Kingdom of Dardania

The Kingdom of Dardania was a polity in the central Balkans in the region of Dardania during classical antiquity. It is named after the Dardani, a Paleo-Balkan tribe that formed the core of the Dardanian polity. Dardania was centered around present-day Kosovo, but also included parts of North Macedonia (Gostivar), Serbia (Novi Pazar) and Albania (Kukës, Tropoja, Has).[1] The eastern parts of Dardania were at the Thraco-Illyrian contact zone. Marcus Licinius Crassus, grandson of the triumvir Marcus Crassus, officially annexed the kingdom in 28 BC while on campaign against the Dacians and Bastarnae.[2] The region was subsequently incorporated into the province of Moesia in 15 BC, and later in 293 AD, as the province of Dardania.

This article is about the Dardanian kingdom in the Balkans. For other uses, see Dardania.
Kingdom of Dardania
4th century BC–28 BC
Approximate extent of the Kingdom of the Dardanians, late 3rd century BC, prior to their conquest of Paeonia and Macedonia.
Approximate extent of the Kingdom of the Dardanians, late 3rd century BC, prior to their conquest of Paeonia and Macedonia.
Religion
Polytheism
Demonym(s)Dardanian, Dardani
GovernmentMonarchy
King 
• c. 231 – c. 206 BC
Longarus
• c. 206 BC – c. 176 BC
Bato
• c. 176 – c. 167 BC
Monunius
Historical eraClassical antiquity
• Founded
4th century BC
• Roman conquest
28 BC
Succeeded by
Roman Republic
Today part of Kosovo
 Albania
 North Macedonia
 Serbia

History

Tribal aristocracy and pre-urban development first emerged in Dardania from the 6th–5th centuries BC. This proto-urban development was followed by the creation of urban centers and the emergence of craftsmanship, and a Dardanian polity began to develop from the fourth century.[3] Moreover, Dardani contact with the Mediterranean world began early and intensified during the Iron Age. Trade connections with the Ancient Greek world developed from the seventh century onwards. Material culture and accounts in classical sources suggest that Dardanian society reached an advanced phase of development.[4][5]

The first written references to the Dardani are as opponents of Macedon in the fourth century, clashing with Philip II who managed to subdue them and their neighbors in 345. However, Philip took no new territory and ended Macedon’s borders near the Danube watershed in Paeonia.[6] The Dardani then remained quiet until Philip's assassination in 336, after which they began planning to revolt alongside the Illyrians and the Thracians. The first century historian Pompey Trogue reports that these ‘’barbarous nations…were of wavering faith and perfidious dispositions’’ and that only Alexander III’s smooth succession averted disaster.[7] Indeed, the Dardani are not mentioned in any ancient accounts of Alexander's Balkan campaign in 335.[8] They remain absent from our sources until 284 when Lysimachus seized Paeonia, which had revolted earlier in 322, forcing her prince Ariston to flee to Dardania.[9] It appears that the Dardani escaped the Macedonian yoke entirely during the Wars of the Diadochi as they again began to freely raid Upper Greece under the reign of Lysimachus. Thereafter the Dardani became a constant threat to Macedonia's northern borders.[10]

In 279, during a Celtic incursion of the Balkans, Dardania itself began to be raided by several tribes on their way to plunder Greece.[10] In that same year an unnamed Dardanian king offered 20,000 warriors to the Macedonian king Ptolemy Ceraunus to stop the invading Celts. Ptolemy found this offer insulting and rudely refused the embassy by saying that

the Macedonians were in a sad condition if, after having subdued the whole east without assistance, they now required aid from the Dardanians to defend their country; and that he had for soldiers the sons of those who had served under Alexander the Great, and had been victorious throughout the world.[11]

Underestimating the Celtic strength, Ptolemy was later captured in battle and subsequently decapitated by their Gallic leader Bolgios.[12][13] The tribes then pushed on towards Southern Greece, but were permanently turned back at Delphi by the Greeks. The remainder withdrew north through Dardania where they were, according to Diodorous, subsequently destroyed by the Dardani.[14] They then disappear from the written historical record until the 230s BC when a constant series of wars, raids, and counter-raids began against the Macedonians.[15]

Following the Celtic invasion, and the consequent diminishment in power of the Macedonians, the influence of Dardania began to grow in the region. In

230, the Dardani under Longarus captured the strategic city of Bylazora in Paeonia.[16] At some point in 230-229 in an unknown location in north-west Macedonia, they defeated the Antigonid king Demetrius II who died shortly the next spring.[17] The Dardanian expansion into Macedonia, similar to the Ardiaean expansion into Epirus in the same period, may have been part of a broader movement among the Illyrian peoples.[18]

Groups of Illyrians began to desert the Ardiaen queen Teuta at around the same time and join the Dardani, forcing her to end an expedition into Phoenice.[19] When Philip V rose to the Macedonian throne, skirmishing with Dardania began in 220-219 and he managed to recapture Bylazora from them in 217. Skirmishes continued in 211 and in 209 when a force of Dardani under Aeropus, probably a pretender to the Macedonian throne, captured Lychnidus and looted Macedonia taking 20.000 prisoners and retreating before Philip's forces could reach them.[20]

In 201, Bato of Dardania (along with Pleuratus the Illyrian and Amynander, King of Athamania) cooperated with Roman consul Sulpicius Galba Maximus in his expedition against Philip V. Always being under the menace of Dardanian attacks on Macedonia, Philip V made an alliance with the Bastarnae at around 183 and invited them to settle in Polog, the region of Dardania closest to Macedonia. A joint campaign of the Bastarnae and Macedonians against the Dardanians was organized, but Philip V died and his son Perseus of Macedon withdrew his forces from the campaign. The Bastarnae crossed the Danube in huge numbers and although they didn't meet the Macedonians, they continued the campaign. Some 30,000 Bastarnae under the command of Clondicus seem to have defeated the Dardani. In 179, the Bastarnae conquered the Dardani, who later in 174 pushed them out, in a war which proved catastrophic, with a few years later, in 170, the Macedonians defeating the Dardani. Macedonia and Illyria became protectorates of the Roman Republic in 168. The Dardanian Kingdom retained its sovereignty until 28 BC, when the Roman Empire under Augustus conquered the region.[21][22]

The Romans created the province of Moesia from parts of Dardania, but later made it a separate province called Dardania.

Geography
Identified places and settlements in Kosovo.

Sites in Kosovo
# Settlement[note 1] Description Location Geographic coordinates Ref.
1 Municipium Dardanorum Soqanicë 43°3′17″N 20°48′36″E [23]
2 Romajë Romajë 42°17′31″N 20°35′34″E [24]
3 Busavatë Busavatë 42°34′49″N 21°32′36″E [25]
4 Ulpiana Ulpiana 42°35′47″N 21°10′31″E [26]
5 Vindenis Gllamnik 42°51′58″N 21°10′59″E [27]
6 Vlashnjë Vlashnjë 42°12′09″N 20°39′45″E
7 Topanicë Topanicë 42°31′25″N 21°38′23″E [28]
8 Duboc Dubovc 42°46′37″N 20°54′37″E [29]
9 Dardana Fortress Kamenica 42°35′33″N 21°33′49″E [30]

Culture

The eastern parts of the region were at the Thraco-Illyrian contact zone. In archaeological research, Illyrian names are predominant in western Dardania (present-day Kosovo), while Thracian names are mostly found in eastern Dardania (present-day south-eastern Serbia). Thracian names are absent in western Dardania; some Illyrian names appear in the eastern parts.[31][32] The correspondence of Illyrian names, including those of the ruling elite, in Dardania with those of the southern Illyrians suggests a "thracianization" of parts of Dardania.[33][34] Strabo in his geographica mentions them as one of the three strongest Illyrian peoples, the other two being the Ardiaei and Autariatae.[35]

Dardanian rulers

According to a historical reconstruction the first attested Dardanian king was Bardylis, who during the expansion of his dominion included the region of Dassaretis in his realm, but this is considered an old fallacy because it is unsupported by any ancient source, while some facts and ancient geographical locations go squarely against it. Most scholars hold that the Illyrian kingdom that was established by Bardylis was centered along Lake Ohrid and east to the Prespa Lakes, which was called Dassaretis later in Roman times, located on the border between Macedon and Epirus.

See also

Notes
  1. Italics: the ancient names are unattested.

References
  1. Shukriu, Edi (2008). "Prehistory and Antique History of Kosova" (PDF). Thesis Kosova. 1: 11–12. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2022-10-13. Retrieved 2022-07-16.
  2. Petrović 2007, p. 10.
  3. Shukriu 2008, p. 9.
  4. Šašel Kos 2010, p. 626.
  5. Gavrilović Vitas 2021, p. 3.
  6. Lane Fox, R. (2011). "PHILIP'S AND ALEXANDER'S MACEDON". Brill's Companion to Ancient Macedon. Studies in the Archaeology and History of Macedon, 650 BC - 300 AD. Leiden. p. 369. ISBN 978-90-04-20650-2.
  7. Justin. Historia Philippicae et Totius Mundi Origines et Terrae Situs [Justinus: Epitome of Pompeius Trogus' Philippic Histories]. Translated by Watson, John Selby [1853]. pp. 11.1.6–10.
  8. Vujčić, Nemanja (2021). "The City of Pelion and the Illyrian War of Alexander". Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies. 61: 504–505.
  9. Wilkes 1992, pp. 145–146.
  10. Petrović 2007, p. 8.
  11. Justin, 24.4.9–10.
  12. Errington 1990, p. 160.
  13. Hammond 1988, p. 253
  14. Diodorus. Bibliotheca historica [Historical Library]. Translated by Walton, Francis R. [1957]. Loeb Classical Library. pp. XXII 9.
  15. Petrović 2007, p. 9.
  16. Errington 1990, p. 185.
  17. Kuzmin, Yuri (2019). "KING DEMETRIUS II OF MACEDON: IN THE SHADOW OF FATHER AND SON". Živa antika/Antiquité vivante. Skopje, North Macedonia (69): 78.
  18. Eckstein 2008, pp. 34–35.
  19. Hammond 1988, p. 335
  20. Hammond 1988, p. 404
  21. Errington 1990, p. 185.
  22. Hammond, N.G.L. (1988). A History of Macedonia: 336-167 B.C. Clarendon Press. p. 253. ISBN 0-19-814815-1.
  23. Wilkes 1992, p. 258.
  24. Schermer, Shukriu & Deskaj 2011, p. 236.
  25. Alaj 2019, p. 41.
  26. The Roman army as a community: including papers of a conference held at ...by Adrian Keith Goldsworthy, Ian Haynes, Colin E. P. Adams, ISBN 1-887829-34-2, 1997, page 100
  27. Fjalor enciklopedik shqiptar, Akademia e Shkencave e Shqipërisë, Tiranë, 2009, fq. 2870 – 2871. ISBN 978-99956-10-32-6.
  28. Alaj 2019, p. 51.
  29. Alaj 2019, p. 65.
  30. Alaj 2019, p. 91.
  31. Papazoglu 1978, p. 131
    the Dardanians ... living in the frontiers of the Illyrian and the Thracian worlds retained their individuality and, alone among the peoples of that region, succeeded in maintaining themselves as an ethnic unity even when they were militarily and politically subjected by the Roman arms [...] and when, towards the end of the ancient world, the Balkans were involved in far-reaching ethnic perturbations, the Dardanians, of all the Central Balkan tribes, played the greatest part in the genesis of the new peoples who took the place of the old
  32. Waldman, Carl; Mason, Catherine (2006). Encyclopedia of European Peoples. Infobase Publishing. p. 205. ISBN 1438129181. According to ancient sources, the Dardani, variously grouped but probably Illyrians, lived west of present-day Belgrade in present-day Serbia and Montenegro in the third century B.C.E, their homeland in the ancient region of Thrace (and possibly there since the eight century B.C.E).
  33. Joseph Roisman; Ian Worthington (7 July 2011). A Companion to Ancient Macedonia. John Wiley & Sons. p. 301. ISBN 978-1-4443-5163-7.
  34. Wilkes 1992, p. 85
    Whether the Dardanians were an Illyrian or a Thracian people has been much debated and one view suggests that the area was originally populated with Thracians who then exposed to direct contact with Illyrians over a long period. [..] The meaning of this state of affairs has been variously interpreted, ranging from notions of Thracianization' (in part) of an existing Illyrian population to the precise opposite. In favour of the latter may be the close correspondence of Illyrian names in Dardania with those of the southern 'real' lllyrians to their west, including the names of Dardanian rulers, Longarus, Bato, Monunius and Etuta, and those on later epitaphs, Epicadus, Scerviaedus, Tuta, Times and Cinna.
  35. Alaj 2019, p. 7.
  36. Wilkes 1992, p. 86
    ... including the names of Dardanian rulers, Longarus, Bato, Monunius and Etuta, and those on later epitaphs, Epicadus, Scerviaedus, Tuta, Times and Cinna. Other Dardanian names are linked with...

Bibliography

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