Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

from roman to post-roman 727
Thebes, or the learned bishop Peter commemorated in verse on a mosaic
inscription. 77
Those areas of the Balkans less accessible to northern invaders preserved
their prosperity, or at least avoided serious decline, until the sixth
century, but thereafter there is a rapid and catastrophic collapse: field
surveys note the almost complete abandonment of the countryside, while
in towns and other significant sites the level of material culture dropped
dramatically and the fabric of society appears to have unravelled. In peninsular
Greece, Athens may have led the decline, depending on what impact
Justinian’s prohibition on pagan participation in teaching in 529 had on the
local economy: the careful concealment of pagan statues at one of the large
houses on the Areopagus at about that date is suggestive, but should not
be pushed too far. 78 In the mid sixth century Bulgars ravaged northern and
central Greece, and by the 580s central Greece and the Peloponnese had
also become the targets for Slav attacks and the location, perhaps, of some
Slav settlement. By the late sixth century it is no longer possible to identify
a north/south divide in the Balkans, since the whole region was suffering
from extreme disruption as raiders caused considerable depopulation and
destruction, with no respite for recovery.
In some cities the population departed en masse: thus at Lissus in
Dalmatia and Euria in Epirus, local clergy seem to have led their flocks to
safety, in Italy and Corfu respectively, in the 590s. 79 For the Peloponnese,
the Chronicle of Monemvasia records migrations to Italy, Sicily, offshore
islands or isolated refuges such as Monemvasia, at which a bishopric was
now established; the Chronicle also asserts that the Peloponnese passed out
of imperial control in 587/8, only to be recovered in the early eighth
century. Although the status of this text is much discussed and its information
may well be exaggerated in certain respects, the general impression of
developments is at least credible; this literary evidence coincides with the
picture of utter desolation recorded in the Argolid field survey. 80 On the
other hand, all was not lost until after 600 and the termination of energetic
campaigning along the Danube under Phocas and the transfer of troops to
Asia Minor by Heraclius: in 592 pope Gregory could refer to a general
recovery in Illyricum from the effects of invasions, which encouraged him
to reorganize the church’s possessions there, and his letters suggest the survival
of ecclesiastical order in Macedonia, peninsular Greece and along the
Adriatic coast. 81
Those who managed to flee into exile were the lucky ones, since both
Slavs and Avars are known to have removed large numbers of captives for
77 Avramea and Feissel (1987) nos. 6 and 7.
78 Frantz (1988) 84–92; caution in Fowden (1990) 496. 79 Greg. Reg. ii.37; viii.32; xiv.7–8.
80 Charanis (1950); Whitby, Maurice 125–6.
81 Reg. ii.23; iii.6, 38; vi.7; ix.156; Whitby, Maurice 112–15.
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