Tactics, at
Upsal, 1664, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. l. iv. c. 8, tom. iii. p. 278,) a
scarce, and hitherto, to me, an inaccessible book.]

I have marked the faint and general outline of the Sclavonians and
Bulgarians, without attempting to define their intermediate boundaries,
which were not accurately known or respected by the Barbarians
themselves. Their importance was measured by their vicinity to the
empire; and the level country of Moldavia and Wallachia was occupied
by the Antes, [16] a Sclavonian tribe, which swelled the titles of
Justinian with an epithet of conquest. [17] Against the Antes he erected
the fortifications of the Lower Danube; and labored to secure
the alliance of a people seated in the direct channel of northern
inundation, an interval of two hundred miles between the mountains
of Transylvania and the Euxine Sea. But the Antes wanted power and
inclination to stem the fury of the torrent; and the light-armed
Sclavonians, from a hundred tribes, pursued with almost equal speed the
footsteps of the Bulgarian horse. The payment of one piece of gold for
each soldier procured a safe and easy retreat through the country of the
Gepidae, who commanded the passage of the Upper Danube. [18] The hopes
or fears of the Barbarians; their intense union or discord; the accident
of a frozen or shallow stream; the prospect of harvest or vintage; the
prosperity or distress of the Romans; were the causes which produced the
uniform repetition of annual visits, [19] tedious in the narrative, and
destructive in the event. The same year, and possibly the same month,
in which Ravenna surrendered, was marked by an invasion of the Huns or
Bulgarians, so dreadful, that it almost effaced the memory of their past
inroads. They spread from the suburbs of Constantinople to the Ionian
Gulf, destroyed thirty-two cities or castles, erased Potidaea, which
Athens had built, and Philip had besieged, and repassed the Danube,
dragging at their horses' heels one hundred and twenty thousand of the
subjects of Justinian. In a subsequent inroad they pierced the wall
of the Thracian Chersonesus, extirpated the habitations and the
inhabitants, boldly traversed the Hellespont, and returned to their
companions, laden with the spoils of Asia. Another party, which seemed
a multitude in the eyes of the Romans, penetrated, without opposition,
from the Straits of Thermopylae to the Isthmus of Corinth; and the last
ruin of Greece has appeared an object t