Teuta
Teuta was the queen regent of the Ardiaei tribe in Illyria, who reigned approximately from 231 BC to 228/227 BC.
Following the death of her spouse Agron in 231 BC, she assumed the regency of the Ardiaean Kingdom for her stepson Pinnes, continuing Agron's policy of expansion in the Adriatic Sea, in the context of an ongoing conflict with the Roman Republic regarding the effects of Illyrian piracy on regional trade. The death of one of the Roman ambassadors at the hands of Illyrian pirates gave Rome the occasion to declare war against her in 229 BC. She eventually surrenderred after losing the First Illyrian War in 228. Teuta had to relinquish the southern parts of her territory and pay a tribute to Rome, but was eventually allowed to keep a realm confined to an area north of Lissus.
Biographical details on the life of Teuta are biased by the fact that surviving ancient sources, which were written by Greek and Roman authors, are generally hostile to Illyrians and their queen alike for political or misogynistic reasons.
Name
Her name is known in Ancient Greek as Τεύτα and in Latin as Teuta, both used as a diminutive form of the Illyrian name Teuta. It stems from the Western Proto-Indo-European root *teutéhₐ-, attached to the PIE suffix -nā. The Illyrian name Teuta is cognate with the Gothic masculine form þiudans 'king'.Biography
Background
After the death of her husband Agron, the former king of the Ardiaei, she inherited his kingdom and acted as regent for her young stepson Pinnes. The exact extent of the kingdom of Agron and Teuta remains uncertain. From what we know, it stretched on the Adriatic coast-land from central Albania up to the Neretva river, and they must have controlled most of the Illyrian inland. According to Polybius, Teuta soon addressed the neighbouring states malevolently, ordering her commanders to treat all of them as enemies and supporting the piratical raids of her subjects, which eventually brought Roman forces to cross the Adriatic for the first time, since those activities increasingly interfered with their trade route in the Adriatic and the Ionian Sea.Early reign (231–230 BC)
In 231 BC, Teuta's armies attacked the regions of Elis and Messenia in the Peloponnese. On their way home, they captured the Greek city of Phoenice, at that time the most prosperous place of Epirus and a centre for the growing commerce with the Italian Peninsula. The city was soon liberated and a truce accepted against the payment of a fee and freeborn prisoners. The seizure of an urban centre, as opposed to looting in the countryside, represented an escalation in the threat posed by Illyrians to Greeks and Romans alike. During their occupation of Phoenice, some Illyrian pirates looted Italian merchant ships in such a high number that the Roman Senate, after ignoring earlier complaints, was compelled to dispatch two ambassadors to the city of Scodra in order to solicit reparations and demand an end to all pirate expeditions. The vivid account of the event, given by the Greek historian Polybius and overtly hostile to Teuta, was probably influenced by an earlier Roman tradition originally intended to justify the invasion of Illyria.On their arrival, the Roman ambassadors Lucius and Gaius Coruncanius found Queen Teuta celebrating the end of an internal Illyrian rebellion as her armies were about to lay siege to the Greek island city Issa. She promised that no royal force would hurt them, but that piracy was a traditional Illyrian custom she was unable to put an end to. Teuta also implied that "it was contrary to the custom of the Illyrian kings to hinder their subjects from winning booty from the sea". One of the envoys reportedly lost his temper and replied that Rome would make it her business to "improve relations between sovereign and subject in lllyria", since " an admirable custom, which is to punish publicly the doers of private wrongs and publicly come to the help of the wronged."
At any rate, one of the two present ambassadors expressed himself to the queen so disrespectfully that her attendants were ordered to seize the ambassadors' ship as it embarked back for Rome, and the insolent envoy was murdered on his homeward voyage, allegedly on Teuta’s order. Cassius Dio's account suggests that the other ambassador may have been made prisoner. News of this event caused the Romans to prepare for war: legions were enlisted and the fleet assembled.
War with Rome (229–228 BC)
In 229 BC, Rome declared war on Illyria and, for the first time, the Roman armies crossed the Adriatic Sea to set foot in the western Balkans. An army consisting of approximately 20,000 troops, 200 cavalry units and an entire Roman fleet of 200 ships, led by Gnaeus Fulvius Centumalus and Lucius Postumius Albinus, was sent to conquer Illyria.The Roman attack seems to have caught up Teuta by surprise, since she had ordered a large naval expedition involving most of her ships against the Greek colony of Corcyra in the winter of 229. The Corcyraeans sought assistance from the Leagues of Greece, but the combined Achaean and Acarnanians fleets were defeated in the battle of Paxos by the superior naval tactics of Teuta's ships. By occupying Corcyra, the Illyrians were thus in the position to breach the important trade routes between the mainland of Greece and the Greek cities in Italy.
When the 200 Roman ships showed up at Corcyra, Teuta's governor Demetrius betrayed her, surrendered the city to the Romans. He sided with them and turned into their advisor for the remaining time of the war. At the end of the conflict in 228 BC, the Romans awarded him the position of governor of Pharos and the adjacent coasts. The remainder of the Roman army in the meantime landed further north at Apollonia. The combined army and navy proceeded northward together, subduing one town after another and eventually besieging the capital, Scodra. Teuta herself had retreated with a few followers to the fortified and strategically well-placed Rhizon, the principal base of the Illyrian fleet.
According to Polybius, she made a treaty in the early spring of 228 BC by which she consented to pay an annual tribute, to reign over a restricted and narrow region north of Lissus, and not to sail beyond Lissos with more than two unarmed ships. They also required her to acknowledge the final authority of Rome. According to Cassius Dio, she abdicated later in 227 BC.
Later life
Appian mentions that, after the defeat, she sent an embassy to Rome to deliver captives and to apologize for the events that had occurred during her spouse Agron’s reign, but not under hers.Depictions
The most detailed account of Teuta's short reign is that of Polybius, supplemented by Appian and Cassius Dio.Polybius' narrative, redacted almost one century after the events and generally hostile to Illyrians and their queen alike, was probably inherited from an earlier account of the Roman annalist Quintus Fabius Pictor, a contemporary of Teuta. But if Polybius was ready to accept the negative picture of the existing tradition, as it confirmed his own negative views on women, he was also aware of Fabius' own prejudices and opposed them on some occasions. In his Histories, Polybius opens the story of the reign of Teuta in those terms: " was succeeded on the throne by his wife Teuta, who left the details of administration to friends on whom she relied. As, with a woman’s natural shortness of view, she could see nothing but the recent success and had no eyes for what was going on elsewhere..."
The mysogyny of Cassius Dio is also evident in his portrait of Teuta. He describes the Illyrian queen as follows: "...woman-like, in addition to her innate recklessness, she was puffed up with vanity because of the power that she possessed... In a very short time, however, she demonstrated the weakness of the female sex, which quickly flies into a passion through lack of judgment, and quickly becomes terrified through cowardice."
According to scholar Marjeta Šašel Kos, the most objective portrait of Teuta is that of Appian.
Legacy
According to the folklore of the modern inhabitants of Risan, Teuta ended her life in grief by throwing herself from Orjen Peak.Teuta is a common given name among modern Albanian women.