A. B. 600, No. 1. Paul Warnefrid
(l. iv. c. 38) relates their irruption into Friuli, and (c. 39) the
captivity of his ancestors, about A.D. 632. The Sclavi traversed the
Adriatic cum multitudine navium, and made a descent in the territory of
Sipontum, (c. 47.)]

[Footnote 30: Even the helepolis, or movable turret. Theophylact, l. ii.
16, 17.]

[Footnote 31: The arms and alliances of the chagan reached to
the neighborhood of a western sea, fifteen months' journey from
Constantinople. The emperor Maurice conversed with some itinerant
harpers from that remote country, and only seems to have mistaken a
trade for a nation Theophylact, l. vi. c. 2.]

[Footnote 32: This is one of the most probable and luminous conjectures
of the learned count de Buat, (Hist. des Peuples Barbares, tom. xi. p.
546--568.) The Tzechi and Serbi are found together near Mount Caucasus,
in Illyricum, and on the lower Elbe. Even the wildest traditions of the
Bohemians, &c., afford some color to his hypothesis.]

[Footnote 33: See Fredegarius, in the Historians of France, tom. ii. p.
432. Baian did not conceal his proud insensibility.]

The Persian alliance restored the troops of the East to the defence of
Europe: and Maurice, who had supported ten years the insolence of
the chagan, declared his resolution to march in person against the
Barbarians. In the space of two centuries, none of the successors of
Theodosius had appeared in the field: their lives were supinely spent in
the palace of Constantinople; and the Greeks could no longer understand,
that the name of emperor, in its primitive sense, denoted the chief of
the armies of the republic. The martial ardor of Maurice was opposed
by the grave flattery of the senate, the timid superstition of the
patriarch, and the tears of the empress Constantina; and they all
conjured him to devolve on some meaner general the fatigues and perils
of a Scythian campaign. Deaf to their advice and entreaty, the emperor
boldly advanced [34] seven miles from the capital; the sacred ensign
of the cross was displayed in the front; and Maurice reviewed, with
conscious pride, the arms and numbers of the veterans who had fought and
conquered beyond the Tigris. Anchialus was the last term of his progress
by sea and land; he solicited, without success, a miraculous answer
to his nocturnal prayers; his mind was confounded by the death of a
favorite horse, the encounter of a wild boar, a storm of wind and rain,
and the bi