Peloponnese
The Peloponnese, Peloponnesus, or Morea, is a peninsula and geographic region in Southern Greece, and the southernmost region of the Balkans. It is connected to the central part of the country by the Isthmus of Corinth land bridge, which separates the Gulf of Corinth from the Saronic Gulf. From the late Middle Ages until the 19th century, the peninsula was known as the Morea, a name still in colloquial use in its demotic form.
The peninsula is divided among three administrative regions: most belong to the Peloponnese region, with smaller parts belonging to the West Greece and Attica regions.
Geography
The Peloponnese is a peninsula located at the southern tip of the mainland, in area, and constitutes the southernmost part of mainland Greece. It is connected to the mainland by the Isthmus of Corinth, where the Corinth Canal was constructed in 1893. However, it is also connected to the mainland by several bridges across the canal, including two submersible bridges at the north and the south end. Near the northern tip of the peninsula, there is another bridge, the Rio–Antirrio bridge. The peninsula has a mountainous interior, although extensive lowlands are also found in the west, in the Evrotas Valley in the south, and in the Argolid Peninsula in the northeast. The Peloponnese possesses four south-pointing peninsulas: the Messenian, the Mani, the Cape Malea, and the Argolid in the far northeast of the Peloponnese. The Messenian Gulf, Laconian Gulf, and Argolic Gulf separate these peninsulas. Moreover, Mount Taygetus in the south is the highest mountain in the Peloponnese, at. Οther important mountains include Cyllene in the northeast, Aroania in the north, Erymanthos and Panachaikon in the northwest, Mainalon in the center, and Parnon in the southeast. The entire peninsula is earthquake-prone and has suffered many earthquakes in the past.The longest river is the Alfeios in the west, followed by the Evrotas in the south, and also the Pineios, also in the west. The Peloponnese, with its indented coasts, is home to numerous spectacular beaches, which are a major tourist draw.
Two groups of islands lie off the Peloponnesian coast: the Argo-Saronic Islands to the east, and the Ionian to the west. The island of Kythira, to the south of the Peloponnese, is considered to be part of the Ionian Islands. The island of Elafonisos used to be part of the peninsula but was separated in the aftermath of the 365 Crete earthquake.
Since antiquity, and continuing to the present day, the Peloponnese has been divided into seven major regions: Achaea, Corinthia, Argolis, Arcadia, Laconia, Messenia, and Elis. Each of these regions is headed by a city, with the largest being Patras in Achaia, followed by Kalamata in Messenia.
Climate
The Peloponnese for the most part enjoys a hot-summer Mediterranean climate, while the Gulf of Corinth has a hot semi-arid climate. Rainfall is higher on the west coast, while the east of the peninsula is significantly drier. Average annual temperatures can reach up to while summer highs reach over in Sparta, within the Evrotas Valley. On 27 June 2007, Monemvasia registered a staggering minimum temperature of 35.9°C, which is the highest minimum temperature ever recorded in mainland Greece and Continental Europe.History
Mythology and early history
The peninsula has been inhabited since prehistoric times. Its modern name derives from ancient Greek mythology, specifically the legend of the hero Pelops, who was said to have conquered the entire region. The name Peloponnesos means Island or Peninsula of Pelops.The Mycenaean civilization, mainland Greece's first major civilization, dominated the Peloponnese in the Bronze Age from the palaces of Mycenae, Pylos, and Tiryns, among others. The Mycenaean civilization collapsed suddenly at the end of the 2nd millennium BC. Archeological research has found that many of its cities and palaces show signs of destruction. The subsequent period, known as the Greek Dark Ages, is marked by an absence of written records.
Classical antiquity
In 776 BC, the first Olympic Games were held at Olympia, in the western Peloponnese, and this date is sometimes used to denote the beginning of the classical period of Greek antiquity. During classical antiquity, the Peloponnese was at the heart of the affairs of ancient Greece, possessed some of its most powerful city-states, and was the location of some of its bloodiest battles.The major cities of Sparta, Corinth, Argos, and Megalopolis were all located on the Peloponnese, and it was the homeland of the Peloponnesian League. Soldiers from the peninsula fought in the Persian Wars, and it was also the scene of the Peloponnesian War of 431–404 BC. The entire Peloponnese, with the notable exception of Sparta, joined Alexander's expedition against the Persian Empire.
Along with the rest of Greece, the Peloponnese fell to the expanding Roman Republic in 146 BC, when the Romans razed the city of Corinth and massacred its inhabitants. The Romans established the province of Achaea, comprising the Peloponnese and central Greece. During the Roman period, the peninsula remained prosperous but became a provincial backwater, relatively disengaged from the affairs of the wider Roman world.
Middle Ages
Byzantine rule
After the partition of the Empire in 395, the Peloponnese became a part of the Byzantine Empire. The devastation of Alaric's raid in 396–397 led to the construction of the Hexamilion wall across the Isthmus of Corinth. Throughout the major part of late antiquity, the peninsula retained its urbanized character: in the 6th century, Hierocles counted 26 cities in his Synecdemus. By the latter part of that century, however, building activity seems to have stopped virtually everywhere except in Constantinople, Thessalonica, Corinth, and Athens. This has traditionally been attributed to calamities such as plague, earthquakes, and Slavic invasions. However, more recent analysis suggests that urban decline was closely linked with the collapse of long-distance and regional commercial networks that underpinned and supported late antique urbanism in Greece, as well as with the generalized withdrawal of imperial troops and administration from the Balkans.Slavic migration, 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. The Slavs did occupy most of the peninsula, as evidenced by the abundance of Slavic 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.Fewer Slavic toponyms appear on the eastern coast, which remained in Byzantine hands and was included in the thema of Hellas, established by Byzantine emperor Justinian II. 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, when Slavs may have been allowed to settle in specific areas that had been depopulated.
Relations between the Slavs and Greeks were probably peaceful apart from intermittent uprisings. There was also a continuity of the Peloponnesian Greek population. This is especially true in Mani and Tsakonia, where Slavic incursions were minimal or non-existent. Considering their predominantly agricultural economy and rural lifestyle, 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. The first attempt by the Byzantine imperial government to reassert its control over the independent Slavic tribes of the Peloponnese occurred in 783, with the logothete Staurakios' overland campaign from Constantinople into Greece and the Peloponnese, which, according to Theophanes the Confessor, captured many prisoners and forced the Slavs to pay tribute.
From the mid-9th century, in the aftermath of a Slavic revolt and attack on Patras, a process of Hellenization was carried out overwhelmingly and persistently. 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 resettled with Greeks. 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, with its capital at Corinth.
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, considering that literary, epigraphic, and sigillographic evidence corroborate Slavic archontes participating in Imperial affairs. By the end of the 9th century, the Peloponnese was culturally and administratively Greek again, 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 times, such tribes were the exception rather than the rule. Even the Melingoi and Ezeritai, however, could speak Greek and appear to have been Christian.
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. 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.
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 corsair emirate there. 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.