of the coast.” It was in the coast-towns alone and in a few other strongholds, such as Mt Taygetos, that he would allow of any survival of the old Greek race, and he triumphantly pointed to the famous name of “Navarino” as containing a fresh proof of an Avar settlement, while in many places he found Slavonic names, corresponding to those of Russian villages. Another evidence of this early Slavonic settlement seemed to be provided by the remark of the very late Byzantine writer, Phrantzes, that his native city of Monemvasia on the south-east coast, which used to supply our ancestors’ cellars with malmsey, was separated from the diocese of Corinth and raised to the rank of a metropolitan see about this identical time, presumably because many Greeks had taken refuge there from the Slavs, and were cut off from Corinth. Finally, a nun, who composed an account of the pilgrimage of St Willibald, the Anglo-Saxon Bishop of Eichstätt, in 723, stated that he “crossed to Monemvasia in the Slavonian land,” an expression which Fallmerayer hailed as a proof that at that period the Peloponnese was known by that name. It need not be said that Fallmerayer’s theory was as flattering to Panslavism as it was unpleasant to Philhellenes. But it is no longer accepted in its full extent. No one who has been in Greece can fail to have been struck by the similarity between the character of the modern and the ancient Greeks. Many an island has its “Odysseus of many wiles”; every morning and evening the Athenians are anxious to hear “some new thing”; and the comedies of Aristophanes contain many personal traits which fit the subjects of the present king. Nor does even the vulgar language contain any considerable Slavonic element, although there are a certain number of Slavonic place-names to be found on the map, including perhaps Navarino. Moreover, the contemporary historian, Theophylact Simokatta, makes no mention of the invasion of 589, though he minutely describes the wars of that period. Yet, as we shall see later, there is no doubt that at one time there was a great Slavonic immigration into Greece, but it took place about 746, instead of in 589, and the incoming Slavs, so far from annihilating the Greeks, were gradually assimilated by that persistent race, as has happened to conquering peoples elsewhere.