Poros during the Byzantine
era ...
... Kalavria along with
Trizina still existed throughout the early
Byzantine years as part of the province of
the Byzantine Empire.
But Alaric, leader of
the Visigoths, who had settled on the north
side of the Balkan peninsula from the beginning
of the 3rd century, went across Thessaly and
reached central Greece from Thermopylae. The
Goths arrived in Attica and Boeotia destroying
everything in their way. From the entire destruction,
Athens was the only city that pulled through.
Corinth, Sparta, Argos and Trizinia got looted
by the Goths. They caused such great damage
in the region that from the last disastrous
invasion, around the last months of 396 A.D.,
Trizinia and Kalavria ceased to exist.
A
few years after the destruction of southern
Greece by the Goths of Alaric, a great earthquake
literally destroyed what was left of the vicious
fury of the Goths. Around that time, Vagionia
(a settlement in Kalavria) must have sunk
in the sea. The rubble of houses and streets
of the city are quite apparent in the shallow
waters of the Gulf of Vagionia.
After
these regional disasters, while Trizina managed
to establish the settlement of Damalasin the
succeeding Byzantine years, Poros failed to
develop any significant village or residential
area. Pirates during the Byzantine years and
under Ottoman rule literally plagued the area
and used the Vagionian bay which even today
is called Barbaria.
At
that time, Sfera was uninhabited while Kalavria
had a few people who lived in isolated farmhouses
and were engaged in the cultivation of a couple
of farms and livestock.
