The exact date of the incursion of the Avars and of the destruction of Epidaurum has also been the subject of controversy. According to some writers, among whom are the native historians of Ragusa, the city was destroyed by the Goths in the third century A.D. But documents written between the third and the seventh centuries mention it as still existing. Constantine Porphyrogenitus speaks of Ragusa as having been founded by refugees from Salona five hundred years before his own time, _i.e._ about 449.[15] But Pope Gregory I. is the last writer who alludes to Epidaurum, so that it was evidently not destroyed before 603. The geographer of Ravenna, who flourished in the eighth century, is the first to mention Ragusa. The Avars made their first appearance in Dalmatia in the year 597-598.[16] They belonged to the same Tartar group as the Huns, and their path was marked with the same ruin and destruction. At one time they were in the service of Justinian, but under his successors they became so powerful and insolent that the Greek emperors might almost be regarded as the vassals to the Chagan of the Avars. In 597 they raided Dalmatia and destroyed over forty towns; and during the next thirty years they conquered the whole country, with the exception of some of the coast settlements, unimpeded by the Greeks, who were then occupied with the Saracens. In 619 they destroyed Salona, whose inhabitants, or at least such of them as escaped from the fury of the barbarians, for the most part took refuge in the walls of Diocletian’s palace at Spalato. But a few wandered southwards and established themselves on an island rock, where Ragusa now stands. About the year 656 the Avars swept down on Epidaurum and razed it to the ground, the surviving inhabitants flying to Ragusa. This year is generally accepted as the date of the city’s, birth. In all probability, however, it was not founded at any definite period, but arose gradually through the influx of refugees from all parts of Southern Dalmatia, from a fishing village into a town. The original settlers were nearly all Latins, and it was not until later that a certain number of Slaves were admitted.[17]