Lichnidos (Ohrid) And St.Sophia
In The Pre-Christian Period

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It is undoubted that the site of the old part of presentday Ohrid was inhabited as early as prehistoric times. As regards the Late Roman period, it is most elaborately studied in the work of Papazoglu. He states that the earliest surviving written document on Lichnidos dates from the 5th century BC. This was occasioned by the Roman-Macedonian Wars which lasted several centuries. Lichnidos of Dassaret is mentioned in the Third Roman-Macedonian War from 171 B.C. as the principal Roman military base, and eventually, in the 1st century B.C., when the Roman province of Macedonia was established, Lichnidos, as an already organized polis, became the capital of the Dassaret region. I will quote Papazoglu verbatim on the Lichnidos of the Roman period:" The economic and political conditions in the Penestinian and Dassaret lands were similar, and if one could draw any conclusions based on their positions, then advantage in development should be given to the Lichnidos over the Penestinian region. Livy describes Uscana Penestinae as a town of 10,000 inhabitants .... Lichnidos could not have been any different from it in any respect. If it had fallen behind it at the time of the Roman invasion, then under Roman government, as the centre of Dassaretia, it must have soon caught up with it and even surpassed it.''
There is insufficient material evidence for a full reconstruction of the town during the Roman period. It was
transformed in the course of the Early Christian, still Toman period, and then totally devastated during the onslaught of Slav tribes that stretched over several centuries. Nevertheless,. Malenko, an archaeologist from Ohrid, provides us with a picture of Ohrid in those times. In addition to the recently unearthed amphitheatre, which was identified as a Graeco-Roman structure, the following information is included as well: remains from the Roman period were discovered in today's Gorna Porta, as well as the pavement of a Roman street with a preserved curb and at points the preserved base of a column. This street leads towards the theatre. Along today's Ilindenska Street, leading towards the lake shore, remnants of buildings dating from the Toman period were discovered, at the site where theManchev's house used to stand. The second Roman gate, which has been walled in, can be seen clearly under the fortress tower. Today it is the site of the Holy Mother of God of Celnica. Traces of a number of Classical structures have been discovered further along St. Clement Street which leads towards Gorna Porta.On the site of Deboi, a Hellenistic necropolis with rich gifts dating from the 4th century B.C. was excavated on Horizon II. Furnaces dating from the Classical period for the slaking of lime and baking of bricks were excavated on the site of the today's Old Market Place at Ohrid. Outside the town, on the site of Paterica, Roman buildings and coins from the times of Nero (54-68) and Constantine I (306-337) have been excavated.
I shall quote Papazoglu again for further facts regarding the city of Lichnidos: " In Lichnidos, the Hellenistic culture which had been present here before the Roman conquests mixed with the autochthonous culture of the local population from the region of Dassaret ..... a border region between Epirus and Macedonia." With firmer establishment of Roman rule, and particularly with the Roman reconstruction of the Via Egnatia, the city gained in importance and received a fresh impulse towards urban development. In the opening centuries of the new era, Roman peace arrived in this region, while wars were waged far away on the northern and the eastern borders of the Roman Empire. Lichnidos was a convenient resting point on the way to the far Roman provinces not only for the Roman legionaries but for their leaders, consuls and emperors. The monuments with votive inscriptions also reflect life in Ohrid at that time :" One of the largest among them, whose three scattered fragments were identified by (ulic as parts of the same monument .... when combined, has the dimensions of 180 x 75 cm and is only a part of the monumental inscription in
four rows that decorated a public building. We learn from it that one Marcus Aurelius, an excellent ducenarius, donated to his country a building whose architecture can be only be speculated on the size and beauty of the inscription. On another marble altar, Gaius Julius, a gymnasiarchus, is mentioned and on a third one Aurelius Cratet, son of Ptolomeus, so famous for his erudition that the people of Athens built him a statue in Asclepius.
A reconstruction of a Classical town can hardly be made on the basis of such meagre information. My efforts may provide us with only an imaginary version, yet, I will permit myself to do that, always bearing in mind that my main goal is to determine the function of the Roman building present in Horizon I of St. Sophia at Ohrid.
In the history of architecture the Roman castrum was a city inhabited with war veterans. It was a large square or rectangular area surrounded by bulwarks and towers. As a rule, it had four city gates from which the main street, called the Cardo Maximus, ran north-south and the second main street, called the Decumanus Maximus ran east-west. The remaining area of the city was divided with an orthogonal net of side streets. At the crossing of the two main streets, Cardo and Decumanus, was the city centre, the forum. It was the main town-planning feature and the place for public gatherings.The public buildings were ordered around the forum :basilicas, baths, gymnasion, palaestra, amphitheatre and taverns and also palaces for the rich. Housing for the rest of the citizens was organized within the remaning area. The necropolis and the workshops that polluted the environment were located outside the city walls.
However, such a perfect organization could be found only in newly founded towns and only on flat terrains. Most of the provincial towns on the Balkans were founded on settlements already existing from the pre -Roman period. These were situated on hills and many of them already had a fortress or at least a citadel. On the territory of the Middle Balkans and in Macedonia , in the abandoned and then unearthed cities such as Scupi,Stobi, Heraclea, Caricin Grad, Ulpiana, Philippi etc. I found analogies that gave me sufficient additional information. All of them had more structural and urban remains from the Roman period than our Lichnidos where life in the centuries that followed covered or completely destroyed the structures and the urban organization of the Roman period.
The Roman period in Lichnidos can be recognized in the fortress whose remains go back all the way to prehistoric times. In 1965 I did research on the whole of the Ohrid fortress for the purpose of its conservation. In the manuscript
of my survey, which is deposited in the Ohrid museum, many places are mentioned, especially from the sites of Gorna Porta, Deboi and as far as Celnica. There, under the layer of masonry, previous layers of opus mixtum i.e. with three or four bends of bricks inserted in the stone masonry, can clearly be seen. The same opus was discovered by Vera Bitrakova in some walls in the polyconch church at Plaosnik and she identified it as an old Roman custom from the 3rd and the 4th centuries, mainly found in the eastern regions of the Roman Empire. Despite the fact that the first written information about the fortress appeared only in the 5th century, this opus is sufficient proof that the fortress had existed as early as the Roman period in a form
that was identical to that of the present-day. It also had a citadel and perimetrical walls that stretched from Labinovo all the way to the town district of Bolnica. In order to understand the fortress as a whole, the question of whether a similar bulwark existed on the south side, in the direction of the lake, has to be clarified. Steep and high cliffs stretch from Labinovo to the terrace now called Dolni Saraj. These cliffs could be defended without a bulwark. However , the depression already mentioned between Dolni Saraj and priest Fotij's tower had to be bridged with bulwarks as well and it is believed that it is their remains that are still visible today. This depression was completely destroyed during the major urban transformations in the centuries that followed. If it can be claimed with any certainty that this was the appearance of the fortress in the Roman period, then the area from the south wall to the lake and from St.Sophia to present day Dolna Porta can be treated as an area with a specific town function, which will be discussed further.
The fortress had two gates whose ruins can be dated back to the late Roman period. They are Gorna Porta and the Gate at the Celnica church. According to their position , in the plan of the fortress they can be seen as the North (Severna) and the East (Istocna Porta) Gates. Without any archaeological evidence, by solely following the slope of the terrain, the South Gate (Juzna Porta) can be located at the area around the Manevci's house. This is further confirmed by the present Ilindenska Street which leads from the North Gate (Severna Porta) to this point and can be identified as the Cardo Maximus. Most of the archaeological remains from the Roman period were discovered along this axis.The Decumanus Maximus can be traced from the East Gate along the present-day Klimentska and Hristo Uzunov Streets; it crosses the Cardo at what is now a widening by the Madzarovci's houses, but from there it cannot be traced any further. Perhaps, after winding over the Plaosnik terraces , it led to the citadel. However, it seems that no West Gate existed at all. Caricin Grad, where Decumanus Street ends with a citadel, can serve as an analogy. This basic town framework fits quite well into the Roman urban concept.. The side streets that form the present town districts are reflected in the orthogonal net which is adapted to the configuration of the terrain. The streets parallel to Decumanus follow its contour, providing conditions for car traffic; parallel to Cardo and perpendicular to the contours are the pedestrian communications. Such a grid in the street net is generally still present today, which is only natural, bearing in mind the universal needs of any town.
The town centre, the forum, can be clearly perceived still at the crossing of the Cardo and Decumanus Maximus, which is further confirmed by the relative flatness of this area. I would not like to go so far as to insist that as part of the Roman tradition the central square of the town was left completely unbuilt through the following centuries; if nothing more, a fountain and small bakery were to be built. The base of a column found near Gorna Porta points to the existence of colonnades along Cardo Street, along which taverns were built as in Stobi, UIpiana etc. Of all the publie buildings, only the site of the theatre can be determined with certainty. From here, all the way to the South Gate and especially around the forum, the sites of the basilica-courthouse, the gymnasium, the baths and the palaestra -- a gymnasiarchus is even mentioned in one inscription --, perhaps a church and the palaces of the rich can only be conjectured. The larger area around the forum was filled with residential buildings clustered together according to Roman urban regulations. This made the territory of this gigantic natural amphitheatre inside the city walls sufficient for around 10,000 citizens, which is exactly the number Papaz(glu suggested for Lichnidos in the Roman period. A distant analogy with Constantinople and the location of the Boukoleon castle suggests that the prominent citizens of Lichnidos built their palaces in the depression in the cliffs. The southern aspect and the openness to the lake make this location ideal for the wealthy and for those with a feeling for natural beauty.
The geomorphologic features of Plaosnik and Deboi made them predetermined for public town functions of a different type. Bitrakova pointed out that the atrium of the polyconch church belonged to a Classical structure that occupied part of this site.., and the entire first phase was part of a martyrium-type building typical of the 4th century. In the Roman period this space can be perceived as a large park with tall greenery in which, here and there small churches could be spotted ( Dionysus is mentioned in one inscription ). The second site Deboi, was similar in character .The discovery of an Early Christian basilica and a monastery of a later date point to the fact that this was also an ancient cult place.
Finally, I can return to the original subject of my research, the space around St. Sophia. This town section of old Lichnidos has a specific location. It is outside the city walls but it is still enclosed by the extended wall that goes to the lake and the controlled access at Dolna Porta. I do not need to look for analogies to note the special town function of the port and the town market. The shores of Lake Lichnidos
have always been well populated. At the time of the Toman-Macedonian Wars " around 217 B.C. Philip V entered Dassaretia, conquered Enchelanai, Kerax, Sation and Boioi
in the area around Lake Lchndos. As the capital of the region in the Roman period, Lichnidos was obviously a trading centre. Lake transportation of people and goods had its advantages over land transport and that was why a port was necessary. This area in the bay of Lichnidos is the best protected from the north and the west winds. And where there was a port, there was also a market, around which temporary and permanent warehouse storage for goods was located, together with inns and, finally, a basilica as a covered market, types of building familiar from the regulation for public building in Roman cities.
Having experienced the movement and the noise of a "prehistoric" market in old Ohrid in the 30's, when it had around 10,000 citizens, I can easily imagine such a scene.The lake was crowded with boats loaded with fish from the distant fishing grounds, firewood from the adjacent mountains and baskets full of grapes from the slopes around the lake. The boats would be tied to poles and unloaded. Loaded wheelcarts and donkeys would arrive in Lichnidos from the north with grain, vegetables and home-made cloth, and from Resen and Kicevo the famous pottery would also arrive. All had to pass the control point at Dolna Porta and pay the usual tax. This place filled with people and goods was dominated by a monumental building , the basilica-marketo Here the market administration was located and a variety of products was sold: milk and dairy products, honey, salt etc. From the archaeological evidence available in the deep foundations of present day St. Sophia, only the outer dimensions with the length and the width of the naos can be conjectured, together with the strength of the walls in the nave and aisleso They all suggest masonry with a facade of opus mixtum and the massive brick vaults typical of great Roman basilicas. Annexes in the form of colonnaded porches should be considered as well.The existing columns from the Turkish porch with their materials, massiveness and the rendering correspond more closely to Roman than to Early Christian structures. Even the stone blocks with Greek inscriptions used in St. Sophia in the secondary and the tertiary use,when compared with the elements of Roman carving ( on the architrave, for example), also appear as Roman originals. I will quote Papazoglu once again o " many of the votive monuments from the 4th and the 5th centuries have Greek inscriptions written over the older, erased Roman texts.
The question that could be asked is how such a monumental structure could be built in a provincial town like Lichnidos. In order to avoid being redundant I will only add that from the 1st century B.C. to the 4th century A.D. Lichnidos had 500 years of quiet development. This was the time when "Macedonia became a senatorial province and the legionls and their military activities were removed far to the north".22 I would also like to mention the famous Roman passion for building and the disproportionality in the urban development of the town. I am convinced that during these 500 years of Roman peace Lichnidos had much higher urban standards than Ohrid after the 500 years of Ottoman rule. Sufficient evidence of the high quality of the urban- structures in Lichnidos is given by the remains of the theatre and the already mentioned votive monuments. Nor should the characteristics of the countryside, lake and climate be neglected. That is why rulers have always been benevolent towards Lichnidos/Ohrid, as is still the case today.

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