Geography (Books 6-14) (7.5.6-7.5.10)

The Ardiaei were called by the men of later times “Vardiaei.” Because they pestered the sea through their piratical bands, the Romans pushed them back from it into the interior and forced them to till the soil. But the country is rough and poor and not suited to a farming population, and therefore the tribe has been utterly ruined and in fact has almost been obliterated. And this is what befell the rest of the peoples in that part of the world; for those who were most powerful in earlier times were utterly humbled or were obliterated, as, for example, among the Galatae the Boii and the Scordistae, and among the Illyrians the Autariatae, Ardiaei, and Dardanii, and among the Thracians the Triballi; that is, they were reduced in warfare by one another at first and then later by the Macedonians and the Romans.

Be this as it may, after the seaboard of the Ardiaei and the Pleraei come the Rhisonic Gulf, and the city Rhizo,[*] and other small towns and also the River Drilo,[*] which is navigable inland towards the east as far as the Dardanian country. This country borders on the Macedonian and the Paeonian tribes on the south, as do also the Autariatae and the Dassaretii—different peoples on different sides being contiguous to one another and to the Autariatae.[*] To the Dardaniatae belong also the Galabrii,[*] among whom is an ancient city,[*] and the Thunatae, whose country joins that of the Medi,[*] a Thracian tribe on the east. The Dardanians are so utterly wild that they dig caves beneath their dung-hills and live there, but still they care for music, always making use of musical instruments, both flutes and stringed instruments. However, these people live in the interior, and I shall mention them again later.

After the Rhizonic Gulf comes the city of Lissus,[*] and Acrolissus,[*] and Epidamnus,[*] founded by the Corcyraeans, which is now called Dyrrachium, like the peninsula on which it is situated. Then comes the Apsus[*] River; and then the Aoüs,[*] on which is situated Apollonia,[*] an exceedingly well-governed city, founded by the Corinthians and the Corcyraeans, and ten stadia distant from the river and sixty from the sea. The Aoüs is called “Aeas “[*] by Hecataeus, who says that both the Inachus and the Aeas flow from the same place, the region of Lacmus,[*] or rather from the same subterranean recess, the former towards the south into Argos and the latter towards the west and towards the Adrias. In the country of the Apolloniates is a place called Nymphaeum; it is a rock that gives forth fire; and beneath it flow springs of warm water and asphalt—probably because the clods of asphalt in the earth are burned by the fire. And near by, on a hill, is a mine of asphalt; and the part that is trenched is filled up again in the course of time, since, as Poseidonius says, the earth that is poured into the trenches changes to asphalt. He also speaks of the asphaltic vine-earth which is mined at the Pierian Seleuceia[*] as a cure for the infested vine; for, he says, if it is smeared on together with olive oil, it kills the insects[*] before they can mount the sprouts of the roots;[*] and, he adds, earth of this sort was also discovered in Rhodes when he was in office there as Prytanis,[*] but it required more olive oil. After Apollonia comes Bylliaca,[*] and Oricum[*] and its seaport Panormus, and the Ceraunian Mountains, where the mouth of the Ionian Gulf[*] and the Adrias begins.

Now the mouth is common to both, but the Ionian is different in that it is the name of the first part of this sea, whereas Adrias is the name of the inside part of the sea as far as the recess; at the present time, however, Adrias is also the name of the sea as a whole. According to Theopompus, the first name came from a man,[*] a native of Issa,[*] who once ruled over the region, whereas the Adrias was named after a river.[*] The distance from the country of the Liburnians to the Ceraunian Mountains is slightly more than two thousand stadia Theopompus states that the whole voyage from the recess takes six days, and that on foot the length of the Illyrian country is as much as thirty days, though in my opinion he makes the distance too great.[*] And he also says other things that are incredible: first, that the seas[*] are connected by a subterranean passage, from the fact that both Chian and Thasian pottery are found in the Naro River; secondly, that both seas are visible from a certain mountain;[*] and thirdly, when he puts down a certain one of the Liburnides islands as large enough to have a circuit of five hundred stadia;[*] and fourthly, that the Ister empties by one of its mouths into the Adrias. In Eratosthenes, also, are some false hearsay statements of this kind—“popular notions,”[*] as Polybius calls them when speaking of him and the other historians.

Now the whole Illyrian seaboard is exceedingly well supplied with harbors, not only on the continuous coast itself but also in the neighboring islands, although the reverse is the case with that part of the Italian seaboard which lies opposite, since it is harborless. But both seaboards in like manner are sunny and good for fruits, for the olive and the vine flourish there, except, perhaps, in places here or there that are utterly rugged. But although the Illyrian seaboard is such, people in earlier times made but small account of it—perhaps in part owing to their ignorance of its fertility, though mostly because of the wildness of the inhabitants and their piratical habits. But the whole of the country situated above this is mountainous, cold, and subject to snows, especially the northerly part, so that there is a scarcity of the vine, not only on the heights but also on the levels. These latter are the mountain-plains occupied by the Pannonians; on the south they extend as far as the country of the Dalmatians and the Ardiaei, on the north they end at the Ister, while on the east they border on the country of the Scordisci, that is, on the country that extends along the mountains of the Macedonians and the Thracians.