Because of the piracy of the Illyrian tribes and the Greek colonists living on the eastern Adriatic pleas for help, the Romans started a war against the Illyrian Queen Teuta in 229 BC. After two wars, the Illyrian kingdom was destroyed in 168 BC, and the Roman consul Lucius Antius told the Illyrian leaders in the town of Shkoder that their kingdom was to be abolished.

There came a period of gradual Romanization of the local population. Archaeological research in a wider area of the Montenegrin Coast proves that the Illyrian coastal towns experienced a revival in the first decades of the 1st century BC and that they expanded territorially. That was the period when Romanization started to encompass more and more intensely the Illyrian people and this process was almost finished during the following two centuries.

None of the ancient writers mentioned particularly a settlement in the area of Bar, as they did with Budva, Risan and Ulcinj. Still, just as the archeological research done during the last couple of decades demonstrates, a large amount of material evidence from the Roman era was discovered spread over a large  number of sites in the proximity of Bar from 1st Century BC to 4th century AD.
In the town itself, the most significant traces of the Roman civilization were discovered by chance. These are parts of a Roman sarcophagus from the 3th century, with an engraved scene from Greek mythology. the scene is the "hunt for the Caledonian boar" or "Meleagrus". The mythological display of the hero Meleagrus is very widespread among the ancient monunebts in the middle of the 3th century and is frequently found as a motif on the ancient engravings. Two such sarcophagi, almost identical to the one from Bar, were found in Salona and Eleusina.
The most significant finding dating from the Roman period next to the shore, at at the location where Bar stands today, is a large piece of a girder from anancient temple. This is a constructional element decorated with motifs of rosettes, astragals, pseudoconsoles with folded leaves, Ionian caraways, etc. It dates from the period from the 2nd to the 4th century.
During the 1950s a mosaic floor was discovered near the port and a great necropolis with graves made of roofing tiles which contained a large number of items was destroyed when a drainage channelk in the centre of the city was being built.
After the reforms of Emperor Diocletian in 207 or 305-306, a total administrative reorganization of the Roman provinces took place. The territory of today's Montenegro mostly coincides with the Roman province Prevalis, which ws seperated from the province of Dalmatia. When the empire was devided into east and west in 396, Prevalis, where Bar was, bcame a part of the eastern Empire with the administrative centre of the province in the city of Shkoder.

 Bigovica

At one of the largest hydro-archaeological sites in Montenegro, in Bigovica Cove (2km from Bar port), a large number of differnt amphorae was discovered - ranging from the 3th century BC to the 4th century AD. In the 4th century, the cove became the "grave" for a mechant gallery, which ws carrying a load of amphorae from northern Africa.
The typology of the amphorae from the Bigovica hydro-archeological site, just behind Volujica Hill demonstrates a large time span. this proves that the cove was used through the centuries as an alternative port, because it was well protected from the northern wind which affects the area where the port is today. It wasw determined, that the oldest amphory dates from the 3rd century BC Also, all of the knoen types of amphorae distributed throughout the Mediterranean ports were confirmed. This is how we have amphorae of Italian, Gaelic, North African and Black Sea origin..