The Avars occupied "Gepidia" in 567, less than a decade after their arrival in Europe. They were nomadic pastoralists, who settled in the lowlands. Stirrups found at Sânpetru German are among the earliest finds in Romania attributed to the Avars. They received agricultural products from farming communities settled in their domains and neighboring peoples subjected to their authority. Emperor Justin II hired, in 578, the Avars to attack the Sclavenes who resumed their plundering raids against the empire around that time. The names of some of the Sclavene leaders were first recorded in the following period. One of them, Musocius, "was called "rex" in the barbarian tongue".