2
Mitko B. Panov
When defining the conception of the Roman borderland in Macedonia related to the Slavs, one has to engage with a variety of complex issues. This first requires clarification of the meaning of the terms Macedonia and Macedonians for the Romans and Byzantines. Second, these terms must be related with the names used in Byzantine accounts referring to the Slavs or the specific Slavic groups, by which the Roman borderland was conceptualized. Third, one must conjecture how the Slavs conceptualized their own borderland in Macedonia that separated them from the Romans and others. The analysis will cover multiple meanings of the names Macedonia and Macedonians in Byzantium (up to the death of Basil II), which when applied in an imperial context discloses the coordinates of Romanness along the conceptual border of Roman power. This conception of the borderland in Macedonia maintained the sense of belonging to Romans, by which the Slavs were either integrated with or separated from Byzantium. That made them either Romans or non-Romans in the eyes of the Byzantines and possibly of the Slavs themselves. Furthermore, we should differentiate the conceptual Roman borderland in Macedonia that was driven by war from the border zone of interaction.
This chapter has no pretensions to provide answers to all of these questions, and it does not enter into the debate about ethnicity.1 Here, we tend to address three generally different perspectives in the sources that reflect the local view from Thessalonica (Miracles of St. Demetrius; John Kaminiates), the imperial perspective from Constantinople (Theophanes, Constantine VII; Leo the Deacon; John Geometres) and the perception of the Slavs (Life of St. Methodius; Life of St. Constantine-Cyril). These sources in comparison provide a glimpse of how the Roman borderland was conceptualized in relation to the Slavs in Macedonia.
Following the subjugation of ancient Macedonia, the Romans recognized that the Macedonians inhabited the geographical region of Macedonia, namely, the Roman province, with Thessalonica continuously considered as its metropolis and immediately associated with the Macedonians. By acknowledging this local and regional/provincial Macedonian identity, the Romans made their symbolic connection with Macedonia, demonstrating that it belonged to the Roman State. This symbolism is best reflected in the poems of Antipater of Thessalonica, the epigram-matist and Roman governor of Thessalonica in the 1st century bc. In his epigrams addressed to his patron Lucius Calpurnius Piso, the Roman consul and governor of Macedonia from 57 to 55 bc, Antipater symbolically connected the Romans with Macedonia. He did this by putting оn Piso’s head the “causia, once a serviceable head-dress for the Macedonians”, that came from the “Macedonian land to thy Italian brows”.2 Antipater also armed the Roman governor with the “sword made of Macedonian steel and taught valiance by the hand of Alexander”, which longed for Piso’s hand to defend Macedonia.3 Antipater thus presented that the Romans were destined to rule “Thessalonica, the mother of all Macedonia”, which sang songs and prayers for the victorious Piso as a new Alexander.4 This was clearly a reference that the Romans rightfully ruled Macedonia and the Macedonians, as Alexander of Macedon once did.
In the following centuries, this connection acquired an additional dimension, when Roman emperors began to identify themselves with Alexander of Macedon and to imitate him to elevate their imperial position and the power of Rome. Roman emperor Caracalla (198–217 ce) even “organized a phalanx, composed entirely of Macedonians, sixteen thousand strong, named it ‘Alexander’s phalanx’, and equipped it with arms that warriors had used in his day”.5 Caracalla was very “fond of the Macedonians”, which prompted his decision to promote a certain Macedonian tribune to the highest ranks based solely on his inquiry that the person was Macedonian in origin, whose father and grandfather bore the names Anti-gonos and Philip.6 Further in the text, we find that the name Alexander was, however, not a criterion for Caracalla to identify someone as Macedonian but was a real “connection with Macedonia”.7 Interestingly, from Dio’s understanding, Caracalla “belonged to three nations (ethne)” of Gaul, Africa and Syria which, combined together, made him Roman with all of their vices.8 From his understanding, Macedonians could also be considered as ethne living in Macedonia, while at the same time being Romans. Caracalla was not a Macedonian because he was not from Macedonia in origin, although he even “went about in Macedonian dress”9 claiming that he was the reincarnation of Alexander himself.10 In this regard, Herodianus even reflected on the borderland of the Macedonians, arguing that, after Caracalla crossed Thrace and came to the “Macedonian border, he immediately became Alexander the Great”.11
Accordingly, to be Macedonian signified that one was directly connected with Macedonia and dressed in the Macedonian way that comprised the identity of its inhabitants, which was recognized by the Roman emperors. When applied in the Roman imperial context, Macedonians simply meant that they were Romans. This understanding reflected the use of the name “Macedonians”, by which the Romans marked their Romanness, with the meaning that Macedonia was Roman and belonged to the Romans.
The Roman conceptual borderland of Macedonia in the 1st century bc is best reflected in the account of Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43) that
above all, when province was so important and equipped with forces so numerous as Macedonia, which has such formidable barbarian tribes upon its borders that our Macedonian commanders have always acted as if the limits of their province were only those of their swords and javelins.12
This was direct argument from a Roman, who considered that Macedonia constituted the borderland that separated the Romans from non-Romans, which was defended with swords and javelins because it was the Roman Empire.
Following the expansion of the Roman Empire, Macedonia naturally was not considered as a Roman borderland. However, Persians in the mid-4th century continued to conceptualize it as such. In his work The Roman History, Ammianus Marcellinus, a Roman soldier and historian, recorded a letter from the Persian king Shapur II (309–379 ad) to the Roman emperor Constantius II (337–361 ad), which said that “my forefathers’ empire reached as far as the river Strymon and the boundaries of Macedonia, even your own ancient records bear witness; these lands it is fitting that I should demand”.13 Interestingly, the same conceptual frontier was shared by the Romans, although in quite a different context. Rejecting Saphur II’s argument as absurd and silly, Constantius II replied that by overthrowing the usurpers “the whole Roman world is subject to us”, thus sending the message that he will maintain the “Roman cause”, if necessary, by war.14 What Constantius II had in mind was that he had been victorious in Roman civil wars following the death of his father Constantine I (306–337), signifying that the borderland in Macedonia (at the River Strymon) to which Saphur II was referring was united under his rule in 350, as was the Roman Empire.
Constantius II did unify the Roman Empire; however, he did not manage to unite the Romans in their definition of Christianity. The Church council held in Serdica in 343 that was intended to overcome the religious differences between the supporters of Arianism and those supporting the Nicene Creed ended in complete failure. As a result, the “West separated from the East” along the borderline between the Dioceses of Macedonia and Thrace.15 As early as the 370s, Macedonia’s frontier became a buffer zone with the Gothic forces that were settled in Thrace as Roman foederati. The defense of Macedonia’s borderline with Thrace became a top strategic priority for the new Western emperor Gratianus (375–383). This resulted in the creation of a separate prefecture, Illyricum, which divided the Diocese of Macedonia from the Diocese of Thrace, marking the East-West political and religious border. This only reinforced the conceptual idea of Macedonia as a borderland that separated and at the same time integrated the Romans. Eastern emperor Theodosius I (379–395) managed to shift the political border to include Macedonia and to overcome the religious dispute with the rejection of Arianism. However, the religious East-West division remained, with Macedonia siding with Rome. Hence, Bishop Ambrosius of Milan, in paying respect to his diseased friend Bishop Acholius of Thessalonica, portrayed him as a true leader of the “people of Macedonia”, whose prayers incited the Lord to work “miracles in Macedonia” in defending the Roman empire from the Goths.16 Following the formal separation of the Roman Empire in 395, Thessalonica, as a seat of the prefecture of Illyricum and of the Roman vicariate from 412, itself became a symbol of integration with and separation from the Romans.17 Hence, in the mid-5th century, Thessalonica was perceived as a city that “belonged to the Macedonian nation (ethnos) and is the main city of Thessalia, Achaea and many other ethne, which are governed by the Prefect of Illyricum”.18
The fall of the western Roman Empire in 476 ended the clash of the Romans over Illyricum, followed by Justinian I’s Reconquista, which was finally replaced with a struggle for survival at the beginning of the 7th century. The disruption of the Danube frontier, with Slavs and Avars plundering the territories of Illyricum all the way to the Aegean, Adriatic and Black Seas, resulted in a shift of the Roman northern borderland with the “barbarians” toward Macedonia and Thrace. Following the general withdrawal of the Roman army from the Balkans by the 620s, the prefecture of Illyricum was generally reduced to Macedonia itself. Hence, Macedonia became the Roman borderland with Thessalonica acting as a key stronghold for the Empire in the Balkans, in addition to the imperial seat in Constantinople. At the same time, the Bishop of Thessaloniki continued to act as papal vicar in Illyricum up to the 730s. This turned Macedonia into a borderland itself, which at the same time integrated with and separated the Romans from new enemies and among themselves.
We have a local insight from Thessalonica about how its citizens perceived the borderland in Macedonia, extracted from the first book of the Miracles of St. Demetrius. Its author, John the Archbishop of Thessalonica, writing in the second decade of the 7th century, conveyed the local view about his city as the metropolis of Macedonia. Interestingly, he directly ascribed the salvation of Thessalonica from the attacking army of Avars and Sklavinoi in 586 to the “bravery of the Macedonians”.19 He thus presented a picture that the city was saved by the citizens themselves without the help of the imperial authorities. In those deciding moments, the major officials from the army and those who served in the great praetorium were not present in the city, and instead were dealing with state affairs “in the land of the Hellenes”.20 This indicates that John distinguished his “Macedonians” in Thessalonica from the “land of the Hellenes” outside Macedonia.21 Signification of the role of the brave Macedonians “as protectors of the city”,22 encouraged by St. Demetrius and God himself, reveals how John perceived and identified his fellow citizens. We can suppose that his view was shared by the citizens themselves because they were the intended audience of the Miracles, which served as homilies transmitted orally. This impression is reflected in John’s direct address to the citizens that they “have witnessed” the miracles performed by St. Demetrius, because he was transmitting the stories known to “all Macedonia”.23 He even created a perception of hypothetically gathering “all of the Macedonians” in Thessalonica, together with the Thessalians and Achaeans, to compare with the much larger enemy army that besieged the city.24 By this, the archbishop further elevated the role of his citizens in defending the metropolis of Macedonia and the Empire itself.
When John related his city to the Empire, he displayed its incomparability and uniqueness in relation to all of the cities in Illyricum and Thrace, because it was placed at the very “heart of the emperor”. By this, John actually explained the reasons why the Avar khagan initiated the attack on Thessalonica in 586, intending to inflict serious harm to the emperor because the city was as important to him as his own children.25 He thus presented an image that the destiny of the Empire depended on the survival of his city. His local perspective on Thessalonica as the center of “all Macedonia” and of “all the Macedonians” gained an imperial dimension by being central to the Roman Empire. Hence, his emphasis on the bravery of the Macedonians who saved the “heart of the emperor” and the Empire itself. From the local perspective of an archbishop, the citizens were Macedonians and at the same time Romans, who in protecting their city had saved the Roman Empire with the help of St. Demetrius and God himself. This conception about Macedonia and the Macedonians was not an imaginary one, as it reflected the view of highest religious official in the city.
However, this raises the question of whether John’s reference to “all Macedonia” was actually a conception of the Roman borderland, with the meaning that it was not lost for the Empire, despite the incursions of the Sklavinoi and Avars. There are indications in the Miracles that support this supposition. Describing the attack of 586, John acknowledged that the citizens had never seen enemies so close before, concluding that “most of the citizens, except those that were listed in the military registers, did not even recognize their appearance”.26 This implies that neither John nor the citizens were able to identify the attacking army. He was thus using the usual terminology of the time by calling the enemy warriors “Sklavinoi”, that is, coming from “Sklavinia”, which was a specific term for the territory that was controlled by the barbarians on the northern side of the Danube at the time of his writing.27 This impression acquires additional importance if we consider that John was writing in the second decade of the 7th century and witnessed other two successive attacks by the enemy army. Despite that, he was referring to the siege in 586 as “the greatest war” that Thessalonica “had ever faced”.28 If that was the case, it would mean that the attack by the nation of Sklavinoi in 615–616 and its joint attack with the Avars in 618, which John did not describe, were of a lesser extent compared to the events of 586. Although by the 620s most or all of the forts in the northern and central Balkans were lost and the emperor had transferred all troops on the eastern frontier, John continued to conceive of Macedonia as a Roman borderland that was withholding the attacks of the enemies. Thus, we have to look for the first indications of Slavic settlement in the hinterland of Thessalonica in the 670s.29
This leads us to the second book of Miracles of St. Demetrius, which was written by an anonymous author from Thessalonica in the 680s. As an introduction to his narrative, the anonymous author stated that he was narrating the danger that the citizens of Thessalonica had faced during the second decade of the 7th century, at the time of John’s episcopate. His conception of the borderland with the Slavs and Avars, however, was different from John’s, although he was narrating the military challenges that occurred when the archbishop was alive. The anonymous author presented a picture of separate groups of the nation of the Sklavinoi: “countless multitudes consisted of Drugubites, Sagudates, Belegezites, Baionites, Berzites and other”, who were united in attacking Thessalonica with the intention to settle with their families after taking over the city. He even presented these Sklavinoi as initially devastating all of Thessaly and the surrounding islands, Hellas, the Cyclades, the whole of Achaia, Epirus, the greater part of Illyricum, and part of Asia before attacking Thessalonica in 615–616.30 However, the anonymous author at the same time remarked that the citizens of Thessalonica were frightened when they heard the news about the devastation that was inflicted on other cities.31 This would comply with John’s testimony that there were no settled groups of Sklavinoi in Macedonia at that time. Despite this, later in the text the anonymous author drew the picture that all of these multitudes of Sklavinoi were united under their leader (exarch), Chatzon, in attacking the city. However, they failed in this endeavor, because Chatzon was murdered during the negotiations in Thessalonica by angry and desperate mothers.32 Hence, there is no indication that, after this unsuccessful attack, those groups of Sklavinoi settled in the vicinity of the city. Furthermore, the anonymous author no longer listed by name any of the groups previously mentioned, nor did he identify any chieftain, instead using the general term “Sklavinoi”. He only mentioned that the Sklavinoi had had a council and decided to ask Avars for military help. This reveals that these Sklavinoi had a rather small military capacity, because they asked the Avar khagan to lead the allied army. The joint attack in 618 proved equally unsuccessful.
Compared to the testimony of John, who considered the siege of Thessalonica in 586 the largest war that the citizens ever faced, it is more likely that the anonymous author used the names of the groups of Sklavinoi, Drugubites, Sagudates, Belegezites, Baiunetes and Berzites, which were formed later by the time of his writing in the 670s, and presented them as attacking the city in 615–616. He did this most probably to provide more clarity to the citizens as his audience, because by the time of his writing these groups were familiar to the citizens of Thessalonica, who were able to differentiate them. This conclusion would make more reasonable the process of differentiation of the separate groups of Sklavinoi in the vicinity of Thessalonica that obtained higher levels of social and political organization, with leaders capable of uniting them and representing their interests. This process required decades, not the few years from 610 to 615. Projection of the names of the groups of the Sklavinoi in Macedonia that formed later with the intention of framing them in the specific historical events in the Balkans that took place in the second decade of the 7th century, apart from making the narrative more familiar to the citizens, was certainly intended to give the siege of Thessalonica in 615–616 a greater dimension than it really had.
This conclusion requires clarification оf how the anonymous author perceived the Roman borderland in Macedonia, compared to John’s perception. Among the geographical areas that suffered devastation from the raids of the Sklavinoi that preceded the attack in 615–616, the anonymous author did not list Macedonia.33 Furthermore, in his introduction to the attack by the Avars and Sklavinoi in 618, he remarked that the Avar khagan was convinced that it would be easy to take Thessalonica, because it was not able to “defend itself as it sat alone among the cities and provinces which had already been made desolate by them”. The Avar leader based his conviction on “it is said” that Thessalonica was positioned in “the middle of all these devastations and receives all those fleeing from the Danube, from Pannonia, Dacia and Dardania, and all the other cities and provinces, providing them with shelter”.34 However, Avar khagan soon found out that this was false information. In addition, the anonymous author presented a picture of the citizens of Naisus and Serdica fleeing Thessalonica, without mentioning any town in Macedonia.35 When recalling further in the text about the attack of “the Sklavinoi, i.e. the so called Chatzon, and also of the Avars”, he also remarked that they
ravaged virtually all Illyricum and its provinces, I mean the two Pannonias, the two Dacias, Dardania, Mysia, Praevalitana, Rhodope, and also Thrace and the regions along the walls of Byzantium, and having taken the rest of the cities and towns, they lead the people to a place near the Danube in the direction of Pannonia.36
Did the exemption of Macedonia from the list of territories that were devasted by the Sklavenes and Avars mean that the anonymous author shared John’s conception of Macedonia as a borderland? The affirmative answer to this question would only confirm that the anonymous author was projecting the names of all Sklavinoi known to him in the 670s into the events in 615–616. He was in fact presenting the constellation that was established in his own time, when Thessalonica was indeed positioned in the midst of the neighboring Sklavinoi, known by then to the citizens by their names and treated as “neighbors”. The anonymous author thought that the provinces on the list that he was using were part of the Illyrian prefecture, although this administrative system no longer existed in his time.37 This only strengthened the notion that Thessalonica and Macedonia were positioned at the very Roman borderland at the time of his writing. Hence, we can assume that the anonymous author and the citizens in the 670s continued to perceive Thessalonica as the metropolis of Macedonia, despite the presence of the Sklavinoi in the neighborhood. This can explain the reference of the anonymous author to the continuous presence of Archbishop John encouraging his citizens, because God himself has “promised him and he was certain in full salvation of his fatherland (πατρἱδος)”.38 By this, the anonymous author in fact stressed that, as long Thessalonica endured, the “fatherland” would be preserved.
The conception of the anonymous author about the Roman borderland in regard to the Slavs is reflected in the location of the Sklavinoi, whom he considered as “neighbors”. He distinguished Drugoubites, Sagudates, and the Sklavinoi, who “consisted of two parts, the Rynchines and the people of the Strymon”,39 who were united in blocking Thessalonica after the murder of Perboundos, the rex of the Rynchines. The assault on the city in 677 failed again due to the intervention of St. Demetrius, who at first deflected “those of the river Strymon” and then prevented the others from the Sklavinoi from overtaking the city.40 From the perspective of the anonymous author, Thessalonica in the 670s stood at the middle of the Sklavinoi, with Drugubites and Sagudates to the west of the city. He perceived the eastern borderland at the Strymon River valley as dividing the Romans from the Sklavinoi in Macedonia and at the same time from the other Sklavenes on the other side of this border. Indicatively, the anonymous author also distinguished Belegezites, who established “relations” with Thessalonica and supplied the citizens with food in the time of the siege.41 Because they were located in Thessaly and were not considered as neighbors, this would comprise the southern borderland, which complemented John’s conception of the frontiers of Macedonia.
The anonymous author also narrated the military campaign of the unnamed Roman emperor, most probably Constantine IV (668–685), who, “with the detachments of the Christ-loving army from Thrace and the opposite areas, went to war against those from Strymon”. Armed “with other saints”, the emperor “exalted the Roman army by defeating the Sklavinoi” and seizing the gorge.42 In the eyes of the author of the second book of the Miracles, this resulted in stabilization of the situation in the Strymon valley. Later, Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (r. 945–959) remarked that in these times, until 688–689, Macedonians lived in the Strymon valley, who were replaced by the new settlers, the “Scythians”, by emperor Justinian II (685–695, 705–711).43 The identification of these “Scythians” is difficult; however, we can assume that they were Slavs who were coming from the territory outside Macedonia. Constantine VII clearly differentiated those Scythians from the Macedonians who lived at this Macedonian border, because he did not consider the Scythians as Romans. However, at the same time he used the name Macedonians to refer to the inhabitants of Macedonia, who were not Sklavinoi. Be this as it may, this is an additional attestation that, by the end of the 7th century, Strymon was conceived as a Roman borderland with the Sklavinoi in Macedonia. It gained further importance after the Bulgarian state was established in 680–681, later obtaining the status of a kleisoura, and by the mid-9th century it was elevated into a theme.44 The theme of Strymon was supposed to defend the border that separated the Sklavinoi in Macedonia and the Romans from the Bulgars and other Sklavenes.
Interestingly, the anonymous author was not using the term Macedonia; instead, he consistently referred to “our country” and quite often to “our city”. His expressions “our” and “ours” certainly displayed a sense of belonging. This is best reflected in the episode about Kuver, a leader of the mixed group of Avar subjects who, after crossing Danube, “came to our lands” and occupied the Keramesian plain,45 most probably Pelagonia. Whether this meant that in ca. 680s there were no Sklavinoi in Pelagonia is difficult to tell due to the lack of written and material evidence.46 However, the anonymous author believed that Kuver was a trespasser on “our lands” in Macedonia. This implies that he continued to maintain the belief that Thessalonica was the metropolis of Macedonia, conceptualizing in this regard “our lands” as the Roman borderland, which was endangered from groups other than Sklavinoi, such as the one led by Kuver.
The fact that the author of the second book of the Miracles considered the Sklavinoi as “neighbors” in the 670s raises another important issue. We notice a tendency to present Thessalonica as a center of the border zone of interaction in Macedonia. This impression does not come solely from the image of Sklavinoi chieftains staying in Thessalonica and interacting with the citizens and officials of the city, such as Chatzon or Perboundos. There is an episode that provides a glimpse of another form of interaction, which was fostered by no other than St. Demetrius. Filling the chronological gap of more than 50 years that followed the unsuccessful attack of Avars and Sklavinoi in 618, the anonymous author wanted to accentuate the continuous role of St. Demetrius as protector of the city, also acting as transmitter of the Miracles among the Sklavinoi. In this regard, he portrayed a picture of Sklavinoi who lived “near us” and started to celebrate “with joy” and “hymns” the miracles performed by St. Demetrius, which saved the city from the earthquake that occurred after the death of Archbishop John.47 According to him, the nation of the Sklavinoi “solemnly announced with songs the miracles, which were performed by the savior of the city and the victor”.48 Here the anonymous author clearly drew the border zone of interaction, which was functioning in his own time. By this he was referring to the process of Christianization of the Sklavinoi who went through Thessalonica, intermediated by St. Demetrius. Thus, although he refers to the Sklavinoi as “barbarians”, he also stresses that, after the siege in 677, they “praised the Lord who saves people, even a few in number”, because their plan was “thwarted by God”.49 In this regard, he also narrated the story of a man of the nation of Sklavinoi who was skilled in making weapons and who started to truly believe in God because of St. Demetrius and became “worthy of unblemished baptism”, which took place in Thessalonica.50 We can assume that the anonymous author was referring to the process of Christianization of the Sklavinoi in Macedonia, which was taking place at the time of his writing, especially among the leading men. The people of Thessalonica and the local inhabitants in the surrounding territory certainly had played a key role in spreading the word of Christianity as per the Apostle Paul long ago, which was now transmitted by St. Demetrius. This process clearly derived from mutual interaction and coexistence and was not driven by force. By this, the author of the second book of the Miracles was referring to the conceptual Roman border zone of inclusion and exclusion in Macedonia, with Christianity being one of the key criteria for someone to be considered as Roman or non-Roman.
Here we should address another issue: did the behavior of the Sklavinoi, and especially that of their leader Perboundos, imply that they were already imperial subjects by the 670s?51 This is difficult to confirm due to the lack of data. However, from the perspective of the anonymous author, we can be certain that these Sklavinoi were perceived at the border zone of interaction, along which Christianity penetrated. This brings us to the question of language as a criterion for the absorption of the Sklavinoi into the Roman Empire. The anonymous author provides certain clues, which are difficult to decode. This especially refers to the formulation “our” for the language of the citizens, which he considered different from the “language of the Romans, the Slavs and the Bulgarians”.52 This is a testimony of the local, who thought that it was important to explain to his citizens that enemy leaders, such was Mauros, one of Kuver’s leading men, spoke the language of the citizens (“our language”) and thus he was able to deceive them. We have another account of Perboundos’ escape from Constantinople, which the anonymous author ascribed to his ability to disguise himself because “he was dressed in the Roman way, spoke our language, and could pass as one of our citizens”.53 Can these testimonies about “our” language of the citizens, which the anonymous author differentiated from the “language of the Romans”,54 be interpreted as an attestation of the Romanization of the Slavic leadership?55 This also posits another important question: was language a criterion for someone to be considered as Roman and integrated into the Roman Empire?
Indicatively, the Byzantine sources are silent about the missions of the Thessalonica-born brothers St. Constantine-Cyril and St. Methodius. However, we have the local view transmitted by their disciples in the late 9th century. The Life of St. Cyril and the Life of St. Methodius reveal that the interaction through Thessalonica was actually a two-way process, which resulted in “all Thessalonicans speak[ing] purely Slavic” by the 9th century.56 Moreover, Methodius was given the task “to rule a Slavic principality” around the mid-840s.57 Bearing in mind the military situation at that time when the main danger was coming from Bulgaria, we can assume that Methodius was appointed as a leader of the former Sklavinia, which was most probably located in the area close to the eastern frontier of the theme of Thessalonica that separated it from the Strymon theme. This would explain the character of Methodius’ mission, which was aimed at strengthening the Roman borderland in Macedonia that separated the Romans and the Macedonian Slavs from Bulgaria. Furthermore, the spoken language that was used in Thessalonica and its vicinity became the basis for Constantine to devise the Slavic writing and Glagolitic alphabet, with the help of his brother, before they were sent to the mission of Moravia to spread the word in Slavic.58 Hence, the integration of the Macedonian Sklavinias into the Roman Empire at that time certainly did not require that they speak the Roman (Greek) language, but it did require them to accept Christianity, Roman ideology and Roman political norms. This was certainly the mission that was entrusted to St. Methodius, which was implemented in Macedonia in the Slavic language.
If we accept that the citizens of Thessalonica spoke purely Slavic by the mid-9th century, did that make them Slavs? The answer would be no, which can also be applied to the Slavs, who were accepted as Romans, not because they spoke the language of the Empire but because they were part of it. This brings us to the Taktika of Emperor Leo VI, who believed that his father Basil I (867–886) had already finished the integration in the 860s by persuading the Slavic nations
to change their ancient customs: he made them into Greek-speakers, subjected them to rulers according to the Roman way, honored them with baptism, freed them from slavery to their own rulers, and trained them to take the field against the nations that make war on the Romans.59
However, it is difficult to confirm this claim of Leo VI, because the missions of Ss. Cyril and Methodius proved to be quite the opposite. Methodius was accepted as the leader of the Slavs living in the former Macedonian Sklavinia because he spoke the Slavic language. The military character of the Taktika and its general description of the Slavs indicate that Leo VI was actually transmitting the established military practice of how Basil I “persuaded” the Slavic leaders to “submit to the laws of the Romans” and end their “ancient and customary independence”. This issue will be discussed in more detail in another study.60
The question that imposes itself is the following: how did the Sklavinoi view themselves and name the territory that they had been controlling in Macedonia since the end of the 7th century? How did they conceptualize their borderland with the Romans? We can suppose that they
could not have entirely displaced or destroyed the local Roman population of Greece (including the Peloponnese), Macedonia, and Thrace, but probably settled among it in ways that temporarily disrupted the functioning of the imperial administration.61
This posits another question: did the belief that was maintained among the Thessalonicans about their city as the metropolis of Macedonia begin to penetrate among the Sklavinoi, along with the process of mutual interaction and coexistence? These questions are relevant, especially considering that Theophanes the Confessor, writing in the end of the 8th and early 9th centuries, used the name Macedonia to refer to the group identity of the Sklavinias. Narrating that the emperor Constantine V (741–775) in 757–758 “conquered the Sklavinias in Macedonia and subjected the rest”,62 Theophanes drew the conceptual Roman borderland at the moment when he wanted to demonstrate that the Romans subjected this territory. Theophanes identified the Sklavinias with the name Macedonia, by which he also distinguished them from the “others” subjected by the Romans who were living outside Macedonian territory. Accordingly, Theophanes conceived Macedonia as a Roman borderland, by which he differentiated these Sklavinias from the other Sklavenes and from the Bulgars.63 He did this by directly associating the name Macedonia with the Sklavinias.64 If Theophanes distinguished the Sklavinias with the name Macedonia, how did the people within perceive themselves and how did they name the territory in which they lived? Did they connect with the name Macedonia and identify themselves with the territory that they were inhabiting, as Theophanes did?
These questions are also applicable in relation to Thessalonica. Constantine VII provides information about the reception of Michael III (842–867) by “other Slavs from the district of Thessalonica”, thus demonstrating their obedience to the emperor.65 This was preceded by the unrest of the exarch of the unnamed Sklavinia in the hinterland of Thessalonica sometime from 835 to 841, which was foreseen by Gregory of Dekapolis who traveled from Thessalonica with the intention to visit it.66 How did the citizens of Thessalonica see the integration of the Sklavinia as Roman subjects? We have the insights of Thessalonica-born John Kaminiates at the beginning of the 10th century about his city and its surroundings. Importantly, in his work on the capture of the city from the Arabs in 904, he stressed that Thessalonica was “the first city of the Macedonians (πρώτης τῶν Μακεδόνων”).67 This was the perception of a native that was not conveyed in written form to his fellow citizens but to his friend Gregory of Cappadocia. The identification of Thessalonica as the first city of the Macedonians acquires additional dimensions because, at the same time, Kaminiates accentuated its famous history deriving from the Apostle Paul, who sowed the seed of the knowledge of God that was continued by St. Demetrius, who “toiled unceasingly on behalf of true piety”.68 Interestingly, Kaminiates referred to the books of the Miracles of St. Demetrius for those who wanted to learn more about the history of the city.69 A reading the first book of the Miracles certainly complemented Kaminiates’ view of his city being the first of the Macedonians.
Furthermore, Kaminiates presented a picture of Thessalonica as sustaining the “clash of much fierce fighting on numerous occasions both from the barbarians and from the Scythians whose territory adjoins theirs”. However, the “sacrament of baptism that had brought the Scythian people into the Christian fold and had made them share in the milk of true piety” brought peace to “all the neighboring territory”.70 He was clearly referring here to the Sklavenes. This leads us to Kaminiates’ conceptualization of the border zone that comprised the neighboring territory. We get a glimpse from this short passage:
In its central portion this plain also contains a mixture of villages, some of whose inhabitants, the Drougoubitai and the Sagoudatoi as they are called, pay their taxes to the city, while others pay tribute to the Scythians who live not far from the border. Yet the villages and their inhabitants live very close to one another, and the close commercial relations that are maintained with the Scythians are a considerable asset to the citizens of Thessaloniki as well, especially when both parties stay on friendly terms with each other and refrain from any violent measures that lead to confrontation and armed conflict. They share a common lifestyle and exchange commodities in perfect peace and harmony, and this has been their policy for some not inconsiderable time past. Mighty rivers, rising from the land of the Scythians, divide among themselves the aforesaid plain.71
Kaminiates actually described that, at the beginning of the 10th century, the Drugubites and Sagudates were paying taxes to Thessalonica, which made them part of the Roman Empire. However, there were also “others”, not named, who were paying tribute to “Scythians”. This territory, from the perspective of Kaminiates, comprised the Roman borderland with the “land of Scythians”, because those “other” lived “not far from the border”. This means that the mixed villages located in Macedonia that paid taxes to Scythians were located at the very Roman borderland that divided the Romans from the “others” and from the Scythians.
To better understand how Kaminiates conceived the borderland, we should determine what the term “neighbors” meant for him. The answer is contained in his description of Veroia as a “neighboring city” whose inhabitants he termed “our neighbors”.72 Hence, by naming the Drugubites and Sagudates as “neighbors”, Kaminiates in fact marked the territory that was part of the Roman Empire that belonged to the theme of Thessalonica, established sometime in the early 9th century. The neighboring villages of the Drugubites and Sagudates were, for Kaminiates, the “others” because they were paying tribute to the Scythians and lived in the vicinity of the border. Hence, for Kaminiates, the mixed villages inhabited by Drugubites and Sagudates actually comprised the Roman borderland with the “others” and the Scythians. He thus remarked that the major rivers (Axios, Haliacmon) that rose from the “land of Scythians” divided the plain that stretched from Thessalonica to Veroia, dividing the villages as well. We get further insight about Kaminiates’ conception of the “neighbors” with his remark about Demetrias: a “city in Hellas, situated at no great distance from us and superior to its neighbors in size of population”.73 The comparison is clear: Thessalonica was superior to its “neighbors” because it was the first city of the Macedonians that “prides herself and not admitting of any comparison with her nearest neighbors”.74 The same was true with the prominent position of Demetrias in relation to its neighbors in Hellas. This short passage of Kaminiates also reveals his conception of the frontier to the south. It coincides with the second book of the Miracles as where the anonymous author located the Belegezites, whom he did not consider as neighbors. They were not mentioned by Kaminiates, which implies that they were already absorbed within the theme of Hellas.75
Indicatively, Kaminiates made a distinction between his fellow citizens and the Drugubites and Sagudates. However, he considered them as neighbors and thus as part of Thessalonica and the Roman Empire. He accordingly portrayed them as Roman subjects, who were obliged to pay tribute and solidarize in the time of war. This is clearly reflected in his narration that “all the Sklavenes gathered from the neighboring regions” were stationed at specific points to defend the city.76 However, when Kaminiates referred to the Sklavenes under the jurisdiction of the strategos of Strymon, he used the formulations the “adjoining territories” and the “whole adjoining region”.77 He accordingly classified those adjoining Sklavenes as “allies” and not as “neighbors”. Kaminiates also distinguished the “leaders of the Sklavenes” who, under the pretext of collecting “allies from the Strymon area”, left the city in crucial moments and even stole the keys to one of the city gates.78 Here, Kaminiates’ prejudice came to the fore, portraying the Sklavenes as treacherous and deceitful even though he considered them to be Roman subjects. However, they were presented as neighbors of the citizens and skilled in military affairs to defend them as Romans.
Taken as a whole, Kaminiates accentuated Thessalonica’s centripetal role for the Empire, drawing a picture that “people belonging to the neighbouring regions and cities” and islands moved to the city to find a refuge.79 This is the same context we find in the Miracles of St. Demetrius, although in quite a different constellation. Kaminiates’ perception of the Roman borderland stretched as far as the borders of the theme of Thessalonica and the adjoining territory of the theme of Strymon. This was exactly how the anonymous author of the second book of the Miracles conceived the borderland in his time. However, by the time of Kaminiates’ writing, the Sklavinoi who found themselves within this borderland were already considered as neighbors, because they were also Christians who shared “the milk of true piety”. We can assume that, in this context, Kaminiates was referring not to the Scythians (Bulgars) but to the Sklavinoi in Macedonia who had accepted Christianity through the process of interaction with Thessalonica intermediated by St. Demetrius and fostered by the missionary work of Ss. Cyril and Methodius. Indicatively, he did not engage in a description of the borderland with the “Scythians”, except for emphasizing their mutually beneficial trade. We are not in a position to reconstruct how the Slavs perceived the borderland from their side, after the Bulgarians occupied most of Macedonia. Again, we are left without a local source to reflect the insight from Ohrid which, at the time of Kaminiates’ writing, was a place of immense work by Ss. Clement and Naum of Ohrid, who continued the traditions of their teachers Ss. Cyril and Methodius. The later accounts from the Archbishop Theophylactos from the late 11th to early 12th centuries are just interpretations filtered through completely different ideological conceptions and established terminology.80 From Kaminiates’ side, the most important thing was to accentuate that his city was first among the Macedonians, which also made them Romans. This again raises the question: did the Slavs living in Macedonia, especially those who became part of the Roman Empire, share the same conceptual belief? We can only assume that this was the case, because we do not have any source to confirm it.
However, we do have the imperial perspective from the mid-10th century represented by Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus. Constantine VII considered himself a Macedonian as he was a member of the Macedonian dynasty, originating from the Byzantine theme of Macedonia established by the end of the 8th century. Constantine VII did everything to connect with Macedonia and the Macedonians, even resorting to fabricating the otherwise modest genealogy of Basil I. In his Life of Basil I, Constantine VII highlighted that his grandfather on his father’s side traced his origins to the nation of the Armenians with his lineage back to the Arsacids, while his mother “proudly claimed descent from Constantine the Great and on the other side boasted the splendid ancestry of Alexander”.81 However, this fabricated genealogy did not make him a real Macedonian in his own eyes, because Basil I was not from Macedonia proper but from the theme with the same name. As with Caracalla long ago, to be Macedonian he had to connect with the real Macedonia.
This can explain why, in his work De Thematibus, instead of presenting the administrative frontiers within the Roman Empire Constantine VII actually depicted the conceptual Roman borders of historical Macedonia.82 He did this by designating the city of Thessalonica as the “metropolis of Macedonia”,83 remarking that the theme of Thessalonica and the theme of Strymon were also part of Macedonia.84 Hence, Constantine VII opted to present historical Macedonia instead of the theme of Macedonia located in Western Thrace, despite the fact that in doing so he completely distorted the administrative borders that he was supposed to present. The Roman connection derived from his historical overview of Macedonia, in which he highlighted that, after subjugation by the Romans, “Macedonia turned from a kingdom to a province, and now it has reached the position of a theme and strategy”.85 This was a reference not to the theme of Macedonia but to the geographical Macedonia, by which the emperor wanted to stress that it belonged to the Romans. Constantine VII certainly recognized the duality of the meaning of the name Macedonia in his time; however, he gave preference to connection with the historical Macedonia. By conceptualizing the borders of the Roman imperial power in Macedonia, he thus justified kinship and descent. Thessalonica as the metropolis of Macedonia, with its apostolic past deriving from the visit of the Apostle Paul among the Macedonians and also as exemplified by Constantine VII,86 provided him the needed connection with Macedonia.
Constantine VII’s perception of Macedonia corresponded with that of the Thessalonicans themselves who, as we have seen, continued to identify their city as the first of the Macedonians. As a result, the conceptual idea of the presence of the Macedonians in Macedonia was maintained, even in circumstances where a large part of the territory was lost by Bulgarians after the 860s. Constantine VII thus maintained the notion that Macedonia belonged to the Romans. This would mean that the Slavs who found themselves in this conceptual Roman borderland in Macedonia became Macedonians and thus Romans.
We have another Roman imperial view transmitted from Leo, a deacon in the imperial palace, which sheds a certain light on this question. Leo the Deacon narrated a story about Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas (963–969), sharing the same notion of Macedonia as Constantine VII. According to Leo, Nikephoros even used this as an argument during the diplomatic negotiations with Russian Prince Sviatoslav in 967, ordering him to abandon the territory of Mysia after Sviatoslav defeated the Bulgarians, “since it belonged to the Romans and was a part of Macedonia from of old”.87 Reinforcing this argument, Leo narrated that Justinian II (685–695, 705–711) temporarily ceded to the Bulgarians this land “that the Istros borders within the Macedonians”.88 Hence, Leo accentuated the conceptual borders of Macedonia, creating an image that Tzimiskes in fact rightly brought Mysia back to the Romans after the victory over both the Rus’ and the Bulgarians. With the triumphant victory of John Tzimiskes and the annihilation of the Bulgarian state in 971, Mysia was returned to the Romans, as were the Bulgarians who were subjects of the Roman Empire.
This was not the case with Macedonia, which was perceived as a Roman borderland itself. However, beginning in 969 a new state emerged in southwestern Macedonia from the “apostasy” of the Cometopouloi. Leo the Deacon directly felt the danger from Samuel’s state, witnessing in person the disastrous defeat of Emperor Basil II (976–1025) at the Gate of Trajan in 986. The following passage from Leo shows how he conceptualized the Roman borderland with this new enemy of the Romans:
The emperor Basil mustered his troops and marched against the Mysians. For those arrogant and cruel people, who breathed murder, were harassing Roman territory and mercilessly plundering the lands of the Macedonians, killing everyone from youth upwards. Therefore, he was roused to greater anger than was proper or provident, and hastened to destroy them at the first assault, but he was deceived in his hopes through the intervention of fortune. For after he traversed the narrow and steep tracks and reached the vicinity of Serdica, which the Scythians are accustomed to call Tralitza, he set up camp here for the army and settled down and kept watch over [the city] for twenty days.89
Clearly, for Leo the “land of the Macedonians” was the Roman territory that was plundered by the new enemy army, which he designated as “Mysians”. In this way, he referred to the territory of Macedonia that belonged to the Romans and was endangered by the new enemy.
John Geometres (ca. 935/40–1000) presented a similar picture in his poems On the Plundering Iberians and On the Comet[opoulos]:
It is not the Scythian fire but the Iberian violence that now thrusts the West against the East. It [was announced by] earthquakes, and the Macedonian land showed the glow of newly risen star. Why do you uselessly reproach the Scythians when you can see that your friends and allies carry out the same things.90
A Comet (Κομίτης) set fire to the sky
While below a comes (κομήτης) was lighting the west
A symbol is that star of the present darkness
He faded with the radiance of the morning star
and he appeared with the sunset of Nikephoros
This terrible typhon among the malefactors,
All is burning: and where are the roars of your power,
Leader of the invincible Rome,
By nature you, our King, by deeds triumphant,
Rise from the grave, roar, O Lion,
teach the foxes to live in caves.91
Geometres poetically expressed Samuel Cometopuolos’ rise in the “Macedonian land”. The “friends” in the poem would be an allusion to the Romans, that is, the imperial establishment in Constantinople. Geometres figuratively infers that Emperor Basil II was incapable of dealing with the serious challenges posed by the incursions of Samuel’s army in Macedonia. In other words, the inhabitants of the “Macedonian land” uselessly accused Samuel’s army – the “Scythians”, since the “friends” – the Roman army and its military generals and the emperor Basil II were to be blamed. In this regard, Geometres presented Samuel’s Scythian army weaving and crossing over in the West as “if it was their own fatherland”.92
Both Leo and Geometres expressed their perception that the Roman possession of the Macedonian land was endangered by the emergence of Samuel’s state. Neither mentioned the enemy leader by name, but both signified that he also claimed the “Macedonian land”. They did not use the names of the themes established after the abolition of the Bulgarian state in the period 971–975.93 There were no more Slavs; there was only the land of the Macedonians, because what mattered for Leo and Geometres was the Macedonian land that was endangered.94 By naming the enemy army coming from Samuel’s state as undefined “Scythians” or “Mysians”, they were clearly conceptualizing Macedonia as the borderland of the Empire. It comprised the “land of the Macedonians”, which belonged to the Romans and was represented by the Macedonian emperors, but it was endangered by the new rising star – the leader of the Scythian State, Samuel Cometopoulos, who also claimed the “Macedonian land”. This conceptual framework complies with the appellation “Scythicus” (Σκυθικòς), which was attached to Basil II by the end of the 10th century. This appellation was used in official correspondence because of the victories of Basil II over Samuel’s Scythian army.95 It corresponded with the conceptual borderland of the Romans in Macedonia during the existence of Samuel’s state, which found reflection in the official “Scythian” terminology.
However, after his victory over Samuel’s state in 1018, Basil II completely redrew the Roman administrative borders in the Balkans, which resulted in the complete abolition of the previous conception of Macedonia as the Roman borderland. This was a well-designed act that resulted in complete terminological distortion in the Balkans, which acquired a form of negation of the contemporary identity of the inhabitants of the former political entities.96 Indicatively, in the restored Macedonian land, Basil II did not restore the name Macedonia. Instead, he introduced a new administrative and ecclesiastical name, “Bulgaria”, encompassing the former Samuel’s polity with its heartland in Macedonia. Basil II identified himself as a Macedonian and thus a Roman; however, he preferred to connect with the theme of Macedonia in western Thrace, thus denying the name to former enemies who also claimed the “Macedonian land”. Hence, the enemies embodied in Samuel’s state now became “Bulgarians”, because they were Roman subjects who lived in the administrative and ecclesiastical territory that Basil II termed as “Bulgaria”. This new name did not designate an ethnic distinction. It had administrative and ecclesiastical meaning, which turned into a designation for the new Roman subjects who found themselves within the borders marking this Roman territory.97 Although Basil II’s appellation was “Scythicus” and he wanted to be remembered as the victor over the Scythians, as his epitaph testifies,98 he became known with the constructed epithet “Bulgar-Slayer”, which was an anachronism of the late 12th century99 deriving from his own conceptualization of the borderland in Macedonia. This turned into a borderland of separation and integration of Macedonia even when the borderland and the Romans were no more.
Notes
· 1 Florin Curta, in The Edinburgh History of the Greeks, c. 500 to 1050. The Early Middle Ages (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), 293–95, observes that “most references to Macedonians in Byzantine texts are in a geographical or administrative and not an ethnic sense”, so that Byzantine Macedonians may well be of some other ethnicity. He concludes that the lack of special names, besides those of administrative origin, meant that “ethnic traits mattered for the classification of those who were not yet (or not at all) subjects of the emperor”. Anthony Kaldellis, Prokopios: The Secret History: With Related Texts (Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 2010), xv, maintains that, by the 5th century, “Macedonians were just Romans from Macedonia”. Also according to Kaldellis, Romanland: Ethnicity and Empire in Byzantium (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019), 227, the Macedonians were the Romans listed by province, which should not cause confusion because they were “just provincial Roman units”. Johannes Koder, “Macedonians and Macedonia in Byzantine Spatial Thinking,” in Byzantine Macedonia. Art, Architecture, Music, and Hagiography. Papers from the Melbourne Conference, July 1995, eds. John Burke and Roger Scott (Melbourne: National Centre for Hellenic Studies & Research/LaTrobe University, 2000), 21. Macedonians were merely the “provenance of representatives from different areas”. However, we cannot simply dismiss the idea that the name Macedonian did not reflect someone’s identity at that time.
· 2 Antipater of Thessalonica 6.335, Anthologia Graeca I, ed. William Roger Paton (London: William Heinemann, 1914), 476–77 (hereafter Antipater of Thesssalonica).
· 3 Antipater of Thesssalonica 9.552, Anthologia Graeca III, ed. William Roger Paton (London: William Heinemann, 1915), 306–7.
· 4 Antipater of Thesssalonica 9.428, 238–39: “Θεσσαλονίκη μήτηρ ἡ πάσης πέμψε Μακηδονίης.”
· 5 Cassius Dio, Historia Romana 78 7.1–2, ed. Earnest Cary (London and Cambridge, MA: Willam Heinemann, Harvard University Press, 1955) (hereafter Cassius Dio).
· 6 Cassius Dio, Historia Romana 78 8.1–2. Caracalla “enrolled picked youths in a unit which he labeled his Macedonian phalanx; its officers bore the names of Alexander’s generals” (Herodianus, Regnum Post Marcum 4.8.2, ed. Carlo Martino Lucarini (München and Leipzig: Saur, 2005).
· 7 Cassius Dio, Historia Romana 78 8.3.
· 8 Ibid., 88 6.1:
Antoninus belonged to three ethne; and he possessed none of their virtues at all, but combined in himself all their vices; the fickleness, cowardice, and recklessness of Gaul were his, the harshness and cruelty of Africa, and the craftiness of Syria, whence he was sprung on his mother’s side.
· 9 Herodianus, Regnum post Marcum 4 8.2.
· 10 Cassius Dio, Historia Romana 78 7.2.
· 11 Herodianus, Regnum Post Marcum 4 8.1.
· 12 Cicero In Pisonem 18, ed. Translation by Neville H. Watts (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958).
· 13 Ammianus Marcellinus, Rerum Gestarum 17 5.5, ed. John C. Rolfe, vol. 1 (London and Cambridge, MA: William Heinemann, 1935).
· 14 Ammianus Marcellinus Rerum Gestarum 17 5.10.
· 15 Socrates Historia eclesiastica 2.2; 2.16, eds. G. C. Hansen and M. Sirinian, GCS NF 1 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1995); Sozomen Historia eclesiastica 3.9, eds. J. Bidez and G. C. Hansen, GCS NF 4 (Berlin: Akademie, 1995).
· 16 Ambrosius episcopus Mediolanensis Epistolae 15, ed. Migne PL, XVI (Paris, 1845).
· 17 On administrative changes that affected Macedonia, see Caroline Snively, “Macedonia in Late Antiquity,” in Companion to Ancient Macedonia, eds. Joseph Roisman and Ian Worthington (Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 545–71.
· 18 Theodoret Kirchengeschichte, 5 17.1–3, ed. Leon Parmentier (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1911).
· 19 Miracles of St. Demetrius 1 14.148, ed. Paul Lemerle, Les plus anciens recueils des miracles de saint Demetrius et la penetration des Slaves dans les Balkans, vol. 1 (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1979) (hereafter Miracles of St. Demetrius).
· 20 Miracles of St. Demetrius 1 13.128.
· 21 Peter Charanis, “Hellas in the Greek Sources of the Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Centuries,” in Late Classical and Mediaeval Studies in Honor of Albert Mathias Friend, Jr., ed. Kurt Weitzmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955), 170–71. Curta, Edinburgh History of the Greeks, 293, notes that, at the time of writing of the first book of Miracles of St. Demetrius, there was no province termed Hellas and the designation “land of Hellenes” did not refer to Greek ethnicity.
· 22 Miracles of St. Demetrius 1 14.152.
· 23 Miracles of St. Demetrius Prologue 9.
· 24 Miracles of St. Demetrius 1 13.126.
· 25 Miracles of St. Demetrius 1 13.117.
· 26 Miracula I 13.124.
· 27 Florin Curta, “Sklaviniai and Ethnic Adjectives: A Clarification,” Byzantion Nea Hellás 30 (2011): 85–98; Florin Curta, “Theophylact Simocatta Revisited. A Response to Andreas Gkoutzioukostas,” Byzantion Nea Hellás 35 (2016): 195–209; Florin Curta, “Sklavinia in Theophylact Simocatta (Hopefully) for the Last Time,” Porphyra 27 (2018): 4–15. For a differing opinion, that Theophylact Simocatta’s Sklavinia (Σκλαυηνία) was an adjective meaning the horde in the land of the Sklavenes, see Evangelos Chrysos, “Settlements of Slavs and Byzantine Sovereignty in the Balkans,” in Byzantina Mediterranea. Festschrift fur Johannes Koder zum 65. Geburtstag, eds. Klaus Belke, Ewald Kislinger, Andreas Kulzer, and Maria A. Stassinopoulou (Vienna: Bohlau-Verlag, 2007), 123–33; Andreas Gkoutzioukostas, “The term ‘Σκλαυηνία’ and the Use of Epithets Which Derive from Ethnic Names in the Historical Work of Theophylact Simocatta,” in International Scientific Conference “Cyril and Methodius: Byzantium and the World of the Slavs”, ed. A.-E. N. Tachiaos (Thessaloniki: Thessprint A.E., 2015), 639–48; Gkoutzioukostas, “Sklavenia (Σκλαυηνία) revisited: previous and recent considerations,” Parekbolai 7 (2017): 1–12.
· 28 Miracles of St. Demetrius 1 13.116.
· 29 Mitko B. Panov, “Reconstructing 7th Century Macedonia: Some Neglected Aspects of the Miracles of St. Demetrius,” Istorija 47, no. 1 (2012): 93–115. See, most recently, Florin Curta, The Long Sixth Century in Eastern Europe (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2021), 10, who supports this conclusion. Curta, The Edinburgh History of the Greeks, 281, argues that no evidence of a Sklavene presence in southern Greece exists before 700.
· 30 Miracles of St. Demetrius 2.1.179.
· 31 Miracles of St. Demetrius 2.1.181.
· 32 Miracles of St. Demetrius 2.1.193–194.
· 33 Miracles of St. Demetrius 2.1.179.
· 34 Miracles of St. Demetrius 2.2.197.
· 35 Miracles of St. Demetrius 2.2.200.
· 36 Miracles of St. Demetrius 2.5.284.
· 37 Florin Curta, The Making of the Slavs. History and Archaeology of the Lower Danube Region, c. 500–700 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 108, n. 98.
· 38 Miracles of St. Demetrius 2.2.195.
· 39 Miracles of St. Demetrius 2.4.230–232.
· 40 Miracles of St. Demetrius 2.4.233–282.
· 41 Miracles of St. Demetrius 2.4.254; 2 4.259; 2 4.268.
· 42 Miracles of St. Demetrius 2.4.277–282.
· 43 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, On the Themes 50–51, ed. Agostino Pertusi (Vatican: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1952), 88–89.
· 44 Alkmene Stavridou-Zafraka, “The Development of the Theme Organisation in Macedonia,” in Byzantine Macedonia. Art, Architecture, Music, and Hagiography. Papers from the Melbourne Conference, July 1995, eds. John Burke and Roger Scott (Melbourne: National Centre for Hellenic Studies & Research/LaTrobe University, 2000), 128–38; Panos Sophoulis, Byzantium and Bulgaria, 775–831 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012), 98.
· 45 Miracles of St. Demetrius 2.5.288.
· 46 Florin Curta, “Were There Any Slavs in Seventh-Century Macedonia?” Istorija 47, no. 1 (2012): 61–75.
· 47 Miracles of St. Demetrius 2.3.223.
· 48 Miracles of St. Demetrius 2.3.222.
· 49 Miracles of St. Demetrius 2.4.268.
· 50 Miracles of St. Demetrius 2.4.272–276.
· 51 Kaldellis, Romanland, 141.
· 52 Miracles of St. Demetrius 2.5.291.
· 53 Miracles of St. Demetrius 2.4.235.
· 54 The explanation of Paul Lemerle, in Les plus anciens recueils des miracles de saint Demetrius, vol. 1, 83, n. 4; 223, n. 3, and Lemerle, Les plus anciens recueils des miracles de saint Demetrius et la penetration des Slaves dans les Balkans, vol. 2 (Paris:Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1981), 150 n. 233; 244, No. 9, that “our language” was a particular dialect of Thessaloniki would be the logical explanation, although he admits that it will not resolve this difficult problem. For another view, that “our language” meant Greek, although the anonymous author considered it different from Roman, see Martha Grigoriou-Ioannidou, “The ‘καϑ ἡμᾶς γλῶςςα’ in the Mauros’ and Kouber’s Episode (Miracula S. Demetrii 291)”, in Byzantine Macedonia. Art, Architecture, Music, and Hagiography. Papers from the Melbourne Conference, July 1995, eds. John Burke and Roger Scott (Melbourne: National Centre for Hellenic Studies & Research/LaTrobe University, 2000), 89–101.
· 55 Kaldellis, Romanland, 141.
· 56 Life of Methodius 5, ed. Otto Kronsteiner (Salzburg: Institut fur Slawistik der Universitat Salzburg, 1989), 54; English translation by Marvin Kantor, Medieval Slavic Lives of Saints and Princes (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, 1983), 11.
· 57 Life of Methodius 2, 48; English translation from Kantor, Medieval Saint Lives, 109.
· 58 See, for the most recent on this issue, Curta, Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages (500–1300), 2 vols. (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2019), 187–88.
· 59 Leo VI Taktika 18.101, ed. and trans. George T. Dennis, The Taktika of Leo VI (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2010). Kalldellis, Roman-land, 137–38, doubts that such a transformation was carried out by one man, but instead was the result of a long process that did not finish with Basil I. However, he sees in Leo’s account a “concept of national assimilation”.
· 60 I will here refer to Curta, The Edinburgh History of the Greeks, 285–88, who has observed that the established bilingualism was a result of the mutual interaction between the Slavs and the Romans.
· 61 Kaldellis, Romanland, 137.
· 62 Theophanes Chronographia AM 6250, ed. Carl de Boor, vol. 1 (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1883), 430; trans. Cyril Mango and Roger Scott (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 595.
· 63 On a material boundary between Byzantium in Bulgaria that resulted from the 30-year peace of 816, see Florin Curta, “Linear Frontiers in the 9th Century: Bulgaria and Wessex,” Quaestiones Medii Aevi Novae 16 (2011): 15–32.
· 64 Koder, “Macedonians and Macedonia in Byzantine Spatial Thinking,” 21, in the context of this passage, remarks that it is impossible to deny that the geographic name also implies an ethnic distinction. Theophanes Chronographia AM 6250, 430; trans. Mango and Scott, 595. Theophanes, in addition, referred to Thessalonica as a “great city of Illyricum”, reflecting his wider conceptual borderland that included the religious aspects (Theophanes Chronographia AM 6277, 461; trans. Mango and Scott, 634).
· 65 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, The Book of Ceremonies II 37, ed. Johann Jacob Reiske and trans. Ann Moffatt and Maxeme Tall (Canberra: Australian Association of Byzantine Studies, 2012), 635. Curta, Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 310, interprets it as an attestation that the Slavs in the region of Thessaloniki were finally subdued. Kaldellis, Romanland, 142, observes that this reception perhaps functioned as an example of obedience to the emperor.
· 66 Ignatios the Deacon, Life of St. Gregory of Dekapolis 49, ed. Georgios Makris (Stuttgart and Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1997), 110. Ignatios also describes how Gregory, on his way to Thessalonica in 855, encountered the Slav bandits on boats upon crossing a river, most probably the Strymon (Ignatios the Deacon, Life of St. Gregory of Dekapolis, 21, 86).
· 67 John Kaminiates, The Capture of Thessaloniki 3, eds. and trans. David Frendo and Athanasios Fotiou (Perth: Australian Association for Byzantine Studies, 2000), 4.
· 68 Ibid., 4–6.
· 69 Kaminiates, The Capture of Thessaloniki 8, 10.
· 70 Kaminiates, The Capture of Thessaloniki 9, 16.
· 71 Kaminiates, The Capture of Thessaloniki 8, 12.
· 72 Kaminiates, The Capture of Thessaloniki 14, 24–25.
· 73 Ibid., 26.
· 74 Kaminiates, The Capture of Thessaloniki 3, 4.
· 75 Curta, Edinburgh History of the Greeks, 126, argues that, by c. 800, the polity of the Belegezites had been absorbed within the theme of Hellas. See also Kaldellis, Romanland, 139–40.
· 76 Kaminiates, The Capture of Thessaloniki 25, 46.
· 77 Ibid.
· 78 Kaminiates, The Capture of Thessaloniki 41, 70–72.
· 79 Kaminiates, The Capture of Thessaloniki 12, 22.
· 80 Mitko B. Panov, The Blinded State. Historiographic Debates about Samuel Cometopoulos and His State (10th–11th Century) (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2019), 110–12.
· 81 Life of Basil 3.4, ed. Igor Ševčenko (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2011), 19.
· 82 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, On the Themes 48–50, 86–88.
· 83 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, On the Themes 50–51, 89.
· 84 Ibid., 88–89.
· 85 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, On the Themes 49, 87–88.
· 86 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, On the Themes 50, 89.
· 87 Leonis diaconi Caloensis historiae libri decem, ed. Charles B. Hase (Bonn: Weber, 1828), 6. 8–9, 103–4; The History of Leo the Deacon: Byzantine Military Expansion in the Tenth Century, Introduction, translation, and annotations by Alice-Mary Talbot and Denis F. Sullivan, Dumbarton Oaks Studies 41 (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2005), 153–55. The ceding of land by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian II to the Bulgar khan Tervel was mentioned only in sources written after 864; see Sophoulis, Byzantium and Bulgaria, 229, n. 68.
· 88 Leo the Deacon, History, 10. 8–10, ed. Hase, 103–4: “Ιςτρς ἐντὸς Μακεδόνων περιορίζει.”
· 89 Leo the Deacon, History, 10. 8–10, ed. Hase, 171–76; trans. Talbot and Sullivan, 213–15.
· 90 John Geometres, Poems, ed. John A. Cramer, Anecdota Graeca e Codd. Manuscriptis Bibliothecae Regiae Parisiensis, IV (Oxford: Typographeo Academico, 1841), 282.
· 91 John Geometres, Poems, ed. Cramer, 283. English translation in Documents on the Struggle of the Macedonian People for Independence and a Nation-State, vol. 1, eds. Hristo Andonov-Poljanski, Velimir Brezovski, Ivan Katardžiev, Branko Panov, Aleksandar Hristov (Skopje: University of Cyril and Methodius, 1985), 94.
· 92 Geometres, Poems, ed. Cramer, 271–73.
· 93 With the administrative rearrangements of Tzimiskes, a new theme of Strymon was established, covering the strategic belt between the rivers Strymon and Nestos, as well as the themes of Druogobiteia, Veroia and Vodena (Edessa) located in the areas northwest of Thessalonica. See Nikolaos Oikonomides, Les listes de préséance byzantines des IXe et Xe siècle (Paris: Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1972), 266–67 (strategos of Draguviteia); 266–67 (strategos of Veroia); 268–9 (strategos of New Strymon); 264–65 (strategos of Strymon). Oikonomides’ view that the theme of Edessa (Vodena) also existed in this period has been accepted by Holmes, Basil II and the Governance of Empire, 396–98. The name of the theme of Drougobitia implies that Drugubites preserved a great deal of autonomy at that time and a sense of tribal identity (Curta, The Edinburgh History of the Greeks, 285–86).
· 94 Two documents from Mount Athos show that a certain group established in the vicinity of Hierissos at the beginning of the 960s was termed as “Σκλάβων Βουλγάρων” or “Bulgarians.” However, both documents had a local character and were intended to settle the land dispute that had occurred in the past. See Panov, The Blinded State, 60–63. Kalldellis, Romanland, 143, interprets this “odd composite designation” as a way in which the Roman State distinguished between its Slavs and Slav settlers from the Bulgarian Empire. Curta, The Edinburgh History of Greece, 173–74, observes that the distinction between Slavs and the Bulgarian Slavs seems to have been important, because the latter were newcomers arriving with the campaigns of the Bulgarian leader Symeon of 918 and 921.
· 95 Correspondence of Leo, Metropolitan of Synada and Syncellus, ed. and trans. Martha P. Vin son, CFHB 23, Dumbarton Oaks Texts 8 (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1985), Epistle 54.8–13; 54.45–49, 87–91:
The emperor was the greatest of these, the emperor who was returning from a brilliant and incomparable victory; who was missed and longed for because of the long time he labored in adversity in order to secure the complete victory; who, because of his achievement, was brilliant and celebrated and did not disdain the appellations “Scythicus” (Σκυθικòς). … Along with you, farewell to that portion of the bureaucracy that renders you satisfactory and efficient service and everyone whom you yourself, perceptive judge of character that you are, deem worthy of the greeting. Don’t, however, spare a single Scyth (Σκύθην), “not even the little boy his mother carries in her womb,” but annihilate and destroy them all together.
It is indicative that Martha P. Vinson translated the Greek term “Σκύθην” as “Bulgarian” (Leo of Synada, Epistle 54.48, 88–89), which is not the terminology that Leo of Synada and his contemporaries were using for the identification of Samuel’s state.
· 96 Paul Stephenson, “Byzantine Conceptions of Otherness After the Annexation of Bulgaria in 1018,” in Strangers to Themselves: The Byzantine Outsider, Papers from the Thirty-Second Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, March 1998, ed. Dion C. Smythe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 255–57, observed that, following Basil’s reconquests in the Balkans, Byzantine authors usually called Bulgarians by the name of an ancient subjected people by which “they were not merely described, they were acquired.” Hence his conclusion that “the polity which dominated the northern Balkans for three centuries preceding Basil II’s reconquest was denied a contemporary identity; its distinct origins and development were masked by a rigid framework of representation.” Florin Curta, Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, ca. 500–1250, Cambridge Medieval Textbooks, 39 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 17–18, argues that for all Byzantine authors, from Procopius to Niketas Choniates, the degree to which one might be considered a barbarian was proportionate to one’s nature, that is, being born outside the Empire, which led them to use ancient names in the authentic accounts for identifying the contemporary peoples. Anthony Kaldellis, Ethnography After Antiquity: Foreign Lands and People in Byzantine Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 112–15, argues that the terms that the Byzantines used for Balkan groups, especially in the 12th century, “projected an ideology not so much of moral and political classification as of geographical ownership, that is, in relation to the former provinces and conquests of the Roman empire.”
· 97 On the complex issue of this terminology constructed by Basil II, see Panov, The Blinded State, 76–100.
· 98 Silvio G. Mercati, “L’epitafio di Basilio Bulgaroctonos secondo it codice Modense Greco 144 ed Ottoboniano Greco 344,” in Collectanea Byzantina, II (Bari: Dedalo libri, 1970), 232–34; Mercati, “Sull’epitafio di Basilio II Bulgaroctonos,” in Collectanea Byzantina, II (Bari: Dedalo libri, 1970), 226–31. See, Paul Stephenson, “The Tomb of Basil II,” in Zwischen Polis, Provinz und Peripherie. Beiträge zur byzantinischen Geschichte und Kultur, Mainzer Veroffentlichungen zur Byzantinistik 7, ed. Lars M. Hoffmann (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2005), 227–38.
· 99 Paul Stephenson, The Legend of Basil the Bulgar-Slayer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 81–96.