[The History of Rome, Book V by Theodor Mommsen]@TWC D-Link bookThe History of Rome, Book V CHAPTER VII 98/101
The strong Roman army encamped at Aquileia in 695, and the triumph of the governor 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.
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