Hung up on Sclavinia: What actually happened in 602? By Florin Curta

https://www.academia.edu/126976749/Hung_up_on_Sclavinia_What_actually_happened_in_602?email_work_card=title People accept the truth with some difficulty, as they deliberately opt for illusions, the imaginary, fantasies, and distortions. Truth commonly appears to them as trivial, drab, and dull. Nuances are hard to get, for they seem to be an obstacle for clear reason." Thus wrote Ioan-Aurel Pop two decades ago-tongue in cheek. His wry comment is as true about the polemic between George Panu (1848-1910) and Mihai Eminescu (1850-1889), as it is about current debates in historiography. Those words could easily apply to many cases of historiographic blindness and stiff-necked persistence in error. Take for example, the common opinion that the revolt of Phocas caused the collapse of the Roman frontier on the Lower Danube. That opinion is demonstrably a product of the Cold War propaganda, yet many a historian continue to believe that the mutiny brought "the abandonment of the Byzantine possessions on the Lower Danube." 2 Some truly choose distortion over truth, which may ...