In antiquity, most of the territory that is now North Macedonia was included in the kingdom of Paeonia, which was populated by the Paeonians, a people of Thracian origins,Bauer, Susan Wise: The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome (2007), , page 518: "... Italy); to the north, Thracian tribes known collectively as the Paeonians." but also parts of ancient Illyria,Wilkes, John: The Illyrians, Wiley-Blackwell, 1996, , p. 49.Sealey, Raphael, A history of the Greek city states, ca. 700-338 B.C., p. 442. University of California Press, 1976. . Ancient Macedonians populated the area in the south, living among many other tribes and Dardania,Evans, Thammy, Macedonia, Bradt Travel Guides, 2007, , p. 13 inhabited by various Illyrian peoples,Borza, Eugene N., In the shadow of Olympus: the emergence of Macedon, Princeton University Press, 1992, , pp. 74-75.Lewis, D.M. et al. (ed.), The Cambridge ancient history: The fourth century B.C., Cambridge University Press, 2000, , pp. 723-724. and Lyncestis and Pelagonia populated by the ancient Greek MolossianThe Cambridge Ancient History Volume 3, Part 3: The Expansion of the Greek World, Eighth to Sixth Centuries BC by John Boardman and N. G. L. Hammond, 1982, , page 284 tribes. None of these had fixed boundaries; they were sometimes subject to the Kings of Macedon, and sometimes broke away.
