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ownership over the territory, and they stayed for another three centuries. Excavated finds from Belgrade’s Roman period are on display in the National Museum.
    As was common practice elsewhere in the empire, Singidunum became more than just a camp with a solely military purpose. On retiring from active service, soldiers would often make a home for themselves in the countryside surrounding their fortress. Meanwhile, Roman power in the region extended in all directions and Singidunum changed from being a frontier outpost to one of the nodal points in the imperial network of roads and river transportation.
    The city under Roman management was part of a secure imperial world and enjoyed one of its longest periods of peace and stability. The civilian population of Singidunum continued to grow outside the confines of the sturdy fortress walls, spilling into what is now Belgrade’s central district. Emperors passed through the region on their way to defend the imperial borders from marauding bands of outsiders, like Claudius II who marched his army in 268 via Singidunum to defeat the Goths near what is now the southern Serbian town of Niš.
    The Roman Emperor Constantine decided on a step that was to have profound consequences for the development of the Balkans and Europe generally, and which echoes down to the present day. He built a new imperial city on the shores of the Black Sea to be named after himself. Gavro Škrivanić of Belgrade’s Historical Institute, writing in
An Historical Geography of the Balkans
, comments on this development: “Konstantinopolis emerged from the old Greek town of Byzantium and was built under Constantine the Great in AD 330 and proclaimed as the capital of the Roman Empire. It had an exceptionally strategic position, and became one of the largest mercantile and communication centres of the world.” This rival to Rome is better known to the Serbs as Byzantium or Carigrad (City of the Tsar or Emperor); it was later renamed Istanbul after it fell to the Ottoman Empire.
    The Roman Empire effectively became two units: a western entity based on the power and the glory of Rome, and an eastern section administered by the new city. The Christian Church took root at the same time, promoted by Constantine who was the first emperor to be baptized, and it too was destined to be divided in two branches. The division was not complete until the Great Schism of 1054 when the leaders of the Church, the Bishop of Rome and the Patriarch in Byzantium, excommunicated one another, thus paving the way for the emergence of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.
    The political and administrative arrangements for the initial partition of the empire led to a weakening of its defences, and Singidunum’s years of
Pax Romana
came to an end. The city was sacked by Goths in 378 and then again at the hands of Attila the Hun in 441. The local population was condemned to slavery and for nearly a hundred years the city ceased to exist. The Byzantine Emperor Justinian began a programme to rebuild it in 535, changing the name from the Roman Singidunum to the Hellenized version Singidon. The walls were constructed from the remains of the previous Roman fortress along with new stone and brick—handiwork that has left a confusing legacy for later archaeologists to sift through. Justinian’s project was constantly interrupted during the rest of that century by the Avars, another tribe who invaded the Balkans and laid siege to the city three times.
    During the sixth and seventh centuries fresh waves of newcomers crossed from the north into the Balkan Peninsula. These latest interlopers were the Slavs who came in search of pasture for their herds and made their way deep into the peninsula. Not much is known of them from this period although they are mentioned by Byzantine chroniclers. They were nomadic peoples who had no form of writing and, consequently, have left behind little evidence about their way of life, customs, rituals or