Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/178

158 THE DECLINE AND FALL The vigour of his mind aud body was fortified by the hardships of a military and savage life. Wrapt in a bear-skin Swatoslaus usually slept on the ground, his head reclining on a saddle ; his diet was coarse and frugal, and, like the heroes of Homer,'^ his meat (it was often horse-flesh) was broiled or roasted on the coals. The exercise of war gave stability and discipline to his army ; and it may be presumed that no soldier was permitted to [A.D.967] transcend the luxury of his chief. By an embassy from Ni- cephorus, the Greek emperor, he was moved to undertake the [Circa £67,000] conqucst of Bulgaria, and a gift of fifteen hundred pounds of gold was laid at his feet to defray the expense, or reward the toils, of the expedition.^ An aniiy of sixty thousand men was as- sembled and embarked ; they sailed from the Borysthenes to the Danube ; their landing was effected on the Ma^sian shore ; and, after a sharp encounter, the swords of the Russians prevailed against the arrows of the Bulgarian horse. The vanquished [Jan 30 A,D. king; sunk into the grave ; his children were made captive ; ^^ and 969] " ^This resemblance may be clearly seen in the ninth book of the Iliad (205-221), in the minute detail of the cookeiy of Achilles. By such a picture a modern epic poet would disgrace his work and disgust his reader ; but the Greek verses are har- monious ; a dead language can seldom appear low or familiar ; and at the distance of t'o thousand se en hundred years we are amused with the primitive manners of antiquity. ^ [The Bulgarian Tsar Peter, successor of Simeon , made a treaty with the Empire in A.D.927. He stipulated to prevent the Hungarians from invading the Empire, and in return he was to receive an annual subsidy ; and the contract was sealed by his marriage with the granddaughter of Romanus. Peter, a feeble prince, wished to preserve the treaty, but he was not able to prevent some Magj'ar invasions (A. D. 959, 962, 967) ; and the strong and victorious Xicephorus refused to pay the subsidies any longer. He saw that the time had come to reassert the power of the Empire against Bulgaria. He advanced against Peter in 967 (this is the right date ; others place it in 966), but unaccountably retreated without accomplishing anything. He then sent Calocyres to Kiev to instigate Sviatoslav against Bulgaria. The envoy was a traitor, and conceived the idea of making Sviatoslav's conquest of Bulgaria a means of ascend- ing himself the throne of Constantinople. Sviatoslav conquered the north of Bulgaria in the same year (Nestor, c. 32), and established his residence at Peristh- lava (near Tulcea, on south arm of the Danube delta ; to be distinguished from Great Peristhlava, see below, note 90). Drster (Silistria) alone held out against the Russians. Sviatoslav wintered at Peristhlava, but was obliged to return to Russia in the following year (968) to deliver Kiev, which was besieged by the Patzinaks (Nestor, c. 33). A few months later his mother Olga died (id. c. 34), and then Sviatoslav returned to Bulgaria, which he purposed to make the centre of his do- minions. Leo Diaconus (v. c. 2, 3 ; p. 77-79) and the Greek writers do not dis- tinguish the first and second Russian invasions of Sviatoslav ; hence the narrative of Gibbon is confused. For these events see Jirecek, Gesch. der Bulgaren, p. 186-7 '. Hilferding, Gesch. der Bulgaren, i. 126; and (very fully told in) Schlumberger, Nic^phore Phocas, c. xii. and c. xv.] 85 [Before Peter's death, in Jan. A. D. 969, Nicephorus, aware of the treachery of his ambassador Calocyres who had remained with Sviatoslav, and afraid of the ambition of the Russian prince, changed his policy ; and, though he had called Russia in to