Illyrians

I don't mean anything like them where they had these slave soldiers raised up from kids who formed the Janissaries in their famous Turkish armies.

Nor do I mean the sorts of slave soldiers like a people such as the ancient Illyrians would employ, where the warriors would each bring five or six slaves to the battlefield each, and they would all fight alongside each other, you know, in the life or death battles.

Not like that either.

These crucifixion victims were part of a slave revolt, perhaps the most famous one

His father's a god after all.

So how legitimate were these victories then? Because the Illyrian one, if anything, can be a little bit debated if you believe the sources.

But at the same time, you know, if he wants to claim it, who's going to stop him?

He's such a stickler.

How Damon and Alphysippus sang their pastoral ditties Will I tell the tale.

Thou, whether broad Tamava's rocky banks thou now art passing, or dost skirt the shore of the Illyrian main, will ever dawn that day when I thy deeds may celebrate, ever that day when through the whole wide world I may renown thy verse, that verse alone of Sophoclean buskin worthy found.

With thee began, to thee shall end the strain.

Take thou these songs that owe their birth to thee, and deign around thy temples to let creep this ivy chaplet twixt the conquering bays.

and to the east beyond the Axios River, into Macedonia and regions settled by Thracian tribes.

To the north of Macedonia by various non-Greek peoples, such as the Peonians, due north, the Thracians to the northeast, and the Illyrians, with whom the Macedonians were frequently in conflict to the northwest.

Chalcidice was settled early on by southern Greek colonists, and was considered part of the Greek world.

While from the late 2nd millennium BC, substantial Greek settlement also occurred on the eastern shores of the Aegean and Anatolia.

His father was Philip of Macedon.

And we are the direct descendants of the ancient Illyrians, which was a province under the Roman Empire.

When you visit Albania, you're going to find... temples and like amphitheaters from roman times byzantine times then the turks were there for 500 years they left their impression some of the architecture you have many world heritage sites but what you didn't have was historians getting in there you didn't have the west being able to get in there and historians that even have access to these runes There was just a DNA test that went viral two days ago on X, and people were offering official apologies to the entire Albanian nation, proving that we are one of the most, if not the most ancient people in all of Europe,

bro.

So for the fastest possible recap, In the 230s BCE, the kingdom of Epirus collapsed and shifted to a republic.

The Achaean and Aetolian leagues joined forces to try and occupy Epirote territory, and Macedon called on the Illyrian kingdom in and around modern Croatia to intervene here.

Battles were fought, and the Illyrian queen Teuta defeated the Greek counterattack and occupied several islands and coastal cities in the Adriatic Sea.

These Illyrians had taken to pirating Italian ships, especially as more Italian trade shifted toward Illyria and Greece when the waters around Sicily became a war zone.

Between the piracy and Greek cities calling for aid from any party that was willing to help, Rome was enticed to cross the Adriatic for the first time.

They arrived too late to rescue the island of Corcyra, modern Corfu, from a siege where both the Aetolian and Achaean Greeks had been driven off.

But in the immediate wake of the First Punic War, Rome had a sizable and experienced navy.

The local tyrant, Demetrius of Pharos, threw in with Rome and welcomed a 200-ship fleet into Corcyra along with over 20,000 Roman legionnaires.