Teuta

After the death of her husband Agron (250–231 BC),[10] the former king of the Ardiaei, she inherited his kingdom and acted as regent for her young stepson Pinnes.[11] The exact extent of the kingdom of Agron and Teuta remains uncertain.[12] From what we know, it stretched on the Adriatic coast-land from central Albania up to the Neretva river,[2] and they must have controlled most of the Illyrian inland.[12] According to Polybius, Teuta soon addressed the neighbouring states malevolently, ordering her commanders to treat all of them as enemies and supporting the piratical raids of her subjects, which eventually brought Roman forces to cross the Adriatic for the first time, since those activities increasingly interfered with their trade route in the Adriatic and the Ionian Sea.[13][2][3]

In 231 BC, Teuta's armies attacked the regions of Elis and Messenia in the Peloponnese. On their way home, they captured the Greek city of Phoenice, at that time the most prosperous place of Epirus and a centre for the growing commerce with the Italian Peninsula. The city was soon liberated and a truce accepted against the payment of a fee and freeborn prisoners.[14] The seizure of an urban centre, as opposed to looting in the countryside, represented an escalation in the threat posed by Illyrians to Greeks and Romans alike.[13] During their occupation of Phoenice, some Illyrian pirates looted Italian merchant ships in such a high number that the Roman Senate, after ignoring earlier complaints, was compelled to dispatch two ambassadors to the city of Scodra in order to solicit reparations and demand an end to all pirate expeditions.[13] The vivid account of the event, given by the Greek historian Polybius and overtly hostile to Teuta, was probably influenced by an earlier Roman tradition originally intended to justify the invasion of Illyria.[13][15]

On their arrival, the Roman ambassadors Lucius and Gaius Coruncanius found Queen Teuta celebrating the end of an internal Illyrian rebellion as her armies were about to lay siege to the Greek island city Issa.[13] She promised that no royal force would hurt them, but that piracy was a traditional Illyrian custom she was unable to put an end to.[13] Teuta also implied that "it was contrary to the custom of the Illyrian kings to hinder their subjects from winning booty from the sea".[16] One of the envoys reportedly lost his temper and replied that Rome would make it her business to "improve relations between sovereign and subject in lllyria",[17] since "[they had] an admirable custom, which is to punish publicly the doers of private wrongs and publicly come to the help of the wronged."[18]

At any rate, one of the two present ambassadors expressed himself to the queen so disrespectfully that her attendants were ordered to seize the ambassadors' ship as it embarked back for Rome,[19] and the insolent envoy was murdered on his homeward voyage, allegedly on Teuta’s order.[17][3] Cassius Dio's account suggests that the other ambassador may have been made prisoner.[20] News of this event caused the Romans to prepare for war: legions were enlisted and the fleet assembled.[17]

In 229 BC, Rome declared war on Illyria and, for the first time, the Roman armies crossed the Adriatic Sea to set foot in the western Balkans.[21] An army consisting of approximately 20,000 troops, 200 cavalry units and an entire Roman fleet of 200 ships, led by Gnaeus Fulvius Centumalus and Lucius Postumius Albinus, was sent to conquer Illyria.[19][3]

The Roman attack seems to have caught up Teuta by surprise, since she had ordered a large naval expedition involving most of her ships against the Greek colony of Corcyra in the winter of 229.[17] The Corcyraeans sought assistance from the Leagues of Greece, but the combined Achaean and Acarnanians fleets were defeated in the battle of Paxos (229 BC) by the superior naval tactics of Teuta's ships.[17] By occupying Corcyra, the Illyrians were thus in the position to breach the important trade routes between the mainland of Greece and the Greek cities in Italy.[22]

When the 200 Roman ships showed up at Corcyra, Teuta's governor Demetrius betrayed her, surrendered the city to the Romans, and sided with them as he turned into their advisor for the remaining time of the war.[23][17][3] At the end of the conflict in 228 BC, the Romans awarded him the position of governor of Pharos and the adjacent coasts.[23] The remainder of the Roman army in the meantime landed further north at Apollonia.[23] The combined army and navy proceeded northward together, subduing one town after another and eventually besieging the capital, Scodra.[23] Teuta herself had retreated with a few followers to the fortified and strategically well-placed Rhizon, the principal base of the Illyrian fleet.[23][3]

According to Polybius, she made a treaty in the early spring of 228 BC by which she consented to pay an annual tribute, to reign over a restricted and narrow region north of Lissus (modern Lezhë), and not to sail beyond Lissos with more than two unarmed ships.[2][3] They also required her to acknowledge the final authority of Rome.[5][2] According to Cassius Dio, she abdicated later in 227 BC.[24][2][3]

Appian mentions that, after the defeat, she sent an embassy to Rome to deliver captives and to apologize for the events that had occurred during her spouse Agron’s reign, but not under hers.[3]

• Cassius Dio (1914). Roman History. Loeb Classical Library. Translated by Cary, Earnest; Foster, Herbert B. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-99041-8.
• Polybius (2010). The Histories. Loeb Classical Library. Translated by Paton, W. R.; Walbank, F. W.; Habicht, Christian. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-99637-3.