nt the two great Celtic streams
almost touched each other, and only a narrow belt of native population
separated the Celtic Cenomani about Brescia from the Celtic Carnians
in Friuli. The Euganei and Veneti had long been peaceful subjects of
the Romans; whereas the peoples of the Alps proper were not only still
free, but made regular forays down from their mountains into the
plain between the Alps and the Po, where they were not content with
levying contributions, but conducted themselves with fearful cruelty
in the townships which they captured, not unfrequently slaughtering
the whole male population down to the infant in the cradle--the practical
answer, it may be presumed, to the Roman razzias in the Alpine valleys.
How dangerous these Raetian inroads were, appears from the fact that
one of them about 660 destroyed the considerable township of Comum.

Illyrian Peoples
Japydes
Scordisci

If these Celtic and non-Celtic tribes having their settlements upon and
beyond the Alpine chain were already variously intermingled, there was,
as may easily be conceived, a still more comprehensive intermixture
of peoples in the countries on the Lower Danube, where there were no
high mountain ranges, as in the more western regions, to serve as
natural walls of partition. The original Illyrian population, of
which the modern Albanians seem to be the last pure survivors, was
throughout, at least in the interior, largely mixed with Celtic
elements, and the Celtic armour and Celtic method of warfare were
probably everywhere introduced in that quarter. Next to the Taurisci
came the Japydes, who had their settlements on the Julian Alps in the
modern Croatia as far down as Fiume and Zeng,--a tribe originally
doubtless Illyrian, but largely mixed with Celts. Bordering with these
along the coast were the already-mentioned Dalmatians, into whose rugged
mountains the Celts do not seem to have penetrated; whereas in the
interior the Celtic Scordisci, to whom the tribe of the Triballi
formerly especially powerful in that quarter had succumbed, and who
had played a principal part in the Celtic expeditions to Delphi,
were about this time the leading nation along the Lower Save as far
as the Morava in the modern Bosnia and Servia. They roamed far and
wide towards Moesia, Thrace, and Macedonia, and fearful tales were
told of their savage valour and cruel customs. Their chief place of
arms was the strong Segestica or Siscia at the point where