Illyria, classical

Trade flourishes during the Iron Age (beginning 700 BCE) between the developing city-states of Italy and Greece and the region's first identifiable peoples: Illyrian-speaking tribes north of Lake Ohrid and west of the Vardar River (in present-day Macedonia), Thracian speakers in the area of modern Serbia, and the Veneti, who probably speak an Italic tongue, in Istria and the Julian Alps (in present-day Slovenia and northwest Croatia).

Greek pottery and a part of a statue of Apollo will be found in the layers below Pula, attesting to the presence or influence of Greek culture.

Greek tradition attributes the foundation of Polai to the Colchians, mentioned in the context of the story of Jason and Medea, who had stolen the golden fleece.

The Colchians, who had chased Jason into the northern Adriatic, were unable to catch him and ended up settling in a place they called Polai, signifying "city of refuge"

Corinthians send out agricultural settlers in about 734 BCE to Corfu (Kérkira), a Greek island of two hundred and twenty-nine square miles (five hundred and ninety-three square kilometers) that lies in the Ionian Sea, just off the coast of Epirus in northwest Greece, thereby supplanting a settlement of Eretrians from Euboea, who retire to the Albanian coast.

The island derives its name from the Greek word “coryphai,” meaning "crests" (the fertile island, flat in the south, has mountain ranges in its northern and central regions).

According to legend, the island was Scheria, home of the Phaeacians in Homeric epic.

Animal representations, floral motifs, and, by the eighth century BCE, human figures in stylized silhouettes, have intruded gradually into the traditional abstract geometric decorations of Greek pottery, particularly abundant in Attica.

The contemporary “Dipylon Krater”, a large vase originally used as a grave monument, depicts dancers, processions of horsemen and chariots, battle scenes, and men and women lamenting the dead.

Most of the Greek city-state governments begin to be run by archons, state magistrates of the highest order.

Athens, initially, has three archons: one each to exercise civil, military, and religious authority.

In the eighth century BCE, the archons' tenure is typically ten years.

By 683, the tenure of the three Athenian archons has been reduced to one year.

The six junior archons (thesmotetai), or magistrates, are said by Aristotle to have been instituted in Athens after 683 BCE to record the laws.

Beginning in the eighth century BCE, trade flourishes between the developing city-states of Greece and Italy and …

…the Balkan region's first identifiable peoples: Illyrian-speaking tribes north of Lake Ohrid and west of the Vardar River (in present-day Macedonia), …

…Thracian speakers in the area of modern Serbia, and …

…the Adriatic Veneti, who probably speak an Italic tongue, in Istria and the Julian Alps (in present-day Slovenia and northwest Croatia).

Perdiccas I, a Dorian, establishes a kingdom (north of modern Greece) over the semibarbarous Macedonian tribes, which include Thracian and Illyrian elements, in about 700.

Herodotus states: "From Argos fled to the Illyrians three brothers of the descendants of Temenus, Gauanes, Aeropus, and Perdiccas; and passing over from the Illyrians into the upper parts of Macedonia they came to the city of Lebaia."

"Now that these descendants of Perdiccas are Greeks, as they themselves say, I myself chance to know and will prove it in the later part of my history.”

The Greeks, who establish trading colonies in the south of Illyria and along the Adriatic Sea coast, heavily influence the Illyrians.

The present-day city of Durrës evolves from a Greek colony known as Epidamnos, which is founded at the end of the seventh century BCE.

Another famous Greek colony named Apollonia arises between Durrës and …