Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

728 23. the balkans and greece 420,602
exploitation in their homelands; though these might be liberated through
military action, their allegiance to the empire was thereafter considered
suspect, so that even release was a mixed blessing. 82 The Slavs’ reputation
for kind treatment of captives, and opportunities for lucrative service with
the successful Avars, will have weakened the attractions of loyalty to Rome.
More importantly, perhaps, the region was experiencing a steady process of
demographic and cultural change as the settlement of Germanic and
Hunnic tribesmen within the Balkans since the fourth century blurred distinctions
between inhabitants north and south of the Danube. The invasions
must have caused heavy casualties, particularly as the Avars, like the
Huns, were capable of undertaking sieges and organizing effective blockades:
an inscription from Sirmium, in poor Greek, attests the agony of this
city in 580: ‘Lord Christ, help the city and smite the Avars, and watch over
Romania and the writer; Amen’; the prayer went unanswered, and the Avar
Chagan had no compunction about taking false oaths on the Bible. 83 Even
Slavs could overrun the walls of Topirus in 552, and defences of the lower
cities at Athens and Corinth c. 582. The absence of Thessalonican coins in
northern Illyricum has been suggested as an indication of lack of economic
activity in the sixth century, possibly of major depopulation; granted
the link between coinage production and army pay, this absence probably
reflects a lack of soldiers, or at least of soldiers whose units were still
closely attached to the imperial system, unlike the unpaid garrison at Pessau
in Noricum or the soldiers at Asemus. 84 Maurice believed that there was
sufficient room in Thrace for the settlement of 30,000 Armenian families,
which would each provide a new soldier. 85
In this period of uncertainty, urban settlements were in fundamental
conflict with the invaders, 86 partly because city walls protected the surpluses
of food and reserves of wealth that interested tribesmen, partly
because the movement of tribes into an area destroyed agricultural prosperity,
constricted a city’s vitality, and prompted the flight of leading inhabitants
to places of greater safety: at Salona, attempted flight by the upper
classes prompted the city’s fall in 638/9, while the refugees from Serdica
and Naissus at Thessalonica c. 620 were probably similar people. 87 Cities
might be choked to death as the more Romanized elements of their population
departed, and it is significant that at many Balkan sites the last
phases of ‘Roman’ occupation are difficult to distinguish from ‘barbarian’
control, with so-called squatter inhabitation of ruined buildings. Part of
the problem is the lack of publications of seventh-century structures,
which are usually unprepossessing and appear uninteresting, and the tendency
of archaeologists to date material to the fifth/sixth century on the
82 Maurice, Strat. xi.4.131–6. 83 Menander fr. 25.1.76–87.
84 Metcalf (1984); cf. Lemerle (1984) 520. Life of Severinus 20.1; Theophylact vii.3.
85 Sebeos 8. 86 Lemerle (1984) 516; contra Howard-Johnston (1983).
87 Thomas the Archdeacon 26–7; Mirac. S. Dem. ii.200.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008