e various peoples in Russia were preparing for an
unknown future. The Bulgarians were occupying large spaces in the
South. The Finns, who had been driven by the Bulgarians from their
home upon the Volga, had centered in the Northwest near the Baltic,
their vigorous branches mingled more or less with other Asiatic races,
stretching here and there in the North, South, and East. The Russian
Slavs, as the parent stem is called, were distributing themselves along
a strip of territory running north and south along the line of the
Dnieper; while the terrible Turks, and still more terrible Tatar
tribes, hovered chiefly about the Black, the Caspian, and the Sea of
Azof. No dream of unity had come to anyone. But had there been a
forecast then of the future, it would have been said that the more
finely organized Finn would become the dominant race; or perhaps the
Bulgarian, who was showing capacity for empire-building; but certainly
not that helpless Slavonic people wedged in between their stronger
neighbors.

But there were no large ambitions yet. It meant nothing to them that
there was a new "Holy Roman Empire," and that Charlemagne had been
crowned at Rome successor of the Roman Caesars (800 A. D.); nor that an
England had just been consolidated into one kingdom. Nor did it
concern them that the Saracen had overthrown a Gothic empire in Spain
(710). For them these things did not exist. But they knew about
Constantinople. The Byzantine Empire was the sun which shone beyond
their horizon, and was for them the supreme type of power and earthly
splendor. Whatever ambitions and aspirations would in time awaken in
these Oriental breasts must inevitably have for their ideal the
splendid despotism of the Eastern Caesars. But that stage had not yet
been reached.

Although branches of the Slavonic race had separated from the parent
stem, bearing different names, the Bohemians on the Vistula, the
Poliani in what was to become Poland, the Lithuanians near the Baltic,
and minor tribes scattered elsewhere, from the Peloponnesus to the
Baltic, all had the same general characteristics. Their religion, like
that of all Aryan peoples, was a pantheism founded upon the phenomena
of nature. In their Pantheon there was a Volos, a solar deity who,
like the Greek Apollo, was inspirer of poets and protector of the
flocks--Perun, God of Thunder--Stribog, the father of the Winds, like
Aeolus--a Proteus who could assume all shapes--Centaur