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Florina

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.

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