page_title: Tetovo
section_title: Roman period
hierarchical_section_title: Tetovo / History / Roman period
caption_attribution_description: English: Market square
context_page_description: Tetovo is a city in the northwestern part of North Macedonia, built on the foothills of Šar Mountain and divided by the Pena River. The municipality of Tetovo covers an area of 1,080 km² at 468 meters above sea level, with a population of 52,915. The city of Tetovo is the seat of Tetovo Municipality.
  In antiquity, Tetovo was a Penestae fortress-town in eastern Illyria, called Oaeneon, in Latin Oaeneum, located on the pass between mount Scardos and river Artatos, a tributary to the Vardar river. This was a territory where the Illyrian tribe Penestae lived, and it included the fortress-towns Draudacum, Uskana, Divra and Styberra in northern Pelagonia.
  Based on archaeological findings in the area, the city was first inhabited thousands of years ago. Archaeological findings include a Mycenaean sword and a bronze statuette of the 6th c. BCE. Subsequently, Oaeneon was ruled by many ethnic groups; the Illyrian Genthius of the Labeatae, by King Perseus of Macedonia, by the Romans, by the Byzantines, by the Slavs, by the Bulgarians, and by Skanderbeg of Kastrioti.
  In the 15th c. AD, Oaeneum came under Ottoman rule for about five centuries.
context_section_description: Oaeneum remained with in Illyricum until Diocletian's reform and Oaeneum became a part of Epirus Nova in the 4th century AD.
  Due to the large barbaric incursions by the Celts, the Ostrogoths led by Theoderic the Great and the Huns from the 3rd century AD, the Romans started to build strong in-wall cities and fortresses on dominant hills around the area of Oaeneum.
  Christianity spread to Oaeneum during the later period of Roman invasion and reached the region relatively early. St Paul preached the Gospel in the region. In the 2nd to the 4th centuries, the main language to spread the Christian religion was Latin. However, after the Byzantine Empire was formed from the Roman Empire, Greek was the main language used.
caption: Tetovo's old market square, known as Gorna Čaršija