IMPERIUM ROMANUM

Provinces · The later eastern provinces

LE-12 Praevalitana

The later Balkan provincial landscape. Dacia south of the Danube, the two Epiri…
The later Balkan provincial landscape. Dacia south of the Danube, the two Epiri, Thessaly, Macedonia, Achaia, and the Thracian districts illustrate the replacement of large commands by smaller jurisdictions. The river network helps relate frontier districts to the Adriatic, Aegean, and imperial straits.

The province connected coastal routes, inland valleys, productive districts, and Adriatic shipping. Its assignment to the Dacian grouping demonstrates that administrative relationships did not follow a simple division between coastal provinces and Danubian provinces. Scodra’s role linked civil government with local urban and later ecclesiastical institutions.

The province inherited communities with different Illyrian, Roman, and regional histories. Late warfare, changes in settlement, and the weakening of imperial support transformed coast and interior differently. Praevalitana’s separate existence should not be erased by treating all eastern Adriatic territory as Dalmatia throughout antiquity.