Illyria was in Classical antiquity a region in the western part of
today's Balkan.
Ancient Illyria can
pose a problem to historians, since before the Roman conquest the
Illyrians were not unified into an Illyrian kingdom, and Illyria's
borders before Rome are not always clear.
In the first decades under Byzantine rule (until 461), Illyria
suffered
the devastation of raids by Visigoths, Huns, and
Ostrogoths. Not long after these barbarian invaders swept through the
Balkans, the Slavs appeared. Between the 6th and 8th centuries they
settled in Illyrian territories and proceeded to assimilate Illyrian
tribes in much of what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo,
Montenegro, Polog valley in The Republic of Macedonia, Serbia, and
Slovenia.
Dalmatia's name is derived from the name of an Illyrian tribe called
the Dalmatae who lived in the area of the eastern Adriatic coast in the
1st millennium BC. They arrived to the Adriatic Coast from the
Dalmatian inland during 3rd and 2nd century BC. The name "Dalmatia" was
in use probably from the second half of the 2nd century and certainly
from the first half of the 1st century BC, defining a coastal area of
the eastern Adriatic between the Krka and Neretva rivers. Its
territory stretched northwards from the river Neretva to the river
Cetina, and later to the Krka, where it met the confines of Liburnia.
Its capital during this period was Delminium.
The Roman Republic attempted to subdue the Illyrian tribes during the Illyrian Wars of 220 and 168 BC, and succeeded, forming the Roman province of Illyricum. The Romans, however, were often faced by rebellions of various Illyrian tribes. In 156 BC the Dalmatae themselves were attacked by a Roman army for the first time, and were defeated but not fully subdued. They raised a number of formidable revolts, more notable of which was that of 33 BC. In AD 9 the Dalmatians formed an alliance with the Pannonians and rebelled for the last time, but were finally crushed by Tiberius. In AD 10, Illyricum was divided by Emperor Augustus into two provinces: Pannonia and Dalmatia which spread into a larger area inland to cover all of the Dinaric Alps and most of the eastern Adriatic coast. This event was followed by total submission and a ready acceptance of Roman culture which spread all over Illyria.
Later on, Dalmatia was the birthplace of Emperor Diocletian who constructed the famous Diocletian's Palace for his retirement a few kilometers south of Salona, in Spalatum. The Palace is now the heart of the modern-day capital of Dalmatia, Split.
The collapse of the Western Roman Empire, with the beginning of the
Migration Period, left the region subject to Gothic rulers, Odoacer and
Theodoric the Great. They ruled Dalmatia from 476 to 535 AD, when it
was restored to the Eastern (Byzantine) Empire by Justinian I.