Sclavene

The Sclavenes take their name from the Sclaveni, early Slavic tribes that crossed the Danube from the sixth century and settled across the Balkans, some reaching the Peloponnese. In southern Greek lands two communities kept a distinct identity into the late Middle Ages: the Melingoi on the slopes of Mount Taygetus and the Ezeritai of the Helos marshes in Laconia.

Constantine VII records them paying tribute and revolting in the tenth century. Under Byzantine and then Frankish rule they became Christians and gradually Hellenized, while keeping their Slavic speech in the hills as late as the fifteenth century.

In the 1330s founders' inscriptions in Laconian churches still name a tzaousios of the Melingoi, and both the Principality of Achaea and the Despotate of the Morea recruited their pastoralist highlanders as soldiers. Kindred Slavic-speaking pockets also survived in Epirus and Macedonia.