Related Links: The History of English Wine		Rome and Byzantium After the end of Magna Graecia, responsibility for the spread of viticulture fell mainly to the Romans. They, typically described as lacking the aesthetic ideals of the ancient Greeks, were nevertheless sufficiently appreciative of Greek culture to adopt much of its heritage, including its alphabet, considerable elements of its language, its deities, its ideas concerning government and education, and, with special vigor, their reverence for wine. The vine continued its expansion with every Roman conquest. Romans brought their viticulture as far north as Britain, although the extent of it there under their rule is unknown. They produced innovations of their own, of which the change from pottery to wooden barrels may be the most significant. Greece, meanwhile, although it fared well politically under Roman rule, had lost hegemony over wine. Not until the Byzantine period, when Constantinople became the seat of Roman power, were Greeks in a position to capitalize on their viticultural assets. Slavic incursions from the north around 650 AD had a powerful negative impact on grapegrowing on much of the mainland as populations abandoned traditional vineyard areas for safer environments. Greece was reclaimed by Byzantium in 1260 AD. A healthy trade in wine, centered in Constantinople, had come to flourish by the end of the first millennium. By the late Middle Ages, however, viticulture fell gradually victim to increasingly feudal land management under fraying Byzantine control. The result was a gradual degradation in wine quality. Monasteries increasingly became the keepers of local wine traditions, acquiring vineyards and outfitting cellars in order to sustain production.