IX.] THE NORTHERN MONGOLS. 343 



documents carry their history back to the 2nd century B.C. Under 

 the Arsacides numerous bands of Bulgars, driven from their homes 

 about the Kama confluence by civil strife, settled on the banks of 

 the Aras, and since that time (150 114 B.C.) the Bulgars were 

 known to the Armenians as a great nation dwelling away to the 

 north far beyond the Caucasus. 



Originally the name, which afterwards acquired such an odious 

 notoriety amongst the European peoples, may have been more 

 geographical than ethnical, implying not so much a particular 

 nation as all the inhabitants of the Bulga (Volga) between the 

 Kama and the Caspian. But at that time this section of the 

 great river seems to have been mainly held by more or less homo- 

 geneous branches of the Finno-Ugrian family, and palethnologists 

 have now shown that to this connection beyond all question 

 belonged in physical appearance, speech, and usages those bands 

 known as Bulgars, who formed permanent settlements in Mcesia 

 south of the Lower Danube towards the close of the yth century 1 . 

 Here "these bold and dexterous archers, who drank the milk and 

 feasted on the flesh of their fleet and indefatigable horses ; whose 

 flocks and herds followed, or rather guided, the motions of their 

 roving camps ; to whose inroads no country was remote or imper- 

 vious, and who were practised in flight, though incapable of fear 2 ," 

 established a powerful state, which maintained its independence 

 for over seven hundred years (678 1392). 



Acting at first in association with the Slavs, and then assuming 

 " a vague dominion " over their restless Sarmatian allies, the 

 Bulgars spread the terror of their hated name throughout the 

 Balkan lands, and were prevented only by the skill of Belisarius 

 from anticipating their Turki kinsmen in the overthrow of the 

 Byzantine Empire itself. Procopius and Jornandes have left 

 terrible pictures of the ferocity, debasement, and utter savagery, 

 both of the Bulgars and of their Slav confederates during the 

 period preceding the foundation of the Bulgar dynasty in Moesia. 

 Wherever the Slavs (Antes, Slavini) passed, no soul was left 



1 See especially Schafarik's classical work Slavische Alterthiiiner, II. p. 159 

 sq. and V. de Saint- Martin, Etudes de Geographic Ancienne et d 'Ethnographic 

 asiatique, n. p. 10 sq., also the still indispensable Gibbon, Ch. XLII. &c. 



: Decline and Fall, XLII. 



