The Chaonians (Greek: Χάονες, Chaones), were an ancient Greek[1] tribe that inhabited the region of Epirus in the north-west of modern Greece and southern Albania. On their southern frontier lay another Epirote kingdom, that of the Molossians, to their southwest stood the kingdom of the Thesprotians, and to their north the lived the Illyrian tribes. According to Virgil, Chaon was the eponymous ancestor of the Chaonians.[2] By the 5th century BC, they had conquered and combined to a large degree with the neighboring Thesprotians and Molossians. The Chaonians were part of the Epirote League until 170 BC when their territory was annexed by the Roman Republic.
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Descriptions by ancient writers
According to Strabo, the Chaonians (along with the Molossians) were the most famous among the fourteen tribes of Epirus, because they once ruled over the whole of Epirus.[3] The Illyrians occupied the coastal and hinterland regions further north; however, the Periplus of Pseudo-Scylax makes a clear distinction between the Chaonians and the Illyrian tribes.[4] The Illyrians and Chaonians appear to have had — at least at times — a confrontational relationship; Polybius recounts a devastating raid mounted in 230 BC by the Illyrians against Phoenice, the chief city of the Chaonians. The incident had major political ramifications. Many Italian traders who were in the town at the time of the sacking were killed or enslaved by the Illyrians, prompting the Roman Republic to launch the first of the two Illyrian Wars the following year.[5]
Political structure
The Chaonians were settled Kata Komas (Greek: Κατά Κώμας) meaning in a collection of villages and not in an organized polis (despite the fact that they called their community a polis) and were a tribal state in the 5th century BC.[6] Aristophanes had used the name of the tribe as a pun to illustrate the chaos of Athenian foreign policy.[7] According to Thucydides, their leaders were chosen on an annual basis; he names two such leaders, Photius and Nikanor "from the ruling lineage".[8] In the 4th century BC, the Chaonians adopted the term prostates (Greek: Προστάτες, "protectors") to describe their leaders, like most Greek tribal states at the time. Other terms for office were grammateus (Greek: Γραμματέυς, "secretary"), demiourgoi (Greek: Δημιουργοί, "creators"), hieromnemones (Greek: Ιερομνήμονες, "of the sacred memory") and synarchontes (Greek: Συνάρχοντες, "co-rulers").[9][10] They joined the Epirote League, founded in 325/320 BC, uniting their territories with those of the Thesprotians and Molossians in a loosely federated state that became a major power in the region until it was conquered by Rome in 170 BC.[11] During the 2nd century, the Prasaebi replaced the Chaones in their control of Buthrotum, as attested in inscriptions from that period.
Geography
Chaonia or Chaon (Ancient Greek: Χαονία or Χάων) was the name of the northwestern part of Epirus. Strabo in Geography places Chaonia as part of Epirus, and reached from the city of Onchesmos (now called Saranda) in the north, to the River Thyamis in the south, and as far as the Ambracian Gulf, including to the south the ancient city of Cestrine (now called Filiates), and represented the southernmost border to the wider region of Illyria.[12]
The Roman historian Appian mentions Chaonia as the southern border along with Macedon, Thrace and Thesprotia in his description and geography of the Illyrian Wars indicating that beyond these regions the Illyrians dwell.[13] Phoenice (Phoinike) was the most important city of the Chaonians.[14] The strength of the Chaonian tribes prevented the Greek city-states from establishing any colonies on the coast of Chaonia.[15]
Mythological origins
The Chaonians claimed that their royal house was of Trojan descent, asserting ancestry through the eponymous hero Chaon (Ancient Greek: Χάων) who gave his name to Chaonia. The stories are unclear as to whether he was the friend or the brother of Helenus, the son of Priam of Troy, but in either case, he accompanied him to the court of Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles who was credited with founding the city of Buthrotum.[2] The stories concerning Chaon's death are as unclear as that of his relationship to Helenus. Chaon was either killed in a hunting accident or offered himself as a sacrifice to the gods during an epidemic, thus saving the lives of his countrymen. In either case, when Helenus became the ruler of the country, he named a part of the kingdom after Chaon.[16] The Chaonians' neighbours, the Molossians and Thesprotians, also asserted Trojan ancestry. It has been suggested that the very similar Chaonian origin-myth may have arisen as a response to the self-definitions of the Molossians and Thesprotians.[17]
List of Chaonians
- Photius and Nicanor, leaders of the Chaonians in the Peloponnesian War (ca. 431-421 BC)
- Doropsos Δόροψος, theorodokos in Epidauros (ca. 365 BC)[18]
- Antanor (son of Euthymides), proxenos in Delphi (325-275 BC)[19]
- Peukestos, proxenos in Thyrrheion, Acarnania (3rd century BC) -πητοῦ Χάονα Πευκεστόν, Σωτι-[20]
- Myrtilos, officer who gave proxeny decree to Boeotian Kallimelos (late 3rd c. BC) [21]
- Boiskos (son of Messaneos), prostates (late 3rd century BC)[22]
- Lykidas (son of Hellinos), prostates (ca. 232-168 BC)[23]
- -tos (son of Lysias), winner in Pale (wrestling) Panathenaics 194/3 BC[24]
- Charops, father of Machatas, father of Charops the younger - philoroman politicians (2nd century BC)[25]
References
- ^ Hammond, NGL (1994). Philip of Macedon. London, UK: Duckworth. "Epirus was a land of milk and animal products...The social unit was a small tribe, consisting of several nomadic or semi-nomadic groups, and these tribes, of which more than seventy names are known, coalesced into large tribal coalitions, three in number: Thesprotians, Molossians and Chaonians...We know from the discovery of inscriptions that these tribes were speaking the Greek language (in a West-Greek dialect)."
* Hammond, "Illyrians and North West-Greeks" (in The Cambridge Ancient History: the Fourth Century BC), p. 434: "Nor was this [Chaonian] Greek speech derived from the Corinthians and Corinthian colonists; [...] it was evidently their own traditional Greek, probably West Greek, as some recorded inquiries at Dodona seem to show."
* Crew, P. Mack. The Cambridge Ancient History - The Expansion of the Greek World, Eighth to Sixth Centuries B.C. Part 3: Volume 3, p. 284. "Inscriptional evidence of the Chaones is lacking until the Hellenistic period; but Ps-Scylax, describing the situation of c. 380-360 put the southern limit of the Illyrians just north of the Chaones, which indicates that the Chaones did not speak Illyrian, and the acceptance of the Chaones into the Epirote alliance in the 330s suggest strongly that they were Greek-speaking."
* Wilkes, John. The Illyrians. Wiley-Blackwell, 1995, p. 104. "Nevertheless there does seem to be evidence that these peoples between Acharnania and Illyria spoke a language akin to Greek, though this is contested by Albanians who would have them to be Illyrians." - ^ a b Virgil. Aeneid, 3.295.
- ^ Strabo. The Geography. Book VII, Chapter 7.5. "Now as for the Epeirotes, there are fourteen tribes of them, according to Theopompus, but of these the Chaones and the Molossi are the most famous, because of the fact that they once ruled over the whole of the Epeirote country — the Chaones earlier and later the Molossi; and the Molossi grew to still greater power, partly because of the kinship of their kings, who belonged to the family of the Aeacidae, and partly because of the fact that the oracle at Dodona was in their country, an oracle both ancient and renowned."
- ^ James Cowles Prichard, Researches Into the Physical History of Mankind, p. 470. Sherwood, Gilbert & Piper, 1841.
- ^ Errington, R.M. "Rome and Greece to 205 BC", in The Cambridge Ancient History, 2nd ed., vol. 8: 81-106.
- ^ Nielsen, Thomas Heine and Hansen, Mogens Herman. Yet More Studies in the Ancient Greek Polis. Franz Steiner Verlag, 1997, ISBN 3515072225, p. 14. "When the Chaonian people in the mid-fourth century consulted the oracle of Zeus at Dodona they called their own community a polis although at that time the Chaonians were settled kata komas and must have been an ethnos rather than a polis."
- ^ Reckford, Kenneth J. Aristophanes' Old-And-New Comedy. UNC Press, 1987, ISBN 0807817201, p. 167. "First, the name "Chaonians," the name of a real tribe in northern Greece, suggests at once the chaos of Athenian foreign policy and foreign involvements (my own effort was, "in Cambodia, and Laos, and-Chaos") and also the deceptiveness of politicians: for words involving the root cha-, "to gape wide," are used throughout this play, and also throughout the Knights, to denote stupid and dangerous gullibility."
- ^ Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War, 2.80.5.
- ^ Horsley, G.H.R. New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity, 1987, ISBN 0858375990. "More recently still N.G.L. Hammond JHS 105 1985 156-160 has examined a number or Macedonian terms for office in the period 336-309 BC...prostates was the name for the senior civic official beside the king...and various tribal states like (the Molossoi and Chaonians)."
- ^ Hornblower, Simon. The Greek World, 479-323 B.C., 2002, ISBN 0415163269. "Even before about 385 the Molossian tribes had combined with the neighbouring Thesprotians and Chaonians to form a Molossian state with a king and officials called prostates (president), grammateus (secretary), and tribal representatives called demiourgoi also hieromnemones some kind of Cult figure (See for all of this SGDI 1334-67, Also seg 23.471,15 synarchontes federal officials)"..."Orestis was part of the federal organisation".
- ^ P. R. Franke, "Pyrrhus", in The Cambridge Ancient History VII Part 2: The Rise of Rome to 220 BC, p. 469, ed. Frank William Walbank. Cambridge University Press, 1984. ISBN 0521234468.
- ^ Strabo. The Geography. Book VII, Chapter 7.5. "Now the Chaones and the Thesproti and, next in order after these, the Cassopaei (these, too, are Thesproti) inhabit the seaboard which extends from the Ceraunian Mountains as far as the Ambracian Gulf, and they have a fertile country. The voyage, if one begins at the country of the Chaones and sails towards the rising sun and towards the Ambracian and Corinthian Gulfs, keeping the Ausonian Sea on the right and Epeirus on the left, is one thousand three hundred stadia, that is, from the Ceraunian Mountains to the mouth of the Ambracian Gulf. In this interval is Panormus, a large harbour at the centre of the Ceraunian Mountains, and after these mountains one comes to Onchesmus, another harbour, opposite which lie the western extremities of Corcyraea, and then still another harbour, Cassiope, from which the distance to Brentesium is one thousand seven hundred stadia."
- ^ Appian. The Foreign Wars (ed. Horace White). Ill. 1.1, The Illyrian Wars, Chapter I. "The Greeks call those people Illyrians who occupy the region beyond Macedonia and Thrace from Chaonia and Thesprotia to the river Ister (Danube). This is the length of the country. Its breadth is from Macedonia and the mountains of Thrace to Pannonia and the Adriatic and the foot-hills of the Alps. Its breadth is five days' journey and its length thirty -- so the Greek writers say. The Romans measured the country and found its length to be upward of 6000 stades and its width about 1200."
- ^ Herman, Mogens. An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis. Oxford University Press, 2004, ISBN 0198140991, p. 348. "Phoinike seems to have been the political center of the Chaonians..."
- ^ Hammond, N.G.L. "Illyris, Epirus and Macedonia", in The Cambridge Ancient History III Part 3: The expansion of the Greek world, eighth to sixth centuries B.C., p. 269. Cambridge University Press, 1925. ISBN 0521234476
- ^ Grimal, Pierre. "Chaon." The Dictionary of Classical Mythology. Trans. A. R. Maxwell-Hyslop. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1986, p. 98.
- ^ Malkin, Irad. The Returns of Odysseus: Colonization and Ethnicity, University of California Press, 1998, ISBN 0520211855, p. 138. "The Chaones, the third major Epirote group, pose a more complex problem, since they seem to have insisted on Trojan origins from Helenos, the captive Trojan seer, who accompanied Neoptolemos. He was also regarded as as the founder of Buthrotum. The story seems to be attested first in Euripides and Theopompus. It may have been a response to both Thesprotian and Molossian self-definitions, since in the fifth century traditions about Trojans, notably Aeneas, were already current with regard to Epirus."
- ^ IG IV²,1 95 col I.1 line 29.
- ^ FD III 4:409 II.7
- ^ IG IX,1² 2:243.
- ^ Cabanes, L'Épire 547,16.
- ^ SEG 38:468.
- ^ SEG 48:683 (manumission record)
- ^ IG II² 2313 col II.8 line 34.
- ^ Toynbee, Arnold Joseph. Hannibal's Legacy: The Hannibalic War's Effects on Roman Life. Oxford University Press, 1965 (Original from the University of Michigan), p. 472. "The part played by Callicrates in Achaïa was played in Epirus by Charops, a local (perhaps Chaonian) politician who had been sent by his grandfather to Rome to receive his education there."
See also
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