Editing Peloponnese (section)

====Slavic invasion, settlement and decline====
The scale of the Slavic invasion and settlement in the 7th and 8th centuries remains a matter of dispute, although it is nowadays considered much smaller than previously thought.<ref>{{Citation | first = TE | last = Gregory | title = A History of Byzantium | publisher = Wiley-Blackwell | year = 2010 | page = 169 | quote = It is now generally agreed that the people who lived in the Balkans after the Slavic "invasions" were probably, for the most part, the same as those who had lived there earlier, although the creation of new political groups and arrival of small immigrants caused people to look at themselves as distinct from their neighbors, including the Byzantines.}}</ref> The Slavs did occupy most of the peninsula, as evidenced by the abundance of Slavic [[Toponymy|toponyms]], but these toponyms accumulated over centuries rather than as a result of an initial "flood" of Slavic invasions, and many appear to have been mediated by speakers of Greek, or in mixed Slavic-Greek compounds.<ref name="Kazhdan 1991, p. 1620"/><ref>Curta (2011), pp. 283–285</ref><ref>Obolensky (1971), pp. 54–55, 75</ref>

Fewer Slavic toponyms appear on the eastern coast, which remained in Byzantine hands and was included in the ''[[Theme (Byzantine district)|thema]]'' of [[Hellas (theme)|Hellas]], established by [[Justinian II]] {{Circa|690}}.<ref>Kazhdan (1991), pp. 911, 1620–1621</ref> While traditional historiography has dated the arrival of Slavs to southern Greece to the late 6th century, according to Florin Curta there is no evidence for a Slavic presence in the Peloponnese until after {{Circa|700 AD}},<ref>Curta (2011), pp. 279–281</ref> when Slavs may have been allowed to settle in specific areas that had been depopulated.<ref>Curta (2011), p. 254</ref>

Relations between the Slavs and Greeks were probably peaceful apart from intermittent uprisings.<ref>Fine (1983), p. 63</ref> There was also a continuity of the Peloponnesian Greek population. This is especially true in [[Mani Peninsula|Mani]] and [[Tsakonia]], where Slavic incursions were minimal, or non-existent. Being agriculturalists, the Slavs probably traded with the Greeks, who remained in the towns, while Greek villages continued to exist in the interior, governing themselves, possibly paying tribute to the Slavs.<ref name="Fine61">Fine (1983), p. 61</ref> The first attempt by the Byzantine imperial government to re-assert its control over the independent Slavic tribes of the Peloponnese occurred in 783, with the [[logothete]] [[Staurakios (eunuch)|Staurakios]]' overland campaign from Constantinople into Greece and the Peloponnese, which according to [[Theophanes the Confessor]] made many prisoners and forced the Slavs to pay tribute.<ref>Curta (2011), p. 126</ref>

[[File:Byzantine Greece ca 900 AD.svg|thumb|350px|A map of [[Byzantine Greece]] {{Circa|900 AD}}, with the themes and major settlements]]
From the mid-9th century, following a [[Siege of Patras (805 or 807)|Slavic revolt and attack]] on [[Patras]], a determined [[Hellenization]] process was carried out. According to the ''[[Chronicle of Monemvasia]]'', in 805 the Byzantine governor of [[Corinth]] went to war with the Slavs, exterminated them, and allowed the original inhabitants to claim their lands. They regained control of the city of Patras and the region was re-settled with Greeks.<ref>Fine (1983), pp. 80, 82</ref> Many Slavs were transported to [[Asia Minor]], and many Asian, Sicilian and Calabrian Greeks were resettled in the Peloponnese. By the turn of the 9th century, the entire Peloponnese was formed into the new ''thema'' of [[Peloponnesos (theme)|Peloponnesos]], with its capital at Corinth.<ref name="Fine61"/>

The imposition of Byzantine rule over the Slavic enclaves may have largely been a process of Christianization and accommodation of Slavic chieftains into the Imperial fold, as literary, [[epigraphic]] and [[sigillographic]] evidence testify to Slavic ''archontes'' participating in Imperial affairs.<ref>Curta (2011), p. 134</ref> By the end of the 9th century, the Peloponnese was culturally and administratively Greek again,<ref>Fine (1983), p. 79</ref> except for a few small Slavic tribes in the mountains such as the [[Melingoi]] and [[Ezeritai]]. Although they were to remain relatively autonomous until [[Ottoman Empire|Ottoman]] times, such tribes were the exception rather than the rule.<ref>Fine (1983), p. 83</ref> Even the Melingoi and Ezeritai, however, could speak Greek and appear to have been Christian.<ref>Curta (2011), p. 285</ref>

The success of the Hellenization campaign also shows that the Slavs had settled among many Greeks, in contrast to areas further north in what is now Bulgaria and the former Yugoslavia, as those areas could not be Hellenized when they were recovered by the Byzantines in the early 11th century.<ref>Fine (1983), p. 64</ref> A human genetics study in 2017 showed that the Peloponnesians have little admixture with populations of the Slavic homeland and are much closer to Sicilians and southern Italians.<ref>[[Stamatoyannopoulos, George]] et al., [http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ejhg201718a.html Genetics of the Peloponnesian populations and the theory of extinction of the medieval Peloponnesian Greeks], European Journal of Human Genetics, 25.5 (2017), pp. 637–645</ref>

Apart from the troubled relations with the Slavs, the coastal regions of the Peloponnese suffered greatly from repeated Arab raids following the Arab capture of [[Crete]] in the 820s and the establishment of a [[Emirate of Crete|corsair emirate]] there.<ref name="ODB1621">Kazhdan (1991), p. 1621</ref><ref>Bées & Savvides (1993), p. 236</ref> After the island was recovered by Byzantium in 961 however, the region entered a period of renewed prosperity, where agriculture, commerce, and urban industry flourished.<ref name="ODB1621"/>