Above: Kalivo, southern side.
Above right: Epirus in the Mediterranean. Drawing by Andrew Crowson.

Kalivo is a commanding hill. Within its immense viewshed lies the Pavllas River Valley and Lake Butrint. Environmental studies of the lake suggest that before the end of the Hellenistic period, it was an isthmus with water surrounding three sides and a stretch of water on its northern flank. Given its proximity to Butrint, the first professional archaeologist to study the hill, Luigi Maria Ugolini, regarded Kalivo as a “second acropolis,” or an appendage to Butrint. As a prehistorian devoted to Classical scholarship, he mined ancient literary sources for topographical information. This left him at an impasse. He felt confident that Vergil’s third book of the Aeneid correctly described Butrint as “parva Troia” (little Troy). However, he could not reconcile this account with the nearly contemporary writings of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who noted: “The presence of the Trojans at Buthrotum is proved by a hill called Troy, where they encamped at that time [when the city was founded].”

The young Ugolini pondered whether it was Butrint or the enigmatic Kalivo that was called Troy in Epirus (the northwestern area of ancient Greece). Its name is believed to derive from the Vlach word kaliva, meaning shepherd’s hut and campsite. Transhumant Vlach pastoralists, who occupied the hilltop in winter months during their seasonal migration from mountain villages, may have given Kalivo its modern name.

Large numbers of prehistoric sherds at Kalivo indicate a settlement of some substance in the Late Bronze Age (LBA), around the 13th century BCE. However, British archaeologist Nicholas Hammond long ago reported that necklace beads were recovered from Kalivo dating to the 6th century BCE, pointing to another possible date. Much more intriguing is the precise date of its Cyclopean and polygonal walls with their well-made, if narrow, gates. Our recent survey shows at least two principal phases of fortifications. The earliest masonry comprises a series of regularly spaced large boulders with smaller stones in between. In its simplicity, the early wall resembles the LBA enclosures found at smaller nearby sites. Later, this wall was replaced with one of polygonal masonry that featured three narrow gates. These well-crafted walls seem to be the strongest clue to the period of settlement. Recent regional surveys and studies of wall typology suggest a date in the Classical period (5th century BCE) for its original construction (first phase). This is broadly contemporary with the earliest known fortification circuit enclosing the acropolis of Butrint, erected in the earlier part of that century.

The walls and gates of the second and more substantial phase appear to belong to the Hellenistic period (323–31 BCE), when the hill lay within the tribal kingdom of Chaonia. Several forts with walls and gates strongly resembling Kalivo were discovered by archaeological surveys in the neighboring region of Thesprotia in northwestern Greece. In his study of two Thesprotian fortresses, Mikko Suha found a similar gateway design involving thresholds at Ayios Donatos and Elea resembling the architecture discovered
during our excavations of the South Gate at Kalivo. The similarities are too striking to ignore. Suha proposes these Thesprotian fortresses date to the expansionist period of King Pyrrhus in the earlier 3rd century BCE.

Troy and “Little Troy”

Troy was an ancient maritime city in Anatolia (modern Turkey). According to legend, the famed city was attacked and ultimately destroyed by a coalition of Greek states after a ten-year war at the end of the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1200 BCE). The Illiad and the Odyssey, epic poems ascribed to Homer and sung in Iron Age Greece for centuries, extol the virtues of legendary heroes of Troy, such as Achilles, Odysseus, Hector, Agamemnon, and Ajax. The Romans traced their own ancestry to Aeneas, the purported son of the goddess Venus and the Trojan prince, who landed on the shores of Italy as a refugee after escaping the sack of Troy. Writing in the time of Augustus, Vergil’s Aeneid (3.289–505) refers to the sacred origins of Buthrotum (Butrint), which was said to have been founded by Helenus, Aeneas’s Trojan kinsman who also escaped Troy. In the story, after encountering the bereaved widow Andramache at Hector’s empty tomb at Buthrotum, Aeneas proclaims that the city was built as a “parva Troia” (little Troy), complete with a copy of Pergama, Troy’s citadel, its famous gate, Scaea, and the rivers Simois and Xanthus. The purported ancestral and spiritual links between Troy, Rome, and Buthrotum, mentioned by the contemporary writers Ovid and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, underpinned the ideology of the city’s colonization in the age of Augustus.

The Mystery of Kalivo’s Size and Grandeu

With kinship ties to Alexander the Great, King Pyrrhus of Epirus (319–272 BCE) governed one of the most powerful kingdoms in the Mediterranean, famously coming to the defense of the Greek cities of southern Italy against Rome. After consolidating all the Epirote tribal groups, he expanded the dominion of Epirus to its greatest territorial extent with the incorporation of southern Illyria and Akarnania. Pyrrhus founded cities, such as Antigonea and Berenice, constructed immense fortifications throughout Epirus, and built numerous urban monuments, including the theatre at Dodona and possibly the theatre at Butrint. Might Kalivo be a Pyrrhic foundation that preceded his famous invasion of southern Italy?

Certainly, Kalivo’s fortifications are, in places, imposing. The walls, probably erected in more than one construction campaign, did not extend to the steep-faced northern side overlooking the lagoon, a feature typical of Greek fortified sites. Access into the enclosure was by three gates, two on the eastern, landward side and one in the southern segment. Satellite imagery shows that the western fortification extended some 230 m further along the whole of the western side for a distance of about 580 m.

The fortress encloses a surface area of roughly 23 ha. Remarkably, this would have been over 15 times the size of Butrint’s acropolis (approximately 1.5 ha) in the 5th century BCE and almost four times that of the entire fortified headland of Butrint (approximately 6 ha) in the 3rd century BCE. In fact, Kalivo was by far the largest fortified site in the entire region, second only to the Chaonian capital, Phoinike, where the combined fortifications of the acropolis and lower city enclose an area of about 50 hectares.

Despite the size and grandeur of its fortifications, surveys and excavations discovered that the fortified hill never possessed any major settlement. In their assessments of the hill, Ugolini and, later, Budina found no traces of internal structures. Surveys by the Butrint Foundation in 1995, 1996, and 2001, followed by excavations in 2004, identified some simple structures on the summit, particularly within a stone wall
enclosure that featured remains ranging from small 2 x 2 m rooms to larger buildings. These intramural structures are perplexing, as they do not appear to represent the remains of an urban settlement. The interrupted building lines and the lack of tumbled masonry surrounding the buildings suggest that the original walls were probably very low or not constructed entirely of stone. The scale of the fortifications, the absence of ancient settlement remains, and the paucity of Classical and Hellenistic pottery are puzzling.

King Pyrrhus and His Costly Victories

Pyrrhus (319–272 BCE) was King of Epirus. He is remembered today for his costly military successes against Macedonia and Rome, which gave rise to the phrase “Pyrrhic victory.” Crowned king at only 12 years old, he allied himself with Demetrius Poliorketes of Macedonia. Dethroned by an uprising in 302 BCE, Pyrrhus fought beside Demetrius in Asia and was sent to Alexandria as a hostage following a treaty between Ptolemy and Demetrius. Ptolemy befriended Pyrrhus and restored him to his Epirote throne in 297. At first, Pyrrhus reigned with a kinsman, Neoptolemus, but later organized his colleague’s assassination. In 294, he enlarged Epirus first by conquest then by marriage. In 281, Tarentum (in southern Italy) asked for Pyrrhus’s assistance against Rome. He invaded Italy with about 25,000 men and won a costly victory over the Romans
at Heraclea in 280. In 279, again suffering heavy casualties, he defeated the Romans at Asculum (Ascoli Satriano) in Puglia. In 278, he invaded Sicily, capturing most of the Punic province except Lilybaeum (Marsala). His methods provoked a revolt of the Greek Sicilians and, in 275, he returned to fight the Romans at Beneventum (Benevento). Back in Epirus, he defeated the Macedonians before attacking Sparta. He was killed alongside his troops and war elephants while fighting in the streets of Argos.

Livestock Enclosure or Military Encampment?

Two hypotheses might explain the strange character of Kalivo. Do the Vlach shepherds that Ugolini photographed here in the 1920s offer a clue? Was Kalivo a place for the seasonal corralling of large herds of cattle or sheep? According to the ancient sources, stock raising had always been a distinctive economic characteristic of Epirus. From the time of Hesiod down to the Roman Empire, historical accounts of Epirus repeatedly refer to pastoralism and animal husbandry as the principal source of livelihood in the region. Later, Cicero and Varro describe the Epirotici and Synepirotae as the collective names of wealthy Romans who controlled large-scale pastoral and cattle ranches in Epirus. These Italian stock breeders produced quality goods (e.g., wool, racehorses, and cows) for export to Italy to meet new consumer demands. Julius Caesar, reflecting on his campaigns in the region, dismissed Epirus as “aspera” (harsh) and “montuosa” (mountainous), but noted that while cereals were scarce, the region possessed plentiful supplies of cattle. In his war against Pompey, Caesar’s troops survived on meat and a native root called chara.

Do Kalivo’s encircling walls belong to events when livestock was exported from the valley? Certainly, the construction of such a large enclosure for penning animals would seem to be the work of a community with an explicit purpose. It would have been an entirely different strategy to corralling animals at dispersed ranches as found in modern Vlach households.

A more compelling hypothesis is that Kalivo functioned as a fortified military camp and defensive refuge for Butrint’s inhabitants during the Classical and Hellenistic periods. In the age of Augustus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus considered the hill to be the site of an ancient encampment established by Butrint’s Trojan founders. The earliest phase of Kalivo’s fortifications appear to date to the early 5th century BCE, judging from the evidence of its wall typology, the discovery of imported Attic sherds at the site, and the occupation sequence at Butrint. The fortifications might have been erected by neighboring Corfu at about the time when those around Butrint were first constructed. A reference to these defenses appears to have been made by Thucydides when describing the stasis (civil strife) on Corfu in 427 BCE that emerged shortly after the start of the Peloponnesian War. In this conflict, the oligoi (oligarchic faction), supported by Greek Corinthians and Epirote Chaonians, contended with the island’s demos (democratic faction) allied to Athens. Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War (3.85) reports that 500 Corfiot oligarchs seized the τείχη (forts) on the peraia (mainland territory) and occupied them as a base to attack the revolutionary citizens on the island. The word τείχη is the plural form of τεῖχος, which means fort or the walls of a Greek military camp. Kalivo was evidently the largest fortified site in Corfu’s peraia.

Corfu’s Last Defense

The focus of the Butrint Foundation’s surveys and excavations within the fortifications at Kalivo was the unique walled enclosure on the southern summit of the hill, measuring roughly 70 x 40 m and built of cut limestone. Numerous close-built structures were identified that originally would have consisted of a superstructure of either mudbrick or wood built above low walls. These could have served as living quarters, shelters, barracks, or other installations associated with a military camp. Among the structures surveyed, the most significant was judged to be a rectangular building (approximately 8 x 5 m) on the northern end of the enclosure. It was built of cut stones and boulders similar to those comprising the fortification wall. Excavation of the building yielded Hellenistic pottery and numerous floor and roof tile fragments, including a large, complete roof tile. Owing to its substantial size and commanding position, the building was interpreted as a key observation and communication point, serving as the principal defense of the northern side of the hill. From here there were commanding views across the expanse of Lake Butrint and along the Vivari Channel well beyond Butrint towards the Straits of Corfu. Historical sources record that Corfu had a large army in the Archaic and Classical periods and that the Epirote tribes also possessed substantial armies in the Hellenistic period. A key issue is surely that the fortifications at Butrint and its hinterland were constructed immediately before Butrint was abandoned by Corfu (ca. 475 BCE). The rising power of the Epirote tribes, in this case the Chaonians, may have provided the impetus for their construction, perhaps as a last defense of Corfu’s peraia. When the oligarchic faction occupied these defenses in 427 BCE, Thucydides notes that they were supported by the Chaonians, who must have been in control of the mainland after Butrint’s abandonment and Corfu’s loss of its peraia. The rebuilding of Kalivo’s walls and reuse of the encampment would coincide with the militarization of Epirus under King Pyrrhus. At the time, the Epirote king fielded one of the strongest and most effective Hellenistic professional armies in the Mediterranean. The Greek cities of Magna Graecia (South Italy) expected Pyrrhus to draw upon a large, well-trained, amply equipped, and ready army from Epirus to lead its war against Rome. As Hammond observed: “It is tantalizing that so much is known of the conflicts of Pyrrhus with Rome and with other states, but so little of his activities in Illyria and Epirus.” Kalivo and its contemporary fortified sites in Chaonia may represent some of Pyrrhus’s martial ambition matching the scale of his professional armies in Epirus.

Do Narrow Gates Offer a Clue?

In many ways, Kalivo may be compared to Koroni, the fortified hilltop site in the territory of the deme (suburb or subdivision) Prasiai in Attica. As James R. McCredie notes in the introduction to his seminal study, Fortified Military Camps in Attica, “The results of these excavations not only conclusively showed that Koroni was not the site of the deme-center of Prasiai, but provided solid evidence for a little-studied and almost unknown kind of site—a foreign military camp in Attica, and one whose construction could be dated to within a few years.” The site of Koroni had walls that “enclosed an area large enough for a considerable force” and featured six gates, of which three were posterns of 1 m width and three were narrow gates 1.0 to 1.5 m wide. The gates at Kalivo are also notably narrow: two are less than 2 m wide and only one is near a regular width at 4 m. The fortified camp at Koroni was built in support of Athens by Ptolemy II of Egypt. It must be noted here that Ptolemy II was not only a contemporary of Pyrrhus, but also had an intriguing relationship with him on account of his father Ptolemy I’s long-standing alliance with Pyrrhus. Pyrrhus’s wife Antigone, Queen of Epirus, was the daughter of Berenice, queen of Egypt and first wife of Ptolemy I.

The interpretation of Kalivo as a Classical and later Hellenistic military encampment and refuge attached to the urban center of Butrint conforms to the general framework of Greek territorial defenses. In this respect, Butrint was no different than a typical polis (city state). As Rune Frederiksen observes in Greek City Walls of the Archaic Period, 900–480 BCE (Oxford, 2011): “In Classical and Hellenistic Greece the walls of a polis-town, the urban center of the polis, were often one constituent part only of a complex system of fortifications of the same polis-state, which included networks of forts and towers spreading out to the most remote corners of the territory.” Recent research at Phoinike has shown that the defense of the city began with the defense of its territory. In the case of Butrint, the fortified military camp of Kalivo would have served as the nexus of its territorial fortlets, including those known at Mursi, Malathrea, and Çuka e Aitoit. Judging from its comparatively small size in respect to Epirote sites and the large territory it controlled over the Pavllas River Valley, the fortified acropolis of Buthrotum, with its sanctuary of Athena Polias, was simply not large enough to accommodate Butrint’s population as a defensive refuge. All the evidence points to the enigmatic fortified site of Kalivo fulfilling this critical purpose—and being a legacy of King Pyrrhus’s vaunting ambition.

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David Hernandez, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Classical Archaeology and Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and Director of the Roman Forum Excavations Project at Butrint. Richard Hodges, Ph.D., is Scientific Director of the Butrint Foundation and President Emeritus, American University in Rome. Dr. Hodges is also a Distinguished Consulting Scholar and former Williams Director of the Penn Museum. He writes a regular column for the magazine Current World Archaeology, which focused on the Penn Museum—“A Museum for the Coming Ages”—in February 2021, Issue 105.

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For Further Reading

On Kalivo

Hernandez, D.R., and Hodges, R. 2020. Butrint
7. Beyond Butrint: Kalivo, Mursi, Çuka e Aitoit, Diaporit and the Vrina Plain, Surveys and Excavations in the Pavllas River Valley, Albania, 1928–2015. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

On Butrint and Its Region

Hammond, N.G.L. 1976. Epirus: The Geography, the Ancient Remains, the History and the Topography of Epirus and Adjacent Areas. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Hernandez, D.R. 2017. Bouthrotos (Butrint) in the Archaic and Classical Periods: The Acropolis and Temple of Athena Polis. Hesperia 86:205–271.

Hernandez, D.R. 2017. Buthrotum’s Sacred Topography and the Imperial Cult, I: The West Courtyard and Pavement Inscription. Journal of Roman Archaeology 30: 38–63.

Hodges, R. 2006. Eternal Butrint: A UNESCO World Heritage Site in Albania. London: General Penne.
Hodges, R. 2017. The Archaeology of Mediterranean Placemaking. Butrint and the Global Heritage Industry. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

On King Pyrrhus

Plutarch (trans. Perrin. B.). 1920. The Parallel Lives, IX. Cambridge MA: Loeb Classical Library.
All images in this article are courtesy of the Butrint Foundation, unless noted otherwise.