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 THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS 87 great Roman Empire by a distinctive name, and to call it the "Eastern" or "Greek" or "Byzantine Em- The Eastern, Ipire." The last adjective, which comes from By- B^zanti* J zantium, the former name for Constantinople, and Empire I is especially applied to the art and literature of this Empire during the Middle Ages, is the most distinctive. For we j have already spoken of the Eastern Empire before 476, and !the adjective "Greek" would not distinguish the culture from that of earlier Greece. The expression "Later Roman J Empire" has been used of this survival of Roman rule in I the East, but is a confusing phrase, since such expressions I as "the early Empire" and "the later Empire" are used of I the Roman Empire before 476 to distinguish its early period i of peace and prosperity from the later centuries of decline land invasion. We shall therefore henceforth speak of the government at Constantinople as the " Byzantine Empire." The Balkan peninsula much of the time was hardly more ! under the control of the Byzantine emperor than was western Europe. The East Goths or Ostrogoths The East 1 were now the chief disturbing element there, the 1 Balkans I although Bulgars, Huns, and Slavs also made and in Italy trouble at times. Various lands were assigned to the Goths ! and they devastated many others. When the walls of j Constantinople were damaged by an earthquake, they I Isaurians, and they vainly attempted to cross over into i Asia Minor. At last, in 488, the emperor persuaded Theo- i doric, who by this time had become king of all the East - Goths, to march against Odoacer, and Constantinople was delivered from them as it had been eighty years before from Other barbarians, however, soon took the place of the Ostrogoths in the Balkan peninsula. It required four or five 1 who had endured a siege of three years behind the walls of Ravenna, only by promising to divide the rule of Italy with him and then murdering him at a friendly banquet. Last in our chronological and narrative survey of the
 * would have broken into the city but for the emperor's
 * the West Goths and twenty-eight years before from Attila.
 * years for Theodoric to conquer Italy. He got rid of Odoacer,