Slavs and Avars (500–800)

chapter 4 East European Dark Ages: Slavs and Avars (500–800)

In response to repeated raids into their lands “on the far side of the river” Danube, the Slavs,

thought it over among themselves, and said: “These Romani, now that they have crossed over and found booty, will in the future not cease com- ing over against us, and so we will devise a plan against them.” And so, therefore, the Slavs, or Avars, took counsel, and on one occasion when the Romani had crossed over, they laid ambushes and attacked and defeat- ed them. The aforesaid Slavs took the Roman arms and the rest of their military insignia and crossed the river and came to the frontier pass, and when the Romani who were there saw them and beheld the standards and accouterments of their own men they thought they were their own men, and so, when the aforesaid Slavs reached the pass, they let them through. Once through, they instantly expelled the Romani and took possession of the aforesaid city of Salona. There they settled and thereafter began gradually to make plundering raids and destroyed the Romani who dwelt in the plains and on the higher ground and took possession of their lands.1

Thus described Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, in the mid-10th century, the migration of the Slavs from their lands to the Balkans. The story is placed chronologically “once upon a time,” at some point between the reigns of Emperors Diocletian, who brought the “Romani” to Dalmatia, and Heraclius. There is no reason to treat the story as a trustworthy historical account, but it is clear that it is meant to explain the particular situation of Salona and the former province of Dalmatia.2 No historian seems to have noticed so far that Emperor Constantine VII’s account is, after all, the only written testimony of

1 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, On the Administration of the Empire 29, pp. 123 and 125. For the sources and interpretation of the story, see Dzino, Becoming Slav, pp. 111–12. 2 In the following chapter (30), those putting to the sword the city of Salona and making themselves master of “all the country of Dalmatia” are Avars, not Slavs (Constantine Porphyrogenitus, On the Administration of the Empire, p. 143).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004395190_005 42 chapter 4 an explicit migration of the Slavs. No 6th-century author mentions the migration of the Slavs to the Danube, or their movement across that river in order to settle permanently in the Balkan provinces of the early Byzantine Empire, or anywhere else in Europe.3 Procopius of Caesarea, writing about Sclavenes in 550 or 551 regarded the Sclavenes as “new,” not because they were newcom- ers, but because they represented a new threat to the empire. He knew that they lived “above the Ister [i.e., Danube] river not far from its banks.”4 In the 530s, magister militum per Thraciam Chilbudius, organized attacks against the Sclavenes, the Huns, and the Antes on the other side of the Danube, a clear in- dication that the former, at least, were not far from the frontier.5 In an attempt to establish a quasi-legendary origin for the Slavs, Jordanes, who finished his Getica in 550 or 551, Jordanes made them descendants from, or a sub-group of the Venethi known from Tacitus and other ancient sources. On the basis of a map with a conical or conic-like projection, which had the river Viscla (presumably Vistula) with a west-east direction, he placed the Sclavenes between the city of Noviodunum (Isaccea, in southeastern Romania) “and the lake Mursianus to the Danaster” (most likely, the river Dniester), to the south, “and northward as far as the Viscla.”6 The description of the lands of inhabited by Sclavenes, however, contains no explanation of how and when they have come to occupy those lands. No migration of the Sclavenes is mentioned in the Getica that could possibly be linked to that territorial expansion. Nor have any other 6th-century authors anything to say about the migration of the Slavs, even though some of them, such as Agathias, describe the migration of other peoples (e.g., the Cutrigurs).7 Like Procopius, Pseudo-Caesarius, Menander the Guardsman, and the author of the Strategikon all mention the Sclavenes in relation to the Danube.8 Inside the Carpathian Basin, independent Slavs are first mentioned by the Frankish chronicler known as Fredegar, who wrote around 660.9 He knew that

3 For a contrary, but utterly wrong opinion, see Fusek, “Drevnee slavianskoe naselenie,” p. 153. 4 Procopius of Caesarea, Wars 5.27.2, p. 252. See also Curta, Making of the Slavs, p. 38. 5 Procopius of Caesarea, Wars 7.14.2–5, pp. 262 and 264. The Sclavenes are those who am- bushed and killed Chilbudius during one of his expeditions across the Danube. See Sarantis, Justinian’s Balkan Wars, p. 86. 6 Jordanes, Getica V 35, p. 63. For the interpretation of this passage, see Curta, “Hiding behind a piece of tapestry.” 7 Agathias, History 5.11.5, p. 177. For the interpretation of that passage, see Curta, “The north- western region of the Black Sea,” p. 151. 8 Curta, Making of the Slavs, pp. 44, 47, and 188. 9 Several sources (Theophylact Simocatta, Paul the Deacon, the Miracles of St. Demetrius) mention Slavs inside the territory controlled by the Avars beginning with the late 6th century. However, neither Procopius of Caesarea, nor Martin of Braga can be cited as sources for the