The Pannonians are settled near Dalmatia close along the Ister from Noricum to European Moesia and lead the most miserable existence of mankind.

How Moesia was reduced (chapters 23-27).

Such of them, however, as live on this side of it and near the Triballic country are reckoned in with the district of Moesia and are called Moesi save among those who are in the very neighborhood.

The Bastarnae are properly classed as Scythians and at this time had crossed the Ister and subdued the part of Moesia opposite them, then the Triballi who live near it, and the Dardani who inhabit the Triballian country.

Next he pursued them, as they were retiring homeward, gained possession of the district called Segetica, and invading Moesia damaged that territory.

Now that he had once taken up arms again he conceived a desire to recompense the Thracians, who had harassed him during his retreat from Moesia; for news was brought at this time that they were fortifying positions and were spoiling for a fight.

Since then there have been included under the name of Moesia all the tribes which the Savus by emptying into the Ister north of Dalmatia, Macedonia and Thrace, separates from Pannonia.

The name appears to be derived from wer, war, and man, a man, and signifies the country of warlike men Germans, habituated from their infancy to arms, G. i. 36; their manner of training their cavalry, 48; their superstition 50; defeated by Caesar, 53; their manners, religion, vi. 23; their huge stature and strength, G. i. 39 G[=e]tae, an ancient people of Scythia, who inhabited betwixt Moesia and Dacia, on each side of the Danube.

[-7-] "What need to set side by side his separate exploits,the conquest of Gaul, the subduing of Moesia, the subjugation of Egypt, the enslaving of Pannonia?

He, who had once governed Moesia for eight years after his prætorship, was, with his wife, indicted for receiving bribes and voluntarily destroyed both her and himself.

The soldiers in Moesia, hearing how matters stood with him, would not wait for Mucianus,they had learned that he was en route,and chose as their general Antonius Primus, [Footnote: M. Antonius Primus.] who had suffered sentence of exile in Nero's reign but had been restored by Galba and was commander of the legion in Pannonia.

In Moesia, [Footnote: An error of the excerptor.

The Lygians lived north of Moesia.]

[Instead, he remained in a city of Moesia, rioting, as was his wont.] (Not only was he averse to physical labor and timorous in spirit, but also most profligate and lewd toward women and boys alike).

He sent into Moesia some deserters to see whether they could make away with him, inasmuch as the emperor was generally accessible, and now, on account of the needs of warfare, admitted to conference absolutely every one who desired it.

Hadrian, on the contrary, was afraid that the barbarians might overpower the guard at the bridge and cross into Moesia, and so he removed the surface work.

Others received land, in Dacia or in Pannonia or in Moesia and Germany or in Italy itself.

When he tried the same tactics on the allies in Moesia he was defeated near the city of the Istrianians by the Bastarnian Scythians who came to their aid; and thereupon he decamped.

In the year A.D. 6 Moesia, which included a large part of the modern kingdom of Serbia and the northern half of that of Bulgaria between the Danube and the Balkan range (the classical Haemus), became an imperial province, and twenty years later Thrace, the country between the Balkan range and the Aegean, was incorporated in the empire, and was made a province by the Emperor Claudius in A.D. 46.

Generally speaking, the Avars, who must have been infinitely less numerous than the Slavs, were settled in Hungary, where Attila and the Huns had been settled a little more than a century previously; that is to say, they were north of the Danube, though they were always overrunning into Upper Moesia, the modern Serbia.

In Macedonia and Lower Moesia (Bulgaria) very few classical names have survived, while in Upper Moesia (Serbia) and the interior of Dalmatia (Bosnia, Hercegovina, and Montenegro) they have entirely disappeared.

Christianity had of course penetrated into Bulgaria (or Moesia, as it was then) long before the arrival of the Slavs and Bulgars, but the influx of one horde of barbarians after another was naturally not propitious to its growth.

Eastern Bulgaria (i.e. Moesia and Thrace) ceased to exist, becoming a purely Greek province; John Tzimisces made his triumphal entry into Constantinople, followed by the two sons of Peter of Bulgaria on foot; the elder was deprived of his regal attributes and created magistros, the younger was made a eunuch.

The Roman province of Moesia (between the Danube and the Balkans) fell before its armies, and the campaign that ensued was so successful that the Dacians were able to compel Rome to an alliance.

Under the strain of those incursions the Roman legions withdrew by degrees into Moesia, and in A.D. 271 Dacia was finally evacuated.