Various excerpts from Early Byzantine churches in Macedonia and southern Serbia
A Study of the Origins and the Initial Development of East Christian Art, by Ralph F. Hoddinott [Palgrave Macmillan, London 1963]
PART II. MACEDONIA BETWEEN ROME AND CONSTANTINOPLE
IV. Roman Macedonia and the Mission of St Paul
1) The Parthian revival of the Persian Empire occurred in the third century b.c. In the course of the next century Rome began its expansion into the lands bordering the eastern Mediterranean. Attempts by the Macedonian kingdom to resist Roman domination were finally liquidated following Roman victories in 168 and 148 b.c. The Romans neither regarded, nor treated, their Macedonian rival lightly and set out systematically to eradicate every trace of its power and independence. Perseus, the last Macedonian king, was seized in 168 while claiming political sanctuary on Samothrace and, after the failure of the final bid to regain independence in 148, the whole of the surviving aristocracy and the chief military and civil officials were deported to Italy. The most important industries were forbidden; the country was divided into four parts, and Macedonians forbidden to cross from one to another. Thus trade, as well as political control, fell largely into Roman hands. Quickly and brutally, the proud motherland of the empire which had reached to India was converted into a stagnant backwater of the Roman Empire.
2) Reliable veterans from the victorious Roman army were given their discharge and awarded land on which to settle. ... Octavius brought over a still larger group of colonists from Italy. These newcomers quickly became, on both a large and small scale, the principal landowners in the region.
3) The indigenous Thracians also continued as an important element of the population in the city of Philippi and, probably to a greater degree, in the countryside.
4) Farther inland, among the mountainous ranges of the north and west, a different situation developed. In these wilder regions, even in the towns, Hellénisation had never been complete. Greek influence, while paramount and a strong civilising force, had had to contend with constantly shifting tribal populations and with cultural allegiances from beyond the Macedonian frontiers. These were principally Illyrian on the west and north and Thracian on the east. The lack of Illyrian or Thracian literature makes any estimate of their cultural contributions extremely difficult, but it was certainly far from negative.
5) Throughout eastern Macedonia, as well as in Thrace itself, the religion of the native Thracians retained an undiminished vitality. Three iconographical aspects of this religion have survived in sufficient number and consistency of representation to leave us some indication of its essential features.
6) In Thessalonica and Verria a particular welcome was given to Paul’s gospel by the Greek population, ‘devout Greeks’ as they are called on one occasion. The race of those who received him with such warmth in Philippi is not specified; and nowhere are the indigenous Thracians or Illyrians mentioned. It seems a possibility that, particularly in Philippi, Paul made no distinction between the Greeks and the urban, Hellenised Thracians. Both were eligible for Roman citizenship. Both would speak Greek. Both, too, practised a synthesis of Thracian and Hellenic cults, which would have prepared them for Christian ideas. The status of women in Illyrian society may, too, have been the reason for the interest shown in Thessalonica and Verria by ‘chief’ and ‘honourable women which were Greeks’. Educated, urban Illyrians, too, would have spoken Greek.