Ancient Hellenic About Epirus.
ANCIENT HELLENIC SOURCES ABOUT EPIRUS..!!
The earliest sources about Epirus come from Herodotus and later by Thucydide 's weighty ones. The latter draws a clear line between the Greeks (Ambrakas, Anaktoras and Leukadas) and barbarians (Koons, Thesprots, Molos, Atintans, etc, while writing about the Peloponesian war and warriors that took part in it.
His acknowledgment that "the Greek-speaking inhabitants of Argos of Amfilohya have learnt the language from those who came to Ambrakas, whereas the other Amfilohya are barbarians:' (Thucydides II, 68).
Later, Ephorus speaks of a clearer ethnic boundary between the Greek and the barbarian world when he says that "Hellada starts with Akarnania for it first comes into contact with the Epirote tribes'" (Apud. Strab. VIII, 1,3,6, 334). We find the same idea in Scylaks when he says that "beyond Molossia comes Ambrakia, a Greek city and that "it is here that (the boundary of) Hellada starts and continues up to the Peneus river and the city of Magnezia, Homolios, that is on this river.'''' (Scyl. 33). So, if Thucydides information draws a clear-cut line between Greeks and barbarians, Ephorus and Scylaks make a clearer definition of the purely ethnic Greek world.
The fact that the "barbarians" of this region did not speak Greek proves clearly that they were not Greeks because language constitutes the main ethnic indicator of a population. The presence of Greek colonies around Ambrakia bay and along the Ionian coast as far as Corkyra is another proof of the existing ethnic situation in the region and the new one that was created in the region soon after VIII th Century B. C. However, their emergence did not change the ethnic character of the native population despite the powerful economic and cultural impact of these settlements in the barbarian world.
The native population remained non-Greek as it was before, as Polybius confirms centuries later, when he quotes Philip V of Macedonia saying that "even among the Aetols there is a great number that are not Hellenes " and that "the Agreys, Apods and the Amfylohys do not belong to Helada " (Polib. XVIII 5,8). After the middle of IV century B. C, the region between Ambrakia bay, the Keraune mountains and Pindus range will be mentioned as Epyrus "and its habitants "Epirots" in all literary sources.
The names that were born after the union of Moloses, Thesprots, Kaons and smaller tribes into a great political entity never became an expression of an ethnic entity. Seemingly, they were created by way of compromise to soothe the old hegemonic rivalries between the large tribes of this region. To its north, this entity borders with the Illyrian world. If literary sources bring full evidence that the population of this region was not Greek, they keep silent about the ethnic links with their northern neighbours. Meanwhile, such literary sources do not mention the presence of a third ethnic group either, one that had settled in the areas between the Greeks and the Ilyrians.
It is well-known that these two great people of the Balkans had already settled definitely in the western and southern part of t he peninsula and had direct contacts as neighbours with each other at the beginning of the last millenium B.C. Both Herodotus and Scylaks as well as two other great Greek historians Thucydides and Ephorus set the ethnic border for the Greek world from Ambrakia bay and Pineiós river. Therefore, beyond that river to the north, the populations described as barbarians and not Hellenophone could belong to none other but the Illyrian trunk. The contact zone between these two worlds has been undoubtedly characterized by an inter-ethnic interference that is universally normal but this does not change the general ethnic framework.
©️wondernature