Figure 3: A reconstruction of the Glasinac Warrior, seventh century BC. Although a shield was not found in the grave, one is portrayed here based upon other shield examples from that time. (Illustration by the author)
As to which kinds of helmets the Illyrians wore after the second century BC, they almost certainly wore various copies of Roman helmets. There are two reasons for this. First, by this time, the Roman Republic had conquered all of northern Italy (previously under the control of the Gallic Celts) and Greece, both of whom were the Illyrians’ neighbouring territories. The Illyrians were thus sandwiched in between these two Roman provinces. While the Illyrians had previously been under the influence of the Celtic tribes to the north-west and the Greeks to the south-east, cultural influence upon the Illyrians was now almost wholly Roman. Secondly and more importantly, beginning a century earlier, the Romans had become militarily involved in Illyria. By the year 200 BC, the Romans had already fought two wars in the region and controlled a sizeable portion of the Illyrian coast. So the Illyrians had direct first-hand contact with Roman military technology, weaponry, armour, equipment and battlefield tactics. With the success that the Romans had in the previous two wars, the Illyrians must have put the Romans’ success down to their superior military, and therefore wanted to emulate it in order to preserve their existing territory against further Roman aggression or even to regain hegemony over the region. Being the enterprising people that they were, they would surely have remodelled their warrior bands along the lines of Roman military units and would have begun copying the Roman way of war in every detail: their armour, their weapons, their shields, their equipment, their training and how they fought. By the time of Gaius Octavianus’ campaigns against the Illyrians during the 30s BC, it is highly likely that the Roman legionnaires and the native Illyrian warriors would have been almost indistinguishable from one another.
For even more protection, Illyrians wore body armour consisting of a cuirass and greaves; armour was rarely worn on the arms, despite what is depicted in movies and TV shows. A metal plaque found in Slovenia shows Illyrian warriors, both infantry and cavalry, wearing what appear to be padded sleeveless jackets reaching down to just above the knee. These vestments, similar to medieval aketons or gambesons, would be able to defend against glancing blows and against some blunt hits, but they would be absolutely useless when it came to a stab. Another warrior from this same plaque is shown wearing a Greek-style cuirass, complete with pteruges decorated with a single row of T-shaped designs or possibly T-shaped metal studs, with the bottom edges of each leather strap trimmed with fringe.
In terms of weaponry, there was much to choose from. The Illyrians armed themselves with short swords like the Greek xyphos or the Roman gladius. Some also carried a curved chopper known as the falcata, also called a machaira or kopis, popular throughout southern Europe from Spain to Greece. However, the weapon that the Romans felt was distinctly Illyrian was a curved bladed weapon known as the sica. The word is derived from the Latin verb secare, meaning ‘to slice’; we have no idea what the Illyrians themselves called this weapon. They were typically short, no more than two feet long, but were most common in ‘large knife size’ for lack of a better term. They could be either single-edged (knife) or double-edged (dagger). Both the single-edged and doubl e- edged versions have curved blades, but what is interesting is that in the single-bladed specimens, the blade is on the concave edge, looking like a backwards sabre or a stretched-out hand sickle.
How were these knives and daggers used, especially the single-edged ones? A tantalizing hypothesis is found in comparing the Illyrian sica with the Levantine khanjar dagger and the teeth of prehistoric sabre-toothed cats. The late palaeontologist Larry Martin hypothesized that the curved teeth of sabre-toothed cats functioned in the same way as Middle Eastern-style curved daggers like the khanjar. What are these knives used for? he asked. They are specially designed for ripping open people’s throats.106Let us imagine that you intend to kill someone with this weapon. Ideally, you sneak up behind them, reach around in front, clamp their nose and mouth shut with your open left hand to prevent them from screaming and giving your presence away, yank back your victim’s head, exposing his throat, and use your sica to dispatch him. When that moment comes, you have two ways of handling it. First, you can place the sharp concave edge across the surface of your victim’s throat (that is, have the bladed edge pointed towards you and your victim) and pull across sharply from left to right. The curved edge of the knife hugs the curvature of your victim’s throat, and results in slicing open the jugular vein, the oesophagus and the carotid artery in one swipe. The second technique is somewhat more vicious and requires a bit more muscle to get the job done. This involves physically piercing the right side of your victim’s throat with the knife, with the bladed edge pointed away from you and your victim, and pushing the blade to the left into your victim’s neck. Because the shape of the knife is curved instead of straight, it will follow a curved path as it stabs into your victim’s neck. The curved shape of the knife will cut a C-shaped slice out of your victim’s throat, first going in, then rounding, and then working its way out in a clean C-shaped swoop. This technique doesn’t just slice open your victim’s throat, but physically rips it open. You have to get through a lot more muscle and fibrous tissue to do this, but with this technique, you are guaranteed a quicker kill. No wonder that the Illyrian sica soon became the preferred weapon of murderers and assassins in the ancient world, and the people who carried these knives became known as the sicarii, or sicarians in English. Today, the word sicario means ‘murderer’ or ‘hit-man’ in Italian and Spanish.
The Illyrians also carried pole-arms, but it seems that they did not conform to a single distinctive style; their spears came in a variety of lengths and shapes. Of all of the pole-arms carried by the Illyrians, the most intriguing is the one called the sibyna. This is one of the few words from the Illyrian language that have survived to this day. Various ancient authors provide different spellings for this weapon, but what is important is what the weapon looked like and how it was used. The famous Roman poet Quintus Ennius, writing in the late-third to mid-second centuries BC, mentions the sibyna in his Annales, which unfortunately have only survived in isolated fragments. While describing a sea battle, he states ‘Illyrici restant sicis sibynisque fodantes’, 107 which translates as ‘The Illyrians stood fast and stabbed with sicas and sibynas.’ Aulus Gellius simply provides the word ‘sibones’ in a list of vocabulary terms pertaining to different weapons used at the time and doesn’t go into any description of it, but since it is lumped into a section of words devoted to pole-arms, we are fairly confident that the word referred to some kind of spear or spear-like weapon.108 The word that the Romans used to describe the sibyna was venabulum, the Latin word for ‘hunting spear’, 109 although the word literally translates to ‘an instrument used in hunting’, which could mean anything. Hunting spears are differentiated from combat spears by being typically fitted with larger-than-average heads that are used to take down large and dangerous prey like lions, bears and especially wild boars. In fact, during the Middle Ages, these kinds of spears were called ‘boar spears’. In addition to having larger heads, they are also fitted with a cross-guard at the base of the spearhead to prevent the spear from digging into the animal so far that it penetrates the animal’s body up to the shaft. The ancient Roman venabulum looked remarkably similar to medieval and modern hunting spears, and they were a common tool used by the bestiarii, the ‘beast men’ who fought against wild animals in the arena. The only difference between the ancient and medieval versions that I can see is that the crossguards on the Roman spears are V-shaped with the two points directed towards the front, while on the medieval ones they are fashioned into a straight horizontal bar.
Javelins were also used: light spears with short thin shafts and small but long metallic heads that could be hurled from a distance; these appear to have been native-made copies of Roman pilum javelins. The reason why is
because a tenth-century AD Byzantine document called the Suda describes the Illyrian spears as being made of metal, as in mostly metal. There were no all-metal spears in ancient or medieval times. The only ancient pole-arm that I can think of that is composed of a higher-than-average amount of metal would be the Roman pilum javelin. If this is true, then this would be a concrete example of the Illyrians adopting Roman weapons.
In terms of sheer numbers of weapons that have been found by archaeologists, the axe is the weapon most frequently uncovered. They were made of iron, bronze and even stone; these stone axes probably had some ritualistic significance.110 Metal arrowheads have been found in sites attributed to the Illyrians.111 The Roman doctor Paulus Aegineta (Paul of Aegina), who wrote an epic medical textbook entitled De Re Medica (On Medical Matters), states that the Dalmatian Illyrians put a type of poison on their arrows called ‘ninum’. He adds that this poison was deadly when it infected an animal’s blood. However, the flesh of the animal was still edible, so there was no risk of the hunter being killed by eating poisoned meat.112 One scholar named Mirko Dražen Grmek proposes that this type of poison was not made from plants, since no toxic plants grow in the area with poisons matching the qualities that Paulus Aegineta describes. Instead, he suggests that this poison was made from snake venom.113
Nicolaus of Damascus states that the Autariate tribe used to kill their own wounded warriors to prevent them from being captured by the enemy.114 This shows that the Autariates, at least, considered it an act of great shame to be captured by their enemies and they would rather die than be taken prisoner. Aleksandar Stipcevic claims that this was done to prevent the enemy from cannibalizing the prisoners. I find Stipcevic’s statement to be wholely bizarre because no ancient author mentions that the Illyrians practised cannibalism, nor is there any archaeological evidence, at least to my knowledge, that shows proof of cannibalism. The basis for the idea that the Illyrians were cannibals and ritually consumed the bodies of their enemies in order to gain their power comes from a description of the Scordisci tribe, who were not ethnic Illyrians. The Scordisci, known in the ancient Greek sources as ‘Skordiskoi’, were Celts who had migrated south into the Balkans. They were named after the place where they first settled, Mount Scordus.115 Florus states that the Scordisci (whom he calls Thracians, not Celts) tortured their prisoners, offered human blood as sacrifices to their gods, and drank out of the hollowed-out skulls of their enemies.116 Other such tales can be found in the writings of other ancient writers. Whether such stories represent real facts about their behaviour and culture or if they are just sensationalized over-the-top works of fiction, we don’t know.117
The Illyrian Navy
A discussion of the ancient Illyrians would be incomplete without mentioning their ships. The Illyrians were renowned as being some of the best sailors in the world, and their ships were renowned as being some of the best in the world. Two kinds of ships deserve close attention: the lembus and the liburnus. The lembus (from the ancient Greek lembos, ‘boat’) was the most common type of Illyrian warship, which had only one level of oars and no sails. It was small, fast and manoeuvrable, and capable of carrying fifty men in addition to the rowers.118 The liburnus, also called the liburna or navis liburnica, ‘the Liburnian ship’, had both oars and a sail. Early versions had a single level of fifty oars, twenty-five on each side, while later versions had a double level of oars; these ships are called ‘biremes’. This later version was a hundred feet or so long, sixteen feet wide and only had a three-foot draft, which meant that despite its large size, it could move in very shallow water. In the double-decker version of the liburnus, there were eighteen oars on each side of each level, totalling thirty-six on each side and seventy-two oars overall. The Romans enthusiastically copied this ship for their own use, and Liburnian-style biremes played a crucial role at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC.119
There is an engraving of an early Liburnian-style ship on a pair of bronze greaves (lower leg armour) found in Ilijak and dated to the seventh century BC. In this engraving, there is a single large rectangular sail mounted on a central mast. Atop the mast is a crow’s nest for a lookout who may have doubled as an archer when the ship was engaged in battle. There are four large ropes that hold the sail in place: two are fixed to the yard-arms and are tied to the hull. These ropes are likely used for ‘tacking’: changing the angle of the sail so that it can catch the wind from a certain direction. The other two ropes are fixed to the bottom corners of the sail and are likely used for raising and lowering the sail. The ship has a forward-projecting prow like the ram’s head on a trireme, but there doesn’t appear to be an actual ram’s head. This hull design is for cutting through the water, not for ramming other ships. Liburnian ships were built for speed, not brute force. Above the prow is a large horned dragon’s head with a long serpentine neck. These Illyrian dragons appear to have two large ears, a pair of Texas-style longhorn horns and a large rectangular head. Note the similarity of this design to that of the giant horned snake seen on the bronze belt plate found in Gradiste, Serbia. The similarity of these two designs indicates that a giant horned serpent must have been part of Illyrian legend, or was perhaps a named character from Illyrian mythology. The Illyrian religion will be discussed later on in this chapter. The ship’s hull has a row of diamond-shaped shields mounted along the side. There is an aftcastle (a raised platform commonly usedas a command post or a tower-like defensive position) in the rear of the ship, but no forecastle towards the front. On the back of the ship, there is a large rudder mounted centrally on a pivot, as opposed to other rudders used on other ships that were mounted on the ship’s side. This would have made Liburnian ships much easier to steer and manoeuvre than other contemporary ships used by other Mediterranean cultures.120
Figure 4: The ketos or cetus, a beast from Roman mythology; the word ‘cetacean’ comes from this. The cetus was a sea dragon with a long serpentine body, crocodile-like jaws and a pair of horns on its head. Could this be an example of the Romans adopting a character from Illyrian mythology? This mosaic is dated to the third century BC and was found at Monasterace in southern Italy. (Photo by Carole Raddato, 17 December 2014. Ancient History Encyclopedia, www.ancient.eu Creative Commons: Attribution-ShareAlike. Used with permission)
The Illyrian Religion
Hardly anything is known about the Illyrian religion. There are a few names of Illyrian gods that survive, mostly in carved inscriptions rather than in paper texts. It is almost certain that, like many ethnic groups composed of many individual tribes, they had a certain standardized pantheon of important gods, accompanied by a host of lesser local deities that were worshipped only by one specific tribe or another.
Polytheistic peoples tend to be more religiously tolerant than monotheists. In societies that worship multiple gods and divine spirits, the idea that other people worship gods that are different from your own isn’t a point of contention. In fact, polytheists will sometimes incorporate foreign gods into their own native pantheon. However, the only times when the Illyrians appeared to actually accept other gods were if those gods were similar to theirs. It essentially means that gods that are from different cultures and have different names but have the same attributes and perform the same functions are regarded as being more or less identical. When it came to gods and religion, the Illyrians rejected foreign gods unless those gods were similar to the deities that they themselves worshipped. As evidence of this, there are inscriptions that mention the names of certain Illyrian gods, and the names of corresponding Roman gods are listed immediately afterwards.121
However, perhaps we are looking at these artefacts incorrectly. The Romans seldom took the time or effort to learn the names of the gods that were worshipped by the peoples that they conquered, so they simply called other gods by Roman names. When the Roman historian Tacitus wrote his famous ethnography on the Germanic tribes during the last years of the first century AD, he stated that the Germanic barbarians mostly worshipped the god Mercury.122 Mercury wa
s a Roman god who was almost exactly identical to the Greek god Hermes. The Germans certainly didn’t worship Mercury; they worshipped their own native gods. In this case, Mercury is a synonym for either Odin or Thor. Tacitus used the name of a Roman god because he was writing for a Roman (preferably Italian) audience, one that was certainly knowledgeable about the Roman pantheon but who may have been completely ignorant about the Germanic religion and, quite frankly, were not interested in learning all of those foreign-sounding names. The fact that the names of Roman gods are listed alongside Illyrian ones may not be due to the idea that the Illyrians accepted Roman gods into their polytheistic pantheon. Instead, it might be due more to letting the Romans know which of their gods corresponded with which Illyrian gods, almost like a reference guide or a cheat-sheet.
As stated many times in this chapter, the topic of snakes appears to have been something commonly associated with the Illyrians. Images of snakes and other serpent-like creatures are seen on Illyrian jewellery and body armour, and they recur frequently in legend and lore. Among the Illyrians, snake imagery seems to have been confined largely to the southern region of Dalmatia. The western and northern lands, occupied by the Japodes and Pannonians respectively, have very little in the way of snake imagery.123 It might be too much of a stretch, though, to think that the Illyrians referred to themselves as ‘the Serpent People’. The reason why is that snakes and snake-worship were a common motif in ancient Europe, not just in Illyria. While the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam associate snakes with evil due to the story of Adam, Eve and the Garden of Eden, in many ancient European cultures, snakes had the complete opposite image. They were believed to be good luck charms, or the embodiments of friendly spirits that could bestow good fortune, prosperity and protection on someone’s house. The Baltic tribes of northern Europe venerated divine snake-like spirits called ‘zaltys’, which were the guardians of the house and all who dwelt within, and would bring good luck to the family. The ancient Romans believed that the protective spirit or genius of a household looked like a snake in its physical form. Famously, Queen Olympias, the mother of Alexander the Great, was a snake-worshipper. Even outside Europe, snakes were seen as protective entities. Famously, the kings of ancient Egypt had cobras adorning their crowns and headdresses, believed to spit venom into the eyes of the king’s enemies. There were also numerous serpentine gods and goddesses in the Egyptian pantheon who served as protectors. The span of snake-worship in ancient Europe and elsewhere indicates that there must have been some common feature among either Indo-European or pre-Indo-European faiths in which snakes were seen as protective good luck symbols.
The Great Illyrian Revolt Page 7