Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

730 23. the balkans and greece 420,602
The Life of Gregentius, although a fictitious text, presents a convincing
picture of living conditions: Gregentius, a native of the Balkans, avoided
capture during a tribal raid by taking refuge in a fort, but those inhabitants
who did not reach a nearby town were captured or slaughtered. Only after
a tribe was firmly established in an area were more stable relations possible
with Roman communities which survived: at Singidunum the Avars appear
to have been happy to permit survivors to remain in their captured city until
the reappearance of a Roman army disturbed the arrangement, and at the
height of their power in 589 the Chagan offered security to city-dwellers if
they paid taxes to the Avars instead of the Romans. 91 Near Thessalonica in
the seventh century good relations were gradually built up between the citizens
and local Slavs, particularly between leaders on each side, as some
Slavs came to appreciate the benefits of Roman civilization. Thessalonica,
however, was a rarity in surviving as a Roman city beyond the mid seventh
century, as the restoration of Roman authority in Maurice’s second decade
was undermined by the resumption of eastern war and imperial dissension;
apart from the immediate hinterland of Constantinople, Roman control
was soon restricted to coastal areas where small communities could
support and defend themselves. An expedition led by Justinian II suffered
heavily in an ambush while returning from Thessalonica to the capital in
688 (Theophanes 364.11–18).
In much of the Balkans there was a complete break between the Roman
and post-Roman worlds. In Bulgaria there was some continuity of language
and administrative skills in the short term, probably transmitted by the
inhabitants of cities along the Black Sea, but the majority of the territory
north of the Stara Planina was already occupied by Slav tribes when
Asparuch led in the new Bulgar ruling élite in 680. In peninsular Greece
enough of the native population survived for the reconnection of this area
with the Byzantine world to be an unremarkable process, but many had
probably had to take refuge in the mountains and other safe areas; there
may already be signs of the process of incorporation into the Byzantine
cultural world in the seventh-century settlement at Isthmia, where the
inhabitants were sedentary agriculturalists inhabiting buildings partly built
of stone. Throughout most of the Balkans, however, the future lay with the
non-Roman elements: Croats and Serbs were settled in the north-west
during Heraclius’ reign, the Bulgars controlled the north-east, while the
Slavs spread into whatever land was available. Centuries of Graeco-Roman
influence and control disappeared, and the new groups with their own languages
and identities were only brought slowly into a Christian commonwealth
through considerable missionary activity. 92
91 Theophylact vii.10–11; Michael the Syrian xi.21.
92 Howard-Johnston (1983); Obolensky (1971) chs. 2–3.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008