itable
avalanche overwhelmed it from without. In the seventh century A.D. there
was another religious eruption in the Semitic world, this time in the
heart of Arabia, where Hellenism had hardly penetrated, and under the
impetus of Islam the Oriental burst his bounds again after a thousand
years. Syria was reft away from the Empire, and Egypt, and North Africa as
far as the Atlantic, and their political severance meant their cultural
loss to Greek civilization. Between the Koran and Hellenism no fusion was
possible. Christianity had taken Hellenism captive, but Islam gave it no
quarter, and the priceless library of Alexandria is said to have been
condemned by the caliph's order to feed the furnaces of the public baths.

[Footnote 1: A.D. 325.]

[Footnote 2: Completed A.D. 538.]

While Hellenism was thus cut short in the east, a mortal blow was struck
at its heart from the north. The Teuton had raided and passed on, but the
lands he had depopulated were now invaded by immigrants who had come to
stay. As soon as the last Goth and Lombard had gone west of the Isonzo,
the Slavs poured in from the north-eastern plains of Europe through the
Moravian gap, crossed the Danube somewhere near the site of Vienna, and
drifted down along the eastern face of the Alps upon the Adriatic
littoral. Rebuffed by the sea-board, the Slavonic migration was next
deflected east, and filtered through the Bosnian mountains, scattering the
Latin-speaking provincials before it to left and right, until it debouched
upon the broad basin of the river Morava. In this concentration-area it
gathered momentum during the earlier part of the seventh century A.D., and
then burst out with irresistible force in all directions, eastward across
the Maritsa basin till it reached the Black Sea, and southward down the
Vardar to the shores of the Aegean.

Beneath this Slavonic flood the Greek race in Europe was engulfed. A few
fortified cities held out, Adrianople on the Maritsa continued to cover
Constantinople; Salonika at the mouth of the Vardar survived a two hundred
years siege; while further south Athens, Korinth, and Patras escaped
extinction. But the tide of invasion surged around their walls. The Slavs
mastered all the open country, and, pressing across the Korinthian Gulf,
established themselves in special force throughout the Peloponnesos. The
thoroughness of their penetration is witnessed to this day by the Slavonic
names which still cling to at least a