The republic of Ragusa : an episode of the Turkish conquest / by Luigi Villari ; with many illustrations by William Hullton.

  • Luigi Villari
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The republic of Ragusa : an episode of the Turkish conquest / by Luigi Villari ; with many illustrations by William Hullton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    27/474 page 9
    of Pope Gregory I. we see that at his time (590-603) Epidaurum, Salona, Doclea, and a few other Roman cities still survived. But in 600, in a letter to the Bishop of Salona, he expressed great sorrow that Dalmatia was hard pressed by the barbarians. “ De Sclavorum gente, quae vobis imminet, affligor vehementer et conturbor.” 1 The whole province was becoming desolate. In 535 the Byzantine Greeks reconquered it from the Goths together with Pannonia. In 539 it was overrun by Huns, Bul- garians, and Slaves, liberated by Narses in 552, and added to the Exarchate of Ravenna. Later it was made into a separate Exarchate ; but after the death of the Emperor Maurice the Slaves became masters of the greater part of the country. When the Eastern Empire was divided into themes, the remaining fragments of the Roman colonies on the Illyrian shore were erected into the Themes of Dalmatia and Dyrrhachium. The former is described at length by Constantine Porphyrogenitus in his De Administrando Imperio,2 written in 949 ; it consisted of little more than a few cities and islands, all the rest of the land being peopled by barbarians. The capital of the Dalmatian theme was no longer Salona, which together with Epidaurum had been destroyed by the Avars in the seventh century, but Jadera or Zara. The other towns of the theme were: Veglia, Arbe, and Opsara (comprising Cherso and Lussino) in the Quarnero ; 1 Quoted in Handelsstrassen unci Bcrgwerke von Serbien tend Bosnien wahrenddes Mittelalters, by Dr. C. J. Jire£ek, Prag, 1879, p. 3. 2 Cap. xxix. to xxxvi.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3