Online Book Reader

Home Category

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Edward Gibbon [1858]

By Root 21937 0
were still frequent and dangerous; and it was not before the close of the tenth century that the freedom and sovereignty of the Gulf were effectually vindicated by the Venetian republic. ^12 The ancestors of these Dalmatian kings were equally removed from the use and abuse of navigation: they dwelt in the White Croatia, in the inland regions of Silesia and Little Poland, thirty days' journey, according to the Greek computation, from the sea of darkness.

[Footnote 2: Hist. vol. iv. p. 11.]

[Footnote 3: Theophanes, p. 296 - 299. Anastasius, p. 113. Nicephorus, C. P. p. 22, 23. Theophanes places the old Bulgaria on the banks of the Atell or Volga; but he deprives himself of all geographical credit by discharging that river into the Euxine Sea.]

[Footnote 4: Paul. Diacon. de Gestis Langobard. l. v. c. 29, p. 881, 882. The apparent difference between the Lombard historian and the above- mentioned Greeks, is easily reconciled by Camillo Pellegrino (de Ducatu Beneventano, dissert. vii. in the Scriptores Rerum Ital. tom. v. p. 186, 187) and Beretti, (Chorograph. Italiae Medii Aevi, p. 273, &c. This Bulgarian colony was planted in a vacant district of Samnium, and learned the Latin, without forgetting their native language.]

[Footnote 5: These provinces of the Greek idiom and empire are assigned to the Bulgarian kingdom in the dispute of ecclesiastical jurisdiction between the patriarchs of Rome and Constantinople, (Baronius, Annal. Eccles. A.D. 869, No. 75.)]

[Footnote 6: The situation and royalty of Lychnidus, or Achrida, are clearly expressed in Cedrenus, (p. 713.) The removal of an archbishop or patriarch from Justinianea prima to Lychnidus, and at length to Ternovo, has produced some perplexity in the ideas or language of the Greeks, (Nicephorus Gregoras, l. ii. c. 2, p. 14, 15. Thomassin, Discipline de l'Eglise, tom. i. l. i. c. 19, 23;) and a Frenchman (D'Anville) is more accurately skilled in the geography of their own country, (Hist. de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xxxi.)]

[Footnote 7: Chalcocondyles, a competent judge, affirms the identity of the language of the Dalmatians, Bosnians, Servians, Bulgarians, Poles, (de Rebus Turcicis, l. x. p. 283,) and elsewhere of the Bohemians, (l. ii. p. 38.) The same author has marked the separate idiom of the Hungarians.

Note: The Slavonian languages are no doubt Indo-European, though an original branch of that great family, comprehending the various dialects named by Gibbon and others. Shafarik, t. 33. - M. 1845.]

[Footnote 8: See the work of John Christopher de Jordan, de Originibus Sclavicis, Vindobonae, 1745, in four parts, or two volumes in folio. His collections and researches are useful to elucidate the antiquities of Bohemia and the adjacent countries; but his plan is narrow, his style barbarous, his criticism shallow, and the Aulic counsellor is not free from the prejudices of a Bohemian.

Note: We have at length a profound and satisfactory work on the Slavonian races. Shafarik, Slawische Alterthumer. B. 2, Leipzig, 1843. - M. 1845.]

[Footnote 9: Jordan subscribes to the well-known and probable derivation from Slava, laus, gloria, a word of familiar use in the different dialects and parts of speech, and which forms the termination of the most illustrious names, (de Originibus Sclavicis, pars. i. p. 40, pars. iv. p. 101, 102)]

[Footnote 10: This conversion of a national into an appellative name appears to have arisen in the viiith century, in the Oriental France, where the princes and bishops were rich in Sclavonian captives, not of the Bohemian, (exclaims Jordan,) but of Sorabian race. From thence the word was extended to the general use, to the modern languages, and even to the style of the last Byzantines, (see the Greek and Latin Glossaries and Ducange.) The confusion of the Servians with the Latin Servi, was still more fortunate and familiar, (Constant. Porphyr. de Administrando, Imperio, c. 32, p. 99.)]

[Footnote 11: The emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, most accurate for his own times, most fabulous for preceding

Return Main Page Previous Page Next Page

®Online Book Reader