•The Thema System and its Historical Background The theme (Greek: tekil – θέμα, plural themata), was the main local administrative unit of the Byzantine Empire for approximately seven centuries. The word means military district. The theme system replaced the earlier main local unit, the Roman diocese, 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 autonomous emperors, and attempt to seize central authority with the local troops. This system generally produced satisfactory results for 300 years in each region of the Byzantine Empire.
The term has two different meanings. It refers both to a kind of military region and to local administrative units. The theme was the organization of the parcels of land granted to 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 farmed; 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 was constantly shocked by the decline of the Byzantine Empire and became very difficult to implement, as many old regions were lost, new regions were not conquered, and many regions, especially in 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 based on the medieval “liege-vassal” relationship. This further contributed to the collapse of the theme system.
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