before New Rome. The full story of the heroic defence cannot be related in this place, but one consideration is too important to be omitted. Had the Romans not been masters of the sea, the issue might well have been less favourable; but the small Slav boats were all sunk or overturned in the waters of the Golden Horn, while Sahrbarâz at Chalcedon was doomed to remain inactive, for Persia possessed no transports and the Roman fleet made it impossible for the besiegers to carry their allies across the straits. Thus at the very time that the barbarian attack by sea collapsed in hopeless failure, the citizens had repulsed with heavy loss the assault on the land walls which was directed mainly against that section where the depression of the Lycus valley rendered the defences most vulnerable. At length, on the eleventh day after his appearance before Constantinople, the Khagan destroyed by fire his engines of war and withdrew, vowing a speedy return with forces even more overwhelming. As the suburbs of the city and the churches of Saints Cosmas and Damian and St Nicholas went up in flames, men marked that the shrine of the Mother of God in Blachernae remained inviolate: it was but one more token of her power — her power with God, with her Son, and in the general ordering of the world. The preservation of the city was the Virgin's triumph, it was her answer to the prayers of her servants, and with an annual festival the Church celebrated the memory of the great deliverance. Bonus and Sergius had loyally responded to their Emperor's trust.[1]
This was indeed the furthest advance of the Avars. They had appeared in the Eastern Alps as early as 595-596, and had formally invested Thessalonica in 597; it would seem that the city was only saved through an outbreak of pestilence amongst the besiegers.[2] After 604 there was no Roman army in the Danube provinces, and in the reign of Phocas and the early years of Heraclius must be placed the ravaging of Dalmatia by Avars and Slavs and the fall of Salonae and other towns. At this time fugitives from Salonae founded the city of Spalato, and those from Epidaurus the settlement which afterwards became Ragusa. A contemporary tells how the Slavs in those dark days of confusion and ravage plundered the greater part of Illyricum, all Thessaly, Epirus, Achaia, the Cyclades, and a part of Asia. In another passage the same author relates how Avars and Slavs destroyed the towns in the provinces of Pannonia, Moesia Superior, the two Dacias, Rhodope, Dardania, and Praevalis, carrying off the inhabitants into slavery. Fallmerayer's famous contention that the Greek people was virtually exterminated is certainly an exaggeration, though throughout Hellas there must have been Slav forays, and many a barbarian band
