Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The Iconoclastic epoch (717-867)

The attitude toward Arabs, Bulgarians, and Slavs 

Page 6

In the military collisions between the Empire and the Bulgarians of the eighth century, the Bulgarian forces included also the Slavs, who formed part of their kingdom. The occupation of the Balkan peninsula by the Slavs also continued in the eighth century. One western pilgrim to the Holy Places, a contemporary of Leo III, visited the Peloponnesian city of Monembasia and wrote that it was situated in Slavonic (Slavinian) land (in Slawinia terrae). There are references to the presence of Slavs in Dyrrachium and in Athens in the eighth century. The following well-known lines (quoted also in an earlier part of this work) in the work of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, On the Themes, refer also to the days of Constantine V: The whole of the Peloponnesus became slavonized and barbarian when the plague spread through the entire universe. The reference here is to the formidable epidemic of 746-47, imported from Italy, which especially devastated the south of Greece and Constantinople. In an attempt to rehabilitate the capital after the epidemic, Constantine transported to Constantinople people from various provinces. Even in the opinion of the population, the Peloponnesus was Slavonized as early as the middle of the eighth century; to the same period must be referred the influx of new settlements in Greece established in place of those communities whose population was either extinguished by the epidemic or taken to the capital when the effort was being made to rehabilitate it. At the end of the eighth century the Empress Irene sent a special expedition against the Slavonic tribes, to Greece, Thessalonica, and the Peloponnesus. Later these Greek Slavs took an active part in the plot against Irene. This indicates clearly that in the eighth century the Slavs in the Balkan peninsula, including all of Greece, were not only definitely and strongly established, but even participated in the political life of the Empire. By the ninth century the Bulgarians and the Slavs became two very serious enemies of the Byzantine Empire

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