bordinate honors, and the popular worship was expressed in vows and
sacrifice. The Sclavonians disdained to obey a despot, a prince, or even
a magistrate; but their experience was too narrow, their passions too
headstrong, to compose a system of equal law or general defence. Some
voluntary respect was yielded to age and valor; but each tribe or
village existed as a separate republic, and all must be persuaded where
none could be compelled. They fought on foot, almost naked, and except
an unwieldy shield, without any defensive armor; their weapons of
offence were a bow, a quiver of small poisoned arrows, and a long rope,
which they dexterously threw from a distance, and entangled their enemy
in a running noose. In the field, the Sclavonian infantry was dangerous
by their speed, agility, and hardiness: they swam, they dived, they
remained under water, drawing their breath through a hollow cane; and
a river or lake was often the scene of their unsuspected ambuscade. But
these were the achievements of spies or stragglers; the military art was
unknown to the Sclavonians; their name was obscure, and their conquests
were inglorious. [15]

[Footnote 11: I adopt the appellation of Bulgarians from Ennodius, (in
Panegyr. Theodorici, Opp. Sirmond, tom. i. p. 1598, 1599,) Jornandes,
(de Rebus Geticis, c. 5, p. 194, et de Regn. Successione, p. 242,)
Theophanes, (p. 185,) and the Chronicles of Cassiodorus and Marcellinus.
The name of Huns is too vague; the tribes of the Cutturgurians and
Utturgurians are too minute and too harsh. * Note: The Bulgarians
are first mentioned among the writers of the West in the Panegyric on
Theodoric by Ennodius, Bishop of Pavia. Though they perhaps took part in
the conquests of the Huns, they did not advance to the Danube till
after the dismemberment of that monarchy on the death of Attila. But the
Bulgarians are mentioned much earlier by the Armenian writers. Above
600 years before Christ, a tribe of Bulgarians, driven from their native
possessions beyond the Caspian, occupied a part of Armenia, north of the
Araxes. They were of the Finnish race; part of the nation, in the fifth
century, moved westward, and reached the modern Bulgaria; part remained
along the Volga, which is called Etel, Etil, or Athil, in all the Tartar
languages, but from the Bulgarians, the Volga. The power of the eastern
Bulgarians was broken by Batou, son of Tchingiz Khan; that of the
western will appear in the course of the histor