Queen Teuta of Illyria
Queen Teuta of the Illyrians was a badass Classical Age warrior queen who oversaw a fleet of hardcore pirates, antagonized the Spartans in their own backyard, led armies and navies that conquered cities and islands along the Adriatic coast, told the Romans to go fuck themselves, and then went out in a blaze of glory by hurling herself off a mountain after reportedly burying 6,000 pounds of gold in a secret location at a place called Devil’s Island. Her last words were an awesomely-specific curse that doomed the Albanian city of Durres to “never have a seafaring tradition”, yet she’s still a national heroine of Albania, appears on their 100 lek coin (basically the $1 bill), and is generally depicted in full armor with a take-no-prisoners demeanor that appropriately invites comparisons to Athena or some other Classical warrior goddess:
Queen Teuta’s husband was King Agron, a pretty brutal warrior-type dude who ruled over one of the more powerful Illyrian tribes. Now, Illyria is basically just what Greeks called anyone who lived on the Adriatic coast north of Greece, but Agron and Teuta were almost certainly from present-day Albania, a detail that bears mentioning mostly because the Albanians don’t really like being confused with Serbs or Croats, in case you missed that memo.
Anyways, in 231 BC King Agron was the shit, and he put together this dope ass army and conquered all of Illyria in a maelstrom of blood, then set his sights south towards Greece. One tribe near the Greek border that was really pissing him off were the Aetolians, so when those assholes besieged a city allied with Agron, the Illyrian King responded by launching landing 5,000-guys in an amphibious night attack from the Adriatic Sea, capturing the high ground, then charging downhill with heavy infantry, routing his enemy, destroying their camp, and breaking the spirit of their army. And like I struggle to organize D&D over Zoom while every person I know is currently quarantined in their own homes with literally nothing better to do, so ripping off a massive coordinated night attack like this at a time when all light sources were primarily based around setting things on fire and this maneuver was like some super hardcore SEAL Team Six shit. The victory was so badass that everyone just went nuts and had this huge rager party, where King Agron got so drunk that his lungs exploded.
Illyrian noble infantry.
Illyria.
Rule of the Illyrians technically passed to Agron’s son, but that kid was only two years old, and two year olds can’t be trusted alone in a room with anything that isn’t covered in fourteen inches of Nerf foam so you really are asking for trouble if you put one of those little bastards in charge of your entire civilization. Teuta took over as regent, meaning she ran shit until the kid’s balls dropped, and she went right to work completing the Good Work that King Agron was doing with regards to the plundering, conquering, destruction, etc. She sent armies to the Peleponnese, sacking and ravaging the lands that fucking Sparta was supposed to be defending, then her armies captured Phoenice, the wealthiest city in the Northern Greek region of Epirus, held it for ransom, and then gave it back to its population in exchange for money, slaves, treasure, and the undying loyalty of its citizenry. Then, when she wasn’t dispatching armies to loot and plunder her enemies, she went Queen Elizabeth BC and basically told any Albanian dude with a rowboat and a scimitar that she wasn’t going to punish them if they raided and pirated and plundered shipping along the Adriatic… as long as they cut her in for a percentage of the profits.
It was an amazingly profitable enterprise, and for the next few years no ships were safe — the talented, deadly, and hard-hitting Illyrian pirate fleet shredded through Greek and Roman shipping, dominating the richest and most trade-heavy waters on earth and taking whatever they wanted from whomever they wanted at all times.
This is a bit of a dramatization, but you get the idea.
Ok, all of this was pretty badass, but the whole “attacking shipping between Italy and Greece” thing, while undeniably lucrative, didn’t really go down well with the new up-and-coming power in the Mediterranean at this time -- the Roman Republic. Rome got kind of annoying by having all their trade ships jacked by Illyrian pirates, so they sent these two brothers to go talk to Teuta and tell her to knock that shit off. They met her in her throne room in the city of Scoda and demanded that she not only order a cease-fire on all Illyrian piracy, but also pay Rome reparations for all the ships and goods and shit they lost.
Teuta was kind of busy with managing the Siege of Issa and all the other conquests she was undertaking, so (according to Roman sources) she told the ambassadors that "it was contrary to the custom of the Illyrian kings to hinder their subjects from winning booty from the sea". Which is basically the polite Classical way of saying “go fuck yourself”.
Well, the Romans didn’t like hearing this, and the ambassadors they’d sent really weren’t down with having some mean lady tell them she was too busy to listen to them whine and complain about dumb shit -- one of them basically started lecturing Queen Teuta on manners, and respect, and all that good stuff you read in the comments section any time a woman with any sort of power or authority posts a paragraph of text online. But while that sometimes works on reddit it’s not really a good strategy when face-to-face with a warrior queen who is currently sitting on a throne surrounded by loyal pirate soldiers, and, naturally, Queen Teuta had that dude’s throat cut and his brother chucked into an Albanian prison.
Very badass. Probably not a great move long term, but, under the circumstances, there aren’t really any better ways for a badass to handle such a blatant act of douchiness.
Teuta ordering her enemies executed for insolence.
So this is as good a time as any to mention that the only real sources of the Queen Teuta story we have were written by the Romans, who hated her guts and were basically against any women in power anywhere. So you got to take a lot of this with a grain of salt. The story above, about the ambassadors being killed, has a real Fake News feel to it, but we don’t have any other sources to go on so that’s what we’ve got. Honestly, it’s probably more of a Boudicca thing, where the King of a powerful tribe dies, his wife takes over, and the Romans step in because they have a strict “no girls allowed” policy with regards to transfer of executive power, and then they send in the army to settle things. But who knows. The point is -- Rome was mad. And they were assembling an army to come put an end to the piracy.
But, whatever. Teuta wasn’t worried. This whole “Roman Republic” thing was probably totally overrated anyways. Plus, in the meantime, the Pirate Queen of Illyria had a war to run, and she continued the Siege of Corcyra, a powerful Greek port city. She besieged the city with a large army and blockaded it with her navy, but the Greeks showed up with a fleet of warships to try and break through the Illyrian cordon. The Illyrians, facing a much larger Greek fleet, responded with an ingenious plan where they lashed their smaller ships together to protect their crews from being rammed by the huge Greek Quadriremes and Quintiremes. Without getting too complicated, it was like strapping two pillows to your chest and letting your brother punch you as hard as he possibly can, only instead of pillows it was empty warships and instead of your brother it was a five-decked wooden battering ram being propelled towards you by a team of 300 ripped Greek guys rowing as hard as they possibly could. The Illyrians absorbed the ramming attacks, counterattacked with Marines, and crushed their enemies, capturing 4 quatriremes, sinking a pentere, and sinking the enemy flagship with the commander still inside it. The city surrendered immediately.
Ancient ship combat was basically just bumper cars on fire.
Well, things were going awesome, but five or six years into Queen Teuta’s reign the ROmans showed up with a truly massive fleet and 20,000 legionnaires, all battle-hardened from the War with Carthage and drilled by professional hardcore Roman drill instructors. Teuta rallied the Illyrian defenses, but she was immediately betrayed by her top General, this total d-bag named Demetrius, and it’s really hard to win a war when your top commander sells you out to a disciplined enemy force that already outnumbers you. Teuta fought heroically, commanding a fighting withdrawal in the face of insurmountable enemy pressure, but ultimately was forced to surrender to Rome in 227 BC. Before she did, however, there are rumors that she took a bunch of plunder and treasure she’d accumulated from both her pirates and her armies and buried it in a cave on an island somewhere in her domain. This is almost certainly bullshit, sure, but it’s still awesome.
The Romans allowed Teuta to rule a small domain after she surrendered, but they made that traitor Demetrius the regent for King Agron’s young son. It didn’t end well for that asshole, of course, because Rome always managed to find a way to fuck over people who weren’t Romans, and while it’s funny in the case of Demetrius it was less cathartic when they decided they couldn’t keep this Queen Teuta around to stir up trouble so they sent guys to take her out as well. Teuta wasn’t going to down like that however, so when she heard guys were coming for her she left her palace, climbed to the top of a nearby mountain, placed a curse on the city of Risan so that they’d never be able to build a good ship again, and then hurled herself off a goddamn mountain to her death. Which is a really baller way to go out… I love that her last words were a super-weird and oddly-specific curse on the city where she was currently residing. She may as well have been swan-diving off the mountain flipping double-birds on the way down.
Teuta is a pretty common name in Albania to this day. She appears on their money, has a special place in the hearts of the Albanian people, and, if you go to the city of Durres you’ll see that the National Bank of Albania has a huge-ass statue of her reclining on a chaise lounge and wearing nothing but a spear, a shield, a badass helmet.
Not a bad way to be remembered.
Links:
Sources:
Champion, Craige. Cultural Politics in Polybius's Histories. University of California Press, 2004.
Jackson, Guida M. Women Rulers Throughout the Ages. ABC-CLIO, 1999.
Salisbury, Joyce E.. Encyclopedia of Women in the Ancient World. ABC-CLIO, 2001.
The Cambridge Ancient History. Cambridge University Press, 1970.