the

ian, exarchate (often called so because the residence of the exarch was at Carthage) dates also from the end of the sixth century, time of Emperor Maurice. The African exarchate was founded on the same principles as its predecessor at Ravenna, and was endowed with similar unlimited power.

Naturally, it was only extreme necessity that could force the Emperor to create such an unlimited office as that of the exarch, who, granting the desire and the presence of certain conditions, could become a very dangerous rival of the Emperor himself. And in reality, as we shall see later, the African exarch will raise the banner of sedition against Phocas, and the son of the exarch will become emperor in the year 610.

As to the activities of the exarchs, it can be said that in Africa they were chosen very wisely by Maurice and demonstrated much skill and energy in governing the land, defending it successfully against the attacks of the natives. On the other hand, the exarchs of Ravenna were unable to overcome the Lombard menace.

According to the correct statement of the French scholar, Diehl,78 the two exarchates must be viewed as the beginning of the theme (province or district) organization, that provincial reform in the Byzantine Empire which started in the seventh century and spread gradually through the entire territory of the Empire. Its distinguishing feature was the combination of both military and civil authority in the hands of the ruler of the theme, usually called the strategos. And while the attacks of the Lombards and Moors produced such significant changes in the West and the South at the end of the sixth century, the attacks of the Persians and Arabs caused later the introduction of similar measures in the East, and the onslaught of the Slavs and Bulgars resulted in the same reforms in the Balkan peninsula.

The unsuccessful external policy of Phocas in regard to the Avars and the Persians, as well as the bloody terror which was the only means of maintaining his position, finally resulted in the revolt of the African exarch, Heraclius. Egypt soon joined in this revolt, and the African fleet under the direction of the exarch's son, also Heraclius by name, sailed forth to the capital, which deserted

78 Diehl, Études byzantines (Paris, 1905), p. 277 (L'origine du régime des thèmes).

Phocas and came over to the side of Heraclius. Phocas was captured and executed. Heraclius, the son, ascended the Byzantine throne and thus started a new dynasty.

The problem of the Slavs in Greece.-As a result of the investigation of sources on the Slavonic invasions into the Balkan peninsula in the second half of the sixth century, a theory of the complete slavonization of Greece arose in the early part of the nineteenth century and aroused heated disputes among scholars.

In the twenties of the last century, when all of Europe was seized with deep sympathy for the Greeks who raised the banner of revolt against the Turkish yoke, when these champions of freedom, through their heroic resistance, succeeded in maintaining their independence and created, with the help of European powers, an independent Greek kingdom, when enthusiastic European society viewed these heroes as sons of ancient Hellas and recognized in them the traits of Leonidas, Epaminondas, and Philopoemen-then it was that from a small German town came a voice which astonished Europe by declaring that not one drop of real Hellenic blood runs through the veins of the inhabitants of the new Greek kingdom; that all the magnanimous impulse of Europe to aid the cause of the children of sacred Hellas is founded on a misunderstanding; and that the ancient Greek element had long ago disappeared and become replaced by new, entirely alien ethnographical elements, chiefly of Slavonic and Albanian origin. The man who ventured to advance openly and boldly this new theory, which shocked to the utmost the beliefs of Europe of that day, was Fallmerayer, at that time professor of general history in one of the German lyceums.

In the first volume of his History of the Peninsula of Morea in the Middle Ages, which appeared in 1830, we read the following lines:

The Hellenic race in Europe is completely exterminated. The physical beauty, the sublimity of spirit, the simplicity of customs, the artistic creativeness, the races, cities, and villages, the splendor of columns and temples, even the name of the people itself, have disappeared from the Greek continent. A double layer of ruins and the mire of two new and different races covers the graves of the ancient Greeks. The immortal works of the spirit of Hellas and some ancient ruins on native Greek soil are now the only evidence of the fact that long ago there was such a people as the Hellenes. And were it not for

these ruins, grave-hills and mausoleums, were it not for the site and the wretched fate of its inhabitants, upon whom the Europeans of our day in an outburst of human emotions have poured all their tenderness, their admiration, their tears, and their eloquence, we would have to say that it was only an empty vision, a lifeless image, a being outside the nature of things that has aroused the innermost depths of their souls. For not a single drop of real pure Hellenic blood flows in the veins of the Christian population of modern Greece. A terrific hurricane had dispersed throughout the space between the Ister and most distant corner of the Peloponnesus a new tribe akin to the great Slavonic race. The Scythian Slavs, the Illyrian Arnauts, children of Northern lands, the blood relations of the Serbs and Bulgars, the Dalmatians and Moscovites-those are the people whom we call Greeks at present and whose genealogy, to their own surprise, we have traced back to Pericles and Philopoemen. . . . . A population with Slavonic facial features and with bow-shaped eyelashes and sharp features of Albanian mountain shepherds, of course, did not come from the blood of Narcissus, Alcibiades, and Antinous; and only a romantic eager imagination can still dream of a revival in our days of the ancient Hellenes with their Sophocleses and Platos."

It was Fallmerayer's opinion that the Slavonic invasions of the sixth century created a situation in which the Byzantine Empire, without actually having lost a single province, could consider as its subjects only the population of the seacoast provinces and fortified cities. The appearance of the Avars in Europe was an epoch-making event in the history of Greece because they brought with them the Slavs and spurred them on to conquer the sacred soil of Hellas and the Peloponnesus.

Fallmerayer based his theory primarily on the data found in the writings of the church historian of the late sixth century, Evagrius. In his history he writes: "The Avars twice made an inroad as far as the Long Wall and captured Singidunum (Belgrade), Anchialus, and all of Greece, with other towns and fortresses, laying everything waste with fire and sword, while the greater part of the forces were engaged in the East."'80

It was this mention of all of Greece in Evagrius that gave Fallmerayer a basis for speaking about the extermination of the Greek nation in the Peloponnesus. The "Avars” of Evagrius did not confuse this German scholar, for at that period the Avars attacked the

TO Fallmerayer, Geschichte der Halbinsel Morea während des Mittelalters (Stuttgart, 1830), I, iii-xiv.

80 Evagrii, Historia ecclesiastica, VI, 10 (ed. Bidez et Permentier, p. 228).

Byzantine Empire conjointly with the Slavs. This particular invasion Fallmerayer referred to the year 589. It did not exterminate the Greeks completely. The final blow to the Greek population came, as Fallmerayer believed, with the importation of the plague from Italy in the year 746. Reference to this is found in the famous quotation from the imperial writer of the tenth century, Constantine Porphyrogenitus, who, in speaking of the Peloponnesus in one of his works, remarked that after this terrible plague "the entire land was slavonized and became barbarian."81 The year when Emperor Constantine Copronymus died (775) may, in Fallmerayer's estimate, be considered the final date when the desolate land became once more, and at this time completely, filled with Slavs, who gradually covered Greece with their new cities, towns, and villages.82

In a later work Fallmerayer applied his conclusions to Attica without any real basis. In the second volume of his History of Peninsula of Morea he advanced a new Albanian theory, according to which the Greek-Slavs who inhabited Greece were displaced and crushed by Albanian settlers during the second quarter of the fourteenth century, so that, in his opinion, the Greek revolution of the nineteenth century was in reality the work of Albanian hands.

The first serious opponent of Fallmerayer was the German historian, Carl Hopf, who had studied thoroughly the problem of the Slavs in Greece and published a History of Greece from the Beginning of the Middle Ages to Our Own Times, in 1867. But Hopf fell into another extreme because of his desire to reduce the significance of the Slavonic element in Greece at all costs. In his judgment, Slavonic settlements in Greece proper existed only from the year 750 until 807; previous to 750 these settlements were not there. With regard to the slavonization of Attica, Hopf showed that Fallmerayer's opinions were based on a false document.

The abundant literature on this subject, often contradictory and inconsistent in its nature, gives enough basis, however, for concluding that Slavonic settlements of very considerable size existed

81 Constantini Porphyrogeniti, De Thematibus, II, 53. Sometimes we find another translation of that passage: "The entire land was reduced into slavery and became barbarian."

82 Fallmerayer, I, 208-10.

in Greece from the end of the sixth century, though they resulted neither in pan-slavonization nor in the complete extermination of the Greeks. Various sources mention the presence of Slavs in Greece, primarily in the Peloponnesus, during all of the Middle Ages up to the fifteenth century.

Scholars have frequently disputed the question of the originality of Fallmerayer's theory. His opinion was nothing new. Slavonic influence in Greece was spoken of before his time, though he was the first one to express his judgments sharply and openly. In recent years a Russian scholar has expressed the well-grounded opinion that the real originator of Fallmerayer's theory was Kopitar, a scholar of Slavonic studies in Vienna in the nineteenth century, who developed in his writings the idea of the significant part played by the Slavic element in the formation of the new Greek nation. True, Kopitar did not develop this theory in detail, but neither did he produce an antischolarly paradox in order to create a striking effect.83

"The extremes of Fallmerayer's theory," the same scholar says, "cannot be defended at present after a thorough study of the problems pertaining to it; but the theory itself, harmoniously and vividly expounded by the author, has a right to claim the attention even of those historians who disagree with it either entirely or partially."84 And truly, this theory, in spite of some very obvious exaggerations, has played a very important part in the science of history by directing scholarly attention to one of the most interesting and at the same time most obscure questions, namely, the problem of Slavs in Greece during the Middle Ages. The writings of Fallmerayer assume still wider general historical significance when viewed as the work of the first scholar who devoted his attention to the ethnographical transformations during the Middle Ages, not only in Greece, but in the Balkan peninsula in general.

Literature, learning, and art in the epoch of Justinian. Summary result.-Reflecting Justinian's multifarious activity, which amazed even his contemporaries, the epoch between 518 and 610 left an abundant heritage in various branches of learning and litera

83 N. Petrovsky, "On the Problem of the Genesis of Fallmerayer's Theory,” Journal of the Ministry of Public Instruction (November, 1913), pp. 143, 149 (in Russian).

84 Ibid., p. 104.