Illyricum was born from a need to link Roman political interests in Macedonia and North Italy – later Cisalpine Gaul – and from the late Republican political backwater it became a crown jewel in imperial geo-political structure. The extension of Roman power in the region was a gradual process, which evolved through time from the late Republican interventionism, to the organised large-scale military operations conducted by Octavian and Tiberius. Insufficient evidence remains a great, almost unbeatable curse that Clio nostra casts upon Illyricum and its historians. It is the main reason why the indigenous peoples of Illyricum still remain ‘people without history’, to paraphrase the title of E. Wolf's influential book, and why Illyricum is still one of the least popular regions of ancient Europe for research for ancient historians.

The Roman political conduct in the region cannot be depicted or analysed in a single ‘objective’ narrative; it was a multifaceted, non-linear process, which existed in a number of different parallel historical narratives. The most influential narratives are certainly those present in the written sources, ‘the discourse of the dominant’, written by the members of the Roman elite and reflecting their perception of the world.