One of the illustrious successors of Iaroslaf the Great upon the throne of Kief, was his grandson Vladimir, grandson also of the Greek emperor Constantine Monomachus, whose surname he bore;[A] a man of wisdom, of valor, and of integrity—a singular instance of elevation of character in an age and among a people but partly emerged from barbarism. He waited long for his right to rule, having respect to the national law that gave precedence to the oldest member of the deceased sovereign’s family. “His father was older than mine, and reigned first in Kief,” he said, deferring to his cousin Sviatopolk Isiaslavitch.[B] Certain of Monomakh’s kinsmen had been wrongfully deprived of their lands by Vsevolod and Isiaslaf, respectively father and uncle of Monomakh. The latter accepted Tchernigof as his share of the spoil; for beyond the right of the strongest, no right was seriously considered in the Russia of that age. Oleg, one of the injured princes, called the Polovtsui barbarians to his aid, and harried the lands of those who had robbed him. Monomakh, moved by the distress of the people, offered to restore the wrested lands that had fallen to his share. To his efforts was due the assembling of the more powerful princes in Congress at Lübetch (1090), on the Dnieper, to effect means for the suppression of the civil wars that afflicted the realm. Seated on a carpet, the princes drew up a treaty, each prince taking oath and kissing the cross, as he declared that thereafter “the Russian land shall be held sacred and dear, as the country of us all. Whoso shall dare to arm himself against his brother, becomes our common enemy.” As nearly as is known, this treaty is the first written assertion of the unity that was incipient in the administration of Ruric, that took form and strength from the administrations of Vladimir and Iaroslaf, and that has been steadily developing through a thousand years of national existence: a unity that holds in an apparently inviolable bond a hundred tribes and nationalities.