The Balkan Peninsula: Part I. Building an Empire
Although the integration policy placated the migrants, it did not serve the Empire well during multi-front wars. While the Huns/Magyars, Greeks, and Slavs fought each other, similar rebellions plagued the Empire in North Africa and Western Europe. During the fifth century AD Rome rapidly lost control of its provinces. The eastern provinces endeavored to bolster the western front, but by the mid-sixth century the Roman half of the Roman Empire met its demise.
Skirmishes also persisted in the Balkan-based Roman (or Byzantine) Empire. Most of these clashes involved control of land. Some conflicts originated from religious differences, but until the advent of Islam during the seventh century, religion was not the flame that lit the Balkan fuse. As the Islamic faith spread, well disciplined guerilla bands of Arab raiders threatened the security of Constantinople. Centuries after the first Arab seige of Constantinople in 718, the mere presence of these foreigners to whom Europe owed the preservation and expansion of the knowledge of the ancient world gave Greek and Slavic peasants and scholars cause to reflect. After blizzards thwarted the 718 seige of Constantinople, Byzantine soldiers were permanently mobilized. Years of political turmoil ensued. Emperors were ousted, tortured, disabled, exiled, and (in the case of Justinian II) restored to power. Emperor ousted emperor or empress; the Imperial Guard found quite grotesque ways to mar its former masters. Byzantine tradition held that no disfigured man was fit to rule. One particularly frequent form of emperor punishment was cutting off the nose of the ousted leader. Why the nose? Theories diverge, but one widely accepted view is that the nose is the most dominant facial feature; a leader who lacks that attribute would not act boldly or dominate the affairs of state with the same pronounced measure that the nose dominates the face. When the emperor Justinian II confounded this tradition by hiring a goldsmith to make him a new nose to replace his severed nasal device, the practice lost its effect, and other punishments such as drawing and quartering, breaking on the wheel, putting out the eyes, or exile to the Crimean coast on the Black Sea quickly replaced it. These stern punishments were also applied in Western Europe.
During the next centuries Patriarchs and Popes bickered; the perceived Arab minace from the south and east strengthened; new battles raged as competing armies ravaged, raided, and struggled to lay claim to as much of Europe as
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