Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/90

70 THE DECLINE AND FALL but the savages of the north eradicated what yet remamed of their sickly and withered roots. In this irruption, the countrj^ and the inhabitants were transformed ; the Grecian blood was contaminated ; and the proudest nobles of Peloponnesus were branded with the names of foreigners and slaves. By the dili- gence of succeeding princes, the land was in some measure purified from the barbarians ; and the humble remnant was bound by an oath of obedience, tribute, and militar}- service, which they often renewed and often violated. The siege of Patras was formed bv a singular concurrence of the Sclavonians of Peloponnesus and the Saracens of Africa. In their last distress, a pious fiction of the approach of the praetor of Corinth revived the courage of the citizens. Their sally was bold and successful ; the strangers embarked, the rebels submitted, and the glory of the day was ascribed to a phantom or a stranger, who fought in the foremost ranks under the character of St. Andrew the Apostle. The shrine which contained his relics was decorated with the trophies of victory, and the captive race was for eer devoted to the ser- vice and vassalage of the metropolitan church of Patras. By the revolt of two Sclavonian tribes in the neighbourhood of Helos and Lacedaemon, the peace of the peninsula was often disturbed. They sometimes insulted the weakness, and some- times resisted the oppression, of the Byzantine government, till at lengtli tlie approach of their hostile brethren extorted a golden bull to define the rights and obligations of the Ezzerites and Milengi, whose annual tribute was defined at twelve hundred pieces of gold. From these strangers the Imperial geographer has accurately distinguished a domestic and perhaps original race, who, in some degree, might derive their blood from the much- Freemen of injured Helots. The liberalitv of the Romans, and especially of Augustus, had enmuichised the maritime cities from the dominion of Sparta ; and the continuance of the same benefit ennobled them with the title of Eleiithero-ov Free-Laconians.^ In the time of Constantine Porphyrogenitus they had acquired the name of Maiiivtcs, under which they dishonour the claim of liberty by the inhuman pillage of all that is shipwrecked on their rocky shores. Their territory, barren of corn, but fruitful of olives, extended to the Cape of Malea ; they accepted a chief or prince from the Byzantine praetor, and a light tribute of four hundred pieces of gold was the badge of their immunity rather i^Strabon. Geopraph. 1. viii. p. 562 [5, § 5]. Pausanias, Giaec. Descriptio, 1. iii. c. 21, p. 264, 26v I'lin. Mist. Nalur. 1. iv, g. 3, Laconia