For several centuries, the Danube served as a natural border between the civilized South and the barbaric North of Europe. The Western Roman Empire fell under the blows of the Germans. Byzantium held back the onslaught of the nomads of the Great Steppe for centuries. In a bitter struggle, the fate of the Orthodox Empire of the East hung in the balance more than once, and yet the hordes of nomads disappeared, and the spiritual heritage of Constantinople still lives in the culture of the peoples who created national states in the Danube Valley.