§ 3.

CHAP. I. they at last effected. The Sclavonian emigrants who had completed the occupation of Greece and the Peloponnesus, after the great plague, were not long allowed to enjoy tranquil possession of the country. In the year 783, the Empress Irene, who was an Athenian by birth, and consequently more deeply interested in the condition of the Greek population than her immediate predecessors, sent an army into Greece, to reduce all the Sclavonians who had assumed independence to immediate dependence on the imperial administration. This force marched into the Peloponnesus, ravaged the lands of the Sclavonians, carried off an immense booty and many prisoners, and compelled all the independent tribes to acknowledge themselves tributary to the Byzantine empire. In spite of this check, the Sclavonians continued numerous and powerful; and fifteen years later, one of their princes in northern Greece, who ruled a province called Veletzia, engaged in a dangerous conspiracy against the imperial government, which had for its object to raise the sons of Constantine V. to the throne of Constantinople.2

The conviction that their affairs were beginning to decline induced the Sclavonians of the Peloponnesus to make a desperate effort to render themselves masters of the whole peninsula. In the year 807, they made the attack on Patras which has been already alluded to. The siege of that city was the first step towards political independence. It seems that they counted on deriving some assistance in their undertaking from a Saracen fleet, which was to co-operate in the attack on Patras by cutting off all connection between the peninsula and the western coast of continental Greece. The Sclavonian military power does not appear to have been very formidable, for the Greeks of Patras were able to defeat the attack on their city, before any aid reached them from

CHANGE IN GREEK RACE AND SOCIETY.

23

the Byzantine troops stationed at Corinth. The policy of the Byzantine government, which viewed with great jealousy every indication of martial spirit among the native Greek population, and every trace of the influence of local institutions, willingly attributed all the honour of the victory to St Andrew, rather than allow the people to perceive that they were able to defend their own rights and liberties, by means of their own courage and municipal authorities.2

The results of a great change in the condition of the Greek race began to be manifest soon after this event. The privileged position of the citizen in Hellenic society had disappeared; and now citizen, alien, freedman and serf were melting into the mass that composed the Romaioi, or Greeks of the Byzantine empire, called contemptuously by the abbot confessor and historian Theophanes, Helladikoi. Society suffered a deterioration in the purity of the blood of its nobler parts, but the mass of the population rose considerably in the scale of humanity. The first great wave of that irresistible river of democracy, which has ever since floated society onward with its stream, then rolled over the Eastern Empire, and it flowed majestically and slowly forward, unnoticed by philosophers, unheeded by the people, and undreaded by statesmen and sovereigns. Unfortunately on this occasion, as on too many others, the waters were allowed to wash away the productive soil of local institutions, and to leave only a few great central rocks insufficient to overlook the wide expanse occupied by despotic authority. The barbarism of the Sclavonians placed them beyond the sphere of this social revolution, but it crushed them

1 The chronicle of Monemvasia, quoted by Fallmerayer, says that, previously to this period, the inhabitants of Patras had emigrated to Reggio in Calabria; so that for a time, if this MS. is to be received as evidence, only the citadel remained in the hands of the Greeks.

2 Const. Pophyr., De Administ. Imp., cap. xlix. p. 131. Leunclavius, Jus Græco-Romanum, p. 278.

$3.

§ 3.

CHAP. I. in its progress. The Greek race, composed of a more popular society than formerly, felt all the invigorating influence of the change. The uncultivated fields to be won from the Sclavonian tribes, were a paradise compared to the richest gardens tilled by the labour of slaves. As soon as the Greek population began to increase sensibly under the new impulse given to society, the necessity was felt of recovering possession of the districts which had been occupied by the Sclavonians for six generations. The progress of society made the Greeks the encroaching party, and their encroachments produced hostilities.

In the reign of the Emperor Theophilus, the Sclavonians of the Peloponnesus broke out in a general rebellion, and remained masters of the open country for some years, committing fearful devastation on the property of the Greeks. But when his widow, Theodora, governed the empire during the minority of her son, Michael III., A.D. 842-852, she sent an army to reduce them to obedience. This Byzantine force, commanded by Theoktistos the Protospatharias, does not appear to have encountered any very obstinate resistance on the part of the rebels. Two tribes the Melings, who occupied the slopes of Taÿgetus, which had already received its modern name Pentedaktylon, and the Ezerits, who dwelt in the lower part of the valley of the Eurotas, about Helos, which the Sclavonians translated Ezero-had exterminated the last remnants of the Spartan, Laconian, and Helot races in these districts, and long enjoyed complete independence.1 They were rendered tributary by this expedition, and were compelled to submit to the authority of chiefs selected by the Byzantine government. The Melings in the mountain were ordered to pay an annual tribute of sixty gold Byzants, and the Ezerits in the rich plain three hundred. The insignificancy of these sums must be considered as a

1 Constantine Porphyrogenitus calls them Μιληγγοὶ καὶ Ἐζερῖται; the Chronicle of the Conquest of the Morea, Meλiyyo.

SCLAVONIANS BECOME TRIBUTARY.

25

proof that they were imposed merely as a sign of vassalage, and not as a financial burden. Under an administration so essentially fiscal as that of the court of Constantinople, the Sclavonian tribes must have been exposed to various modes of oppression. Rebellion was a natural consequence; and accordingly, in the reign of Romanos I., we find them again in arms, A.D. 920-944. Krinites Arotras, the Byzantine governor of the Peloponnesus, received orders to exterminate the Melings and Ezerits, who had distinguished themselves by their activity. After a campaign of nine months, in which he laid waste their territory, carried off their cattle, and enslaved their children, he at last granted them peace on their engaging to pay an increased tribute. The subjection of the mountaineers of Taygetus was on this occasion so complete that they were compelled to pay annually the sum of six hundred gold Byzants, and the tribute of the Ezerits was fixed at the same amount. The successor of Krinites embroiled the affairs of his province; and a Sclavonian tribe, called the Slavesians, invading the Peloponnesus, threatened the whole peninsula with ruin. The Melings and Ezerits, taking advantage of the troubles, sent a deputation to the Emperor Romanos to petition for a reduction of their tribute; and the Byzantine government, fearing lest they should join the new band of invaders, consented to reduce the tribute to its first amount, and to concede to the tributaries the right of electing their own chiefs.1

From this period the Melings and the Ezerits were governed by self-elected chiefs, who administered the affairs of these Sclavonian tribes according to their native laws and usages. In this condition they were found by the Franks, when they invaded the Peloponnesus at the commencement of the thirteenth century.2 In the time

1 Const. Porphyr., De Adm. Imp., c. 1. p. 133.

Chronicle of the Conquest of the Morea, Greek text of Copenhagen MS. published by Buchon. Paris, 1845, p. 111. v. 1668. The Sclavonians in the Morea are described-Ανθρώπους ἀλαζονικοὺς, κ' οὐ σέξυνται αὐθέντην.

A. D.

920-944.

§ 3.

CHAP. I. of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, the whole of Mount Taygetus and its counterforts was occupied by the Sclavonians. The only district that remained in the possession of the Greeks was the fortress of Maina. In that retired corner of Laconia, a small remnant of the Greek race survived, living in a state of isolation, poverty, and barbarism. So completely had they been separated from all connection with the rest of the nation, and secluded from the influence of the Greek church, that the rural population around the fortress had remained pagans until the reign of Basil I., the Macedonian, A.D. 867-886. In the reign of Constantine VII. Porphyrogenitus, these Maniates paid to the imperial treasury an annual tribute of four hundred gold Byzants.1

The epitomiser of Strabo, who lived not long before the commencement of the eleventh century, speaks of the Sclavonians as forming almost the entire population of Macedonia, Epirus, continental Greece, and the Peloponnesus. He mentions the coast of Elis in particular, as a district where all memory of the ancient Hellenic names, and consequently of the Greek language, was then forgotten; the population consisting entirely of Sclavonians, or as he calls them Scythians.2

The Sclavonian tribes in Elis and Laconia were found by the Franks in a state of partial independence, A.D. 1205. They still preserved their own laws and language; and though they acknowledged the supremacy of the Byzantine government, they collected the tribute they were compelled to pay among themselves, and regulated their local administration by their own national usages.

Const. Porphyr., De Adm. Imp., c. 1. p. 134. It is difficult to fix the position of the Kastron of Maina mentioned by Constantine Porphyrogenitus, in consequence of an error in the text. It is said to have been situated at Cape Malea, on the sea-coast, beyond the territory of the Ezerits. Malea is here evidently an inadvertency of the writer or an error of a copyist.

For the age of the epitomiser, see Dodwell, De Geograph. Etate, Diss. vi. The passages referred to will be found in Geograph. Vet. Scrip. Gr. Minores, Hudson, tom. ii. 98; and in Coray's edition of Strabo, tom. iii. p. 373, 386.