20e - Balkan Languages (Illyrian, Thracian and Daco-Moesian)

Summary

ILLYRIAN

Applied to language, the name ‘Illyrian’ is a very ambiguous term. Associated with the so-called Lusatian civilization, the concept of ‘Illyrian’ has been misused by a whole generation of scholars to characterize a wave of apparently Indo-European movements in various parts of Europe and even the Middle East. If the term ‘Illyrian’ is, however, circumscribed to the area to which the Romans applied it at the beginning of the Christian era, it would encompass the territories stretching from the northern borders of Epirus to the Danube and the Sava, and from the coast of the Adriatic inland to the rather fluid Moesian boundaries, the Šar Dagh and the Ceraunian mountains. This would include the territories of such tribes as the Iapodes, the Liburni, the Delmatae, the Maezaei and others that older sources like Hecataeus (sixth century B.C.) do not attribute to the Illyrian group, whereas Herodotus links up the Ενετοι who lived to the north of Macedonia as neighbours of the Dardani and the Triballi with the Illyrians. Furthermore, the immigration of ‘Illyrians’ into Calabria in the early Iron Age has been assumed, especially on the basis of their language, known as Messapic, which has survived in more than three hundred inscriptions as well as in their onomastic material. It is, however, methodologically sounder to consider Messapic as a separate entity within the context of the languages of pre-Roman Italy. If, then, the term ‘Illyrian’ should apply only in the relevant area in the Balkans, what kind of linguistic situation obtains there?