Illyrian Tribes in 218 B.C.

Illyrian Tribes — Spring 218 BC · Rome twice across the sea; the tribes unbroken.

In 218 BC the Illyrians are not a state but a fierce patchwork of independent peoples along the eastern Adriatic and through its mountainous hinterland — from the Histri and Liburni of the north, down the Dalmatian coast and into the Dinaric interior of the Delmatae, Daesitiates and Autariatae, to the powerful Dardani inland and the Atintani on the Epirote march. They are seafarers and pirates, herders, miners and warriors, lately humbled by Rome in two Illyrian Wars but unbroken in their hills. Select a people to read its story.

No single king rules the Illyrians. From Istria and the Liburnian shore, down the broken Dalmatian coast with its thousand isles, and back into the harsh Dinaric uplands to the Dardani on the Macedonian march and the Atintani above Epirus, they are a host of warlike peoples bound by one mountain-and-sea culture and split by a hundred feuds. Their lembi — swift light galleys — and the lean Liburnian craft have preyed on Greek and Italian shipping since time out of mind. That piracy drew Rome across the Adriatic twice in a decade: against Queen Teuta of the Ardiaean Kingdom in 229, and against the renegade Demetrius of Pharos last year. Rome now shields the Greek coastal cities; but the tribes proper remain free, fierce, and a standing menace to Macedon and to all who sail.