which was followed up after the arrival of the relieving force three days later by the restoration of the Imperial authority along the west coast. At that age so great a victory was naturally ascribed to superhuman aid. St Andrew, the patron-saint of Patras, who, as we have seen, was believed to have suffered martyrdom there, and whose relics were then preserved there, had caused the scout’s horse to stumble and had been seen on a milk-white steed leading the citizens in their successful onslaught on the Slavs[37]. The gratitude, or policy, of the government showed itself in the dedication of the spoil and captives to the service of the church of St Andrew, and the Slavonic peasants of the neighbourhood became its tenants and paid it a yearly rent. The Archbishop of Patras, who had hitherto been dependent upon Corinth, was raised by Nikephoros to the rank of a Metropolitan, and Methone, Korone and Lacedæmon, were placed under his immediate jurisdiction. The political object and result of this step, which was ratified by later Emperors, was to hellenise the vanquished Slavs by means of the Greek clergy. Moreover, the policy of Nikephoros in organising Greek military colonies round the Slav settlements in Greece, tended to check Slavonic raids. Public lands were bestowed on these colonists whose establishment contributed much to the ultimate fusion of the two races. Thus, the defeat of the Slavs before Patras and the wise measures of Nikephoros prevented the Peloponnese from becoming a Slavonic State, like Servia or Bulgaria, and from that date the tide, which had at one time threatened to submerge the Greek nationality there, began to ebb. Of this phenomenon we shall be able to watch the progress.