CHAPTER VII.

OF THE SLAVONIAN RACE.

SECTION I.-General Survey.

ALTHOUGH nations of Slavonian origin occupy the greater part of Europe to the eastward of the Vistula, and may be said to divide almost equally with the German race the northern region of this quarter of the world, their history is comparatively of recent date. Our acquaintance with the German nations commences three centuries before the Christian era. We do not distinctly recognise the Slavonians till nearly nine hundred years afterwards. We find them first described by name in the works of two celebrated writers. Procopius, the historian of Justinian's reign, terms them Eкλabñvo, or Sclaveni; and his contemporary Jornandes gives to the same people, or rather to a subdivision of them, the designation of Sclavini.* There were, however, nations known long before this period

* The name of Slavi or Slavonians, evidently identical with Exλabñvoɩ and Sclavini, is supposed to be of Slavonian origin, but it is differently explained and derived by Slavonian writers. By some it is said to mean "the illustrious,” or “ the glorious,” and is derived from "Slava," glory. Such is Karamsin's opinion. A more probable account of this name is given by Dobrowsky, who observes that the Slavonian language has three terms equivalent to the Greek ẞápßapos, these are Czud, Wlach, Niem. Czud or Tschud are foreign people, but particularly those supposed to be of Finnish extraction; Wlach, which is the Slavonian way of writing the word Welsh, means, as does that term among the Germans, "Gauls, or Italians;" Niem applies especially to the Teutonic nations. In antithesis with Niem, which is interpreted "Dumb or unintelligible people," is Slowane, "People of the word"— (slowo,) or "the speakers," a meaning which is still preserved in the name of the Slovaks and some other tribes of the same race. Slavi and Slavini or Slavonian were perhaps thence derived by a slight change of pronunciation.

in the eastern part of Europe, or in Sarmatia, from some of whom the Slavonian tribes have been supposed, perhaps with good reason, to be descended. The Venedæ, in the northern tracts near the coast of the Baltic, are by many writers regarded as the ancestors of the Slavonian race; others deduce that people from the ancient Sarmatæ. We shall take some notice of the arguments by which these opinions are defended after surveying the history of this family of nations from the period when they become clearly known and identified.

Jornandes distinguishes the whole Slavonian race by the collective term of Winidæ, a slight modification of the name of Wends, which is applied to all the nations of this family by their German neighbours. After describing Dacia, now Hungary, surrounded by lofty Alps, namely, the Carpathian chain, he adds, that on the left side of these mountains towards the north, and from the source of the river Vistula, an immense region lies, which is inhabited by the populous nation of the Winidæ. Different tribes of this race had, he says, particular epithets, but the names by which they were generally distinguished were those of Slavini and Antes. They were all subject to the Goths in the time of their great emperor Hermanrich, who was a contemporary of Julian. The Slavini were the western division: they occupied all the country between the Danube and the river Dniester or Tyras, and extended towards the north as far as the Vistula, termed by Jornandes the Viscla. To the eastward of the Sclavini and of the Dniester were the Antes, who reached down as far as the coast of the Euxine, and from the Tyras to the Dnieper or Borysthenes.*

In another passage of his work, containing a brief account of the war in which king Hermanrich subdued the Wends, Jornandes makes three divisions of that people, which he terms Veneti, Antes, and Sclavi. Veneti is probably only a more latinised form of Winida. He says expressly that all these three races were of one origin: " Post Herulorum cædem idem Hermanricus in Venetos arma commovit, qui, quamvis armis dispertiti, sed numerositate pollentes, primo resistere conabantur. Hi, ut ab initio expositionis, vel catalogo gentis dicere

* Jornandes de Rebus Geticis, apud Grotium.

cœpimus, ab una stirpe exorti, tria nunc nomina reddidere: id est Veneti, Antes, Sclavi: qui, quamvis nunc ita facientibus peccatis nostris ubique desæviant, tamen tunc omnes Hermanrici imperio serviere."

Procopius describes the same race under a parallel division : he terms the principal tribes Antæ and Sclaveni-kλabñvaι— but calls them collectively by a name not elsewhere found, namely, Spori.* "These nations," he says, "the Sclaveni and the Antæ, are not ruled by one chief, but live as of old, under a popular government, and therefore their proceedings, both in prosperity and adversity, are referred to public consultations. All common affairs, from ancient usage, are conducted in a similar manner among these barbarous tribes....They dwell in miserable cabins erected at considerable distances from each other, and not unfrequently change the places of their abode. When they go to war, most of them march against their enemies with little bucklers and darts in their hands, and without breastplates. Some of them have not even a coat or cloak, and wear no covering but greaves about their thighs, and in this state come to battle with their adversaries. Both tribes have the same language, which is extremely barbarous. Nor do they differ in any respect from each other in person: they are all of remarkably good stature and powerful. Their complexions and hair are neither white nor yellow, nor entirely inclined to black, but all of them are somewhat red-haired. They also live, like the Massagetæ, in a hardy manner, neglectful of comfort, and like them are always covered with a squalid filthiness. They are by no means cruel or malicious, but resemble the Hunns in their simple habits. In ancient times one name was given both to the Antæ and the Sclaveni : they were formerly called in common Spori, as I suppose, because they were scattered over the country in cabins separated from each other; owing to this circumstance they extend themselves over a wide tract of land: most of the territories on the Danube are in their possession."+

* Spori is probably an erroneous orthograpy of Sorbi, a name common to several tribes of the Slavonian family.

+ It is worth while to advert to the description given by Gibbon, chiefly from this passage of Procopius: "Four thousand six hundred villages," he says,

Procopius describes the Sclaveni and the Antæ as inhabiting the northern side of the Danube, whence they made frequent incursions into the provinces on the right bank of that river, frequently plundering in their expeditions some of the most populous and fertile countries of the Byzantine empire.

It appears from this account that the Slavi possessed in the time of Jornandes, that is, after the complete emigration of the Goths from their settlements on the Danube and to the northward of the Euxine, a great part of the countries which had been subdued by that people, and afterwards by the Hunns. From the Danube they reached northward across the Krapak or Carpathian chain into Poland and Russia. In the of Jornandes there were no Slavic tribes on the Adriatic, or in the countries situated to the southward of the Danube, which they occupied, as we shall find, at a somewhat later period.

age

Modern writers recognise the division of the whole Slavic race into two great branches, corresponding with those which are denominated in the above extracts Antes and Slavini. The former is the eastern branch, the latter comprehends the western tribes of this family. The correctness of this division was perceived and exemplified by the learned Bohemian abbot Dobrowsky, one of the most profound investigators of the Slavic history and literature and antiquities, whose views have been adopted with little variation by succeeding writers.*

"were scattered over the provinces of Russia and Poland; and the huts of the barbarians were hastily built of rough timber, in a country deficient both in stone and iron. Erected, or rather concealed, in the depths of forests, on the banks of rivers, on the edge of morasses, we may not perhaps without flattery compare them to the architecture of the beaver, which they resembled in a double issue, to the land and water, for the escape of the savage inhabitants, an animal less cleanly, less diligent, and less social than that marvellous quadruped. The fertility of the soil, rather than the labour of the natives, supplied the rustic plenty of the Sclavonians." The document whence Gibbon obtained the supposed number of Slavonian villages is a particular list in a curious MS. of the year 550, found in the library of Milan, which exercised the patience of the Count de Buet. Karamsin has examined this list, and he avers that it contains many names which are not Slavonian. He deems it unworthy of credit.

* Dobrowsky is followed by Adelung in the account of the Slavonic nations given in the second volume of the Mithridates, as likewise by Schaffarik, author of a learned work entitled "Geschichte der Slavischen Sprache und Literatur," published at Buda in 1826, and by the anonymous writer of an excellent memoir on

Dobrowsky enumerates the dialects spoken by all the various nations of the Slavonian race, as follows. To the eastern division, as he says, belong, first, the Russian and its dialects; second, the old Slavonian, the ecclesiastical or literary dialect of this language; third, the modern Slavonic or Illyrian dialect, spoken in Bulgaria, Servia, Bosnia, and Dalmatia; fourth, the Croatian; fifth, the Windish, spoken by the people termed Winds, in Carinthia, Carniola, Stiria or Steyermark, together with the variety of the Windish spoken in the county of Eisenberg. To the western branch of Slavonian dialects belong, first, the Slovakian; second, the Bohemian language; third and fourth, the Wendish, in Upper and Lower Lusatia ; fifth, the Polish, with the Silesian variety of that language.

Dobrowsky distinguishes the dialects belonging to these two classes of Slavonic idioms by certain particles, the use of which is common to a whole class, and unknown to the forms of speech which belong to the other class. I need not specify these, but shall merely remark that the dialects of the Slavonian language, though numerous and clearly marked, and even constituting groupes severally distinguishable, are yet by no means so remote from each other as are many idioms which are universally regarded as dialects of one language.

SECTION II. Of the Eastern Slavic Nations or Antes.

First branch.-Paragraph 1.-Of the Russians.

The Russians or Moscovites are one of the nations descended from that branch of the Slavonic race which is termed by Jornandes Antes, and by Dobrowsky, the eastern division of the Slavi. The Russians, as it is well known, are by far the most numerous and extensively spread, and they occupy the regions furthest to the East of all the nations belonging to this stock.* The first notices discovered of the Antes are in the the same subject in the American Biblical Repository, published at Andover, U.S., 1834.

The Wjætitsches or Vyætitsches, a Slavonian branch on the upper territory of the Oka, were, according to Nestor, the most eastern tribe of the whole Slavic race in the ninth century. (Nestor, Aelteste Jahrbücher, &c. Scherer. Müller's Ugr. Volkst. ii. 247.)