Florina
under the Romans -
continued to be a Greek-land under
the Epigonoi (the successors of Alexander the Great) and for some two centuries
was the core of larger state units ruled by Macedonian kings. It was only after
the decisive battle of Pydna in 168 B.C. that Macedonia ceased to exist as an
independent state and came under Roman domination. Its territories were divided
into four semi-autonomous regions.
Despite Roman rule, the Macedonian provinces prospered, and attracted new
colonists from the East and from Italy. For the first time, Jewish communities
appeared. However, as can be seen from the inscriptions, the Roman colonists
were gradually Hellenised.
During
the 3rd century A.D. there were successive invasions of Goths and other
tribes related to them, but these attacks were beaten off and did not lead
to ethnological adulteration. In 324 A.D., Byzantium became the capital of
the Eastern Roman Empire. This had a positive effect on the further
development of Macedonia and particularly on that of its capital,
Thessaloniki, which soon grew to the point where it was regarded as the
second most important city in the Byzantine Empire.
With the exception of some enclaves of Latin-speaking and other peoples, the
fundamentally Greek population of Florina remained effectively unchanged until
the 7th century A.D., when various Slav races (Drogovites, Strumonites,
Sagoudates, and others) began to settle in the area of Macedonia. With the
permission of the Byzantine authorities, these tribes formed small Slavic
enclaves known to the Byzantines as 'Sclavineae'. Throughout the 7th century the
Slavs fought the Byzantines and made repeated attacks on Thessaloniki, though
without success. In 688 Justinian II won a decisive victory over them, and
forcibly removed many of them to Bithynia in Asia Minor. For a long time the
Slavs lived peacefully in the European provinces of the Byzantine Empire and, as
can be seen from Byzantine writers, many of them were Hellenised.
Ottoman
rule -
which was completed during the 15th
century, caused major changes in the population of the Balkans in general and of
Macedonia in particular. The Christian population began to abandon the plains
and take refuge in the mountains, while the economic and intellectual elite fled
to the West. Simultaneously, Turkmen populations (Uruks) moved in, settling
principally in Central Macedonia. Those Christians who found themselves unable
to bear the harshness of the Ottoman yoke and the humiliations to which they
were subjected embraced Islam. Known as 'Valaades', these Greek-speaking Muslim
populations were still to be found in some parts of the Kozani area until the
liberation of Macedonia in 1912. Later, with the exchange of populations of
1923-24, they shared the fate of their co- religionists and settled in Turkey.
The Liberation - The reward for the efforts and sacrifices of the participants in the Macedonian Struggle came with the victorious Balkan Wars of 1912-13, by which Macedonia shook off the Ottoman yoke that had lain upon it for five centuries. The Treaty of Bucharest (10 August 1913) finally fixed the frontiers of the Balkan states in Macedonia. The part of Macedonia which came into Greek possession included most of the villages of Thessaloniki and Monaster, with the exception of some provinces which today lie within Yugoslavian and Bulgarian Macedonia.
