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neighbouring Slavs, even as Rurik ruled at Novgorod. Some twenty years later Rurik's son Oleg came down and put Oskold and Dir to death, and annexed Kiev to his sway. It soon overshadowed Novgorod in importance, and became the capital of the Russian state. It has been doubted whether this story of the founding of Kiev is historical, but the date of the foundation, in chronological proximity to A.D. 860, is probably correct.1

§ 5. The Magyars

The Russian peril had proved a new bond of common interest between the Empire and the Khazars, and during the reign of Michael (before A.D. 862), as we have seen, a Greek missionary, Constantine the Philosopher, made a vain attempt to convert them to Christianity.3

About this time a displacement occurred in the Khazar Empire which was destined to lead to grave consequences not only for the countries of the Euxine but for the history of Europe. At the time of Constantine's visit to the Khazars, the home of the Magyars was still in the country between the Dnieper and the Don, for either in the Crimea itself or on his journey to Itil, which was probably by way of the Don, his party was attacked by a band of Magyars. A year or two later the Magyar people crossed the Dnieper.

Pseudo-Nestor's date is A.M. 6370 =A.D. 862 (but events extending over a considerable time are crowded into his narrative here). The chronicler attributes to Oskold and Dir the attack on Constantinople, which he found in the Chronicle of Simeon and dates to A.D. 866. I am inclined to think that there is a certain measure of historical truth in the Pseudo-Nestor tradition, if we do not press the exact date. If Kiev was founded shortly before A.D. 860 as a settlement independent of Novgorod, and if the Kiev Russians attacked Cple., we can understand the circumstances of the conversion. It was the rulers of Kiev only who accepted baptism, and when the pagans of Novgorod came and slew them a few years later, Christianity, though we may conjecture that it was not wiped out, ceased to enjoy official recognition.

The posterior limit is usually given as A.D. 863 (the latest date for

the embassy of Rostislav, see above, p. 393); but we can limit it further by the Magyar incident, ep. Appendix XII. The circumstance that in A.D. 854-855, Bugha, the governor of Armenia and Adarbiyan, settled Khazars, who were inclined to Islam, in Sham-kor (see above, p. 410, n. 6), may, as Marquart suggests (Streifzüge, 24), have some connexion with the religious wavering of the Chagan.

3 See above, p. 394 sq.

Vita Constantini, c. 8. The attack of the Hungarians is related before Constantino (c. 9) starts for the country of the Khazars, to which he is said to have sailed by the Macotis. If this order of events is accurate, we must suppose that the Magyars made an incursion into the Crimea, and perhaps the incident occurred in the territory of the Goths. See Appendix XII.

The cause of this migration was the advance of the Patzinaks from the Volga. We may guess that they were pressed westward by their Eastern neighbours, the Uzes; we are told that they made war upon the Khazars and were defeated, and were therefore compelled to leave their own land and occupy that of the Magyars. The truth may be that they made an unsuccessful attempt to settle in Khazaria, and then turned their arms against the Magyar people, whom they drove beyond the Dnieper. The Patzinaks thus rose above the horizon of the Empire and introduced a new element into the political situation. They had no king; they were organized in eight tribes, with tribal chiefs, and each tribe was subdivided into five portions under subordinate leaders. When a chief died he was succeeded by a first cousin or a first cousin's son; brothers and sons were excluded, so that the chieftainship should be not confined to one branch of the family.3

The Magyars now took possession of the territory lying between the Dnieper and the lower reaches of the Pruth and the Sereta country which had hitherto belonged to the dominion of the Khans of Bulgaria. They were thus close to the Danube, but the first use they made of their new position was

Constantine, De adm. imp. 169. In the later movement of the Patzinaks to the west of the Dnieper (in the reign of Leo VI.), we are expressly told that they were driven from their land by the Uzes and Khazars, ib. 164.

Constantine says that a portion of the Magyars joined their kinsmen, the Sabartoi asphaloi in "Persia," i.e. the Sevordik in Armenia (see above p. 410).

3 Constantine, ib. 165. He gives the names of the eight γενεαί oι θέματα, in two forms, simple and compound, e.g. Tzur and Kaarti-tzur, Ertem and labdi-ertem.

This country was called (by the Hungarians or Patzinaks, or both) Atel-kuzu: Constantine, ib. 169 eis τύπους τοὺς ἐπονομαζομένους Ατελκούζου. The name is explained, ib. 173, as κατὰ τὴν ἐπωνυμίαν τοῦ ἐκεῖσε διερχο μένου ποταμοῦ Ἐτέλ καὶ Κουζού (where there seems to be an error in the text, as E. Kal K., two rivers, is inconsistent with Trоû яотаμоî) and p. 171

it is said to be called κατὰ τὴν ἐπωνυ μίαν τῶν ἐκεῖσε ὄντων ποταμῶν, which are enumerated as the Bapoux (= Dnieper, cp. Var in Jordanes, Get. c. 52, and Bory-thenes), the Koußoû (Bug), the Tpoûλos (= Dniester: Turla, Tyras, cp. Roesier, 154), the Bpouros (Pruth), and the ZépETOS. Atel or Etel means river (and was specially applied to the Volga-the "Itil"-ep. Constantine, ib. 164,). Zeuss (Die Deutschen und die Nach burstämme, 751), Kuun (Relat. Hung. i. 189), Marquart (op. cit. 33), explain kuza as between (ep. Hungarian köz, in geographical names like Szamoskoz); so that Atelkuzu would mean Mesopotamia. But Westberg (Kanal. ii. 48) explains Kocho in the Geography of Pseudo-Moses as the Dnieper, and identifies the name with Kuzu. He supposes that in Constantine, p. 169, the true reading is (as on p. 173), 'Ατὲλ καὶ Κουζού, and that Atel and Kuzu were alternative names (kal - "or") for the region of the lower Dnieper.

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not against Bulgaria. In A.D. 862 they showed how far they could strike by invading territories in central Europe which acknowledged the dominion of Lewis the German, the first of that terrible series of invasions which were to continue throughout a hundred years, until Otto the Great won his crushing victory at Augsburg. If we can trust the accounts of their enemies, the Magyars appear to have been a more terrible scourge than the Huns. It was their practice to put all males to the sword, for they believed that warriors whom they slew would be their slaves in heaven; they put the old women to death; and dragged the young women with them, like animals, to serve their lusts. Western writers depict the Hungarians of this period as grotesquely ugly, but, on the other hand, Arabic authors describe them as handsome. We may reconcile the contradiction by the assumption that there were two types, the consequence of blending with other races. The original Finnish physiognomy had been modified by mixture with Iranian races in the course of many generations, during which the Magyars, in the Caucasian regions, had pursued their practice of women-lifting."

Up to the time of their migration the Magyars, like the l'atzinaks, had no common chieftain, but among the leaders of their seven tribes one seems to have had a certain preeminence. His name was Lebedias," and he had married a noble Khazar lady, by whom he had no children. Soon after the crossing of the Dnieper, the Chagan of the Khazars, who still claimed the rights of suzerainty over them, proposed to the Magyars to create Lebedias ruler over the whole people. The story is that Lebedias met the Chagan-but we must interpret this to mean the Beg-at Kalancha in the gulf of Perekop, and refused the offer for himself, but suggested

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Megerê (Magyar), Kurtygermatu,
Tarianu, Genakh, Kare, Kase. Cp.
Kuun, i. 148-158.

Kuun (op. cit. i. 205, 208) thinks that Lebedias is identical with Eleud of the Notary of King Béla. His title was, no doubt, Kende, see Ibn Rusta, 167.

7 Constantine, op. cit. 169 Tоû πроs αὐτὸν ἀποσταλῆναι Χελάνδια τὸν πρῶτον αὐτῶν βοέβοδον. Banduri saw that Xelárdia was a proper namie, and eis has probably fallen out of the text. See Kuun, i. 208, Marquart, 35.

Salmutzes, another tribal chief, or his son Arpad. The Magyars declared in favour of Arpad, and he was elevated on a shield, according to the custom of the Khazars, and recognized as king: In this way the Khazars instituted kingship among the Magyars. But while this account may be true so far as it goes, it furnishes no reason for such an important innovation, and it is difficult to see why the Khazar government should have taken the initiative. We shall probably be right in connecting the change with another fact, which had a decisive, influence on Magyar history. Among the Turks who composed the Khazar people, there was a tribeor tribes-known as the Kabars, who were remarkable for their strength and bravery. About this time they rose against the Chagan; the revolt was crushed; and those who escaped death fled across the Dnieper and were received and adopted by the Magyars, to whose seven tribes they were added as an eighth. Their bravery and skill in war enabled them to take a leading part in the counsels of the nation. We are told that they taught the Magyars the Turkish language, and in the tenth century both Magyar and Turkish were spoken in Hungary. The result of this double tongue is the mixed character of the modern Hungarian language, which has supplied specious argument for the two opposite opinions as to the ethnical affinities of the Magyars. We may suspect that the idea of introducing kingship was due to the Kabars, and it has even been conjectured that Arpad belonged to this Turkish people which was now permanently incorporated in the Hungarian nation.*

Almus in the Hungarian chron icles. On Arpad's date, see Appendix XII.

* Constantine, op. cit. 171-172. Vám béry, A magyarok eredete, 140, explains the name Kabar as "insurgent.

See above, p. 410, n. 4.

• Marquart makes this assertion (op. cit. 52), basing it on the passage in Constantine (op. cit. 172μ4-21), where, he observes, ol Káßapo is the

3

subject throughout, and consequently
τὸν Λιούντινα τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ̓Αρπάδη εἶχον
apyorra means that Levente, Arpad's
son, was ruler of the Kabars. I can-
not accept this strict interpretation of
the grammar.
I feel sure that the
subject of the verbs (διεπέρασαν, εἶχον,
etc.) is not the Kabars, but the
Hungarians (ol Toupko), who include
the Kabars. Levente was apxwv of
the Hungarians.

CHAPTER XIV

ART, LEARNING, AND EDUCATION IN THE AMORIAN PERIOD

THROUGHOUT the Middle Ages, till its collapse at the beginning of the thirteenth century, the Eastern Roman Empire was superior to all the states of Europe in the efficiency of its civil and military organization, in systematic diplomacy, in wealth, in the refinements of material civilization, and in intellectual culture. It was the heir of antiquity, and it prized its inheritance-its political legacy from Rome, and its spiritual legacy from Hellas. These traditions, no less than the tradition of the Church, which was valued most of all, may be said to have weighed with crushing force upon the Byzantine world; conservatism was the leading note of the Byzantine spirit. Yet though the political and social fabric always rested on the same foundations, and though the authority of tradition was unusually strong and persistent, the proverbial conservatism of Byzantium is commonly exaggerated or misinterpreted. The great upheaval of society in the seventh century, due to the successive shocks of perilous crises which threatened the state with extinction, had led to a complete reform of the military organization, to the creation of a navy, to extensive innovations in the machinery of the civil and financial government, to important changes in the conditions of the agricultural population and land-tenure; and it is a matter of no small difliculty to trace the organization of the eighth and ninth centuries from that of the age of Justinian. But even after this thoroughgoing transformation, the process of change did not halt. The Emperors were continually adjusting and readjusting the machinery of government to satisfy new needs and meet changing circum

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