GREEK DARK AGES

1. Preliminaries (fourth to sixth centuries A.D.)


146 B.C. Greece conquered by Roman troops and turned into a Roman province

            ------> by A.D. 400 (map): the southern (Peloponnese) and central (Attica) parts become Achaia
                                    the northern part divided between Thessalia, Macedonia and Epirus Vetus

by 500: Greece was still a relatively well populated region (map), well connected to long-distance trade routes within the Empire (map), with a number of important cities and thriving Christian communities (map)

BUT: precisely because it was relatively far from endangered frontiers, Greece was targeted by barbarians raids/invasions moving deep into imperial territory (see map):

IN ADDITION: Athens:


Corinth:

C by 550: Greece was a much impoverished region, with fewer fortifications than the rest of the Balkans, and declining cities (the ONLY exception: Thessalonica)
 

2. Slavs and Avars in Greece:


Emperor Justinian (527-565) began a huge fortification program in the Balkans, in an attempt to slow, if not stop, invasions across the Danube
 


some remarks:

  1. no source talks about Slavs settled in Greece, as if their concern was only with plundering (see the Slavic leader in Corinth)
  2. various authors carefully distinguished between Avars and Slavs
  3. except the siege of Thessalonica, Slavs and Avars seem to have operated separately, without any coordination
the only source that explicitly refers to Avars and/or Slavs settled in Greece by A.D. 600 is the so-called Chronicle of Monemvasia: (Read text)

the first part of the chronicle describes Avars

second part of the chronicle describes territories remaining under Byzantine control: * this part contains information confirmed by Arethas' note
 

3. Fallmerayer and the "Slavic problem"

early 1800s: following Napoleon's wars across Europe, there is an increasing interest in classical Greece, especially in art.

at that time, Greece was part of the Ottoman Empire, but by 1815, a group of islands on the western coast were taken by Great Britain------>early interest in supporting Greek nationalism (philhellenes)

ex= Lord Byron died at Missolonghi in 1824 fighting for the Greeks

1822: an assembly at Epidaurus declared Greek independence, but an Ottoman expedition overran the entire peninsula in 1825-----> the intervention of the "great powers" (Britain, France, and Russia)
1827: the combined fleet of the three powers defeated the Ottomans at Navarino
1827-1829: Russia successfull waged war on the Ottoman Empire
1830: Greece, the first independent state in the Ottoman-dominated Balkans

BUT: not everybody saw the influence of Russia as beneficial

William Leake: British journalist, who wrote Researches in Greece (London, 1814) -- Greeks are Slavs

Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer:
German journalist, enraged by the political naivete of the philhellnes
feared Russian territorial expansion
because Greeks were Orthodox [like the Russians], he saw the liberation of Greece as a strengthening of Russia
1830 History of the Morean [Greek] Peninsula (Stuttgart)
used the Chronicle of Monemvasia, plus a number of place names in Greece derived from Slavic words
the ancient Greeks had been wiped out during the early Middle Ages
the ancestors of the modern Greeks were Slavs and Albanians who settled in Greece during the Middle Ages and were exposed to Byzantine culture (thus adopting the language)

Fallmerayer's idea attacked by many for different aspects of his theory (Carl Hopf in Germany, Bartholomaus Kopitar in Austria)
in Greece, he became a villain and was demonized as Panslavist and agent of the Russian tsar (his work was translated into Greek only in the 1980s)
in 1941, on the eve of the Nazi occupation of Greece, an eminent German linguist, Max Vasmer published a book on Slavic place-names arguing for an early and substantial presence of Slavs in Greece
following the Civil War, his ideas became not just politically incorrect, but became the main target of Greek nationalism (Fallmerayer's name is still loathed by many Greeks)
 
 

4. The written evidence:

there is clear evidence that some cities (particularly Athens) remained under Byzantine control despite contraction and destruction, Athens remained a center for education and study eastern Greece seems to have been organized very early as a theme BUT: there is also evidence that Slavic tribes have already settled northern Greece there were also Slavs and Avars in central and southern Greece 782/3: the first attempt to subdue the Slavic tribes in central and southern Greece (Theophanes):