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THE BYZANTINES. IO9 that their excessive interference in affairs purely Italian brought on the rupture between the East- ern and the Western churches. After the Goths came the Huns. These hordes, gradually advancing from Asia into Europe, made their appearance in the fifth cen- tury under Attila. He ravaged Thrace and Macedonia and imposed a humiliating peace upon the government of Constantinople, which happened to be represented at the time by a child and a woman, namely, Theodosius H. and his sister, the Empress Pulcheria. When, how- ever, in course of time the husband of the latter, the Emperor Marcia, ascended the throne, and Attila sent to demand the continuance of the tribute, he was met with the reply: " I have iron for Attila, but no gold!" Attila moved away westward, spreading devastation and terror around him, till the day when ^tius broke the power of the Huns upon the plain of Chalons- sur-Marne. In the sixth century the Avans poured down from the region of the Volga. In the time of Justinian II. and that of his successor, they dev- astated Byzantine provinces. Priscus, the gen- eral of the Emperor Maurice, at last subdued them in the year 600. But twenty years later