Ardiaean Kingdom in 218 B.C.

Ardiaean Kingdom — Spring 218 BC · The Broken Kingdom of the Pirates.

The Ardiaean Kingdom — the Illyrian realm of the south-eastern Adriatic, the great power of Illyrian piracy. Out of the mountains and drowned coasts behind Scodra the Ardiaei built a sea-empire of the swift lembi, the light pirate-galleys whose oared raids fell on every shore from Epirus to Italy. Under King Agron the kingdom reached its height; on his death his widow, Queen Teuta, loosed the corsairs upon the world and so provoked the First Illyrian War with Rome (229–228 BC). Beaten, Teuta was stripped of her conquests and forbidden to sail beyond Lissus; Rome raised up the renegade Demetrius of Pharos as a client-prince and threw its protection over the Greek coastal cities. But Demetrius forgot his benefactors. Trusting in his friendship with Philip V of Macedon, he raided beyond Lissus and tore the cities from Roman obedience — and Rome came back. In the Second Illyrian War of 219 BC the consul Aemilius stormed Dimale and took Pharos itself; Demetrius fled to Philip’s court. So in spring 218 the kingdom is shattered and cowed, the boy-king Pinnes its nominal ruler, the renegade gone, and the long shadow of Rome lying over the coast. A realm of pirate-galleys, mountain tribes, and contested Greek ports, with its capital at Scodra.

Illyria in 218 is a kingdom in the aftermath of ruin. Twice in a decade Rome has crossed the Adriatic to break it. The first war humbled Queen Teuta, whose corsairs had grown so bold they murdered Rome’s own envoys; the peace of 228 stripped the Ardiaei of their conquests and forbade their galleys to pass south of Lissus. To hold the coast Rome set up Demetrius of Pharos, a turncoat captain, as its prince in Illyria. But when Rome was pressed by the Gauls in the north and by Carthage in the west, Demetrius judged her too distracted to answer: he sailed past Lissus with fifty lembi, plundered the Cyclades, threw off Roman restraint and bound himself to Philip V of Macedon. He misjudged. Just last year, before Hannibal’s march turned all eyes to Italy, the consul Lucius Aemilius came with an army, stormed the great fortress of Dimale in seven days, and ran Demetrius to ground on his own island of Pharos. Demetrius escaped by night to the court of Philip; the kingdom lies open and obedient. The boy Pinnes, heir of Agron, is its nominal king, and the swift pirate-galleys ride at anchor while Rome’s shadow lies long across the Greek ports of the shore.