right to put a stop to privateering; whereupon Lucius
Coruncanius replied, that in that case Rome would make it her business
to introduce a better law among the Illyrians. For this certainly not
very diplomatic reply one of the envoys was--by the king's orders, as
the Romans asserted--murdered on the way home, and the surrender of
the murderers was refused. The senate had now no choice left to it.
In the spring of 525 a fleet of 200 ships of the line, with a landing-
army on board, appeared off Apollonia; the corsair-vessels were
scattered before the former, while the latter demolished the piratic
strongholds; the queen Teuta, who after the death of her husband
Agron conducted the government during the minority of her son Pinnes,
besieged in her last retreat, was obliged to accept the conditions
dictated by Rome. The rulers of Scodra were again confined both on
the north and south to the narrow limits of their original domain,
and had to quit their hold not only on all the Greek towns, but also
on the Ardiaei in Dalmatia, the Parthini around Epidamnus, and the
Atintanes in northern Epirus; no Illyrian vessel of war at all, and
not more than two unarmed vessels in company, were to be allowed in
future to sail to the south of Lissus (Alessio, between Scutari and
Durazzo). The maritime supremacy of Rome in the Adriatic was
asserted, in the most praiseworthy and durable way, by the rapid
and energetic suppression of the evil of piracy.
Acquisition of Territory in Illyria
Impression in Greece and Macedonia
But the Romans went further, and established themselves on the east
coast. The Illyrians of Scodra were rendered tributary to Rome;
Demetrius of Pharos, who had passed over from the service of Teuta to
that of the Romans, was installed, as a dependent dynast and ally of
Rome, over the islands and coasts of Dalmatia; the Greek cities
Corcyra, Epidamnus, Apollonia, and the communities of the Atintanes
and Parthini were attached to Rome under mild forms of symmachy.
These acquisitions on the east coast of the Adriatic were not
sufficiently extensive to require the appointment of a special
auxiliary consul; governors of subordinate rank appear to have
been sent to Corcyra and perhaps also to other places, and the
superintendence of these possessions seems to have been entrusted
to the chief magistrates who administered Italy.(11) Thus the most
important maritime stations in the Adriatic became subject, like
Sicily
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