•The Θέμα System and its Historical Background The theme (Greek: singular – θέμα, plural – θέματα themata), was the main local administrative unit of the Byzantine Empire for approximately seven centuries. The word means military division. The theme system was established in the seventh century, when the Byzantine territories began to be conquered by Muslim armies, replacing the earlier main local unit, the Roman diakos system, which had been established by the Roman emperors Diocletian and Constantine I.
The reason for this division was that it allowed local governors to command the troops in their regions, declare themselves as independent emperors, and attempt to seize central authority with the local troops. This system generally produced satisfactory results for 300 years in every region of the Byzantine Empire.
The term “thema” has two different meanings. It refers to both a kind of military region and to local administrative units. The theme was the organization of the land parcels granted to the soldiers for farming. Technically, the soldiers were military units formed to fight under the command of a strategos (provincial governor). They were not the owners of the land they were given and cultivated; the land belonged to the state. The soldiers who worked the land had the right to harvest and to receive the yield and profit from the cultivated land.
The theme system, which had been constantly shocked by the decline of the Byzantine Empire, became very difficult to implement because many of the old regions were lost and many of the regions, especially in the border areas, were constantly changing hands. On the other hand, the Franks, who captured Constantinople and established the Latin Empire with the Fourth Crusade, established feudal states by applying a medieval hierarchical system similar to the Frankish apanage system, which was attached to this empire. This situation also contributed to the collapse of the theme system.
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