Buthrotum

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Buthrotum

Buthrotum (byo͞othrōˈtəm), city of ancient Epirus, in S Albania, 8 mi (12.9 km) S of Sarandë, opposite N end of the island of Kérkira (Corfu) on an inland lagoon off the Corfu Straits. Dating probably from the 8th cent. B.C. it was the site of a shrine of Asclepius and a fortress covering approaches to Kérkira. The city became one of the leading centers of Epirus and was located, under Roman rule, on a main road. It declined in the late 6th cent. A.D., but revived beginning in the late 11th cent. as fortress town under the Byzantines, Crusaders, and Venetians, finally passing to Ottoman rule (1798–1912). On its site is the modern Albanian village of Butrint (bo͞o-trēntˈ), where Italian excavations in the 1930s uncovered Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and Venetian remains of the ancient city, including a theater (4th cent. B.C.), a baptistery (4th cent. A.D.), Roman baths, Byzantine churches, and Venetian castle (now a museum). The ancient ruins and surrounding area became a national park in 2000.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Buthrotum

(present-day Butrint or Butrinti), a city on Lake Butrint, in Epirus (Albania). Founded by settlers from Corinth and Corfu at the turn of the sixth century B.C.; destroyed by the Visigoths in about A.D. 551. The city completely ceased to exist after the Turkish conquest (15th century). The ruins were partially excavated in 1928-35 by the Italian L. Ugolini. The walls that surrounded the acropolis in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., as well as gates (including the Lion Gates, which have a lion worked in relief on their architrave), were excavated. In the lower city there is a temple of Aesculapius, where a statue of the god still stands, and a theater dating from the third century B.C. , with 19 rows of seats and with marble statues (including the “Goddess of Butrinti,” sculpted by a member of the school of Praxiteles). Remains of homes and public buildings, showing occasional traces of murals, have also been found. There is a baptistry with a mosaic floor dating from the seventh century, a Venetian fortress dating from the 14th century, and other structures. Part of the city is an open-air museum.

REFERENCES

Ugolini, L. M. Albania antica: L’acropolidiButrinto. Rome, 1937.
Adhami, S. Monumente të cultures né Shqipëri. Tirana, 1958.

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Constantinople Convention of 1800

References in periodicals archive ?

Blown by varying winds, the Trojans had at length reached Buthrotum, where had been foretold a long and arduous journey before Aeneas would reach Italy.

AENEID

First there is the decretum that Caesar drew up in his lifetime, cancelling the planned settlements in Buthrotum in exchange for payment of the region's war indemnity by Cicero's friend Atticus.(24) This decree had not yet been published at the time of Caesar's death, and many of the letters to Atticus discuss the efforts made to secure its recognition, including its adjudication by the consuls in June.

In summary the circumstances were these: Caesar imposed a hefty war indemnity on the territory of Buthrotum in Epirus (NW Greece); when payment was not forthcoming, he scheduled this region for confiscation to provide land for settlers.

The Senate, Mark Antony, and Caesar's legislative legacy

Buthrotum was a special place for the Romans because it figured in the legend that linked Rome's origins to the fali of Troy, an association that also made the place particularly appealing to Mussolini and his revived Roman Empire.

Caesar was minded to plant a settlement of his army veterans there, a project apparently not completed at the time of his death bur realised by his heir Augustus (colonia Iulia, later Augusta, Buthrotum).

Before the ship turned to enter the harbour of Corfu town, some may have gained a glimpse of the Vivari channel, a sea passage leading to a large inland lagoon guarded by the ancient site of Buthrotum (Butrint).

Richard Hodges. Eternal Butrint. A UNESCO World Heritage Site in Albania

This volume brings together seventeen studies of Buthrotum, the historical city of Butrint, which lies near Corfu on the west coast of Greece.

Butrint 4; the archaeology and histories of an Ionian town

She surfaces in Carthage, Buthrotum, and Italy, where female characters focus on the personal effects of her adultery or suggest that another Helen will cause problems.

The prejudice and bitterness of Trojan characters, more evident in Aeneas's and Deiphobus's narrations, surface in Aeneas's account of his meeting with Andromache in Buthrotum. After Andromache had been conveyed across the seas and endured the insolent son of Achilles, she gave birth in slavery (3.325-7).

Helen of Rome? Helen in Vergil's Aeneid

Among their topics are the geopolitics of imagining ancient Alexandria, space and the imperial imaginary in Apollonius' Argonautika, space and spin: geopolitical vistas in the 40s, mapping the foundations: the Italian network of city foundations in the poetic and antiquarian tradition, colonial readings in Virgilian geopoetics: the Trojans at Buthrotum, and beatus carcer / tristis harena: the spaces of Statius' Silvae.