ABSTRACT
The migrations of the Celtic and Germanic tribes lasted through several generations and were paralleled by those of the Slavs: but while Celts and Germans were early brought into touch with the cultures of old and new Rome, the Slavs were brought late into these civilizing contacts. The Slav language itself is Indo-European, and the early location of the Slavs between the Baltic and the Carpathians is attested by its many resemblances to the Baltic group of that speech family: Lithuanian, Latvian and Old Prussian. In the sixth century the Slavs pressed into the Balkans, the Croats and Serbs penetrating Istria and Dalmatia, and other Slav tribes Illyricum. 'Glagolitism', the movement for a vernacular liturgy, remained through the centuries, and especially among the Dalmatian Slavs, a permanent religious factor, though the original glagolitic alphabet gave way, under the influence of the Beneventan script, to the Cyrillic.
