The Slavic Tribes of Greece

[Basileios I]

What were the names of the Slavic tribes which overrran Greece in the 7th century?

[Brownbeard]

Originally Posted by BasileiosII

What were the names of the Slavic tribes which overrran Greece in the 7th century?

Unknown? There is little to nothing written about the tribes consisting the first wave. Croats(TM) and Serbs(TM) were the first copyrighted ones. The rest got their names afterwards after the region they inhabited(or the region they inhabited got named after them before)

[Tambourmajor]

AFAIK the Byzantines just universally called them "Sklavenoi".

[Olaus Petrus]

There is no good knowledge, about Slavs of the migration period. We know only little about early history of Serbs, Croats and other South Slavs.

[Nike]

I can say only about the main groups: Antes and Slavinii. But the sub-groups...

[Basileios I]

Originally Posted by Nike

I can say only about the main groups: Antes and Slavinii. But the sub-groups...

So they were South Slavs like Serbians and Croatians? Somwhere I read that Serbian tribes overran Greece in the 7th century.

[Brownbeard]

Antii&co predate any migration into the Balkans. These were proto-slav groups before great migrations.

Antes are East Slavs
Slavinii are South Slavs
Venedes are West Slavs

[Basileios I]

Originally Posted by Brownbeard

Antii&co predate any migration into the Balkans. These were proto-slav groups before great migrations.

Antes are East Slavs
Slavinii are South Slavs
Venedes are West Slavs

So the Slavs in Greece (especially on the Peleponnes) were "Slavinii"?

[Nike]

Yes, although the Antes have atacked the Balkans, too (but not settled, afaik).

[Basileios I]

Originally Posted by Nike

Yes, although the Antes have atacked the Balkans, too (but not settled, afaik).

Any different "Slavinii" tribes in the different regions of Greece?

[Olaus Petrus]

Don't know which tribes attacked to Greece, but ancestors of South Slavs conquered parts of Byzantium. In South-East Balkans most important groups were ancestors of Bulgars (Actually name Bulgars come from Turkish people, who mixed with Slavic population of Bulgaria) and Macedonians (Not the same as Greek Macedonians of Alexander). South West most important groups were ancestors of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (there is also some smaller ethnic groups). Difference between different Slavic tribes propably wasn't very big when they arrived. In Balkans different Slavic groups mixed with earlier nations which lived in Balkans, like Illyrians, Thracians, Dacians and Getae.

Because Slavs didn't create any written sources and Byzantines just called them Slavs it's impossible to say which groups attacked to Greece.

[Basileios I]

So in an EU2 Scenario starting in 630 AD, should Slavonic (South-Slavic) culture be seperated into many small?

[bogmih]

No. They all spoke more or less the same language, maybe with some dialectal differences.

[Nike]

Yes, language similarity between Slavic languages is quite big even today. Personally I have problems understanding only people from Poland and the Czech Republic. The rest, especially South Slavs (Serbs, Croats, Slovenes), are like speaking in home.

Just a few corrections to Olaus Petrus:
1. "In Balkans different Slavic groups mixed with earlier nations which lived in Balkans, like Illyrians, Thracians, Dacians and Getae." I don't know for sure for Illyrians, but I wouldn't say they really mixed with the ancient population, due to the fact that this ancient population was at that time almost completely gone. Especially the Getae! Thracians (and I believe also Illyrians) were to a great degree exterminated or deported during the various "barbaric" raids, including those of Goths, Huns, Bulgars, Avars and Slavs. Most recent archeological researches show that some areas were even left completely depopulated - f.e. Macedonian archeologist Mikulchik reports that after the ancient Macedonian population was "evacuated" to South-Eastern Thrace and the Slavs came in, they found the area empty. And the Slavs themselves continued south to the warmer and more hospitable Greece, so for more than a century this region was mostly depopulated.
2. "Because Slavs didn't create any written sources and Byzantines just called them Slavs it's impossible to say which groups attacked to Greece." I don't fully agree. But I'll add more later, as I have some other work now.

Btw, Basileos, if you need names of Slavic sub-group tribes, I could search for some, which settled the area of Solun (Thessaloniki). For now I remember only tribes, such as Rinhinii, Velegiziti etc. But, of course, it's quite doubtful if they had these same names during the plundering period!

[Basileios I]

Originally Posted by Nike

Btw, Basileos, if you need names of Slavic sub-group tribes, I could search for some, which settled the area of Solun (Thessaloniki). For now I remember only tribes, such as Rinhinii, Velegiziti etc. But, of course, it's quite doubtful if they had these same names during the plundering period!

Would be great.

But I'm especially looking for names of Slavic tribes further south, in the Thessaly region and on the Peleponnes.

In the scenario (Arabia Universalis) I'm working on the Byzantine Empire and I plan to make the inland areas of Greece not directly controled by the Empire (they were only nominal overlords) but by different Slavic tribes, as it was in reality. After Heraclius the Empire lost control over nearly the whole Balkans except coastal towns in Greece, coastal towns in present-day Albania (Dhyrrachion), Dalmatia and the province of Thrace and parts of Macedonia (Thessalonike).

[Olaus Petrus]

Originally Posted by Nike

Yes, language similarity between Slavic languages is quite big even today. Personally I have problems understanding only people from Poland and the Czech Republic. The rest, especially South Slavs (Serbs, Croats, Slovenes), are like speaking in home.

Just a few corrections to Olaus Petrus:
1. "In Balkans different Slavic groups mixed with earlier nations which lived in Balkans, like Illyrians, Thracians, Dacians and Getae." I don't know for sure for Illyrians, but I wouldn't say they really mixed with the ancient population, due to the fact that this ancient population was at that time almost completely gone. Especially the Getae! Thracians (and I believe also Illyrians) were to a great degree exterminated or deported during the various "barbaric" raids, including those of Goths, Huns, Bulgars, Avars and Slavs. Most recent archeological researches show that some areas were even left completely depopulated - f.e. Macedonian archeologist Mikulchik reports that after the ancient Macedonian population was "evacuated" to South-Eastern Thrace and the Slavs came in, they found the area empty. And the Slavs themselves continued south to the warmer and more hospitable Greece, so for more than a century this region was mostly depopulated.
2. "Because Slavs didn't create any written sources and Byzantines just called them Slavs it's impossible to say which groups attacked to Greece." I don't fully agree. But I'll add more later, as I have some other work now.

Btw, Basileos, if you need names of Slavic sub-group tribes, I could search for some, which settled the area of Solun (Thessaloniki). For now I remember only tribes, such as Rinhinii, Velegiziti etc. But, of course, it's quite doubtful if they had these same names during the plundering period!

I took the fact that they mixed with earlier inhabitants from Wikipedia, which is not always the most reliable source.

About the written sources and barbarian (in this case Slavic) tribes I must add that naming them wasn't always very specific. It's usually hard to say which group certain name meaned and same name could mean different group in different text.

[Nike]

Ok, I've uploaded one simple map of the Slavic tribes on the Balkans in the middle of the VII century, which I found. It's on Bulgarian (and Cyrillic), so I'll just list the names of the Slavic tribes there (from south to north and west to east): Velegiziti (around Larissa), Dragoviti (to the north of Solun, along the Vardar River), Smoliani (to the east of Dragoviti, between Philippi and Philipopolis (Plovdiv)), Berziti (to the north of Dragoviti, between Skopie and Ohrid, upper flow of Vardar), Strumci (along the Struma River), Serbian tribes (obviously in Serbia), Moravians (along the Morava River), Timochans (between the Morava and Danube rivers), The seven Slavic tribes (along the lower flow of the Danube), Severi (eastern Danubian plain, the west of Odesos, Mesembria and the Black Sea coast), Branichevtsi (to the north of the Moravians and Timochani, around Singidunum (Beograd)), Abodriti (to the north of Singidunum and Sirmium). But I think this particular map (from the Bulgarian MFA site) would be better...

[Basileios I]

Thanks!

That's just what I needed.

So those Slavic tribes were de facto independent and only nominally ruled by the Byzantine Emperor, right?

And the purple areas are under direct Roman control?






And there is a tribe called Abodriti. Always thought they settled in northern Germany ...

[Nike]

Yellow is area with compact Slavic population. Purple is area with mainly Romean population. As for control - I don't know. I know only for Bulgaria that they had their own kniazes, ruled their own "sclavinii" regions and such. For Byzantium - I'm not sure.

Btw Abodriti is a disputable thing. It comes from one message from... I think it was at the time of Charlemagne's son, when it is reported (by a Frankish chronicler in 827) that messengers came to him from three tribes: "By the emperor came messengers of the Abodriti, the Precedents and the Timochans, which had recently left their alliance with the Bulgarians". So most people (those, which "created" the basis of official Bulgarian history) thought that all these three tribes are Slavic "rebels" and that there was a large-scale anti-Slavic policy in Bulgaria at those times. While Abodriti and Precedents lived, afaik, along the river Oder in Germany. But if there is new evidence of Slavic tribes with the same name...

[Karl Martell]

Yeah, a tribe called Abodriti lived in western Mecklenburg, in northern Germany.