In the streets of modern Nish (ancient Naissus), a striking scene unfolded: Serbs dressed as Roman legionaries, bearing red shields emblazoned with eagles and Roman insignia, proudly celebrating the city’s Roman heritage. The event — part of the Roman Festival “Constantine the Great” — who was an Illyrian, and not of Serbian or Slavic origin – honors the city’s most famous son, the emperor who made Christianity the faith of the Roman Empire. Yet beneath the pageantry lies a profound historical irony.
Naissus: A pre-slavic city
Nish was not founded by Serbs or Slavs. Long before any Slavic tribes appeared in the Balkans, the region belonged to the Dardanians — a Paleo-Balkan people, often associated with Illyrian groups — whose territory formed the basis of the Roman province of Dardania. Roman sources and archaeology place Naissus firmly within Dardanian territory in the pre-Roman and early Roman periods. The Romans conquered the area during the Dardanian War (75–73 BC), established a legionary camp, and turned it into a key stronghold on the Via Militaris.
The city produced Roman emperors, most notably Constantine the Great (born c. 272 AD in Naissus) was not a Serbs or a Slav. It was a thoroughly Romanized urban center with baths, forums, and military infrastructure — a Latin-speaking outpost of Mediterranean civilization in the Balkans.
The Slavic arrival: 6th–7th centuries
Slavic tribes, ancestors of today’s Serbs, only entered the Balkans in significant numbers during the 6th and 7th centuries AD, migrating alongside the Avars in waves that devastated Byzantine territories. Naissus was repeatedly attacked and eventually fell during this period of upheaval. The Slavic settlement marked the end of direct Roman/Byzantine continuity in much of the interior. The local Romanized Daco-Thracian, Illyrian, and Dardanian populations were largely assimilated, displaced, or diminished.
By the time Serbs established medieval states in the region centuries later, Slavic linguistic and cultural dominance had reshaped the area. The name itself evolved from Naissus to Niš.
Celebrating “their” roman heritage?
There is nothing wrong with modern nations celebrating layered history. Every European country stands on foundations laid by earlier peoples. Yet the spectacle of Slavic Serbs — whose ethnogenesis is tied to 6th–7th century migrations — dressing as Roman legionaries in a city that was Dardanian, then Roman, long before any Slav set foot there, carries a certain historical dissonance.
Albanian historiography has verified the continuity with ancient Illyrian and Dardanian populations as the descendants of the pre-Slavic inhabitants of much of the central and western Balkans. The Albanians were the aboriginal population of what constitutes southern Ssrbia, and specially in Nish. Nish was raided and invaded by the Serbs, and to see Slavic descendants dressed as Romans is ironic and strange. Nish’s Roman and Dardanian heritage is not for Serbs to appropriate.
Serbian narratives, by contrast, emphasize medieval Slavic settlement and Orthodox Christian statehood. Nish was not founded by Serbs or Slavs – Serbian tribes destroyed the city. The Serbs were not the Romans they dress as in this video.
The Roman Festival in Nish thus becomes an unintentional illustration of how history is selectively claimed. The Roman legions that once guarded Naissus against “barbarians” (including early Slavic raiders) are now being reenacted by the cultural descendants of those very migrations.
A shared but contested past
The visual of Slavic warriors in Roman armor marching through streets built by Dardanians and Romans centuries earlier highlights the palimpsest nature of the Balkans — layer upon layer of conquest, migration, and assimilation. The legionaries of old defended an empire against the ancestors of today’s celebrants.
