324 Henry Skene, Esq., on the Albanians. 



labour. They are, in fact, the best agriculturists of European 

 Turkey : diligent husbandmen, they have consequently spread 

 their colonies partly over Thrace, and partially even in Ma- 

 cedonia ; although in the middle ages they had extended 

 them over the greatest part of what is called now European 

 Turkey. 



The Bulgarians crossed the Danube before the reign of 

 Justinian, and kept constantly pouring down from the vast 

 plains of Poland, Lithuania, and Russia, during the sixth 

 century ; and they continued gradually gaining ground in the 

 fine countries of Macedonia and Illyria, until the fall of the 

 Byzantine empire. Their relations with the emperors were 

 those of peace, when it was purchased by the latter, or of 

 hostilities generally successful on their part ; and they con- 

 sequently overran a large part of the empire.* They made 

 a permanent alliance in the year 360, with Michael the Third, 

 which stipulated, by treaty, their conversion to Christianity ; 

 and, on the other hand, the grant to them of a tract of hilly 

 country around Mount Rhodope, to which they gave the 

 name of Zagora, still extant. In the tenth century they are 

 said by the Emperor Constantino Porphyrogeunctus to have 

 occupied even the Peloponnesus, and he dates their possession 

 of it from the time of the Emperor Constantino Copronymus, 

 in the eighth century f. The epitomiser of Strabo, who 

 wrote in the time of Basil Bulgaroctonus, that is about the 

 year 1000, goes further, and gives the whole of Greece to the 

 Bulgarians, whom he calls Scythian Sclavonians. They esta- 

 blished their capital at Achris or Achrida, the ancient Lych- 

 nides, and, their chief, by name Peter, was dignified with the 

 title of King by the Emperor Romanus, who gave him also his 

 grandaughter in marriage. When this town was destroyed 

 by Basil the Second at the opening of the eleventh century, 

 a treasure was found by him there, amounting to the weight 

 of ten thousand pounds in gold. The Bulgarians had driven 

 the Albanians back to the more mountainous tracts of country. 



* Gibbon's Roman Empire, vol. iv., c. 42, 43 ; vol. v., c. 55. 

 t Const. Porphyrog. de Them. b. 2 Thema. 6 Peloponnesus. 



