FOOTNOTES
[1] Herodot. i, 196; Skylax, c. 19-27; Appian. Illyric. c. 2, 4, 8.
The geography of the countries occupied in ancient times by the Illyrians, Macedonians, Pæonians, Thracians, etc., and now possessed by a great diversity of races, among whom the Turks and Albanians retain the primitive barbarism without mitigation, is still very imperfectly understood; though the researches of Colonel Leake, of Boué, of Grisebach, and others (especially the valuable travels of the latter), have of late thrown much light upon it. How much our knowledge is extended in this direction, may be seen by comparing the map prefixed to Mannert’s Geographie, or to O. Müller’s Dissertation on the Macedonians, with that in Boué’s Travels, but the extreme deficiency of the maps, even as they now stand, is emphatically noticed by Boué himself (see his Critique des Cartes de la Turquie in the fourth volume of his Voyage),—by Paul Joseph Schaffarik, the learned historian of the Sclavonic race, in the preface attached by him to Dr. Joseph Müller’s Topographical Account of Albania,—and by Grisebach, who in his surveys, taken from the summits of the mountains Peristeri and Ljubatrin, found the map differing at every step from the bearings which presented themselves to his eye. It is only since Boué and Grisebach that the idea has been completely dismissed, derived originally from Strabo, of a straight line of mountains (εὐθεῖα γραμμὴ, Strabo, lib. vii, Fragm. 3) running across from the Adriatic to the Euxine, and sending forth other lateral chains in a direction nearly southerly. The mountains of Turkey in Europe, when examined with the stock of geological science which M. Viquesnel (the companion of Boué) and Dr. Grisebach bring to the task, are found to belong to systems very different, and to present evidences of conditions of formation often quite independent of each other.
The thirteenth chapter of Grisebach’s Travels presents the best account which has yet been given of the chain of Skardus and Pindus: he has been the first to prove clearly, that the Ljubatrin, which immediately overhangs the plain of Kossovo at the southern border of Servia and Bosnia, is the north-eastern extremity of a chain of mountains reaching southward to the frontiers of Ætolia, in a direction not very wide of N-S.,—with the single interruption (first brought to view by Colonel Leake) of the Klissoura of Devol,—a complete gap, where the river Devol, rising on the eastern side, crosses the chain and joins the Apsus, or Beratino, on the western,—(it is remarkable that both in the map of Boué and in that annexed to Dr. Joseph Müller’s Topographical Description of Albania, the river Devol is made to join the Genussus, or Skoumi, considerably north of the Apsus, though Colonel Leake’s map gives the correct course.) In Grisebach’s nomenclature Skardus is made to reach from the Ljubatrin as its north-eastern extremity, south-westward and southward as far as the Klissoura of Devol: south of that point Pindus commences, in a continuation, however, of the same axis.
In reference to the seats of the ancient Illyrians and Macedonians Grisebach has made another observation of great importance (vol. ii, p. 121). Between the north-eastern extremity, Mount Ljubatrin, and the Klissoura of Devol, there are in the mighty and continuous chain of Skardus (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 Albanian robbers from the Dibren, may cross (there is a path of this kind which connects Struga with Ueskioub, mentioned by Dr. Joseph Müller, p. 70, and some others by Boué, 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 (compare Livy, xxxii, 9; Plutarch, Flaminin. c. 4); while the Illyrian Dardani and Autariatæ border upon Pæonia, to the north of Pelagonia, and threaten Macedonia from the north-east of the mountain-chain of Skardus. The Autariatæ are not far removed from the Pæonian Agrianes, who dwelt near the sources of the Strymon, and both Autariatæ and Dardani threatened the return march of Alexander from the Danube into Macedonia, after his successful campaign against the Getæ, 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 Mœsia, and on the eastern side of the Axius. This, and the fact that the Dardani were the immediate neighbors of the Pæonians, shows us that their seats could not have been far removed from Upper Mœsia (Livy, xlv, 29): the fauces Pelagoniæ (Livy, xxxi, 34) are the pass by which they entered Macedonia from the north. Ptolemy even places the Dardani at Skopiæ (Ueskioub) (iii, 9); his information about these countries seems better than that of Strabo.
[2] Hekatæi Fragm. ed. Klausen, Fr. 66-70; Thucyd. i, 26.
Skylax places the Encheleis north of Epidamnus and of the Taulantii. It may be remarked that Hekatæus seems to have communicated much information respecting the Adriatic: he noticed the city of Adria at the extremity of the Gulf, and the fertility and abundance of the territory around it (Fr. 58: compare Skymnus Chius, 384).
[3] Livy, xliii, 9-18. Mannert (Geograph. der Griech. und Römer, part vii, ch. 9, p. 386, seq.) collects the points and shows how little can be ascertained respecting the localities of these Illyrian tribes.
[4] Strabo, iv, p. 206.