In these migrations the Slaves displaced whatever remnants were left of the old Illyrian race in the lands near the Danube. They have themselves to some extent taken the Illyrian name, a change which has sometimes led to confusion. But at the time the movement went much further south than this. ♦Extent of Slavonic settlement.♦ The Slaves pressed on into a large part of Macedonia and Greece, and, during the seventh and eighth centuries, the whole of those countries, except the fortified cities and a fringe along the coast, were practically cut off from the Empire. The name of _Slavinia_ reached from the Danube to Peloponnêsos, leaving to the Empire only islands and detached points of coast from Venice round to Thessalonica. Their settlements in these regions gave a new meaning to an ancient name, and the word _Macedonian_ now began to mean _Slavonic_. ♦Albanians.♦ And it must have been at this time that the Illyrians, the _Skipetar_ or _Albanians_, pressed southward and formed those colonies in Greece, some of which still keep the Albanian language, while the Slavonic language has vanished from those lands for ages. ♦Nature of Slavonic settlement in Greece.♦ The Slavonic occupation of Greece is a fact which must neither be forgotten nor exaggerated. It certainly did not amount to an extirpation of the Greek nation; but it certainly did amount to an occupation of a large part of the country, which was Hellenized afresh from those cities and districts which remained Greek or Roman. While these changes were going on in the Hadriatic and Ægæan lands, another immigration later in the seventh century took place in the lands south of the lower Danube, and drove back the Imperial frontier to Haimos. ♦Settlement of the Bulgarians, c. 679.♦ This was the incursion of the _Bulgarians_, another Turanian people, but one whose history has been different from that of most of the Turanian immigrants. By mixture with Slavonic subjects and neighbours they became practically Slavonic, and they still remain a people speaking a Slavonic language. ♦The Eastern Empire cut short in its own peninsula.♦ Thus the Empire, though it still kept its possessions in Italy with the great Mediterranean islands, though its hold on Western Africa lasted on into the eighth century, though it still kept outlying possessions on the northern and eastern coasts of the Euxine, was cut short in that great peninsula which seems made to be the immediate possession of the New Rome. ♦Moral influence of Constantinople.♦