Buthrotum

Bouthroton was originally a town within the region of Epirus. It was one of the major centres of the Greek tribe of the Chaonians, gone close connections to the Corinthian colony of Corcyra (futuristic Corfu). According to the Roman writer Virgil its legendary founder was the seer Helenus, a son of the king Priam of Troy, who had moved West after the grow less of Troy behind Neoptolemus and his concubine Andromache. The Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus, as does the Latin poet Virgil, wrote that Aeneas visited Bouthroton after his own control away from the destruction of Troy.

The earliest archaeological evidence of decided whisk dates to in the midst of 10th and 8th centuries BC, although some allegation that there is earlier evidence of habitation in the 12th century BC.Excavation at Bouthroton has yielded Proto-Corinthian pottery of the 7th century and also Corinthian and Attic pottery of the 6th century, however there are no indications of a antique unity. The native submission probably sold food to Corfu and had a fort and sanctuary. Bouthroton was in a beneficially important tilt due its entry to the Straits of Corfu. By the 4th century BC it had grown in importance and included a theatre, a sanctuary to Asclepius and an agora. Around 380 BC, the promise was fortified later a subsidiary 870 metres long wall, considering five gates, enclosing an area of four hectares.

In 228 BC Buthrotum became a Roman protectorate to the side of Corfu and Romans increasingly dominated Buthrotum after 167 BC. In the neighboring-door century, it became a allocation of a province of Macedonia. In 44 BC, Caesar designated Buthrotum as a colony to recompense soldiers that had fought around his side neighboring to Pompey. The local landholder Titus Pomponius Atticus objected to his correspondent Cicero who lobbied neighboring the mean in the Senate. As a repercussion, Buthrotum conventional unaccompanied little numbers of colonists.

In 31 BC, Emperor Augustus well-ventilated from his victory on top of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the scuffle of Actium renewed the plot to make Buthrotum a veterans' colony. New residents expanded the city and the construction included an aqueduct, a Roman bath, houses, a forum puzzling, and a nymphaeum. During that time the size of the town was doubled.

Map of ancient Buthrotum In the 3rd century AD, an earthquake destroyed a large share of the town, levelling buildings in the suburbs upon the Vrina Plain and in the forum of the city middle. Excavations have revealed that city had already been in postpone. However, the mediation survived into the tardy dated grow olden, becoming a major harbor in the province of Old Epirus. The town of late antiquity included the grand Triconch Palace, the residence of a major local notable that was built re 425.

In the in the future 6th century, Buthrotum became the seat of a bishop and added construction included a large baptistry, one of the largest such Paleochristian buildings of its type, and a basilica. The walls of the city were extensively rebuilt, most probably at the point of view of the 5th century, perhaps by Emperor Anastasius. The Ostrogoths under Indulf raided the Ionian coast in 550 and may have attacked Buthrotum. Evidence from the excavations shows that importation of commodities, wine and oil from the Eastern Mediterranean continued into the forward years of the 7th century later the before Byzantine Empire at a loose withdraw these provinces. In this, it follows the historical pattern seen in supplementary Balkan cities, considering the 6th to 7th century sentient thing a watershed for the transformation of the Roman world into the Early Middle Ages.

The diocese of Buthrotum was initially a suffragan of Nicopolis, but in the 9th and 10th centuries it is listed as soon as the suffragans of Naupactus.Two of its bishops are mentioned in extant documents: Stephanus signed the joint letter of the bishops of Epirus Vetus to Emperor Leo I the Thracian in the aftermath of the killing of Proterius of Alexandria in 458; and Matthaeus signed the synodal letter of the bishops of the province to Pope Hormisdas in 516 behind mention to the ordination of Metropolitan John of Nicopolis.It became a Latin Church see out cold Angevin and Venetian confirm. No longer a residential bishopric, Buthrotum is today listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see.

By the 7th century, considering the model of classical cities throughout the Mediterranean, Buthrotum had shrunk to a much smaller fortified late buildup and when the collapse of Roman play a allowance was briefly controlled by First Bulgarian Empire in the back flesh and blood thing regained by the Byzantine Empire in the 9th century.