The city of Lyncus
We know that N. Vulić in the early thirty's performed preliminary excavations outside the village of Gorenci with the task to find the settlement of the inhabitants to whom the necropolis at Trebenishte belonged, “Novi grobovi kod Trebeništa”, Spomenik, LXXVII, 1934. His observation is referred in whole as follows: “The signed person was this time also looking for a settlement where the inhabitants buried in the necropolis at Trebenishte, used to live. According to the testimonies of the local inhabitants, in the whole surrounding areas of the villages of Orovnik, Gorenci and Trebenishte, underground walls can be found in only one place, in front of Gorenci, approximately one kilometer away from the necropolis. The signed person had dug several ditches, leading to the subsoil. Wherever he would dig, he would really come up to walls. These must have been foundations of buildings. Unfortunately, only small parts of them had remained. In fact, there had never been more than one row of stones. The walls are without mortar or cement. Any conclusion regarding the period this settlement dated could not be made from them. Small objects, (such as chips of earth dishes) were not found at all, so that it could not be a basis for conclusion, either. Therefore, the question regarding the location of the settlement to which our necropolis belonged still cannot be answered”. In addition to that, there are some other clues about location of the city of Lyncus at the village of Gorenci. Lyncus, so called by Thucydides and Livy (59 BC – 17 AD) was situated to the east of the Dessaretii. It occupied the shores of the Ohrid Lake in direction of the river Black Drim with the hilly surroundings up to the city of Debar where Lyncestians also used to have some access to the silver mines of Damastium, in the Valley of Radika River. From the Livy's history of the first campaign of the Romans in Macedonia, which commenced apparently with the invasion of Lyncestis, the consul Sulpicius entered that territory from the country of the Dessaretii, and encamped on the river Bevus, near Lyncus. At Octolophus, Philip V, the king of Macedon challenged the Romans when many Macedonians were killed and some were driven into bogs and were sucked down together with their horses in the bottomless mud. Even the king Philip V was in danger, galloping round the swamp until he reached his camp in safety. Doubtlessly, the whole valley of Struga alongside the river Black Drim was waterlogged land and impossible for road communication from Ohrid to Sruga. When the road “Via Egnatia” was build, it must have followed a direction alongside the slope of the hills surrounding the valley of Sruga and passing the river Black Drim at Dobovjani, the place for the Pons Servilli. We also know by Anna Comnena, daughter of Emperor Alexius I that “the river Black Drymon runs down from the lake Lychnis through some hundred channels, which we call bridges. For separate rivers amounting to one hundred in number come out of this lake as if from different sources, they never failand flow separately in this way until they join into one river near Deure”. http://www.macedonia.se/en/Load/66/lyncus_city/ Download the brochure © Kiril Arsov, 2012 Copyright © 2001-2012 Macedonia Development Center