of Cisalpine Gaul Lucius Afranius, lead us to infer, that about
this time an expedition to the Alps took place, and it may have been
in consequence of this that we find the Romans soon afterwards
in closer connection with a king of the Noricans. But that even
subsequently Italy was not at all secure on this side, is shown
by the sudden assault of the Alpine barbarians on the flourishing town
of Tergeste in 702, when the Transalpine insurrection had compelled
Caesar to divest upper Italy wholly of troops.

Illyria

The turbulent peoples also, who had possession of the district
along the Illyrian coast, gave their Roman masters constant
employment. The Dalmatians, even at an earlier period the most
considerable people of this region, enlarged their power so much
by admitting their neighbours into their union, that the number
of their townships rose from twenty to eighty. When they refused
to give up once more the town of Promona (not far from the river
Kerka), which they had wrested from the Liburnians, Caesar
after the battle of Pharsalia gave orders to march against them;
but the Romans were in the first instance worsted, and in consequence
of this Dalmatia became for some time a rendezvous of the party
hostile to Caesar, and the inhabitants in concert with the Pompeians
and with the pirates offered an energetic resistance
to the generals of Caesar both by land and by water.

Macedonia

Lastly Macedonia along with Epirus and Hellas lay in greater
desolation and decay than almost any other part of the Roman
empire. Dyrrhachium, Thessalonica, and Byzantium had still some
trade and commerce; Athens attracted travellers and students
by its name and its philosophical school; but on the whole there lay
over the formerly populous little towns of Hellas, and her seaports
once swarming with men, the calm of the grave. But if the Greeks
stirred not, the inhabitants of the hardly accessible Macedonian
mountains on the other hand continued after the old fashion their
predatory raids and feuds; for instance about 697-698 Agraeans
and Dolopians overran the Aetolian towns, and in 700 the Pirustae
dwelling in the valleys of the Drin overran southern Illyria.
The neighbouring peoples did likewise. The Dardani on the northern
frontier as well as the Thracians in the east had no doubt been
humbled by the Romans in the eight years' conflicts from 676
to 683; the most powerful of the Thracian princes, Cotys, the ruler
of the