Due to the archaic features found in the ancient Greek name of the city: Onchesmus () and the toponyms of the surrounding region it appears that the site was part of the proto-Greek area of late 3rd-early 2nd millennium BC Bronze Age tools typical of Mycenaean Greece have been unearthed in Sarandë which date c. 1400-1100 BC. In antiquity the city was known by the name of "Onchesmus" or "Onchesmos" and was a port-town of Chaonia in ancient Epirus, opposite the northwestern point of Corcyra, and the next port upon the coast to the south of Panormus. It was inhabited by the Greek-speaking tribe of the Chaonians. Onchesmos flourished as the port of the Chaonian capital Phoenice (modern-day Finiq). It seems to have been a place of importance in the time of Cicero, and one of the ordinary points of departure from Epirus to Italy, as Cicero calls the wind favourable for making that passage an "Onchesmites". According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus the real name of the place was the Port of Anchises (Ἀγχίσου λιμήν), named after Anchises, the father of Aeneas; and it was probably owing to this tradition that the name Onchesmus assumed the form of "Anchiasmus" or "Anchiasmos" () under the Byzantine Empire.