This is the gate mentioned in Virgil's Aeneid which tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who fled the fall of Troy and travelled to Italy, where he supposedly became the ancestor of the Romans. When Aeneas came to Butrint, he compared it to Troy in miniature. He even mentions the gate that he entered and how he embraced it, remembering the Scaean gate - the main gate of Troy, his distroyed home.
"Proceeding on, another Troy I see,
Or, in less compass, Troy’s epitome.
A riv’let by the name of Xanthus ran,
And I embrace the Scaean gate again.
My friends in porticoes were entertain’d,
And feasts and pleasures thro’ the city reign’d.
The tables fill’d the spacious hall around,
And golden bowls with sparkling wine were crown’d.
Two days we pass’d in mirth, till friendly gales,
Blown from the south supplied our swelling sails.
Then to the royal seer I thus began:
‘O thou, who know’st, beyond the reach of man,
The laws of heav’n, and what the stars decree;
Whom Phoebus taught unerring prophecy,
From his own tripod, and his holy tree;
Skill’d in the wing’d inhabitants of air,
What auspices their notes and flights declare:
O say; for all religious rites portend
A happy voyage, and a prosp’rous end;
And ev’ry power and omen of the sky
Direct my course for destin’d Italy."
- Virgil, Aeneid, Book III, Trans. John Dryden.