this defeat, the name and the nation
are lost during a century and a half; and it may be suspected that the
same or a similar appellation was revived by strange colonies from the
Borysthenes, the Tanais, or the Volga. A king of the ancient Bulgaria,
bequeathed to his five sons a last lesson of moderation and concord.
It was received as youth has ever received the counsels of age and
experience: the five princes buried their father; divided his subjects
and cattle; forgot his advice; separated from each other; and wandered
in quest of fortune till we find the most adventurous in the heart of
Italy, under the protection of the exarch of Ravenna. [4] But the stream
of emigration was directed or impelled towards the capital. The modern
Bulgaria, along the southern banks of the Danube, was stamped with
the name and image which it has retained to the present hour: the new
conquerors successively acquired, by war or treaty, the Roman provinces
of Dardania, Thessaly, and the two Epirus; [5] the ecclesiastical
supremacy was translated from the native city of Justinian; and, in
their prosperous age, the obscure town of Lychnidus, or Achrida,
was honored with the throne of a king and a patriarch. [6] The
unquestionable evidence of language attests the descent of the
Bulgarians from the original stock of the Sclavonian, or more properly
Slavonian, race; [7] and the kindred bands of Servians, Bosnians,
Rascians, Croatians, Walachians, [8] &c., followed either the standard
or the example of the leading tribe. From the Euxine to the Adriatic, in
the state of captives, or subjects, or allies, or enemies, of the Greek
empire, they overspread the land; and the national appellation of the
slaves [9] has been degraded by chance or malice from the signification
of glory to that of servitude. [10] Among these colonies, the
Chrobatians, [11] or Croats, who now attend the motions of an Austrian
army, are the descendants of a mighty people, the conquerors and
sovereigns of Dalmatia. The maritime cities, and of these the infant
republic of Ragusa, implored the aid and instructions of the Byzantine
court: they were advised by the magnanimous Basil to reserve a small
acknowledgment of their fidelity to the Roman empire, and to appease,
by an annual tribute, the wrath of these irresistible Barbarians. The
kingdom of Crotia was shared by eleven Zoupans, or feudatory lords;
and their united forces were numbered at sixty thousand horse and
one hundred