Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/21

 ILLYRIANS, MACEDONIANS, P.EONIAXS. fi southernmost. Among the southern Illyrian tribes are to be numbered the Taulantii, originally the possessors, aftenvards the immediate neighbors, of the territory on which Epidamnus was founded. The ancient geographer Hekataeus 1 (about 500 dus (above seven thousand feet high) only two passes fit for an army to cross : one near the northern extremity of the chain, over which Grisebach himself crossed, from Kalkandele to Prisdren, a very high col, not less than five thousand feet above the level of the sea; the other, considerably to the southward, and lower as well as easier, nearly in the latitude of Lychnidus, or Ochrida. It was over this last pass that the Roman Via Egnatia travelled, and that the modern road from Scutari and Durazzo to Bitolia now travels. With the exception of these two partial depressions, the long mountain-ridge maintains itself undiminished in height, admitting, indeed, paths by which a small company either of travellers or of Alba- nian robbers from the Dibren, may cross (there is a path of this kind which connects Stroga with Ueskioub, mentioned by Dr. Joseph Mailer, p. 70, and some others by Bone", vol. iv, p. 546), but nowhere admitting the passage of an army. To attack the Macedonians, therefore, an Illyrian army would have to go through one or other of these passes, or else to go round the north-eastern pass of Katschanik, beyond the extremity of Ljubatrin. And we shall find that, in point of fact, the military operations recorded between the two nations carry us usually in one or other of these directions. The military proceedings of Brasidas (Thucyd. iv. 124), of Philip the son of Amyntas king of Macedon (Diodor. xvi, 8), of Alexander the Great in the first year of his reign (Arrian, i, 5), all bring us to the pass near Lychnidus (com- pare Livy, xxxii, 9; Plutarch, Flaminin. c. 4); while the Illyrian Dardani and Autariata? border upon Pfeonia, to the north of Pelagonia, and threaten Macedonia from the north-east of the mountain-chain of Skardus. The Autariatse are not far removed from the Paonian Agrianes, who dwelt near the sources of the Strymon, and both Autariatae and Dardani threatened the return march of Alexander from the Danube into Macedonia, after his successful campaign against the Geta?, low down in the course of that great river (Arrian, i, 5). "Without being able to determine the precise line of Alexander's march on this occasion, we may see that these two Illyrian tribes must have come down to attack him from Upper Moesia, and on the eastern side of the Axius. This, and the fact that the Dardani were the immediate neighbors of the Pseonians, shows us that their seats could not have been far removed from Upper Mcesia (Livy, xlv, 29) : the fauces Pelagoniae (Livy, xxxi, 34) are the pass by which they entered Macedonia from the north. Ptolemy even places the Dardani at Skopiae (Ueskioub) (hi, 9) ; his information about these countries seems better than that ci Strabo. 1 Ilekataei Fragm. ed. Klausen, Fr. 66-70 ; Thucyd. i, 26. Skylax places the Encheleis north of Epidamnus and of the Taulantii.