This article refers to the ancient inhabitants of the Balkans. For other uses of this word, see Illyria (disambiguation).

Illyrians has come to refer to a broad, ill-defined group of peoples who inhabited the western Balkans (Illyria, roughly from northern Epirus to southern Pannonia) and even perhaps parts of Southern Italy in classical times into the Common era, and spoke Illyrian languages. It is, however, less believable that in reality there was such a broad group that self-identified as Illyrians, and some argue that the ethnonym Illyrioi came to be applied to this large group of peoples by the ancient Greeks, Illyrioi having perhaps originally designated only a single people that came to be widely known to the Greeks due to proximity. Indeed, such a people known as the Illyrioi are supposed to have occupied a small and well-defined part of the south Adriatic coast, around Skadar Lake astride the modern frontier between Albania and Montenegro. The name may then have expanded and come to be applied to ethnically different peoples such as the Liburni, Delmatae, Iapodes, or the Pannonii.

Pliny in his Natural History tacitly implies a stricter usage of the term Illyri, when speaking of Illyri proprie dicti ("Illyrians properly so-called") among the native communities in the south of Roman Dalmatia. A passage from Appian's Illyrike is representative of the broader usage of the term:

The Greeks call those people Illyrian who dwell beyond Macedonia and Thrace, from Chaonia and Thesprotia to the river Danube. —Appian, Illyrike 1

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Sick of Levi and Sarah .. They should get a room to track their full noodle frontity of Levi and their media war. I am sick of them.
Illyrians (P Dennis) Thu, 29 Oct 2009 05:07:04 -0000
Sick of Levi and Sarah .. They should get a room to track their full noodle frontity of Levi and their media war. I am sick of them.

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