"Frequent assaults" is probably a correct description of what the Serb
of that period had to endure at the hands of this particular
opponent, the Bulgar. Having swarmed across the Peninsula, the Bulgar
was now in the act of consolidating a great kingdom, for this was the
magnificent epoch of the Bulgarian Tzar Simeon, whose word ran far and
wide from the Adriatic. The Bulgarian map[9] which exhibits the
Tzardom at the death of Simeon is painted in the same brown colour
from opposite Corfu right across to the Black Sea and up as far as the
mouths of the Danube, which signifies that in those parts (including,
of course, Macedonia) the word of Simeon was supreme. But the Serbian
provinces of Ra[vs]ka, Zeta, Bosnia and some adjoining lands are
painted brown and white, being hatched with white diagonal lines; and
this indicates very candidly that in the north-west Simeon was not
omnipotent. We are indeed told in the letterpress that "on the other
hand Simeon meanwhile took the opportunity to settle accounts with the
Serbians because of their perfidious policy, and he subjected them in
the year 924"; but doubtless this was a kind of subjection which in
925 would have to be repeated, and this would account for one of
Simeon's faithful chroniclers having made that allusion to perfidious
policy. Of the Tzar himself we are given an attractive picture: unlike
his father, Boris, who patronized Slav literature for the reason that
it made his State less permeable to Byzantine influence, Simeon had no
political object in his encouragement of native literature.[10] He was
himself a man of letters, having studied at Constantinople. He was
acquainted with Aristotle and Demosthenes, he discussed theology with
the most eminent doctors of the Church, and of positive science--or of
what was then regarded as such--he possessed everything which had
survived the great shipwreck of ancient thought. Not only did he found
monasteries and schools, but he gathered writers round him; and, in
order to stimulate them, he himself wrote original books and
translations, thus ennobling, we are told, the literary vocation in
the eyes of his rude and warlike race. He would probably have smiled
if he had known that one of his writers had attributed to him the
subjection of the Serbs; but what one would like to learn is whether
Macedonia, even then a kaleidoscope of races, was more or less
completely under the shadow and the brilliance of his sword, more or
less completely subjugated. Four centuries later the Serbs were to
have a Macedonian empire which, like Simeon's, dissolved on the death
of its founder. To these old empires the Serb and the Bulgar of our
day are looking back, and it would be interesting to know if harassed
Macedonia was calmly content to be first Bulgarian and then Serbian,
or whether it was a calm of that Eastern kind which means that a
ruler's assaults upon the people are infrequent.