The Balkans: A History of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—TurkeyHogarth, D. G. (David George)
History
The Balkans: A History of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey
Hogarth, D. G. (David George)
Balkan Peninsula -- History; Eastern question (Balkan)
In the year A.D. 6 Moesia, which included a large part of the modern
kingdom of Serbia and the northern half of that of Bulgaria between the
Danube and the Balkan range (the classical Haemus), became an imperial
province, and twenty years later Thrace, the country between the Balkan
range and the Aegean, was incorporated in the empire, and was made a
province by the Emperor Claudius in A.D. 46. The province of Illyricum
or Dalmatia stretched between the Save and the Adriatic, and Pannonia
lay between the Danube and the Save. In 107 A.D. the Emperor Trajan
conquered the Dacians beyond the lower Danube, and organized a province
of Dacia out of territory roughly equivalent to the modern Wallachia
and Transylvania, This trans-Danubian territory did not remain attached
to the empire for more than a hundred and fifty years; but within the
river line a vast belt of country, stretching from the head of the
Adriatic to the mouths of the Danube on the Black Sea, was Romanized
through and through. The Emperor Trajan has been called the Charlemagne
of the Balkan peninsula; all remains are attributed to him (he was
nicknamed the Wallflower by Constantine the Great), and his reign
marked the zenith of Roman power in this part of the world. The Balkan
peninsula enjoyed the benefits of Roman civilization for three
centuries, from the first to the fourth, but from the second century
onwards the attitude of the Romans was defensive rather than offensive.
The war against the Marcomanni under the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, in
the second half of this century, was the turning-point. Rome was still
victorious, but no territory was added to the empire. The third century
saw the southward movement of the Germanic peoples, who took the place
of the Celts. The Goths invaded the peninsula, and in 251 the Emperor
Decius was killed in battle against them near Odessus on the Black Sea
(the modern Varna). The Goths reached the outskirts of Thessalonica
(Salonika), but were defeated by the Emperor Claudius at Naissus (Nish)
in 269; shortly afterwards, however, the Emperor Aurelian had
definitively to relinquish Dacia to them. The Emperor Diocletian, a
native of Dalmatia, who reigned from 284 to 305, carried out a
redistribution of the imperial provinces. Pannonia and western Illyria,
or Dalmatia, were assigned to the prefecture of Italy, Thrace to that
of the Orient, while the whole centre of the peninsula, from the Danube
to the Peloponnese, constituted the prefecture of Illyria, with
Thessalonica as capital. The territory to the north of the Danube
having been lost, what is now western Bulgaria was renamed Dacia, while
Moesia, the modern kingdom of Serbia, was made very much smaller.
Praevalis, or the southern part of Dalmatia, approximately the modern
Montenegro and Albania, was detached from that province and added to
the prefecture of Illyria. In this way the boundary between the
province of Dalmatia and the Balkan peninsula proper ran from near the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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