Peoples who occupied eastern Europe in ancient times and were known to the Romans as Sarmatians and Scythians. The name is believed to come from slowo (“well speaking”). After the collapse of the Huns in the 5th century the Slavs migrated westwards to the Elbe, the Baltic, the Danube, the Adriatic, and the Black Sea. In the 9th century the missionaries Cyril and Methodius from Constantinople evangelized the Slovenes or southern Slavs.