Social/Cultural
Under the Macedonian Dynasty [867-1056], Byzantium's political power reached its climax as previous territories were built into the Empire, and multi-ethnicity was restored. This period is also significant as the time in which Byzantine culture was spread among the Slavs and other Balkan peoples. After many Turkish attacks in the late eleventh century, the Empire was able to maintain a lesser but still significant political and military power under the Komnenian Dynasty: the cost was a social transformation that had a powerful military aristocracy, and eventually took away the previously free peasantry.