The reconstruction of South-Eastern Europe

SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE

was made prisoner by the Avars in Pannonia, but managed to escape and fled through Slavonia to Italy. On his journey through the forest he found no food and fell exhausted to the ground. Fortunately a Slav woman from a neighbouring village found him, and although he, being a Langobard, was considered an enemy, she, pitying his state, took him to her house and kept him many days. And when he had recovered his strength she led him through the forest and showed him his way. It is not without interest to note that this Slav village woman had some sound knowledge of medicine, as during the first days, when he lay utterly exhausted, she gave him no solid food but only milk and soups. This was more than was known to a contemporary Byzantine general, who on arriving in Italy gave his starving troops solid food, which caused wholesale death in their ranks. Many other races,—Ostro Goths, Langobards and Visigoths,—who about the same period penetrated into the Roman Empire, were half-nomadic militarily organised tribes, who moved from place to place with their women and children, never showing any willingness to settle peacefully upon the territory that they had conquered. Unlike them, the Slavonic tribes, who penetrated into the Balkans, had already an agricultural, communal organisation of their own. Being used to the cultivation of the soil and the rearing of cattle, they quickly took 37