Velkov’s principal scholarly focus was, throughout his career, the
settlement history of Thrace under the Roman Empire, particularly the
period between the fourth and sixth centuries, and the transition to
Byzantine rule.^58 The range of information available for this period
gave him an acute awareness of the different types of evidence that
need to be taken into account in order to provide a coherent and
rounded picture of settlement life. Notwithstanding the central role
played by the Balkan provinces in the politics of the later Empire,
historical narratives were nevertheless of limited use, whereas inscrip-
tions offered a rich and, in many respects, far more nuanced reflection of
settlement life in its various permutations. The major civic conurbations,
whether imperial foundations (and re-foundations), or veteran colonies,
flourished alongside other sites, whose nomenclature implied native
origins. The suffixes of many place names, including—bria—diza,—
para, and occasionally prefixes (notably theByzasthat underlies the
name Byzantion), indicate the strength of local settlement traditions, as
well as the persistence of native linguistic patterns.
The history of these native foundations was not easy to tease out. Most
of the epigraphic texts were and are of imperial date, so of little use in
clarifying how the educated, propertied families, whose members usually
contributed to the cost of such documents, came to wield their influence.
Some were immigrants, but many local men could continue to be
prominent through grants of Roman citizenship. The views expressed
in Velkov’s publications of the 1960s and 1970s on the development of
civic entities were consistent with the widespread opinion among Balkan
scholars that city life, understood as the organization ofpoleison the
Greek model, was a development that post-dated the Macedonian con-
quest of Thrace.^59
Karl Marx had promoted the view that slavery in classical antiquity was
adefining characteristic of Greek and Roman societies. Although some
twentieth-century Marxists, such as G. E. M. de Ste Croix, departed from
this all-embracing definition, preferring to identify slavery as the means by
which the propertied classes extracted a surplus from their landed wealth,
rather than the general means of production in ancient classical societies,
these kinds of distinctions were not at all well known in the countries
of the Communist bloc.^60 Unlike many of his contemporaries, Velizar
(^58) Velkov 1988, 139–277 with further references.
(^59) Cf. Velkov 1970, 14 (= 1988, 236). See further Ch. 2 on settlement patterns and types.
(^60) On Karl Marx’s views on ancient slavery: Morley 2009, 42–3, 151–6; de Ste Croix
1981, 52:‘the most significant distinguishing feature of each social formation, each“mode
of production”,... is not so muchhow the bulk of the labour of production is done, as how
30 Introduction