The Byzantine Empire was the sun which shone beyond their horizon, and was for them the supreme type of power and earthly splendor.

Whatever ambitions and aspirations would in time awaken in these Oriental breasts must inevitably have for their ideal the splendid despotism of the Eastern Caesars.

But that stage had not yet been reached.
Although branches of the Slavonic race had separated from the parent stem, bearing different names, the Bohemians on the Vistula, the Poliani in what was to become Poland, the Lithuanians near the Baltic, and minor tribes scattered elsewhere, from the Peloponnesus to the Baltic, all had the same general characteristics.

Their religion, like that of all Aryan peoples, was a pantheism founded upon the phenomena of nature.

In their Pantheon there was a Volos, a solar deity who, like the Greek Apollo, was inspirer of poets and protector of the flocks--Perun, God of Thunder--Stribog, the father of the Winds, like Aeolus--a Proteus who could assume all shapes--Centaurs, Vampires, and hosts of minor deities, good and evil.