Roman Dalmatia included besides the modern region of that name the whole of Bosnia, the Herzegovina, Montenegro, and parts of Croatia and Albania. Diocletian divided it into two provinces, Dalmatia proper to the north, and Prævalis or Prævalitana to the south. At the time of the partition of the Roman Empire Dalmatia was apportioned to the Western division, the neighbouring provinces of Dardania, Mœsia Superior, and Prævalis to the Eastern. When the barbarian hordes began to pour down into Southern Europe the latter province remained under Roman rule until early in the sixth century, but Dalmatia was conquered in 481 by Odovakar, and added to the Gothic kingdom of Italy. Both these facts emphasise Dalmatia’s character as an outpost of the West in the Eastern world. But the Slaves, the last of the barbarians to march westwards and southwards, soon began to press ever more closely against the Roman settlements, and the colonists were driven from the interior to the coast towns. From the letters of Pope Gregory I. we see that at his time (590-603) Epidaurum, Salona, Doclea, and a few other Roman cities still survived. But in 600, in a letter to the Bishop of Salona, he expressed great sorrow that Dalmatia was hard pressed by the barbarians. “De Sclavorum gente, quae vobis imminet, affligor vehementer et conturbor.”[6] The whole province was becoming desolate. In 535 the Byzantine Greeks reconquered it from the Goths together with Pannonia. In 539 it was overrun by Huns, Bulgarians, and Slaves, liberated by Narses in 552, and added to the Exarchate of Ravenna. Later it was made into a separate Exarchate; but after the death of the Emperor Maurice the Slaves became masters of the greater part of the country. When the Eastern Empire was divided into themes, the remaining fragments of the Roman colonies on the Illyrian shore were erected into the Themes of Dalmatia and Dyrrhachium. The former is described at length by Constantine Porphyrogenitus in his _De Administrando Imperio_,[7] written in 949; it consisted of little more than a few cities and islands, all the rest of the land being peopled by barbarians. The capital of the Dalmatian theme was no longer Salona, which together with Epidaurum had been destroyed by the Avars in the seventh century, but Jadera or Zara. The other towns of the theme were: Veglia, Arbe, and Opsara (comprising Cherso and Lussino) in the Quarnero; Tragurium, Spalatum or Aspalathum, and Rhagusium, founded by refugees from Salona and Epidaurum; Decatera (Cattaro), Rosa (Porto Rose), and Butova (Budua). The theme was governed by a Greek Strategos residing at Zara (Jadertinus Prior), and by inferior officials (dukes) in the smaller centres. But their authority hardly extended beyond the town walls.