City
Dyrratio
Durrës
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Dyrratio is the copyist's spelling, shaped by the way medieval Latin was pronounced, for Dyrrachium, the port city now called Durrës in Albania. Its older Greek name was Epidamnos, yet Dyrrachium already appears on coins from the fifth century BC, and in Roman times it won out for a curious reason: in Epidamnus, Roman ears heard damnum, meaning loss or harm, a bad omen. The harbour town was a free community in Cicero's day and held Roman rights under Augustus. After 314 it became capital of the province of Epirus Nova, and by the fifth century at the latest it was a bishop's seat.