Triballi

Triballi, a Thracian people whose earliest known home was the “Triballian plain” (probably the Plain of Kosovo), near the junction of the Angrus and Brongus rivers (the western and southern Morava) in the north-central Balkans. Sometime after 424 bc they were overcome by the Autariatae, an Illyrian tribe. In 339 bc the Triballi refused to allow Philip II of Macedon to pass through the Haemus (Balkan) Range unless they received a share of his booty. Philip forced a passage but was wounded in the hostilities. After Philip’s death, Alexander the Great in 335 crossed the Haemus and defeated the Triballi. The Macedonian expeditions left the land of the Triballi devastated, and the nearby Illyrians conquered them. They later gathered enough strength to cause trouble to the Roman governors of Macedonia.