Durrës Before Durrës

Were Epidamnos and Dyrrachion Really the Same City?

Ancient sources tell a more complex story than a simple change of name

Elton Varfi

For centuries the history of Durrës has been told through two names: Epidamnos and Dyrrachion. But when the testimonies of Thucydides, Pausanias, Appian, and Stephanus of Byzantium are set side by side, the picture becomes less linear. The sources repeatedly distinguish a city, a peninsula, a port, and even an “ancient” settlement from the later one. And a coin of the fifth–fourth century BC attests the civic name Dyrrachion long before the arrival of Rome.

Two pages that complicate an apparently simple story

The two pages reproduced in this article belong to the 1849 edition of the Ethnica of Stephanus of Byzantium edited by August Meineke. The entry that concerns us begins near the bottom of page 108 and continues on page 109: Δυρράχιον, Dyrrachion. It is a short text only in appearance. In a few lines Stephanus gathers mythical traditions, geographical indications, grammatical forms of the place-name and, above all, quotations from authors much earlier than himself.

Stephanus was a Byzantine grammarian of the sixth century, and his work was a vast repertory of places and peoples. He was therefore not writing a history of Durrës in the modern sense. Its value for us lies in the fact that it preserves fragments and formulations drawn from earlier works, some of them now lost. The entry on Dyrrachion also belongs to the part of the letter delta that has come down to us in unusually ample form compared with much of the epitomized work. For this reason it must be read carefully, but also with discipline: what the source says must be distinguished from what we may infer from it.

Fig. 1 — Stephanus of Byzantium, Ethnica, ed. August Meineke, Berlin 1849, p. 108. The entry on Dyrrachion begins in the lower part of the page. Scan supplied by the author; the text of the 1849 edition is in the public domain.

Fig. 2 — Stephanus of Byzantium, Ethnica, ed. August Meineke, Berlin 1849, p. 109. Here the entry on Dyrrachion continues, with references to Dyrrachia, the Taulantii, Eratosthenes and Pausanias. Scan supplied by the author; the text of the 1849 edition is in the public domain.

“Dyrrachion, an Illyrian city”: what Stephanus of Byzantium really says

The entry opens with a formula that deserves to be reported without paraphrase:

Δυρράχιον, πόλις Ἰλλυρική.

Dyrrachion, an Illyrian city.

This is a clear-cut definition, but it would be methodologically wrong to turn it into a modern declaration of national identity. In an ancient geographical lexicon, “Illyrian” here indicates at least geographical and historical-regional belonging. A little further on Stephanus preserves, through Eratosthenes, a different qualification of Epidamnos, which will be quoted in full in its own context. For the question examined here, however, the decisive fact is mainly topographical: the distinction between the city of Epidamnos and the peninsula called Dyrrachion.

This is precisely the framework already visible in Thucydides, the earliest historical testimony considered here. At the beginning of the story of the crisis of Epidamnos, which would contribute to the escalation toward the Peloponnesian War, the historian places the city at the entrance to the Ionian Gulf and names as its neighbours the Taulantii, described as of Illyrian stock. He also records the tradition of a Corcyraean foundation, with an oikist from Corinth. For the question examined here, the essential point is that Epidamnos appears from the outset within a space closely connected with the Taulantii and with Illyria.

A peninsula called Dyrrachion, a city called Epidamnos

The most revealing part of Stephanus’ entry is not only the adjective “Illyrian”. It is the topographical distinction that appears in the sources he has collected. Here Stephanus cites Strabo (Geography VII, 5, 8): Epidamnos, a foundation of the Corcyraeans, is the city “now called Dyrrachion”, and the text specifies that Dyrrachion is also the name of the peninsula on which it stands. Shortly afterwards Eratosthenes is even more explicit:

πόλις δὲ Ἑλληνὶς Ἐπίδαμνος ἐπὶ χερρονήσου τῆς καλουμένης Δυρραχίου.

Epidamnos is a Greek city on the peninsula called Dyrrachion.

This sentence is fundamental because it shows that, at least in the geographical tradition preserved by Stephanus, the two names were not necessarily equivalent from the beginning. “Epidamnos” identifies the polis; “Dyrrachion” here identifies the peninsula. In the same context the Taulantii appear and, in a quotation from Euphorion, even the regional form Dyrrachia: “the cities of Dyrrachia and the peoples of the Taulantii.”

As a grammarian, Stephanus is also concerned with explaining how the ethnic is formed from the name of the city, and he records forms such as Dyrrachenoi, the inhabitants of Dyrrachion. It is a philological detail, but the important point is not to attribute to the place-name an ethnic origin that these forms do not prove: it is to note that Dyrrachion is not a Roman creation. The name is attested in an earlier tradition and, as we shall see, in the pre-Roman coinage of the city.

Pausanias: “the city of our own time is not the ancient one”

The most surprising testimony is that of Pausanias. Stephanus cites it near the end of the entry, but we can check it directly in Book VI of the Description of Greece (VI, 10, 8). Pausanias is speaking of Cleosthenes of Epidamnos, an Olympic victor, when he inserts a clarification about the city: the Epidamnians, he says, still possess the same territory as before, but the city of his own present is not the ancient city; it lies a short distance away from that one, and bears the name Dyrrachion after its founder.

This passage prevents us from reducing the whole issue to a simple bureaucratic replacement of one name by another. Pausanias clearly distinguishes “the ancient city” from a later city situated not far away. He does not tell us how great the distance was, nor does he provide coordinates that would allow us to identify the two nuclei with certainty. But the distinction exists in the text and must be taken seriously.

It is equally important not to go beyond what the source permits. Pausanias alone does not prove the existence of two autonomous and contemporary cities. He may be describing a shift of settlement, a refoundation, a different harbour nucleus that became dominant, or an urban transformation matured over the centuries. His testimony, however, makes historically legitimate a question too often erased by the schoolbook formula “Epidamnos, later Dyrrachium”.

Appian: Epidamnos above, Dyrrachion by the harbour

Appian, in the Civil Wars (II, 39), goes even further on the narrative level. At the beginning of his excursus he says that some regard Dyrrachion and Epidamnos as the same thing “by mistake”. He then recounts a mythical genealogy: a local king called Epidamnos would have founded the city and given it his own name; Dyrrachos, the son of Epidamnos’ daughter and Poseidon, would have added a ναύσταθμον, a harbour installation or naval base, calling it Dyrrachion.

The genealogy of Epidamnos and Dyrrachos clearly belongs to the language of etiological myth. It must not be turned into archaeological chronicle. But the spatial structure of the narrative is interesting: a centre called Epidamnos and a harbour installation called Dyrrachion. Appian goes on to recall Brygians, Taulantii, Liburnians and Corcyraeans, and concludes that, after various transformations, the older name Dyrrachion once again prevailed.

What may lie behind this tradition? We cannot know with certainty. But when Appian is read together with Pausanias and with the fragment of Eratosthenes preserved by Stephanus, one constant emerges: the ancient sources repeatedly preserve a distinction between topographical elements that modern reconstructions often merge into one single city with two successive names.

The name Dyrrachion is attested long before Rome

At this point a material document changes the weight of the discussion: the coin. In the Münzkabinett of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin there is a silver stater of Dyrrhachion dated to about 450–350 BC. On the reverse appears the abbreviation ΔY-P, referring to the name of the city. The specimen weighs 10.83 grams and measures 23 millimetres. It is therefore a numismatic testimony clearly earlier than the Roman intervention in Illyria in 229 BC.

This fact is decisive for assessing an explanation preserved by Pomponius Mela (De Chorographia II, 56): the Romans would have changed the name Epidamnos because it seemed to contain an evil omen, almost in damnum for anyone going there. But if Dyrrachion appears on coinage of the fifth–fourth century BC, the name cannot be a Roman creation. Mela’s notice can therefore explain, at most, a Roman preference for, or generalization of, a name that already existed, not its origin.

Fig. 3 — Silver stater of Dyrrhachion, ca. 450–350 BC, 10.83 g, 23 mm. ΔY-P appears on the reverse. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Münzkabinett, inv. 18218515. Photograph: Reinhard Saczewski. Public Domain Mark 1.0.

Has modern archaeology solved the problem? Not yet

The issue has not remained confined to philologists. In 2001 the Durrës Regional Archaeological Project conducted an intensive survey in the hills immediately to the north-west of the modern city, exploring about six square kilometres and identifying numerous sites, inscriptions, tombs, and Greek-period materials. The report, published in 2003 in Hesperia by Jack L. Davis, Afrim Hoti, Iris Pojani and colleagues, raises precisely the question that emerges from the sources: was the earliest city of Durrës perhaps made up of two distinct settlements?

The archaeologists explicitly recall Appian, who describes Dyrrachium as a harbour and Epidamnus as a centre situated higher up. But their result does not authorize a simplistic answer: in the area specifically surveyed, no proof emerged of a pre-Hellenic village or urban centre able to settle the question definitively. This limitation matters. The sources allow us to formulate the hypothesis of differentiated nuclei; archaeology, at least on the basis of that survey, has not transformed it into certainty.

The same report considers it probable that the “peninsula” remembered by Strabo and Eratosthenes corresponded to the hills examined by the project, an area that until relatively recent times was almost entirely separated from the mainland by a marsh. This does not automatically allow us to reconstruct the ancient coastline, but it makes plausible that the topography evoked by the sources was very different from that of contemporary Durrës.

Fig. 4 — The Roman amphitheatre of Durrës within the fabric of the modern city. The monument belongs to the Roman phase of Dyrrachium and does not prove the position of archaic Epidamnos; it does, however, show the extraordinary urban stratification of the site. Photo: Pudelek, 11 August 2014, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

So were Epidamnos and Dyrrachion the same city?

The most accurate answer is this: in some periods and in some sources the two names end up indicating the same large urban centre; but we have no reason to assume that they always designated exactly the same thing. The ancient testimonies preserve a more articulated memory.

Thucydides knows Epidamnos as a colonial polis linked to Corcyra and Corinth, set beside the Illyrian Taulantii. Eratosthenes, through Stephanus, places Epidamnos on a peninsula called Dyrrachion. Pausanias distinguishes the ancient city from the city of his own time, located a short distance away and called Dyrrachion. Appian narratively separates the centre of Epidamnos from the harbour of Dyrrachion. The coinage, finally, shows that the name Dyrrachion was already fully alive in the fifth–fourth century BC, long before Rome could impose any onomastic preference.

This does not authorize us to write that archaeology has demonstrated the existence of “two Durrës” independent of one another. That would be an excessive conclusion. It does, however, authorize us to reject the overly easy version according to which there was only one city called Epidamnos and the Romans, troubled by a Latin assonance, simply changed its name to Dyrrachium. That explanation tells only the last phase of a much older toponymic history.

Two ancient formulae to be read without forcing them

One delicate point remains. The same entry of Stephanus preserves both formulae: “Dyrrachion, an Illyrian city” and, through Eratosthenes, “Epidamnos, a Greek city”. Both must be recorded because they belong to the ancient dossier; but this contrast is not the centre of our inquiry, which concerns rather the topographical and historical relationship between the two names.

For the problem examined here it is enough to observe that the sources place Epidamnos and Dyrrachion, in more than one testimony, in a close relationship with Illyria and with the Taulantii. Thucydides names the latter as Illyrian neighbours; Stephanus calls Dyrrachion an “Illyrian city” and also records Dyrrachia as a territorial designation within Illyria. These facts do not in themselves solve the question of the two nuclei, but they define the regional framework within which it must be studied.

Perhaps this is the most interesting lesson offered by the pages of Stephanus of Byzantium. They do not restore to us a label to be used in a contemporary dispute. They restore to us a plural city: harbour and landward, linked to the Taulantii and to the Illyrian world, capable of preserving two very ancient names that at some moments designate distinguishable realities and at other moments end up overlapping.

The survival of Dyrrachion

In the end it was Dyrrachion — in Latin Dyrrachium — that prevailed in the long Roman and Byzantine history of the city. The medieval and modern forms Durazzo and Durrës belong to the later history of that name. But its success does not begin with Rome. The Berlin coin, the quotations preserved by Stephanus, and the narratives of Pausanias and Appian show that the name already belonged deeply to the geography and ancient memory of the place.

Perhaps, then, the right question is not “what was the true name of Durrës?”. The sources suggest a more fruitful question: at what moment did Epidamnos and Dyrrachion begin to overlap until, for later authors, they became two names of the same city? It is a question that still requires archaeology, historical topography, numismatics and philology. But the two pages of Stephanus of Byzantium allow us at least to see clearly where the problem begins.

Note on the translations

The English translations of the Greek and Latin passages quoted or paraphrased in this article have been checked directly against the ancient texts indicated in the bibliography. The English wording is meant to serve the historical context and does not claim to replace a critical edition. For the entry Δυρράχιον, both the scan of Meineke’s 1849 edition and the modern editorial tradition of the Ethnica have been verified.

Ancient sources and essential bibliography

1. Stephanus of Byzantium, Ethnica, entry Δυρράχιον, in August Meineke (ed.), Stephani Byzantii Ethnicorum quae supersunt, G. Reimer, Berlin 1849, pp. 108–109. Historical edition also consulted in the digitized scan on Internet Archive.

2. Margarethe Billerbeck – Christian Zubler (eds.), Stephani Byzantii Ethnica, Volumen II: Δ–Ι, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae 43/2, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin–New York 2011.

3. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, I, 24–25. Greek text and comparison translations: Scaife Viewer / Perseus.

4. Strabo, Geography, VII, 5, 8. Passage on Epidamnos/Dyrrachion and the peninsula; text and comparison translation: LacusCurtius / University of Chicago and ToposText.

5. Pausanias, Description of Greece, VI, 10, 8. Passage on the ancient city and the Dyrrachion of his own time; text and comparison translations: Perseus and Theoi Classical Texts Library.

6. Appian, Civil Wars, II, 39. Text and comparison translation: LacusCurtius / University of Chicago and ToposText.

7. Pomponius Mela, De Chorographia, II, 56. Latin comparison text: Scaife Viewer / Perseus and Packard Humanities Institute.

8. Jack L. Davis, Afrim Hoti, Iris Pojani, Sharon R. Stocker, Aaron D. Wolpert, Phoebe E. Acheson, John W. Hayes, “The Durrës Regional Archaeological Project: Archaeological Survey in the Territory of Epidamnus/Dyrrachium in Albania”, Hesperia, 72.1 (2003), pp. 41–119, DOI: 10.2307/3182036.

9. Marjeta Šašel Kos, Appian and Illyricum, Situla 43, Narodni muzej Slovenije, Ljubljana 2005.

10. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Münzkabinett, Dyrrhachion, silver stater, ca. 450–350 BC, 10.83 g, 23 mm, inv. 18218515; mint Dyrrhachium, region Illyricum. Photographs: Reinhard Saczewski; Public Domain Mark 1.0. Online catalogue of the Münzkabinett Berlin.

Image credits

Figs. 1–2: scans of Meineke’s edition of the Ethnica (Berlin 1849), supplied by the author. The text of the edition is in the public domain.

Fig. 3: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Münzkabinett, inv. 18218515; official collection photograph by Reinhard Saczewski; Public Domain Mark 1.0.

Fig. 4: Pudelek, Amphitheatre of Durrës, 11 August 2014, Wikimedia Commons; Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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