8, tom.iii.p.

278,) a scarce, and hitherto, to me, an inaccessible book.] I have marked the faint and general outline of the Sclavonians and Bulgarians, without attempting to define their intermediate boundaries, which were not accurately known or respected by the Barbarians themselves.

Their importance was measured by their vicinity to the empire; and the level country of Moldavia and Wallachia was occupied by the Antes, [16] a Sclavonian tribe, which swelled the titles of Justinian with an epithet of conquest.

[17] Against the Antes he erected the fortifications of the Lower Danube; and labored to secure the alliance of a people seated in the direct channel of northern inundation, an interval of two hundred miles between the mountains of Transylvania and the Euxine Sea.

But the Antes wanted power and inclination to stem the fury of the torrent; and the light-armed Sclavonians, from a hundred tribes, pursued with almost equal speed the footsteps of the Bulgarian horse.