The nomenclature of the European themes is more intelligible. Most of them bear ancient names, and the districts which bear them are at least survivals of the lands which bore them of old. After a good deal of shifting, owing to the loss and recovery of so many districts, the Empire under Constantine Porphyrogennêtos numbered twelve European themes. _Thrace_ had shrunk up into the land just round Constantinople and Hadrianople, the latter now a frontier city against the Bulgarian. _Macedonia_ had been pushed to the east, leaving the more strictly Macedonian coast-districts which the Empire still kept to form the themes of _Strymôn_ and _Thessalonikê_. ♦Use of the name Hellas.♦ Going further south, the name of _Hellas_ has revived, and that with a singular accuracy of application. Hellas is now the eastern side of continental Greece, taking in the land of Achilleus. The abiding name of Achaia has vanished for a while, and the peninsula which had been won back from the Slave again bears its name of _Peloponnêsos_. But _Lakedaimonia_ now appears on the list of its chief cities instead of Sparta. This and other instances in which one Greek name has been supplanted by another are witnesses of the Slavonic occupation of Hellas and its recovery by a Greek-speaking power. Off the west coast the realm of Odysseus seems to revive in the theme of _Kephallênia_, which takes in also the mythic isle of Alkinoos. Such parts of Epeiros and Western Greece as clave to the Empire form the theme of _Nikopolis_. ♦The Hadriatic lands.♦ To the north, on the Hadriatic shore, was the theme of _Dyrrhachion_, and beyond that again, the Dalmatian and Venetian cities still counted as outlying portions of the Empire. ♦Possessions of the Empire in Italy.♦ Beyond the Hadriatic, southern Italy forms the theme of _Lombardy_, interrupted by the principality of _Salerno_, while Naples, Gaeta, and Amalfi were outlying posts like Venice and Ragusa. _Sicily_ was still reckoned as a theme; but it was now wholly lost to the Saracen. ♦Chersôn.♦ And far away in the Tauric peninsula, the last of the Hellenic commonwealths, the furthest outpost of Hellenic civilization, had sunk in the ninth century into the Byzantine theme of _Chersôn_. ♦Seeming Asiatic character of the Empire.♦