AKARNANIANS. — EPIROTS.
Some notice must be taken of those barbarous or non-Hellenic nations
who formed the immediate neighbors of Hellas, west of the range
of Pindus, and north of that range which connects Pindus with
Olympus,—as well as of those other tribes, who, though lying more
remote from Hellas proper, were yet brought into relations of traffic
or hostility with the Hellenic colonies.
Between the Greeks and these foreign neighbors, the Akarnanians,
of whom I have already spoken briefly in my preceding volume, form
the proper link of transition. They occupied the territory between
the river Achelôus, the Ionian sea, and the Ambrakian gulf: they
were Greeks, and admitted as such to contend at the Pan-Hellenic
games,[792] yet they were also closely connected with the Amphilochi
and Agræi, who were not Greeks. In manners, sentiments, and
intelligence, they were half-Hellenic and half-Epirotic,—like
the Ætolians and the Ozolian Lokrians. Even down to the time of
Thucydidês, these nations were subdivided into numerous petty
communities, lived in unfortified villages, were frequently in the
habit of plundering each other, and never permitted themselves to be
unarmed: in case of attack, they withdrew their families and their
scanty stock, chiefly cattle, to the shelter of difficult mountains
or marshes. They were for the most part light-armed, few among
them being trained to the panoply of the Grecian hoplite; but they
were both brave and skilful in their own mode of warfare, and the
sling, in the hands of the Akarnanian, was a weapon of formidable
efficiency.[793]
[792] See Aristot. Fragm. περὶ Πολιτειῶν, ed. Neumann: Fragm. 2,
Ἀκαρνάνων πολιτεία.
[793] Pollux, i, 150; Thucyd. ii. 81.
Notwithstanding this state of disunion and insecurity, however, the
Akarnanians maintained a loose political league among themselves,
and a hill near the Amphilochian Argos, on the shores of the
Ambrakian gulf, had been fortified to serve as a judgment-seat, or
place of meeting, for the settlement of disputes. And it seems that
Stratus and Œniadæ had both become fortified in some measure towards
the commencement of the Peloponnesian war. The former, the most
considerable township in Akarnania, was situated on the Achelôus,
rather high up its course,—the latter was at the mouth of the river,
and was rendered difficult of approach by its inundations.[794]
Astakus, Solium, Palærus, and Alyzia, lay on or near the coast of
the Ionian sea, between Œniadæ and Leukas: Phytia, Koronta, Medeôn,
Limnæa, and Thyrium, were between the southern shore of the Ambrakian
gulf and the river Achelôus.
[794] Thucyd. ii, 102; iii, 105.
The Akarnanians appear to have produced many prophets. They traced
up their mythical ancestry, as well as that of their neighbors the
Amphilochians, to the most renowned prophetic family among the
Grecian heroes,—Amphiaraus, with his sons Alkmæôn and Amphilochus:
Akarnan, the eponymous hero of the nation, and other eponymous
heroes of the separate towns, were supposed to be the sons of
Alkmæôn.[795] They are spoken of, together with the Ætolians, as
mere rude shepherds, by the lyric poet Alkman, and so they seem to
have continued with little alteration until the beginning of the
Peloponnesian war, when we hear of them, for the first time, as
allies of Athens and as bitter enemies of the Corinthian colonies on
their coast. The contact of those colonies, however, and the large
spread of Akarnanian accessible coast, could not fail to produce some
effect in socializing and improving the people. And it is probable
that this effect would have been more sensibly felt, had not the
Akarnanians been kept back by the fatal neighborhood of the Ætolians,
with whom they were in perpetual feud,—a people the most unprincipled
and unimprovable of all who bore the Hellenic name, and whose
habitual faithlessness stood in marked contrast with the rectitude
and steadfastness of the Akarnanian character.[796] It was in order
to strengthen the Akarnanians against these rapacious neighbors,
that the Macedonian Kassander urged them to consolidate their
numerous small townships into a few considerable cities. Partially,
at least, the recommendation was carried into effect, so as to
aggrandize Stratus and one or two other towns; but in the succeeding
century, the town of Leukas seems to lose its original position as
a separate Corinthian colony, and to pass into that of chief city
of Akarnania,[797] which is lost only by the sentence of the Roman
conquerors.
[795] Thucyd. ii, 68-102; Stephan. Byz. v. Φοίτιαι. See the
discussion in Strabo (x, p. 462), whether the Akarnanians did,
or did not, take part in the expedition against Troy; Ephorus
maintaining the negative, and stringing together a plausible
narrative to explain _why_ they did not. The time came when the
Akarnanians gained credit with Rome for this supposed absence of
their ancestors.
[796] Polyb. iv, 30: compare also ix, 40.
[797] Diodor. xix, 67; Livy, xxxiii, 16-17; xlv, 31.
Passing over the borders of Akarnania, we find small nations or
tribes not considered as Greeks, but known, from the fourth century
B. C. downwards, under the common name of Epirots. This word
signifies properly, inhabitants of a continent, as opposed to those
of an island or a peninsula, and came only gradually to be applied by
the Greeks as their comprehensive denomination to designate all those
diverse tribes, between the Ambrakian gulf on the south and west,
Pindus on the east, and the Illyrians and Macedonians to the north
and north-east. Of these Epirots, the principal were,—the Chaonians,
Thesprotians, Kassôpians, and Molossians,[798] who occupied the
country inland as well as maritime along the Ionian sea, from the
Akrokeraunian mountains to the borders of Ambrakia in the interior
of the Ambrakian gulf. The Agræans and Amphilochians dwelt eastward
of the last-mentioned gulf, bordering upon Akarnania: the Athamânes,
the Tymphæans, and the Talares, lived along the western skirts and
high range of Pindus. Among these various tribes it is difficult to
discriminate the semi-Hellenic from the non-Hellenic; for Herodotus
considers both Molossians and Thesprotians as Hellenic,—and the
oracle of Dôdôna, as well as the Nekyomanteion, or holy cavern
for evoking the dead, of Acheron, were both in the territory
of the Thesprotians, and both, in the time of the historian,
Hellenic. Thucydidês, on the other hand, treats both Molossians and
Thesprotians as barbaric, and Strabo says the same respecting the
Athamânes, whom Plato numbers as Hellenic.[799] As the Epirots were
confounded with the Hellenic communities towards the south, so they
become blended with the Macedonian and Illyrian tribes towards the
north. The Macedonian Orestæ, north of the Cambunian mountains and
east of Pindus, are called by Hekatæus a Molossian tribe; and Strabo
even extends the designation Epirots to the Illyrian Paroræia and
Atintânes, west of Pindus, nearly on the same parallel of latitude
with the Orestæ.[800] It must be remembered, as observed above,
that while the designations Illyrians and Macedonians are properly
ethnical, given to denote analogies of language, habits, feeling,
and supposed origin, and probably acknowledged by the people
themselves,—the name Epirots belongs to the Greek language, is given
by Greeks alone, and marks nothing except residence on a particular
portion of the continent. Theopompus (about 340 B. C.) reckoned
fourteen distinct Epirotic nations, among whom the Molossians and
Chaonians were the principal. It is possible that some of these may
have been semi-Illyrian, others semi-Macedonian, though all were
comprised by him under the common name Epirots.[801]
[798] Skylax. c. 28-32.
[799] Herodot. ii, 56, v, 92, vi, 127; Thucyd. ii, 80; Plato,
Minos, p. 315. The Chaonians and Thesprotians were separated by
the river Thyamis (now Kalamas),—Thucyd. i, 46; Stephanus Byz. v.
Τροία.
[800] Hekatæus, Fr. 77, ed. Klausen; Strabo, vii, p. 326; Appian,
Illyric. c. 7. In the time of Thucydidês, the Molossi and the
Atintânes were under the same king (ii, 80). The name Ἠπειρῶται,
with Thucydidês, means only inhabitants of a continent,—οἱ ταύτῃ
ἠπειρῶται (i, 47; ii, 80) includes Ætolians and Akarnanians (iii,
94-95), and is applied to inhabitants of Thrace (iv, 105).
Epirus is used in its special sense to designate the territory
west of Pindus by Xenophon, Hellen. vi, 1, 7.
Compare Mannert. Geographie der Griech. und Römer, part vii, book
2 p. 283.
[801] Strabo, vii, p. 324.
Of these various tribes, who dwelt between the Akrokeraunian
promontory and the Ambrakian gulf, some, at least, appear to have
been of ethnical kindred with portions of the inhabitants of
southern Italy. There were Chaonians on the gulf of Tarentum, before
the arrival of the Greek settlers, as well as in Epirus; we do
not find the name Thesprotians in Italy, but we find there a town
named Pandosia, and a river named Acheron, the same as among the
Epirotic Thesprotians: the ubiquitous name Pelasgian is connected
both with one and with the other. This ethnical affinity, remote or
near, between Œnotrians and Epirots, which we must accept as a fact
without being able to follow it into detail, consists at the same
time with the circumstance,—that both seem to have been susceptible
of Hellenic influences to an unusual degree, and to have been
moulded, with comparatively little difficulty, into an imperfect
Hellenism, like that of the Ætolians and Akarnanians. The Thesprotian
conquerors of Thessaly passed in this manner into Thessalian Greeks,
and the Amphilochians who inhabited Argos on the Ambrakian gulf,
were Hellenized by the reception of Greeks from Ambrakia, though the
Amphilochians situated without the city, still remained barbarous in
the time of Thucydidês:[802] a century afterwards, probably, they
would be Hellenized, like the rest, by a longer continuance of the
same influences,—as happened with the Sikels in Sicily.
[802] Thucyd. ii, 68.
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.
[803] Strabo, vii, p. 324. In these same regions, under the
Turkish government of the present day, such is the mixture
and intercourse of Greeks, Albanians, Bulgaric Sclavonians,
Wallachians, and Turks, that most of the natives find themselves
under the necessity of acquiring two, sometimes three, languages:
see Dr. Grisebach, Reise durch Rumelien und nach Brussa, ch. xii,
vol. ii, p. 68.
[804] Livy, xlv, 34; Thucyd. i, 47. Phanotê, in the more
northerly part of Epirus, is called only a _castellum_, though it
was an important military post (Livy, xliii, 21).
[805] Leake’s Travels in Northern Greece, ch. xxxviii, vol. iv,
pp. 207, 210, 233; ch. ix. vol. i, p. 411; Cyprien Robert, Les
Slaves de Turquie, book iv, ch. 2.
Βουβόται πρῶνες ἐξόχοι—Pindar, Nem. iv, 81; Cæsar, Bell. Civil.
iii, 47.
[806] Polybius, ii, 5, 8.
[807] Plutarch, Pyrrh. c. i; Livy, xlv, 26.
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.
[808] See the description of the geographical features of Epirus
in Boué, La Turquie en Europe, Géographie Générale, vol. i, p. 57.
[809] See the account of this territory in Colonel Leake’s
Travels in Northern Greece, vol. i. ch. v; his journey from
Janina, through the district of Suli and the course of the
Acheron, to the plain of Glyky and the Acherusian lake and
marshes near the sea. Compare, also, vol. iv, ch. xxxv, p. 73.
“To the ancient sites (observes Colonel Leake) which are so
numerous in the great valleys watered by the lower Acheron,
the lower Thyamis, and their tributaries, it is a mortifying
disappointment to the geographer not to be able to apply a single
name with absolute certainty.”
The number of these sites affords one among many presumptions
that each must have been individually inconsiderable.
[810] Dêmosthenês, De Haloneso, ch. 7, p. 84 R; Strabo, vii, p.
324.
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.
[811] Skylax, c. 32; Pausanias, i, 11; Justin, xvii, 6.
That the _Arrhybas_ of Justin is the same as the _Tharypas_ of
Pausanias,—perhaps, also, the same as _Tharyps_ in Thucydidês,
who was a minor at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war,—seems
probable.
[812] Thucyd. ii, 81.
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.