east and west, and the march-land of east | trian, have remained outposts of civilizaand west has of necessity been also the tion, fringing a mainland which has always march-land of rival empires and rival lagged behind them. And at two periods Churches. But these coasts and islands again, difference of race and language, have been a march-land in yet a further difference of higher and lower civilizasense than this. Their history has made tion, have been further aggravated by them in all ages the border, sometimes of difference of religion. That the land has civilization against actual barbarism, always long been a debatable land between the of a higher civilization against a lower. Eastern and Western Churches is not all. And if their position has made them the Dalmatia has twice been a border-land of march of the two great divisions of the Christendom itself. The Slavonic immiChristian Church, it has also made them grants of the seventh century were heathe march of Christendom itself, first thens; some of them long remained so. against heathendom and afterwards against | In the tenth century one Dalmatian disIslam. A glance at the map will at once trict, the Narentine coast between Spalato show that the Dalmatian land, whose and Ragusa, together with some of the islands and peninsulas and inland seas neighboring islands, bore the significant make it almost a secondary Hellas, must name of Pagania.* The heathen settlehave been from the earliest times the seat ments gradually grew into Christian kingof a higher civilization than the boundless doms, but a later revolution changed those mainland from which its mountains fence Christian kingdoms into subject provinces it off. But here again its position as a of the Mussulman. As once against the border-land comes in with tenfold force. heathen, so now against the Turk, DalDalmatia, with all her islands and havens, matia became one of the frontier lands of could never be as Greece, or even as Italy, Christendom. At some points the Chrisbecause she did not in the same way stand tian fringe is narrow indeed; at two points free from the vast mainland behind her. it is altogether broken through. The mounThat mainland, on the other hand, has tain wall whose slopes begin in the streets been actually checked in the path of civil- of Ragusa fences off the land of the Aposization by the fringe of higher civilization tolic King from the land where the choice which has been spread along its edge. of the Christian lies only between bondage Civilization and barbarism have been and revolt. And at two points of the brought into the closest contact with one inland seas of Dalmatia, one of them fitanother, without either distinctly gaining tingly within the bounds of the old Pathe upper hand. The barbarian has been gania, the dominion of the misbeliever checked in his calling as destroyer; the reaches down to the Hadriatic shore itself. civilized man has been checked in his call- The Dalmatian shore itself is therefore ing of enlightener. The barbarian has not pre-eminently a border-land; but in that been able, as in lands further to the east, character it only carries out in a higher to force his way through the line of civil- degree the character of the mainland which ization which has hemmed him in; nor has it fringes. The whole of Illyricum is, and the civilized man been able to force his always has been, in some sort a borderway over the mountain barrier which has land. Its character as such is emphatically doomed the lands to the east of it to an marked in the geography of the transiabiding state of at least comparative bar- tional days of the Roman empire. In that barism. The old Illyrian became the great division into prefectures which subject of the Roman; his land be- formed the groundwork of the somewhat came the highway and the battle-field of the Goth; his name and race and tongue were swept away or driven southward by the Slave. The Slave again has been brought into bondage by the Turk. But, during all these changes, the cities and islands, Greek, Roman, Venetian, or Aus

whose works, "De Thematibus" and "De Adminis‐ The Emperor Constantine Porphyrogennêtos, from trando Imperio," we get the fullest account of Dalmatia and the neighboring lands, as they stood in the tion) the limits of Pagania with great accuracy. It is tenth century, defines (cap. 30, p. 145 of the Bonn edithe region of the famous Narentine pirates, and takes in the present bit of Turkish territory at Klek.

that new Christian State makes it no longer the end of Christendom, it still is

-for the two points of Turkish coast at Klek and Sutorina are hardly worth counting as exceptions- -the beginning of Islam and the end of continuous Christendom. North-west of that point we are still in the borderland of eastern and western Europe; south of it we are undoubtedly in the eastern division. While the Dalmatian coast itself has been as it were an outlying piece of the West thrown out on the eastern side of the gulf, the mainland to the back of it shares, in a less degree, the border character of the coast itself. The whole land along the Danube and its tributaries, from the border of Rætia to the border of Thrace in the later sense, was

later division of the empire into East and | dation of the modern Greek kingdom, West, the name Illyricum has two mean- actually the end of Christendom along ings. There is the Illyricum of the east, those coasts. And though the birth of which has strangely spread itself southwards so as to take in Macedonia, and that in a sense in which Macedonia takes in Greece. There is the Illyricum of the west, which in like manner stretches itself northwards, so as to take in a large part of the lands between the Danube and the Alps. Of the western Illyricum, the Dalmatian coast forms a part; and it should be noted that the line between eastern and western Illyricum is drawn nearly at the point which separates the modern Dalmatian kingdom from the Ottoman province of Albania. That line is not an arbitrary line. The point at which the continuous, or nearly continuous, dominion of Venice stopped is one which is clearly marked in the coast-line. At that point the coast, which so far stretches in a slant-all Illyricum in one sense or other of that ing direction from north-west to south-east, turns in a direction nearly due south. North-east of that point, Venice was mistress of the whole coast, save only the dominions of Ragusa and the two points where Ragusa had deemed that the crescent of Mahomet was a less dangerous neighbour than the lion of Saint Mark. In the possession of that coast, the Austrian archduke and Hungarian king has succeeded the two seafaring commonwealths. The dominions of Venice had not always ended at that point. South of it she had at different times held a domin-moment. Magyar and Catholic Hungary, ion, sometimes larger, sometimes smaller, called on by her geographical position to both among the islands and on the main- be, as of old, the champion of Christenland. Even down to her fall, besides her dom, cannot bring herself freely to cast in possession of Corfu and the other so-called her lot with her Slavonic and Orthodox Ionian islands, she still kept one or two neighbours. The Orthodox Slave has detached points on the mainland. But sometimes deliberately deemed that the the point of which we speak, the point so rule of the unbelieving Turk was less to clearly marked on the map, was the end of be dreaded than the rule of the Catholic that abiding and nearly continuous domin- Magyar. The orthodox Slave, placed on ion in which the Apostolic King has suc- the borders of so many political and religceeded her. That point, once the fron- ious systems, has become the subject, tier of the Eastern and Western Empires, sometimes of the western Cæsar, someis now the frontier of the Slave and the times of the Hungarian king, sometimes Albanian; that is to say, it is the boundary of the Venetian commonwealth, someof the land within which the Slave thor- times of the Turkish sultan. His indeoughly and permanently supplanted the pendent being, which once took a form old Illyrian whom the Albanian repre- which promised to become the dominant The same point was, till the foun- | power of south-eastern Europe, is now shut

sents.

ambiguous word. It has been within them, as a great border-land, that the greatest fluctuations to and fro have taken place between West and East in their various forms; between the Teuton and the eastern Slave; between both and the Magyar; between the Eastern and the Western Church; between both and the pagan and the Mussulman. The old Rome strove hard for the spiritual dominion of the Bulgarian; she won the spiritual dominion of the Magyar. Of this last papal triumph we see the political results at this

up in the little principality on the Black | Hellenic culture by the formal right of Mountain, that gallant outpost of Christen- sharing in the Isthmian games. Rome dom, where the border character of the thus became a power east of the Hadriwhole land and its people, gathered as it were together on the very march of Christendom and Islam, stands out more clearly than on almost any other spot of the Illyrian land.

Roman world. The land was now Roman; | power, and even to withstand every prayer its chief cities were Roman colonies. In which called on him to take the burthen due time all its inhabitants, along with the other inhabitants of the Roman world, were admitted to the name and rights of Romans. And now it became clear that the Illyrian provinces, and the Dalmatian coast-land above all, had received a special and important mission in the history of Rome and of the world.

of empire again upon his shoulders, Through the whole of the time when emperors followed each other so fast, and when, amidst all confusions and treasons, so many found their way to the throne by undoubted merit, it was among the barbarian peasants of the Illyrian frontier-land that Rome found her most valiant defenders and her wisest rulers.

The first of the barbarian emperors came indeed from the lands east of the Hadriatic, but from a province which no

within the limits of the land with which we are dealing. The first Maximin, born in Thrace, sprung, as it was said, of a Gothic father and an Alan mother, finds no place in our Illyrían series. His reign is simply a sign that old distinctions were broken down; though it would seem that the character of his reign caused a reaction which left its mark in the choice of the more strictly Roman emperors who again followed him for a while. The line of emperors whose places of birth can be placed within Illyria in the wider sense begins more worthily with Decius. His birth in Pannonia brings him, in the laxer geography of the age, within the Illyrian border, and he stands forth as the first of the long line of champions of the Roman dominion against the Goth.* The series which begins with Decius ends with Belisarius and Narses. The long list of the defenders of Rome takes in men from every province and of every race, till in Belisarius the championship has come back, not indeed to the same race, but to the same corner of the world. The work which has been begun by the Illyrian, perhaps by the Roman settled on Illyrian soil, was carried on by the Spaniard and the Vandal, and ended by the Slave and the Persian. But before Rome received her last Illyrian Cæsar, the days came when Valerian was led captive before the throne of Sapor, and when the Roman dominion was split in pieces by those endless pretenders, tyrants in the Roman. sense of the word, who, by a somewhat forced analogy, reminded men of the Thirty at Athens. Out of this anarchy and chaos men

It was in the second half of the third century that the Illyrian lands began to show themselves as charged with the special work of providing external cham-stretch of geographical license can bring pions and internal reformers for the empire of which they formed a part. When all distinctions were broken down, when all the men of the Mediterranean lands were alike Romans, when the purple of the Cæsars became a prize open to every soldier who was enrolled in the Roman legions, it was from the Illyrian lands that Rome drew the greatest of her emperors. And it was from the special Dalmatian land that she drew the emperor who was to begin a new order of things, to establish her empire on a new footing, and to leave behind him on his native Dalmatian shore the most abiding monument of Roman magnificence and Roman art. By this time all regard for special Roman birth had long passed away. The feeble tradition of hereditary succession which had once prevailed, and which was one day to prevail again, had fallen into abeyance. No lasting hereditary dynasty had ever been founded. The divine stock of the Julii, the seed of Aphroditê and Anchisês, had been kept on only by successive adoptions which admitted Octavii, Claudii, and Domitii to the rights of the sacred house. The Sabine Flavii lasted but two generations. Under the adopted family which began with Nerva, the bounds of Italy were passed, and the dominion of Rome reached its greatest extent under the Spaniard Trajan. A series of desperate attempts were made to continue at least the name of the Antonines, among princes who neither came of their blood nor represented them by any legal adoption. A fictitious succession was thus carried on till the fall of Alexander Severus and the elevation of the first Max- once more came from the lands between imin. The throne was now open to "every barbarian peasant of the frontier." * So it was till one barbarian peasant found himself so safe upon the throne that he could dare, like Sulla, to lay aside his

Gibbon, vol. i., chap. vii. p. 287. Ed. Milman.

the Danube and the Hadriatic to win again the lost provinces of Rome, and to drive back her Teutonic invaders. The Gothic Claudius won his surname from the first

"Decius Sirmiensium vico ortus." Aurelius Victor, Cæs. 29. "E Pannoni inferiore, Bubaliæ natus." Epitome 29.

great check given to the Gothic enemy on | him as a stern and even a cruel prince; the battle-fields of Dardania and in the yet, in the moment of victory, he could passes of Haimos. His fasces and his imitate the clemency of Pompeius rather than the cold-blooded cruelty of Cæsar. The conqueror, in the car of the Gothic

mission passed to one whom the Illyrian lands might more distinctly claim as their own than either of the two imperial cham-king, was drawn by his four stags up the pions whom they had as yet sent forth. ascent to the capitol. But in the triumph Decius and Claudius at least bore Roman of Aurelian, as in the triumph of Pomnames, and boasted, truly or untruly, of peius, none turned aside to the right at the Roman descent. But Aurelian, no man point where the ascent began. The magdoubted, was sprung of peasant blood in nanimity which had no place in the soul of the Danubian lands, and drew his Roman the divine Julius had a place in the soul of cognomen from the Roman patron of his the peasant's son of Sirmium. As Aurefather. The exact place of his birth is lian went up to offer his thanksgiving to variously fixed, but all accounts place it the gods of Rome, no captive was led aside at some point or other of the land whose to the Tullianum to share the fate of Caius duty as a border-land was then to be the Pontius and of Vercingetorix. march of the Roman against the Goth.* Whether he was Pannonian, Dacian, or Mosian, all those lands come within the wide sense of the Illyricum of those days; all come within the march-land of East and West. Perhaps from the banks of the Save, perhaps from a more southern point of the same region, came the man who won back Gaul from Tetricus and Palmyra from Zenobia, who drove back the Alemannic invader from Italy, and who girded Rome herself with the walls which still surround her. But the man who girded Rome with her new walls was also the man who withdrew the power of Rome from the lands beyond the Danube. The Dacia of Trajan was surrendered by Aurelian. The surrender of Dacia and the fortification of Rome were alike signs of the change which had come over the world since Trajan's day. The days of conquest are now past. The victories of Rome are now won only to defend or to secure old possessions, not to annex new ones. When Italy lay open to German invaders, when Rome had again to fight for her being on the old battle-ground of Hasdrubal and Nero,† it was vain to dream of defending Roman outposts on the Dniester and the Carpathians. Rome herself, not the empire but the city, now needed bulwarks for her own shelter. And those bulwarks were given her by the Illyrian who had won his way to the purple from the lowest ranks of her army, and who, on the throne of her empire, could recall the memory of the best worthies of her commonwealth. Aurelian, who had recovered alike Gaul and Syria, joined the laurels of Cæsar to the laurels of Pompeius. Men spoke of

His different alleged birthplaces are collected in his life by Vopiscus in the Augustan history.

"Juxta amnem Metaurum ac fanum Fortunæ," says the Epitome which bears the name of Aurelius Victor, 35. Cf. Gibbon, vol. ii. chap. xi. p. 25.

Among the many competitors whom Aurelian had to strive against was one who arose in the Dalmatian land itself. But Septiminus, who perished by the hands of his own followers,* was but the emperor of a moment, not a serious rival, like the ruler of Gaul and the queen of the East. And the Dalmatian land, along with the rest of Illyricum, might well rejoice to have given Rome a prince whose name lives alongside of the name of the later heroes of her commonwealth, and even alongside of the name of the best beloved among her ancient kings. He who traces out the changes which successive ages have wrought in the aspect of the local Rome finds two names which everywhere form his landmarks, the name of Servius and the name of Aurelian. The walls, the gates, the mighty temple of the Sun, were gifts which one great Illyrian left in the city of his empire. We feel that we are drawing near to the times when an Illyrian greater still left monuments no less famous, alike in the city of his empire and in the land of his birth. But, before we reach those days, the Illyrian land had yet to give Rome two more heroes. Aurelian died by the hands of soldiers who were misled by lying tales, and who presently repented of the deed. Then came that strange interregnum which seemed to recall the earliest mythical days of the Roman State. The throne of Aurelian stood vacant, as legends said that the throne of Romulus had stood vacant. Aurelian had in truth given such new strength to his government that the machine could work for a while after the hand of the reformer was taken away. For a moment soldiers and senators were at

Aur., Vict. Epit. 35. Hujus tempore apud Dalmatas Septiminus Imperator effectus, mox a suis obtruncatur." †This is Gibbon's remark, chap. xii., vol. ii. p. 57.