except a few doubtful and scattered settle ments on the opposite coast, the most distant sphere of Greek colonization in those seas, as it was the latest chosen of all the spheres of genuine Greek settlement, as distinguished from Macedonian conquest. It was through these lands, through wars and negotiations with their rulers, that Rome won her first footing on the eastern coast of the Hadriatic, and thereby found her first opportunity and excuse for meddling in the affairs of Greece. The land through which the Roman had thus made his highway into the eastern lands became, in the days when his empire split asunder, a border-land, a disputed possession, of the Eastern and the Western Empire, of the Eastern and the Western Church. In days when Greek and Roman had so strangely become names of the same meaning, the cities of the Dalmatian coast clave as long as they could to their allegiance to the Greek-speaking prince whose empire still bore the Roman name. In after times they became part of the dominion of that mighty commonwealth which, itself as it were a portion of the east anchored off the shores of the west, bore rule alike on the mainland of Italy and among the

THE Eastern shores of the Hadriatic have in all ages borne the character of a border-land. And it is from their character as a border-land that they draw a great part of their charm, alike for him who studies their past and present history and for him who looks on their hills and islands with his own eyes. And they have been a border-land in two senses. They form the march of the two great geographical, political, and religious divisions of Europe. The two great peninsulas which the Hadriatic Gulf parts asunder have a marchland which does not exactly coincide with their primary physical boundary. The north-eastern part of the eastern peninsula, that which is sometimes called the Byzantine peninsula, is closely connected, even physically, with the Italian peninsula which lies on the western side of the gulf. The mountains which part off Istria and Dalmatia from the vast mainland to the east of them are a continuation of the range of mountains which parts off Italy from the vast mainland to the north of her. It is indeed true in one sense that the heights which part off all the three great penin-islands and peninsulas of Greeee. In our sulas of southern Europe are parts of one range stretching from the Pyrenees to Haimos. But Dalmatia is bound to Italy by a closer tie than this, and Istria is bound to her by a tie closer still. Istria lies east of the Hadriatic; yet, on any theory of natural boundaries, Istria is manifestly Italian. In the case of Dalmatia the connection is not so close and unbroken; yet the narrow, the constantly narrowing, strip of land between the mountains and the sea, though geographically part of the eastern peninsula, has not a little the air of a thread, a finger, a branch, cast forth from the western peninsula. Dalmatia is thus physically a march-land; and its physical position has ever made it the march-land of languages, empires, and religions. It lies on the border of those two great divisions of Europe which we may severally speak of as the Greek and the Latin worlds. The Dalmatian archipelago, a secondary gaan with its islands and peninsulas, formed, unless we

own day it forms part of the dominions of a potentate who still clings, however vainly, to the titles, traditions, and ensigns of the elder Rome, but whose geographical position calls him before all princes to be the arbiter, the conqueror, or the deliverer of the lands which still look with fear or with hope to the younger Rome. Dalmatia in all her stages, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Venetian, Austrian, has steadily kept up her character of a border-land between eastern and western Europe. And if we take into our account the great struggle of the early days of our own century, the short incorporation of Dalmatia by France, the still shorter occupation of some of her islands and cities by England — in days when England did not despise Montenegrin, and even Russian help- the long destiny of this coast as a debatable ground between the two great divisions of Europe is carried on in yet minuter detail.

The Dalmatian coast has thus always kept its character as a march-land between

tion, fringing a mainland which has always lagged behind them. And at two periods again, difference of race and language, difference of higher and lower civilization, have been further aggravated by difference of religion. That the land has long been a debatable land between the Eastern and Western Churches is not all. Dalmatia has twice been a border-land of Christendom itself. The Slavonic immigrants of the seventh century were heathens; some of them long remained so. In the tenth century one Dalmatian district, the Narentine coast between Spalato and Ragusa, together with some of the neighboring islands, bore the significant name of Pagania.* The heathen settlements gradually grew into Christian kingdoms, but a later revolution changed those Christian kingdoms into subject provinces of the Mussulman. As once against the heathen, so now against the Turk, Dalmatia became one of the frontier lands of Christendom. At some points the Christian fringe is narrow indeed; at two points it is altogether broken through. The mountain wall whose slopes begin in the streets of Ragusa fences off the land of the Apostolic King from the land where the choice of the Christian lies only between bondage and revolt. And at two points of the inland seas of Dalmatia, one of them fittingly within the bounds of the old Pagania, the dominion of the misbeliever reaches down to the Hadriatic shore itself. The Dalmatian shore itself is therefore pre-eminently a border-land; but in that character it only carries out in a higher

east and west, and the march-land of east | trian, have remained outposts of civilizaand west has of necessity been also the march-land of rival empires and rival Churches. But these coasts and islands have been a march-land in yet a further sense than this. Their history has made them in all ages the border, sometimes of civilization against actual barbarism, always of a higher civilization against a lower. And if their position has made them the march of the two great divisions of the Christian Church, it has also made them the march of Christendom itself, first against heathendom and afterwards against Islam. A glance at the map will at once show that the Dalmatian land, whose islands and peninsulas and inland seas make it almost a secondary Hellas, must have been from the earliest times the seat of a higher civilization than the boundless mainland from which its mountains fence it off. But here again its position as a border-land comes in with tenfold force. Dalmatia, with all her islands and havens, could never be as Greece, or even as Italy, because she did not in the same way stand free from the vast mainland behind her. That mainland, on the other hand, has been actually checked in the path of civilization by the fringe of higher civilization which has been spread along its edge. Civilization and barbarism have been brought into the closest contact with one another, without either distinctly gaining the upper hand. The barbarian has been checked in his calling as destroyer; the civilized man has been checked in his calling of enlightener. The barbarian has not been able, as in lands further to the east, to force his way through the line of civil-degree the character of the mainland which ization which has hemmed him in; nor has the civilized man been able to force his way over the mountain barrier which has doomed the lands to the east of it to an abiding state of at least comparative barbarism. The old Illyrian became the subject of the Roman; his land became the highway and the battle-field of the Goth; his name and race and tongue were swept away or driven southward by the Slave. The Slave again has been brought into bondage by the Turk. But, during all these changes, the cities and islands, Greek, Roman, Venetian, or Aus

it fringes. The whole of Illyricum is, and always has been, in some sort a borderland. Its character as such is emphatically marked in the geography of the transitional days of the Roman empire. In that great division into prefectures which formed the groundwork of the somewhat

whose works, "De Thematibus" and "De Adminis‐ The Emperor Constantine Porphyrogennêtos, from trando Imperio," we get the fullest account of Dalmatia and the neighboring lands, as they stood in the tion) the limits of Pagania with great accuracy. It is the region of the famous Narentine pirates, and takes in the present bit of Turkish territory at Klek.

tenth century, defines (cap. 30, p. 145 of the Bonn edi

dation of the modern Greek kingdom, actually the end of Christendom along those coasts. And though the birth of that new Christian State makes it no longer the end of Christendom, it still is - for the two points of Turkish coast at Klek and Sutorina are hardly worth counting as exceptions — the beginning of Islam and the end of continuous Christendom. North-west of that point we are still in the borderland of eastern and western Europe; south of it we are undoubtedly in the eastern division. While the Dalmatian coast itself has been as it were an outlying piece of the West thrown out on the eastern side of the gulf, the mainland to the back of it shares, in a less degree, the border character of the coast itself. The whole land along the Danube and its tributaries, from the border of Rætia to the border of Thrace in the later sense, was all Illyricum in one sense or other of that ambiguous word. It has been within them, as a great border-land, that the greatest fluctuations to and fro have taken place between West and East in their various forms; between the Teuton and the eastern Slave; between both and the Magyar; between the Eastern and the Western Church; between both and the pagan and the Mussulman. The old Rome strove hard for the spiritual dominion of the Bulgarian; she won the spiritual dominion of the Magyar. Of this last papal triumph we see the political results at this moment. Magyar and Catholic Hungary, called on by her geographical position to be, as of old, the champion of Christendom, cannot bring herself freely to cast in her lot with her Slavonic and Orthodox

later division of the empire into East and West, the name Illyricum has two meanings. There is the Illyricum of the east, which has strangely spread itself southwards so as to take in Macedonia, and that in a sense in which Macedonia takes in Greece. There is the Illyricum of the west, which in like manner stretches itself northwards, so as to take in a large part of the lands between the Danube and the Alps. Of the western Illyricum, the Dalmatian coast forms a part; and it should be noted that the line between eastern and western Illyricum is drawn nearly at the point which separates the modern Dalmatian kingdom from the Ottoman province of Albania. That line is not an arbitrary line. The point at which the continuous, or nearly continuous, dominion of Venice stopped is one which is clearly marked in the coast-line. At that point the coast, which so far stretches in a slanting direction from north-west to south-east, turns in a direction nearly due south. North-east of that point, Venice was mistress of the whole coast, save only the dominions of Ragusa and the two points where Ragusa had deemed that the crescent of Mahomet was a less dangerous neighbour than the lion of Saint Mark. In the possession of that coast, the Austrian archduke and Hungarian king has succeeded the two seafaring commonwealths. The dominions of Venice had not always ended at that point. South of it she had at different times held a dominion, sometimes larger, sometimes smaller, both among the islands and on the mainland. Even down to her fall, besides her possession of Corfu and the other so-called Ionian islands, she still kept one or two neighbours. The Orthodox Slave has detached points on the mainland. But sometimes deliberately deemed that the the point of which we speak, the point so rule of the unbelieving Turk was less to clearly marked on the map, was the end of be dreaded than the rule of the Catholic that abiding and nearly continuous domin- Magyar. The orthodox Slave, placed on ion in which the Apostolic King has suc- the borders of so many political and religceeded her. That point, once the fron-ious systems, has become the subject, tier of the Eastern and Western Empires, sometimes of the western Cæsar, someis now the frontier of the Slave and the Albanian; that is to say, it is the boundary of the land within which the Slave thoroughly and permanently supplanted the old Illyrian whom the Albanian represents. The same point was, till the foun

times of the Hungarian king, sometimes of the Venetian commonwealth, sometimes of the Turkish sultan. His independent being, which once took a form which promised to become the dominant power of south-eastern Europe, is now shut

up in the little principality on the Black | Hellenic culture by the formal right of Mountain, that gallant outpost of Christen-sharing in the Isthmian games. Rome dom, where the border character of the thus became a power east of the Hadriwhole land and its people, gathered as it atic; but it was not till a later generation, were together on the very march of Chris- not till Rome was already great in Spain tendom and Islam, stands out more clearly and in Asia, that Illyrian allies or subjects than on almost any other spot of the Illyr- were directly incorporated with her doian land. minion. Things had then changed. Roman protection was fast changing into Roman dominion. Macedonia, once the enemy of Greece, was now her bulwark, and Illyria was the ally of Macedonia. The overthrow of Perseus, the partition of the Macedonian kingdom, carried with it the overthrow and dismemberment of his Illyrian ally, and the kingdom of Gentius, the kingdom of Skodra, became a part of Rome's dominion beyond the gulf.*

We may thus set down Illyria as a whole, in all its senses, except perhaps that widest sense of all in which it takes in Peloponnêsos, as being at all times essentially a border-land, and the Dalmatian coast as being the part in which its character as a border-land comes out most strongly. The whole land, and especially the Dalmatian part of it, was a land which had cost Rome much trouble to win, but which, when won, became one of those parts of It is now that Dalmatia first comes into her dominion which had the greatest share sight as a land with a distinct being. in fixing her own destiny. It was through Dalmatia revolted from the rule of GenIllyria that Rome first made her way to tius, to become a separate power, whose Macedonia and Greece. It was in warfare conquest was a far harder work for Rome with Illyria that she gained her first Hel- than the overthrow of the kingdom from lenic allies or subjects. In the fourth cen- which it had split off. It was not till after tury the Dalmatian coasts and islands had more than a hundred and fifty years of been studded with Greek colonies. The intermittent warfare, warfare in which northern Epidauros, the parent of Ragusa, Roman defeats alternated with Roman triand the island cities of Pharos and Kor- umphs, it was not till after the Christian kyra the Black, had been planted, some of era had begun, that the last Dalmatian them, strangely enough, under the auspices revolt was put down by the arms of Tibeof the tyrant Dionysios. These spots, rius, under the auspices of Augustus. The some of them famous in later times, and whole of the borderland, from the frontier even in the wars of our own century, show of Italy to the frontier of Hellas, was now how far the borders of the Hellenic world admitted to the bondage and the repose of had now extended themselves, since the the Roman peace; one part of the land, days, better known to most of us, when the Istrian peninsula, was formally taken Epidamnos had been the furthest outpost within the bounds of Italy. The coast of Hellas in those lands. In the next cen- was now fringed with Roman cities, adtury, Skodra on the mainland and the mitted to the rights of Roman municipal island post of Issa became the strong-life, and striving to imitate the mighty holds of the Illyrian kingdom of Argôn and Teuta, and Illyrian pirates became the dread of the Greek and Italian ports. One Greek of the Hadriatic islands, Dêmêtrios of Pharos, has won for himself, by a series of treasons, a prominent place in the history of those times. In the interval between the first and second Punic wars, Rome broke the power of the pirate queen. She received Epidamnos, Apollônia, and the elder Korkyra as her allies or subjects, and her ambassadors were admitted within the pale of Hellenic religion and

Black Korkyra, now Curzola, was a colony of Knidos, and Pharos, now Lesina, a colony of Paros. See Strabo, vii. 5 (vol. ii., p. 104). For the help given to the Parians in this colony, and for his own colony of Lissos, see Diodoros, xv. 13. This is Lissos on the mainland, not the modern Lissa, the island Issa which figures in the war between Rome and Illyria (see Polybios, ii. 8, 11; xxxii. 18). Epidauros is not mentioned so early, but its name and the worship of Askiêpios speak for themselves.

works of Rome herself. Pola, under her new name of Pietas Julia, reared her amphitheatre beside her harbor: she crowned her hill with her capitol, and adorned her streets and her forum with the temple of Augustus and the arch of the Sergii. Zara, Jadera, on her peninsula, became a Roman colony, and reared the arch and the columns which still survive among the more stately memorials of later times. Salona, on her own inland sea, with her own archipelago in front of her, with her mountain wall rising above her shores, became the greatest city of the Dalmatian Coast, and one of the greatest cities of the

The earlier Illyrian war is recorded in the second book of Polybios. Appian has a special book on the Illyrian wars. In him (chap. xi.) we get our first notices of Dalmatia as such: the name is not found in Polybios. There is also a shorter notice in Strabo, which has been already referred to.