XIV.] THE CAUCASIC PEOPLES. 549 



in 680, under the five brothers Klukas, Lobol, Kosentses, Miikl, 

 and Khrobat, with their sisters Tuga and Buga. These were 

 followed by the kindred Srp (Sorb) tribes from the Elbe, who left 

 their homes in Misnia and Lusatia, and received as their patri- 

 mony the whole region between Macedonia and Epirus, Dardania, 

 Upper Mcesia, the Dacia of Aurelian, and Illyria, i.e. Bosnia and 

 Servia. The Lower Danube was at the same time occupied by 

 the Severenses, "Seven Nations," also Slavs, who reached to the 

 foot of the Hemus beyond the present Varna. Nothing could 

 stem this great Slav inundation, which soon overflowed into 

 Macedonia (Rumelia), Thessaly, and Peloponnesus, so that for a 

 time nearly the whole of the Balkan lands, from the Danube to 

 the Mediterranean, became a Slav domain parts of Illyria and 

 Epirus (Albania) with the Greek districts about Constantinople 

 alone excepted. 



Hellas, as above seen, has recovered itself, and the Albanians 1 , 

 direct descendants of the ancient Illyrians, still hold 



T*hp 



their ground and keep alive the last echoes of the Albanians, 

 old Illyrian language, which was almost certainly a 

 proto-Aryan form of speech probably intermediate, as above- 

 mentioned, between the Italic and Hellenic branches. They even 

 retain the old tribal system, so that there are not only two main 

 sections, the northern Ghegs and the southern Toshks, but each 

 section is divided into a number of minor groups 2 , such as the 

 Malliesors (Klementi, Pulati, Hoti, etc.) and Mirdites (Dibri, 

 Fandi, Matia, etc.) in the north, and the Toxides (whence Toshk) 

 and the Yapides (Lapides) in the south. The southerners are 

 mainly Orthodox Greeks, and in other respects half-Hellenized 

 Epirotes, the northerners partly Moslem and partly Roman 



1 That is, "Highlanders" (root alb, alp, height, hill). From Albanites 

 through the Byzantine Arvanites comes the Turkish Arnaut, while the national 

 name Skipetar has precisely the same meaning (root skip> scop t as in cr/roTreXo?, 

 scopulus, cliff, crag). Thus the very nomenclature shows Italo-Hellenic and 

 even Keltic (alb] relations. 



2 There are about twenty of these phis or phar (phratries) amongst the 

 Ghegs, and the practice of exogamous marriage still survives amongst the Mir- 

 dites south of the Drin, who, although Catholics, seek their wives amongst the 

 surrounding hostile Turkish and Muhammadan Gheg populations. 



