Buthrotum According to the Roman writer Virgil, its legendary founder was the seer Helenus, a son of king Priam of Troy, who had moved West after the fall of Troy with Neoptolemus and his concubine Andromache. Both Virgil and the Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus recorded that Aeneas visited "Bouthroton" after his own escape from the destruction of Troy. The earliest archaeological evidence of settled occupation dates to between 10th and 8th centuries BC, although some claim that there is earlier evidence of habitation in the 12th century BC. Excavation at Bouthroton has yielded Proto-Corinthian pottery of the 7th century and
Helenus the bones of Pelops to Troy, and persuaded Neoptolemus (Achilles' son by the Scyrian princess Deidamia) and Philoctetes (who possessed Heracles' bow and arrows) to join the Greeks in the war. Neoptolemus was hiding from the war at Scyrus, but the Greeks retrieved him. Neoptolemus had taken Andromache, Helenus's sister-in-law, and Hector's widow, as a slave and concubine after the fall of Troy, and fathered Molossus, Pielus and Pergamus with her. After the fall of Troy, Helenus went with Neoptolemus, according to Apollodorus' Epitome 6.13. He traveled with Neoptolemus, Andromache and their children to Epirus, where Neoptolemus permitted him to