THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD IN LATE ANTIQUITYprecedence over the spacious civic structures of earlier times.^33 Circumstances
were also diffi cult in Greece, where late sources suggest that in the late sixth
century some cities, including ancient Sparta, Argos and Corinth, were aban-
doned by their inhabitants in favour of safer places. Archaeological and other
evidence does not always confi rm this oversimplifi ed picture, but it does seem
that the pattern of urban settlement was changing signifi cantly during the later
sixth and seventh centuries. At Corinth, the remaining population retreated
to the fortifi ed height of Acrocorinth, and this became typical of Byzantine
settlements in Greece. This impression of a search for places of refuge is
reinforced in many sites in the Balkans, where inhabited centres contracted
and regrouped around a defensible acropolis, or were abandoned in favour of
such positions elsewhere. The early Byzantine walls at Sparta enclosed only
the ancient acropolis and not the civic centre; it was presumably hoped that
they would provide a place of refuge for the population in time of attack.^34
The late Chronicle of Monemvasia connects the move of population in Greece
explicitly with the Slav invasions of the 580s, but the extent of Slav move-
ment and settlement is a contentious subject, and both the chronology and
the archaeological record are hard to trace.^35 According to the same source,
the population of Lakedaimon, ancient Sparta, settled at Monemvasia, a rocky
crag on the east coast of the Peloponnese, very hard of access; however, the
actual date of the foundation of Monemvasia is extremely obscure, and Sparta
remained inhabited in the Byzantine period. The general phenomenon of
population movement, if it happened in this way, was probably more gradu-
al, and a number of different factors may have been operative in bringing it
about, including possibly a shift in economic activity. Whatever the reasons
for the new pressures from Avars and Slavs (Sclaveni) in the late sixth century,
the empire found the threat diffi cult to deal with, and resorted to a mixture of
diplomacy, subsidies and warfare to try to control it. Athens itself was not oc-
cupied, but both Athens and Corinth suffered attack in the 580s, which shows
clearly in the coin evidence, and which caused considerable destruction by
fi re, and Thessalonica was besieged; the Long Walls of Constantinople were
attacked more than once by Sclaveni and Avars in the same decade. These
Slavs were described by the Emperor Maurice in his Strategikon:
[The Slavs and the Antes] are both independent, absolutely refusing to
be enslaved or governed, least of all in their own land. They are populous
and hardy, bearing readily heat, cold, rain, nakedness and scarcity of pro-
visions ... Owing to their lack of government and their ill feeling toward
one another, they are not acquainted with an order of battle.
(Maurice, Strategikon, 11.4, trans. Dennis)Although Athens was used as a base against the Slavs nearly a century later by
the Emperor Constans II (662–3), new building, if any, involved subdivision
into smaller rooms and the use of former fi ne buildings as sites for olive-
presses. Similar phenomena are also encountered frequently in North Africa,