jottings to give a detailed analysis of M. Pic's work; but I may be able with its help, and with that of the other authorities above referred to, to construct a rapid sketch of the history of the Wallachs south of the Danube.

It must be recollected that the number of Roman colonies established in the Balkan peninsula was not considerable; and though through them Latin obtained as the official language a footing in the country, it may well be doubted whether their influence was sufficient to Romanise the whole populations of Thrace. There are, in fact, many proofs to the contrary: the Greek colonies along the shores of the Ægean preserved their nationality throughout the days of Roman rule; the survival of the old Illyrian tongue in Albania shows that in that part of the peninsula Roman influences were never paramount; the fact that many Thracian tribes preserved their national organisation under their own rulers up to the third century also tends to prove that Thrace was never completely Romanised. On the other hand, on the northern bank of the Danube, in the province of Dacia Trajana, the California of the ancients, which attracted colo

nists from all parts of the empire, the Roman element must have rapidly acquired a complete preponderancy, and absorbed the native population. But this wealthy province was the first to fall under the weight of barbarian invasions. In 271 the Emperor Aurelian was obliged formally to cede it to the Goths, after carrying the greater part of the population across the Danube into the southern province of Dacia Riparia. The sacrifice, however, only stemmed the torrent for a while. One wave pushed the other forward. The Huns followed the Goths across the Danube, and devastated the whole of the peninsula; and when Attila's empire was broken up, the Huns only disappeared to make room for the Slavs and the Bulgars. Towns and villages. disappeared; the fields were deserted; whole nations were destroyed. During this period of confusion, anarchy, and desolation, what became of the Roman colonies and the Romanised Thracians of the peninsula? Facts must here give way to conjecture; and the most unreasonable conjecture is certainly not that, flying before the storms which broke over the peninsula from the north and the north-east, they

sought refuge in the wildest parts of the mountain-ranges which intersect these regions; and that the Wallachs, who appear in the pages of history about the beginning of the tenth century, are the descendants of these fugitives, who exchanged under dire necessity the culture and refinement of town life for the hardships of a nomadic existence, preserving only through the vicissitudes of fortune the language which they inherited from their ancestors.

The first allusion to the Wallachs is generally considered to be found in an episode of the Byzantine expedition against the Avars in 579, related by Theophanes. A soldier, seeing a packanimal drop its burden, turned to a muleteer, saying, "Torna, torna, fratre!" The muleteer did not understand him, but some of the soldiers did, and fancying the enemy was upon them, cried out "Torna, torna!" and fled, creating a panic throughout the army. But when it is recollected how many mercenaries from all parts of the world served in the Byzantine armies, it surely does not absolutely follow that the sentence in question was Wallach; nor, even if that were proved, would it show that the popu

lation of the peninsula was at that time Wallach, -the less so that the muleteer, probably a man of the country, to whom the sentence was addressed, did not even understand it. The first authentic mention of the Wallachs occurs in 976, where a colony of them between Kastoria and Prespa, under the Kambouni, is alluded to in a Golden Bull of the Emperor Basil II. In the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries other colonies of Wallachs are mentioned in the Rhodope, under the Balkans, in Thrace, in Ætolia, and in Epirus. In Thessaly, which, together with the adjoining districts of Epirus and Macedonia, was called from the twelfth to the fifteenth century Great Wallachia, the Wallachs formed the mass of the population; and it was there that Benjamin of Tudela met them in the course of his travels. But both his description of them, and the information to be gathered from other medieval sources, show conclusively that their colonies were the mere temporary settlements of nomadic tribes, under complete subjection to the ruling races, Greek or Slav, and possessing no national cohesion. So conclusive, indeed, is the evidence on this

point, that it would scarcely have occurred to any one to claim any political influence for the Wallachs of that period, had not the Chronicles of Niketas Khoniates and the historians of the Crusades appeared to give the Wallachs, by the free, if erratic, introduction of their name, an almost preponderating share in the revival of the second Bulgarian kingdom, and its struggles against the Byzantines.

The Byzantine empire had succeeded, during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, in reducing once more the Bulgarians to subjection. The Emperor Basil II., surnamed Bulgaroktonos, after thirty years' fighting, broke up the powerful kingdom founded by the Czar Simeon, and Thrace was once more restored to the Byzantine empire. But the peace which was maintained by the strong hand of the Comnenes up to the fall of the last of that dynasty, failed to restore permanent strength to the rotten fabric of the empire. No sooner had the Emperor Andronicus lost his throne (1185) than a vast insurrection broke out, under the leadership of the two brothers Peter and Asen, throughout the northern and central portions