To assign the names and exact boundaries of the different tribes inhabiting Epirus, as they stood in the seventh and sixth centuries B. C., at the time when the western stream of Grecian colonization was going on, and when the newly established Ambrakiots must have been engaged in subjugating or expelling the prior occupants of their valuable site,—is out of our power. We have no information prior to Herodotus and Thucydidês, and that which they tell us cannot be safely applied to a time either much earlier or much later than their own. That there was great analogy between the inland Macedonians and the Epirots, from Mount Bermius across the continent to the coast opposite Korkyra, in military equipment, in the fashion of cutting the hair, and in speech, we are apprized by a valuable passage of Strabo; who farther tells us, that many of the tribes spoke two different languages,[803]—a fact which at least, proves very close intercommunion, if not a double origin and incorporation. Wars, or voluntary secessions and new alliances, would alter the boundaries and relative situation of the various tribes. And this would be the more easily effected, as all Epirus, even in the fourth century B. C., was parcelled out among an aggregate of villages, without any great central cities; so that the severance of a village from the Molossian union, and its junction with the Thesprotian (abstracting from the feelings with which it might be connected), would make little practical difference in its condition or proceedings. The gradual increase of Hellenic influence tended partially to centralize this political dispersion, enlarging some of the villages into small towns by the incorporation of some of their neighbors; and in this way, probably, were formed the seventy Epirotic cities which were destroyed and given up to plunder on the same day, by Paulus Emilius and the Roman senate. The Thesprotian Ephyrê is called a city, even by Thucydidês.[804] Nevertheless, the situation was unfavorable to the formation of considerable cities, either on the coast or in the interior, since the physical character of the territory is an exaggeration of that of Greece,—almost throughout, wild, rugged, and mountainous. The valleys and low grounds, though frequent, are never extensive,—while the soil is rarely suited, in any continuous spaces, for the cultivation of corn: insomuch that the flour for the consumption of Janina, at the present day, is transported from Thessaly over the lofty ridge of Pindus, by means of asses and mules;[805] while the fruits and vegetables are brought from Arta, the territory of Ambrakia. Epirus is essentially a pastoral country: its cattle as well as its shepherds and shepherd’s dogs were celebrated throughout all antiquity; and its population then, as now, found divided village residence the most suitable to their means and occupations. In spite of this natural tendency, however, Hellenic influences were to a certain extent efficacious, and it is to them that we are to ascribe the formation of towns like Phœnikê,—an inland city a few miles removed from the sea, in a latitude somewhat north of the northernmost point of Korkyra, which Polybius notices as the most flourishing[806] of the Epirotic cities at the time when it was plundered by the Illyrians in 230 B. C. Passarôn, the ancient spot where the Molossian kings were accustomed on their accession to take their coronation-oath, had grown into a considerable town, in this last century before the Roman conquest; while Tekmôn, Phylakê, and Horreum also became known to us at the same period.[807] But the most important step which those kings made towards aggrandizement, was the acquisition of the Greek city of Ambrakia, which became the capital of the kingdom of Pyrrhus, and thus gave to him the only site suitable for a concentrated population which the country afforded.
If we follow the coast of Epirus from the entrance of the Ambrakian gulf northward to the Akrokeraunian promontory, we shall find it discouraging to Grecian colonization. There are none of those extensive maritime plains which the gulf of Tarentum exhibits on its coast, and which sustained the grandeur of Sybaris and Krotôn. Throughout the whole extent, the mountain-region, abrupt and affording little cultivable soil, approaches near to the sea,[808] and the level ground, wherever it exists, must be commanded and possessed, as it is now, by villagers on hill-sites, always difficult of attack and often inexpugnable. From hence, and from the neighborhood of Korkyra,—herself well situated for traffic with Epirus, and jealous of neighboring rivals,—we may understand why the Grecian emigrants omitted this unprofitable tract, and passed on either northward to the maritime plains of Illyria, or westward to Italy. In the time of Herodotus and Thucydidês, there seems to have been no Hellenic settlement between Ambrakia and Apollonia. The harbor called Glykys Limên, and the neighboring valley and plain, the most considerable in Epirus, next to that of Ambrakia, near the junction of the lake and river of Acheron with the sea, were possessed by the Thesprotian town of Ephyrê, situated on a neighboring eminence; perhaps also, in part, by the ancient Thesprotian town of Pandosia, so pointedly connected, both in Italy and Epirus, with the river Acheron.[809] Amidst the almost inexpugnable mountains and gorges which mark the course of that Thesprotian river, was situated the memorable recent community of Suli, which held in dependence many surrounding villages in the lower grounds and in the plain,—the counterpart of primitive Epirotic rulers in situation, in fierceness, and in indolence, but far superior to them in energetic bravery and endurance. It appears that after the time of Thucydidês, certain Greek settlers must have found admission into the Epirotic towns in this region. For Dêmosthenês[810] mentions Pandosia, Buchetia, and Elæa, as settlements from Elis, which Philip of Macedon conquered and handed over to his brother-in-law the king of the Molossian Epirots; and Strabo tells us that the name of Ephyrê had been changed to Kichyrus, which appears to imply an accession of new inhabitants.
Both the Chaonians and Thesprotians appear, in the time of Thucydidês, as having no kings: there was a privileged kingly race, but the presiding chief was changed from year to year. The Molossians, however, had a line of kings, succeeding from father to son, which professed to trace its descent through fifteen generations downward, from Achilles and Neoptolemus to Tharypas about the year 400 B. C.; they were thus a scion of the great Æakid race. Admêtus, the Molossian king to whom Themistoklês presented himself as a suppliant, appears to have lived in the simplicity of an inland village chief. But Arrybas, his son or grandson, is said to have been educated at Athens, and to have introduced improved social regularity into his native country: while the subsequent kings both imitated the ambition and received the aid of Philip of Macedon, extending their dominion[811] over a large portion of the other Epirots: even in the time of Skylax, they covered a large inland territory, though their portion of sea-coast was confined. From the narrative of Thucydidês, we gather that all the Epirots, though held together by no political union, were yet willing enough to combine for purposes of aggression and plunder. The Chaonians enjoyed a higher military reputation than the rest,—but the account which Thucydidês gives of their expedition against Akarnania exhibits a blind, reckless, boastful impetuosity, which contrasts strikingly with the methodical and orderly march of their Greek allies and companions.[812] We may here notice, that the Kassopæans, whom Skylax places in the south-western portion of Epirus between the Acheron and the Ambrakian gulf, are not noticed either by Herodotus or Thucydidês: the former, indeed, conceives the river Acheron and the Thesprotians as conterminous with the Ambrakiotic territory.
To collect the few particulars known respecting these ruder communities adjacent to Greece, is a task indispensable for the just comprehension of the Grecian world, and for the appreciation of the Greeks themselves, by comparison or contrast with their contemporaries. Indispensable as it is, however, it can hardly be rendered in itself interesting to the reader, whose patience I have to bespeak by assuring him that the facts hereafter to be recounted of Grecian history would be only half understood without this preliminary survey of the lands around.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Thucyd. i, 13.
[2] Thucyd. i, 13.
[3] Plutarch, Amator. Narrat. c. 2, p. 772; Diodor. Fragm. lib. viii, p. 26. Alexander, Ætolus (Fragm. i, 5, ed. Schneidewin), and the Scholiast ad Apollon. Rhod. iv, 1212, seem to connect this act of outrage with the expulsion of the Bacchiadæ from Corinth, which did not take place until long afterwards.
[4] The first account seems referred to Dêmôn (an author of about 280 B. C., and a collector of Attic archæology, or what is called Ἀτθιδόγραφος. See Phanodêmi, Dêmônis, Clitodêmi, atque Istri, Ἀτθίδων, Fragmenta, ed. Siebelis, Præfatio, pp. viii-xi), and is given as the explanation of the locution—ὁ Διὸς Κόρινθος. See Schol. ad Pindar. Nem. vii, ad finem; Schol. Aristophan. Ran. 440: the Corinthians seem to have represented their eponymous hero as son of Zeus, though other Greeks did not believe them (Pausan. ii, 1, 1). That the Megarians were compelled to come to Corinth for demonstration of mourning on occasion of the decease of any of the members of the Bacchiad oligarchy, is, perhaps, a story copied from the regulation at Sparta regarding the Periœki and Helots (Herod. vi, 57; Pausan. iv, 14, 3; Tyrtæus, Fragm.). Pausanias conceives the victory of the Megarians over the Corinthians, which he saw commemorated in the Megarian θησαυρὸς at Olympia, as having taken place before the 1st Olympiad, when Phorbas was life-archon at Athens: Phorbas is placed by chronologers fifth in the series from Medon, son of Codrus (Pausan. i, 39, 4; vi, 19, 9). The early enmity between Corinth and Megara is alluded to in Plutarch, De Malignitate Herodoti, p. 868, c. 35.