History of the Balkans in Maps

This map shows the Roman Empire at its greatest extent. Across the Adriatic, in the area today called the Balkans, they had encountered a native population known as Ilyrians, who occupied the whole area of the coast and up to the Danube River. In a series of wars between 229 BC and 168 BC, Rome captured this area. Rome's rule was challenged, in 6 AD by a massive revolt, which Augustus brutally suppressed by 10AD. Meanwhile, having gained control of the Balkan peninsula, the Empire had moved north. Julius Caesar conquered Gaul, and subsequent rulers pushed across the Rhine river. With the arrival of the Germanic tribes on the frontiers of the Empire in the 4th century, the Romans erected a series of fortifications which ran from the Rhine to the Danube, and thence along that river to the Black Sea.

By 300 AD, the major threat to the Empire was in the East, along the Danubian boundary, where the Goths, the first Germanic tribe to push into the area, staged a series of devastating raids. Divided into two groups, the West Goths (Visigoths) and the East Goths (Ostrogoths), these nomadic warriors threatened the entire Eastern Empire. To meet that threat, Constantine the Great essentially moved his capital to a new city, which he named after himself, Constantinople. From there, he hoped to defend the Balkans as the first line of defense against the Goths.