THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS 87 great Roman Empire by a distinctive name, and to call it the "Eastern" or "Greek" or "Byzantine Em- The Eastern, Ipire." The last adjective, which comes from By- B^zanti* J zantium, the former name for Constantinople, and Empire I is especially applied to the art and literature of this Empire during the Middle Ages, is the most distinctive. For we j have already spoken of the Eastern Empire before 476, and !the adjective "Greek" would not distinguish the culture from that of earlier Greece. The expression "Later Roman J Empire" has been used of this survival of Roman rule in I the East, but is a confusing phrase, since such expressions I as "the early Empire" and "the later Empire" are used of I the Roman Empire before 476 to distinguish its early period i of peace and prosperity from the later centuries of decline land invasion. We shall therefore henceforth speak of the government at Constantinople as the " Byzantine Empire." The Balkan peninsula much of the time was hardly more ! under the control of the Byzantine emperor than was western Europe. The East Goths or Ostrogoths The East 1 were now the chief disturbing element there, the 1 Balkans I although Bulgars, Huns, and Slavs also made and in Italy trouble at times. Various lands were assigned to the Goths ! and they devastated many others. When the walls of j Constantinople were damaged by an earthquake, they
- would have broken into the city but for the emperor's
I Isaurians, and they vainly attempted to cross over into i Asia Minor. At last, in 488, the emperor persuaded Theo- i doric, who by this time had become king of all the East - Goths, to march against Odoacer, and Constantinople was delivered from them as it had been eighty years before from
- the West Goths and twenty-eight years before from Attila.
Other barbarians, however, soon took the place of the Ostrogoths in the Balkan peninsula. It required four or five
- years for Theodoric to conquer Italy. He got rid of Odoacer,
1 who had endured a siege of three years behind the walls of Ravenna, only by promising to divide the rule of Italy with him and then murdering him at a friendly banquet. Last in our chronological and narrative survey of the
