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71-552: Amantia ( Ancient Greek : Ἀμάντια, Ἀβάντια ; Latin : Amantia ) was an ancient city and the main settlement of the Amantes , traditionally located in southern Illyria in classical antiquity. In Hellenistic times the city was either part of Illyria or Epirus . In Roman times it was included within Epirus Nova , in the province of Macedonia . The site has been identified with the village of Ploçë , Vlorë County , Albania. Amantia

142-537: A pitch accent . In Modern Greek, all vowels and consonants are short. Many vowels and diphthongs once pronounced distinctly are pronounced as /i/ ( iotacism ). Some of the stops and glides in diphthongs have become fricatives , and the pitch accent has changed to a stress accent . Many of the changes took place in the Koine Greek period. The writing system of Modern Greek, however, does not reflect all pronunciation changes. The examples below represent Attic Greek in

213-411: A Hellenized Illyrian city-state by Eckstein (2008), and Lasagni (2019), and as an Illyrian city by Olgita Ceka (2012), and Jaupaj (2019). Winnifrith considered the massive walls of Amantia as of Illyrian rather than Epirote or Macedonian foundation, and that the site later acquired the trappings of a Hellenistic city. Mesihović (2014) has described Amantia as an Illyrian city built and governed according to

284-474: A few well-turned lines show a much better style than the Alexandra . One poem traditionally attributed to him, Alexandra or Cassandra , has been preserved in its complete form. The first mention of Alexandra is from the first century A.D. by The ancient scholiast, whose report is traced back to Theon , an Alexandrian Grammarian (first century A.D.). Alexandra runs at 1474 iambic trimeters . It consists of

355-472: A lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period. They have the same general outline but differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period is Mycenaean Greek , but its relationship to the historical dialects and

426-419: A lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek , spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either a fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Regarding the speech of the ancient Macedonians diverse theories have been put forward, but the epigraphic activity and the archaeological discoveries in

497-413: A lower town. The original walls made of irregularly slammed limestone were renewed in the 4th century with isodomic ashlar layers. By the 4th century or later, the indigenous site became a town very much organised on a Greek model, acquiring the trappings of a Hellenistic city. It has been suggested that in terms of fortifications, masonry and general architecture, language and religion Amantia shares

568-439: A mostly universal opinion that the tragedy was written by Lycophron. The only real skeptics from antiquity instead believe that Alexandra was rather written by a homonymous poet who probably was a grandson of Lycophron and lived during the first half of the second century B.C. Many support that it was written by a revisionist. The reasoning behind this is that there are many historical inconsistencies within Alexandra. Many of

639-543: A prefix /e-/, called the augment . This was probably originally a separate word, meaning something like "then", added because tenses in PIE had primarily aspectual meaning. The augment is added to the indicative of the aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect, but not to any of the other forms of the aorist (no other forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist). The two kinds of augment in Greek are syllabic and quantitative. The syllabic augment

710-461: A prophecy uttered by Cassandra and relates the later fortunes of Troy and of the Greek and Trojan heroes. References to events of mythical and later times are introduced, and the poem ends with a reference to Alexander the Great , who was to unite Asia and Europe in his world-wide empire. The style obtained for the poem's author, even among the ancients, the title of "obscure"; one modern scholar says

781-519: A region of religious exchanges, in which facts must be shifted, before considering them to belong to just one culture. The Illyrian - Greek cult of the nymphs was widespread in the region as well as in Amantia. An ancient sanctuary of the eternal fire called Nymphaion was located in an area near Amantia and the Amantes . Amantia's prosperity during the Hellenistic era could explain the bilingualism of

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852-464: A residential bishopric , Amantia is today listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see . Amantia is an archaeological park of Albania , designed as such on 7 April 2003 by the government of Albania . The culture of the region had a language that is not well known, and it seems to have not had its own writing system. Amantia's urban organization occurred at a period of wider evolution among

923-671: A separate historical stage, though its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek , and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek , and Koine may be classified as Ancient Greek in a wider sense. There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek; Attic Greek developed into Koine. Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language , divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic , Aeolic , Arcadocypriot , and Doric , many of them with several subdivisions. Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms in literature , while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms. Homeric Greek

994-556: A standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance . This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period ( c.  300 BC ), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek , which is regarded as

1065-510: A vowel or /n s r/ ; final stops were lost, as in γάλα "milk", compared with γάλακτος "of milk" (genitive). Ancient Greek of the classical period also differed in both the inventory and distribution of original PIE phonemes due to numerous sound changes, notably the following: The pronunciation of Ancient Greek was very different from that of Modern Greek . Ancient Greek had long and short vowels ; many diphthongs ; double and single consonants; voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops ; and

1136-556: Is a literary form of Archaic Greek (derived primarily from Ionic and Aeolic) used in the epic poems , the Iliad and the Odyssey , and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects. The origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of

1207-418: Is added to stems beginning with consonants, and simply prefixes e (stems beginning with r , however, add er ). The quantitative augment is added to stems beginning with vowels, and involves lengthening the vowel: Some verbs augment irregularly; the most common variation is e → ei . The irregularity can be explained diachronically by the loss of s between vowels, or that of the letter w , which affected

1278-644: Is called 'East Greek'. Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian Greek had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, as exemplified in the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar who wrote in Doric with a small Aeolic admixture. Thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to

1349-448: Is considered by some linguists to have been closely related to Greek . Among Indo-European branches with living descendants, Greek is often argued to have the closest genetic ties with Armenian (see also Graeco-Armenian ) and Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ). Ancient Greek differs from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and other Indo-European languages in certain ways. In phonotactics , ancient Greek words could end only in

1420-446: Is found above the fountain of Ploça village. It shows that the establishment of the Roman province of Macedonia in 148 BC led to the installation of Latin-speaking populations as far as Amantia. The bilingual inscription can also testify that in the ancient site of Ploça there was a Latin enclave and that the city prospered around 200 AD; it could also be the nature of the text that required

1491-643: Is linked to the Illyrian movements via the Adriatic ( Iapygians ) in antiquity. A homonymous Illyrian tribe lived in eastern Slavonia . The earliest of the written sources that recorded the toponym Amantia is the Periplus of Pseudo-Skylax (4th century BC), mentioning it as a city in Illyria. By listing it as the only site between the two poleis of Apollonia and Orikos , the account of Pseudo-Skylax suggests that Amantia

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1562-532: The Suda , the massive tenth century Byzantine Greek historical encyclopaedia, he was the son of Socles, but was adopted by Lycus of Rhegium. It is believed that Lycophron was acquaintances with Greek philosopher Menedemus , who may have influenced some of Lycophron's tragedies and even wrote a satyr drama about the man. At an unknown date Lycophron was intrigued by the literary movement in Alexandria and settled there. He

1633-412: The Alexandra "may be the most illegible piece of classical literature, one which nobody can read without a proper commentary and which even then makes very difficult reading." The poem is evidently intended to display the writer's knowledge of obscure names and uncommon myths; it is full of unusual words of doubtful meaning gathered from the older poets, and long-winded compounds coined by the author. It

1704-471: The Amantes seceded from the Epirote state only at the moment of the fall of the monarchy. At the time of Pyrrhus , his son Alexander II and his descendants, Greater Epirus was still strong and controlled both southern Illyria in the north and part of Acarnania in the south. In this context it is no wonder that the bronze coins of Amantia, starting from 230 BC, used symbols of the Epirote tradition with which

1775-745: The Greek region of Macedonia during the last decades has brought to light documents, among which the first texts written in Macedonian , such as the Pella curse tablet , as Hatzopoulos and other scholars note. Based on the conclusions drawn by several studies and findings such as Pella curse tablet , Emilio Crespo and other scholars suggest that ancient Macedonian was a Northwest Doric dialect , which shares isoglosses with its neighboring Thessalian dialects spoken in northeastern Thessaly . Some have also suggested an Aeolic Greek classification. The Lesbian dialect

1846-426: The boule . The town was surrounded with a walled enclosure roughly 2,100m long. A large fort was built with two gates and two defensive towers in the north. Ancient Greek language Ancient Greek ( Ἑλληνῐκή , Hellēnikḗ ; [hellɛːnikɛ́ː] ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into

1917-584: The first Macedonian War as a victory for Rome is unfitting, the details and predictions for the Roman's triumph fit better with the second Macedonian War . Some modern studies have concluded that the Alexandra cannot be the work of the third-century BC author; in one scholar's summary of this view, the poem was: written in the immediate aftermath of the victory of Flamininus at Battle of Cynoscephalae over Philip V of Macedon in 197/6 BC. The author, whose true name and place of origin are probably concealed beneath

1988-501: The present , future , and imperfect are imperfective in aspect; the aorist , present perfect , pluperfect and future perfect are perfective in aspect. Most tenses display all four moods and three voices, although there is no future subjunctive or imperative. Also, there is no imperfect subjunctive, optative or imperative. The infinitives and participles correspond to the finite combinations of tense, aspect, and voice. The indicative of past tenses adds (conceptually, at least)

2059-1031: The 5th century BC. Ancient pronunciation cannot be reconstructed with certainty, but Greek from the period is well documented, and there is little disagreement among linguists as to the general nature of the sounds that the letters represent. /oː/ raised to [uː] , probably by the 4th century BC. Greek, like all of the older Indo-European languages , is highly inflected. It is highly archaic in its preservation of Proto-Indo-European forms. In ancient Greek, nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases ( nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , and vocative ), three genders ( masculine , feminine , and neuter ), and three numbers (singular, dual , and plural ). Verbs have four moods ( indicative , imperative , subjunctive , and optative ) and three voices (active, middle, and passive ), as well as three persons (first, second, and third) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated through seven combinations of tenses and aspect (generally simply called "tenses"):

2130-490: The Archaic period of ancient Greek (see Homeric Greek for more details): Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ' ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι· Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή· ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς. The beginning of Apology by Plato exemplifies Attic Greek from

2201-604: The Classical period of ancient Greek. (The second line is the IPA , the third is transliterated into the Latin alphabet using a modern version of the Erasmian scheme .) Ὅτι [hóti Hóti μὲν men mèn ὑμεῖς, hyːmêːs hūmeîs,   Lycophron He was born at Chalcis in Euboea , and flourished at Alexandria in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus (285–247 BC). According to

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2272-449: The Elder . It is situated on the slope of a high hill and had only its acropolis fortified. The massive walls of Amantia are considered of Illyrian foundation and are dated to before the end of the 4th century BC. The city was built around 450 BC on the site of a proto-urban settlement. Already from the beginning it had a fortified acropolis that was surrounded by a 2.1 km long wall, with also

2343-452: The Greek colony of Taras , which were widespread in the region from the 4th century BC, but enriched with very stylistic innovations. In the Roman period this deity has undergone transformations mainly of Eastern influence. Some label this deity as the Illyrian god of fertility. In reality, it is futile to approach ancient cults in ethnic or national terms. The South of the Adriatic is clearly

2414-618: The Greek model. Papadopoulos (2016) described it as an indigenous site that by the 4th century BC or later developed into a city very much organised on a Greek model. According to Lippert and Matzinger (2021), like other Illyrian cities, Amantia was not a polis of the Greek type. In the Roman era , the use of Greek by the Romans to address the natives was seen not only as a gesture of good will, but also as an effort to promote rapprochement between those communities. A 2nd century AD bilingual inscription in Greek and Latin dating back to Imperial times

2485-400: The Roman side. In the middle of the 2nd century BC Amantia was found in alliance with Apollonia, most probably as part of a united pro-Roman policy against various Illyrian states. Following the Roman annexation of the region (148 BC), the city became part of the Roman province of Macedonia and then Epirus Novus . Throughout the Roman period, Amantia was a civitas libera . Amantia was among

2556-550: The aorist. Following Homer 's practice, the augment is sometimes not made in poetry , especially epic poetry. The augment sometimes substitutes for reduplication; see below. Almost all forms of the perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect reduplicate the initial syllable of the verb stem. (A few irregular forms of perfect do not reduplicate, whereas a handful of irregular aorists reduplicate.) The three types of reduplication are: Irregular duplication can be understood diachronically. For example, lambanō (root lab ) has

2627-460: The archaic era – with Amantia being in such a case among the first settlements in the region to worship the goddess – or from the Hellenistic era along with the cult of Athena . The temple of Aphrodite in Amantia is an example of the Hellenistic influence in present-day Albania via contact with the nearby Greek colonies. The cult of Heracles has been also confirmed in the city. Apollo was also among

2698-419: The augment when it was word-initial. In verbs with a preposition as a prefix, the augment is placed not at the start of the word, but between the preposition and the original verb. For example, προσ(-)βάλλω (I attack) goes to προσ έ βαλoν in the aorist. However compound verbs consisting of a prefix that is not a preposition retain the augment at the start of the word: αὐτο(-)μολῶ goes to ηὐ τομόλησα in

2769-438: The center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for the dialects is: West vs. non-West Greek is the strongest-marked and earliest division, with non-West in subsets of Ionic-Attic (or Attic-Ionic) and Aeolic vs. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Often non-West

2840-563: The dialect of Sparta ), and Northern Peloponnesus Doric (including Corinthian ). All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, and these colonies generally developed local characteristics, often under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BC, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed, largely based on Attic Greek , but with influence from other dialects. This dialect slowly replaced most of

2911-450: The early 2nd century BC, which only cities that were considered Greek were eligible to receive. The time duration that passed before Illyrian cities were documented on a list of theorodokoi clarifies that acculturation did take place in southern Illyria; however, it indicates that the process was gradual. Amantia occupied an important defensive position above the Aoos/Vjosë river valley to

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2982-511: The east, and on the road to the coast and the Bay of Aulon . At the archaeological site of Ploçë, a temple dedicated to Aphrodite , a theatre, and a stadium have also been found. Pseudo-Skylax ( Periplus . 26) and Lycophron ( Alexandra . 1043) recorded the toponym Ἀμάντια, Amantia . The Delphic list of theorodokoi reported the form Ἀβάντια, Abantia . The city-ethnic is recorded as Ἀμάντιεύς, Amantieus by Pseudo Skylax (27). The town's demonym

3053-516: The following periods: Mycenaean Greek ( c.  1400–1200 BC ), Dark Ages ( c.  1200–800 BC ), the Archaic or Epic period ( c.  800–500 BC ), and the Classical period ( c.  500–300 BC ). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers . It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been

3124-405: The foremost crown of glory, obtaining the sceptre and monarchy of earth and sea" and elaborates with allusions to the course of historical events. Some scholars, such as Stephanie West, regard these passages as interpolations and defend the attribution of the bulk of the poem to Lycophron the tragic poet. Thomas Nelson and Katherine Molesworth have argued that 'Lycophron' is a pen name to signpost

3195-556: The historical Dorians . The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with the Dorians. The Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people – Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians (including Athenians), each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, and Cypriot, far from

3266-472: The historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups already existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed not later than 1120 BC, at the time of the Dorian invasions —and that their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BC. The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to

3337-489: The impenetrably enigmatic biographical tradition concerning "Lycophron," probably used the name, and some of the literary substance, of Lycophron, not in emulation, but as an ironic reminiscence of the earlier writer, who had combined the practice of tragedy and the elucidation of comedy. Only on this assumption of a deliberate pseudepigraphon can the full irony of his work be appreciated. Cassandra prophesies that her Trojan ancestors' descendants "shall with their spears win

3408-586: The information provided by an Apollonian commemorative monument, suggesting an "oppositional ethnicity" between the Greek colonial associations of the Bay of Aulon (i.e. the area called Abantis ), and the barbarians of the hinterland. Amantia was located on the territory of the Amantes , who were described as an Illyrian people in the Periplus of Pseudo-Scylax (mid. 4th century BCE), as Epirotes by Proxenos (3rd century B.C) and by Hesychius, and as barbarians by Pliny

3479-632: The inhabitants of the city were accustomed, and only the legend on the coins was changed from ΑΠΕΙΡΩΤΑΝ (of the Epirotes) to ΑΜΑΝΤΩΝ (of the Amantes), both written in Greek letters. The organisation of Amantia is quite similar to that of a polis rather than of a federal state. The local official titles and institutions display typical names of a Greek settlement of that time, such as: prytanis ( Greek : πρύτανις , "the one that presides"), grammateus ( Greek : γραμματεύς , "secretary"), toxarchis, agonothetes and

3550-487: The key elements of the poem do not line up with the third century B.C. Most of this has to do with the poem bringing up Rome. Alexandra takes place in Hellenistic period, and says that Rome was on the rise to be a great world power. An example is in verses 1444-1450; in which the poet describes the Roman's successes against the Macedonians. Many historians believe that for somebody living in the second century B.C., describing

3621-686: The land of the Atintanes towards the city of Amantia. It has been suggested that the data from Pausanias is more in accordance with the settlement of the Euboean colony in Thronion in the coastal site of Triport located in front of the Acroceraunian Mountains northwest of Aulon , not in Amantia in the site of Ploç located south of the Aoos valley in the hinterland of Aulon. Pausanias' data have been compared with

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3692-589: The locals were treated as Greek. By the 3rd century BC, the town was strengthened economically and minted its own coins. In 230 BC Amantia joined the Koinon of the Epirotes . The fact that Amantia received theoroi from Delphi during the early 2nd century BC, indicates that it was listed among the Greek cities in the area north of the Acroceraunian mountains. In 168 BC during the 3rd Illyrian-Roman War Amantia supported

3763-499: The older dialects, although the Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language , which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek . By about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosed into Medieval Greek . Phrygian is an extinct Indo-European language of West and Central Anatolia , which

3834-487: The perfect stem eilēpha (not * lelēpha ) because it was originally slambanō , with perfect seslēpha , becoming eilēpha through compensatory lengthening. Reduplication is also visible in the present tense stems of certain verbs. These stems add a syllable consisting of the root's initial consonant followed by i . A nasal stop appears after the reduplication in some verbs. The earliest extant examples of ancient Greek writing ( c.  1450 BC ) are in

3905-507: The poem's style, aligning it with the 'frigidity' of Lycophron the sophist . Many scholars are certain that the Ptolemaic court would not have commissioned a piece to praise the Romans. Although the Egyptians and Romans had established a political relationship in 273 B.C., the two powers did not do much diplomacy together during the rule of Ptolemy II . Egypt became more dependent on Rome after

3976-412: The prominent deities worshipped in Amantia as in the nearby Corinthian colonies and surrounding settlements in today's northweestern Greece and southern Albania, but also in nearby Molossian towns. Other cults like that of the male fertility deity are common of southern Illyria. It seems that the iconographies of this deity were derivations of Egyptian or Italic iconographies ( Bes - Silenus ), mainly from

4047-497: The rest of his life, what may be his end is told in Ovid's Ibis , "Tuque cothurnatus cecidesse Lycophrona narrant, Haereat in fibris fixa sagitta tuis" (And they say that Lycophron fell in his boots, and let his arrow stick in his bones.) The poetic compositions of Lycophron chiefly consisted of tragedies , which secured him a place in the Pleiad of Alexandrian tragedians . The Suda gives

4118-416: The same features as the rest of the settlements of the Greek world of that time. But it has been also assumed that like other Illyrian cities Amantia, was not a polis of the Greek type. Amantia was among the main cities and tribal centres of Epirus during the Hellenistic period. At the second half of the 4th century Amantia received sacred theoroi ambassadors from Argos , southern Greece, indicator that

4189-413: The settlement in that period. On the basis of language, institutions, officials, onomastics, city-planning and fortifications it has been described as a Greek city by historians N.G.L. Hammond (1989), Šašel Kos (1986), Hatzopoulos (1997), Rudolf Haensch (2012), and as a Greek city in southern Illyria, in the territory of the Illyrian tribe of Amantes by Fanula Papazoglou (1986). It has been described as

4260-613: The settlement was founded by Locrians from nearby Thronium and Abantes from Euboea . Stephanus Byzantius – based on Pausanias – mentions that Amantia was founded on Illyrian territory by the Euboean Abantes "returning from the Trojan war". According to another legend reported by Lycophron in his Alexandra , Elpenor – who actually died at Troy – and the Abantes from Euboea went to the island Othronos and were driven by swarms of snakes to

4331-558: The settlements of the broader area of Epirus as a result of the previous development among Molossian cities. The first inscriptions in Amantia appear in the 4th century BC, during the Hellenistic era , and are in Greek. The onomastics are mainly Greek, with some non-Greek names. The local culture readily borrowed iconography and technique from the Greeks. Many cults of Amantia are of the typical Greek pantheon, such as Zeus , Aphrodite , Pandemos and Pan . The cult of Aphrodite probably dates from

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4402-517: The syllabic script Linear B . Beginning in the 8th century BC, however, the Greek alphabet became standard, albeit with some variation among dialects. Early texts are written in boustrophedon style, but left-to-right became standard during the classic period. Modern editions of ancient Greek texts are usually written with accents and breathing marks , interword spacing , modern punctuation , and sometimes mixed case , but these were all introduced later. The beginning of Homer 's Iliad exemplifies

4473-511: The thriving settlements of Epirus during the last two centuries B.C. Eulalius, one of the Eastern bishops at the Council of Sardica who refused to recognize its right to revoke the condemnation of Athanasius of Alexandria and withdrew in a body to Philippopolis , was probably bishop of this town, but some think he was bishop of Amasea . During the early 4th century a basilica was erected. No longer

4544-489: The titles of twenty tragedies, of which a very few fragments have been preserved: Aeolus , Allies ( Symmakhoi ), Andromeda , Chrysippus , Daughters of Aeolus , Daughters of Pelops , Elephenor , Herakles , Hippolytus , Kassandreis , Laius , Marathonians , Menedemus , Nauplius , Oedipus (two versions), Orphan ( Orphanos ), Pentheus , Suppliants ( Hiketai ), Telegonus , and the Wanderer ( Aletes ). Among these,

4615-523: The use of both languages. The numismatic material unearthed at Amantia shows that the more numerous coins were of republican Epirote origin, followed by coins with the local legend, which were fewer in number. The territorial proximity to the koinon of the Epirotes explains the predominant role of the coins of this neighbouring state. The symbols that appear on the bronze coins of Amantia are Zeus / thunderbolt , Dione / trident , and Artemis / spearhead , which were taken from Epirus. The community of

4686-539: Was Amantieus ( Ancient Greek : Ἀμάντιεύς ). The name Amantia and the tribal name Amantes have been connected with the Albanian term amë/ãmë ("river-bed, fountain, spring"). It has been suggested that the root morpheme *Amant- was perhaps a "barbarized" version of *Abant- in relation to the Abantes . The name Amantia is generally accepted as Illyrian . The toponym corresponds to Amantia in southern Italy which

4757-475: Was Aeolic. For example, fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos are in Aeolian. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric (including Cretan Doric ), Southern Peloponnesus Doric (including Laconian ,

4828-515: Was designated as an archaeological park on 7 April 2003 by the government of Albania. The massive walls of Amantia were built before the end of the 4th century BC, and literary sources report them as an Illyrian rather than Epirote or Macedonian foundation. Later Amantia acquired the trappings of a Hellenistic town. In 230 BC Amantia became part of the Koinon Epirus . Amantia received sacred ancient Greek envoys, known as theoroi , around

4899-455: Was entrusted by Ptolemy with the task of arranging the comedies in the Library of Alexandria ; as the result of his labours he composed a treatise On Comedy . Lycophron is also said to have been a skillful writer of anagrams . Like most of his life, the end of Lycophron's life is lost to time as of now, but there is some evidence of his death. Although it is not known if he stayed in Alexandria for

4970-588: Was probably written as a show-piece for the Alexandrian school, rather than as straight poetry. It was very popular in the Byzantine period, and was read and commented on very frequently; the manuscripts of the Alexandra are numerous. Two explanatory paraphrases of the poem survive, and the collection of scholia by Isaac and John Tzetzes is very valuable (much used by, among others, Robert Graves in his Greek Myths ). Through most of antiquity there seems to be

5041-517: Was somehow important. It seems that in the Periplus the toponym Amantia denotes the territory rather than the urban center of the polis. It has been suggested that in the Periplus Orikos is identified as a Greek city placed in the territory of Amantia, the latter being regarded as an Illyrian city. Lycophron's Alexandra (3rd century BC) attests Amantia as a polis in the urban sense. A tradition reported by Pausanias (2nd century AD) alleges that

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