Asia Minor was now the chief stronghold of the Eastern Empire. The population had been recruited by Christian refugees from the Mohammedan lands farther east, and had therefore become more decidedly Oriental, but it was strenuous, industrious, and warlike. The whole of the peninsula was included in the Empire, save the south-eastern district of Cilicia between the Taurus and the sea. But the loss of Tarsus was more than compensated for by the inclusion of a larger portion of western Armenia within the Empire, by reason of the Armenians, despite their obstinate adherence to the Monophysite heresy, seeing in incorporation with the Empire their only chance of salvation from Islam. [Sidenote: The Balkan Peninsula.] In the Balkan peninsula the districts actually ruled by the Emperor were much less extensive. The western and central parts were still ‘Slavonia,’ and even the Peloponnesus was largely peopled by Slavonic tribes, at best tributary, and often practically independent. But the settlement of the Magyars in Pannonia (895) had pushed the Bulgarians more to the south, and now not only were the lands between Danube and Rhodope Bulgarian, but this nation encroached largely on the Slavs in the lands south of the Balkans. [Sidenote: The Bulgarians.] The result left little for the Romans save long strips of coast territory. Nowhere in Europe did their power penetrate far inland. Adrianople was at best the border town of the Greeks. A few miles inland from Thessalonica the Bulgarian rule began. The Bulgarians separated the theme of Hellas, which included Thessaly and the lands south down to Attica, from the themes of Nicopolis and Dyrrhachium that crept along the coast of Epirus. Scattered scraps of islands and coastlands in Dalmatia almost connected the Empire with its Venetian dependency. The theme of Cherson included the south coast of the Crimea, but this outpost of Greek civilisation was hardly more directly ruled from Constantinople than Venice itself. The lesser islands were still Greek, but Cyprus alone of the great islands remained under the Empire, and that was soon lost. [Sidenote: Italy.] In south Italy there only remained the misnamed theme of Lombardy, including the heel of the boot, of which the capital was Bari, and the theme of Calabria, cut off from its neighbour province by the Lombard princes of Salerno, who held the low-lying grounds at the head of the Gulf of Taranto. Such a widely scattered dominion was hard to rule and harder to defend. But each theme was under the government of a _strategos_, who subordinated the civil to the military administration. A large standing army of mercenaries—largely Norsemen—well drilled and equipped, enabled the Greeks to cultivate their fields and carry on their commerce in peace. The trade between east and west was still entirely in Greek hands. Even an exhaustive fiscal system could not cut off these sources of wealth. But if the Greek Emperors taxed