town was Murom ; north of these were the Merians, whose town was Rostov ; and further north were the Ves, who lived about the White Lake (Bielo-ozero). The Muromians, the Merians, and Ves were in loose subjection to Riuric (Nestor, c. IS)-] "5 The haughty proverb : " Who can resist God and the great Novogorod?" is applied by M. Levesque (Hist, de Russie, torn. i. p. 60) even to the times that pre- ceded the reign of Kuric. In the course of his history he frequently celebrates this republic, which was suppressed A. D. 1475 (torn ii. p. 252-266). That accurate traveller, Adam Olearius, describes (in 1635) the remains of Novogorod, and the route by sea and land of the Holstein ambassadors (tom. i. p. 123-129). ^ In hac magna civitate, quae est caput regni, plus trecentae ecclesise habentur et nundinos octo, populi etiam ignota manus (Eggehardus ad A.D. loiS, apud Bayer, tom. i.. p. 412 [Ekkehardus Uraugiensis, Chronicon, ap. Pertz, Mon. vi.]). He likewise quotes (tom. x. p. 397) the words of the Saxon annalist [Adam of Bremen, ii. c. 19], Cujus (Russiae) metropolis est Chive, remula sceptri Constantino- politani quae est clarissimum decus Grascias. The fame of Kiow, especially in the xith century, had reached the German and the Arabian geographers.