Page:Nicolae Iorga - My American lectures.djvu/152

 vain, and the oppression of ruthless masters has been relentlessly wasted. Thus are be conceived the first groupings of the peasant communities.

Rome had withdrawn its legions and the simple elements of provincial administration. No barbarian was eager to conquer these abandoned people who could offer them no promise of rich booty, no accumulated riches, nor any opportunity for reaching the inevitable goal of all invaders, the imperial Rome of the East, Constantinople. The cities have disappeared, as they were new and not consolidated, being mere fortified places affording barracks for soldiers, markets for the neighbouring peasants and — though seldom — administrative centres offering opportunities of life at a higher level. But the former Dacian villages persevered notwithstanding the hardships of the time and they maintained, in a Roman form, the tradition of a very ancient popular civilisation, bequeathed to them by their Thracian forbears. In them no warriors now dwelt and the warlike qualities of the following of Decebalus no longer existed in their patient souls: only when attacked were the military virtues of their fathers awakened. Long and peaceful centuries began to be for this Latin-speaking race of shepherds and tillers of the soil. They had no history worthy the chronicling, no laws to be codified, no stone memorials to be preserved through the ages. The great battles were fought in the Balkans, on the main road to the City of the Caesars, where new frontiers were traced and new lines of demarcation were established. Withdrawn from the noise of conflict and the making of history, treasure of energy were transmitted from generation to generation.

But later, in the fourteenth century, under the Apostolic crown of Hungary, which had assumed the mission of converting all pagans, another people formed themselves.