Macedonia, 1 A.D. to 1100 A.D.

[Istor]

The question is why did Macedonia shift to Thrace.

because Empire wanted to save Macedonian villagers from Slavic atrocities. So, it moved them to Edirne and called the region *thrace) as Macedonian thema. After that the dynasty was called Macedonian.

[Petros Houhoulis]

Originally Posted by Istor

because Empire wanted to save Macedonian villagers from Slavic atrocities. So, it moved them to Edirne and called the region *thrace) as Macedonian thema. After that the dynasty was called Macedonian.

No Istor, the empire didn't order the transfer of the Macedonians to Thrace. There is no proof of any such imperial edict, not that the people would follow it with their own will.

You have to comprehend that the Macedonians fled on their own, when they realized that no Imperial army was coming to save them...

...And that the Macedonian dynasty and its' era was all about the attempts of the empire to regain Macedonia...

[Petros Houhoulis]

http://www.fullbooks.com/Peace-Theor...lkan-War1.html

3

_The Arrival of the Slavs in the Balkan Peninsula_, A.D. 500-650


The Balkan peninsula, which had been raised to a high level of security
and prosperity during the Roman dominion, gradually relapsed into
barbarism as a result of these endless invasions; the walled towns, such
as Salonika and Constantinople, were the only safe places, and the country
became waste and desolate. The process continued unabated throughout the
three following centuries, and one is driven to one of two conclusions,
either that these lands must have possessed very extraordinary powers of
recuperation to make it worth while for invaders to pillage them so
frequently, or, what is more probable, there can have been after some time
little left to plunder, and consequently the Byzantine historians'
accounts of enormous drives of prisoners and booty are much exaggerated.
It is impossible to count the number of times the tide of invasion and
devastation swept southwards over the unfortunate peninsula. The emperors
and their generals did what they could by means of defensive works on the
frontiers, of punitive expeditions, and of trying to set the various
hordes of barbarians at loggerheads with each other, but, as they had at
the same time to defend an empire which stretched from Armenia to Spain,
it is not surprising that they were not more successful. The growing
riches of Constantinople and Salonika had an irresistible attraction for
the wild men from the east and north, and unfortunately the Greek citizens
were more inclined to spend their energy in theological disputes and their
leisure in the circus than to devote either the one or the other to the
defence of their country. It was only by dint of paying them huge sums of
money that the invaders were kept away from the coast. The departure of
the Huns and the Goths had made the way for fresh series of unwelcome
visitors. In the sixth century the Slavs appear for the first time. From
their original homes which were immediately north of the Carpathians, in
Galicia and Poland, but may also have included parts of the modern
Hungary, they moved southwards and south-eastwards. They were presumably
in Dacia, north of the Danube, in the previous century, but they are first
mentioned as having crossed that river during the reign of the Emperor
Justin I (518-27). They were a loosely-knit congeries of tribes without
any single leader or central authority; some say they merely possessed the
instinct of anarchy, others that they were permeated with the ideals of
democracy. What is certain is that amongst them neither leadership nor
initiative was developed, and that they lacked both cohesion and
organisation. The Eastern Slavs, the ancestors of the Russians, were only
welded into anything approaching unity by the comparatively much smaller
number of Scandinavian (Varangian) adventurers who came and took charge of
their affairs at Kiev. Similarly the Southern Slavs were never of
themselves able to form a united community, conscious of its aim and
capable of persevering in its attainment.

The Slavs did not invade the Balkan peninsula alone but in the company of
the Avars, a terrible and justly dreaded nation, who, like the Huns, were
of Asiatic (Turkish or Mongol) origin. These invasions became more
frequent during the reign of the Emperor Justinian I (527-65), and
culminated in 559 in a great combined attack of all the invaders on
Constantinople under a certain Zabergan, which was brilliantly defeated by
the veteran Byzantine general Belisarius. The Avars were a nomad tribe,
and the horse was their natural means of locomotion. The Slavs, on the
other hand, moved about on foot, and seem to have been used as infantry by
the more masterful Asiatics in their warlike expeditions. Generally
speaking, the Avars, who must have been infinitely less numerous than the
Slavs, were settled in Hungary, where Attila and the Huns had been settled
a little more than a century previously; that is to say, they were north
of the Danube, though they were always overrunning into Upper Moesia, the
modern Serbia. The Slavs, whose numbers were without doubt very large,
gradually settled all over the country south of the Danube, the rural
parts of which, as a result of incessant invasion and retreat, had become
waste and empty. During the second half of the sixth century all the
military energies of Constantinople were diverted to Persia, so that the
invaders of the Balkan peninsula had the field very much to themselves. It
was during this time that the power of the Avars reached its height. They
were masters of all the country up to the walls of Adrianople and
Salonika, though they did not settle there. The peninsula seems to have
been colonized by Slavs, who penetrated right down into Greece; but the
Avars were throughout this time, both in politics and in war, the
directing and dominating force. During another Persian war, which broke
out in 622 and entailed the prolonged absence of the emperor from
Constantinople, the Avars, not satisfied with the tribute extorted from
the Greeks, made an alliance against them with the Persians, and in 626
collected a large army of Slavs and Asiatics and attacked Constantinople
both by land and sea from the European side, while the Persians threatened
it from Asia. But the walls of the city and the ships of the Greeks proved
invincible, and, quarrels breaking out between the Slavs and the Avars,
both had to save themselves in ignominious and precipitate retreat.

After this nothing more was heard of the Avars in the Balkan peninsula,
though their power was only finally crushed by Charlemagne in 799. In
Russia their downfall became proverbial, being crystallized in the saying,
'they perished like Avars'. The Slavs, on the other hand, remained.
Throughout these stormy times their penetration of the Balkan peninsula
had been peacefully if unostentatiously proceeding; by the middle of the
seventh century it was complete. The main streams of Slavonic immigration
moved southwards and westwards. The first covered the whole of the country
between the Danube and the Balkan range, overflowed into Macedonia, and
filtered down into Greece. Southern Thrace in the east and Albania in the
west were comparatively little affected, and in these districts the
indigenous population maintained itself. The coasts of the Aegean and the
great cities on or near them were too strongly held by the Greeks to be
affected, and those Slavs who penetrated into Greece itself were soon
absorbed by the local populations. The still stronger Slavonic stream,
which moved westwards and turned up north-westwards, overran the whole
country down to the shores of the Adriatic and as far as the sources of
the Save and Drave in the Alps. From that point in the west to the shores
of the Black Sea in the east became one solid mass of Slavs,
and has remained so ever since. The few Slavs who were left north of the
Danube in Dacia were gradually assimilated by the inhabitants of that
province, who were the descendants of the Roman soldiers and colonists,
and the ancestors of the modern Rumanians, but the fact that Slavonic
influence there was strong is shown by the large number of words of
Slavonic origin contained in the Rumanian language.

[Illustration: THE BALKAN PENINSULA ETHNOLOGICAL]

Place-names are a good index of the extent and strength of the tide of
Slav immigration. All along the coast, from the mouth of the Danube to the
head of the Adriatic, the Greek and Roman names have been retained though
places have often been given alternative names by the Slavonic settlers.
Thrace, especially the south-eastern part, and Albania have the fewest
Slavonic place-names. In Macedonia and Lower Moesia (Bulgaria) very few
classical names have survived, while in Upper Moesia (Serbia) and the
interior of Dalmatia (Bosnia, Hercegovina, and Montenegro) they have
entirely disappeared. The Slavs themselves, though their tribal names were
known, were until the ninth century usually called collectively S(k)lavini
([Greek: Sklabaenoi]) by the Greeks, and all the inland parts of the
peninsula were for long termed by them 'the S(k)lavonias' ([Greek:
Sklabiniai]).

During the seventh century, dating from the defeat of the Slavs and Avars
before the walls of Constantinople in 626 and the final triumph of the
emperor over the Persians in 628, the influence and power of the Greeks
began to reassert itself throughout the peninsula as far north as the
Danube; this process was coincident with the decline of the might of the
Avars. It was the custom of the astute Byzantine diplomacy to look on and
speak of lands which had been occupied by the various barbarian invaders
as grants made to them through the generosity of the emperor; by this
means, by dint also of lavishing titles and substantial incomes to the
invaders' chiefs, by making the most of their mutual jealousies, and also
by enlisting regiments of Slavonic mercenaries in the imperial armies, the
supremacy of Constantinople was regained far more effectively than it
could have been by the continual and exhausting use of force.

[Petros Houhoulis]

Why don't you read the above and comment upon them?

[tymphaios]

I like the Idea of Macedonia moving around. There are probably enough of us in Germany to create an Upper Macedonia here, and maybe also a New Macedonia in the USA. There is some basis for it, at least we are Greeks.

[kliment]

modern greece?this is a good one.

[Nikas]

It appears that when the Slavs first penetrated south of the Danube it was more as raiders and pillagers than as actual settlers. The Balkans had already been ravaged by successives waves of Goths, Huns, and Avars, so the population in the countryside outside of the "major" urban centres should not have been substantial. After these initial raids, due in part to the overthrow of the Emperor Maurice, the Slavs realized the Roman defenses had collapsed and began settling in. Of course they would have started with the less defended and more scarcely populated countryside, as well as they did not have the technology to successfully storm the stronger fortresses such as Adrianople, Thessaloniki, and Constantinople itself. It is not hard too imagine that this process would have taken some time, especially as the Byzantines were in a life-and-death struggle first with the Persians, and then with the Arabs. I believe that the Greek population (the actual Macedonians) would have gradually relocated to regions that were easier to defend from the capital, or Thessaloniki itself. It is these settlers that would have laid the foundation of the later theme of Macedonia.

I believe it is very safe to say that the Macedonians never mixed with the barbarian Slavs, but emigrated to regions and strongholds within the reach and protection of the Empire. One has but to read the writings of Procopius, the Strategikon of Maurice, or the Miracles of St. Demetrius to see the abhorrence the Macedonians had for these new barbarians. It is interesting to note that in the De Administrando Imperio, it is the armies of the "Macedonians" and "Thracians" that are used to put down the Slavs in Greece and the Peloponnesus and re-impose Roman control.

[Cadmus]

it is the armies of the "Macedonians" and "Thracians" that are used to put down the Slavs in Greece and the Peloponnesus and re-impose Roman control.

So the Macedonians were able to maintain their culture in the Slav invasions does that necessarily imply same goes for the Thracians because their culture seems to have been absorbed totally..

[Nikas]

"Macedonians" and "Thracians" is referring to the units from the respective military themes. The inhabitants were of course always Greek (Macedonians), or long since Hellenized (Thracians).