war, in so far as it was waged by the Dalmatians in common. But warfare continued here and there; various tribes and fortresses held out by themselves. It was necessary to besiege Setovia, and Caesar was wounded there in his knee. He returned after this to Rome, to enter upon his second consulship (33 B.C.), leaving the completion of his work to Statilius Taurus, who for his services on this occasion received a large share in the Illyrian spoils, and laid the foundation of his great wealth. But Caesar laid down his consulate on the very day on which he assumed it, and returned to Dalmatia, in order to receive the submission of the conquered peoples. The eagles which had been captured from the army of Gabinius were restored, and 700 boys were given to the conqueror as hostages.
The civilizing of these Illyrian lands was now begun in earnest; the chief towns on the coast were raised to the position of Italian communities; and a new epoch began in the history of Salonae, Iader, Pola, Tergeste, and other places, which made their mark in the later history of Europe. It was now, doubtless, that colonies were settled at Salonae, Pola and Emona. Thus Salonae became in full official language, Colonia Martia Julia Salonae, and Emona— which corresponds to Laibach, the capital of Carniola—became Colonia Julia Emona. Pola, called Colonia Pietas Julia Pola; may have become in some measure for Illyricum, what Lugudunum was for the Three Gauls, in so far as a temple of Rome and Augustus was built there during the lifetime of the first Emperor.
A change was also made in the administration of Illyricum. Hitherto it had been joined to the government of Cisalpine Gaul, with the exception of a small strip of land in the south of Dalmatia: which was annexed to Macedonia. But after Caesar’s campaigns, Illyricum was promoted to the dignity of a separate province, bounded by the Savus in the north and the Drilo in the south. At the division of provinces in 27 B.C. it was assigned to the senate. But in the nature of things it could not long remain senatorial. The presence of legions on the northern frontier could not be dispensed with, and it devolved upon the governor to watch over Noricum on the one hand and Moesia on the other. Such powers and responsibilities were not likely to be left to a proconsul: and accordingly soon after the conquest of Raetia, when hostilities in Pannonia seemed likely to break out, we find Agrippa sent thither (13 B.C.), invested “with greater powers than all the governors out of Italy”. The terror of Agrippa’s name held the Pannonians in check, but on his death in the following year they took up arms, and Tiberius was appointed to succeed Agrippa. He brought the rebellious tribes to submission, but in the next year (11 B.C.) was again compelled to take the field against them, and also to suppress a revolt of the Dalmatians. These events led to the transference of Illyricum from the senate to the Emperor. Both the Dalmatian subjects and the Pannonian neighbors required the constant presence of military forces. At the same time the northern frontier of the province advanced from the Savus to the Dravus, in consequence of the successes of Tiberius in his three campaigns (12-10 B.C.). Poetovio, on the borders of Noricum, now became the advanced station of the legions, instead of Siscia. This extension of territory soon led to a division of Illyricum into two provinces, Pannonia and Dalmatia, both imperial. The government of Pannonia was especially important, because the intervention of the legatus might be called for either in Noricum or in Moesia. It is well to notice that the name Illyricum was used in two ways. In its stricter sense it included Pannonia and Dalmatia; in a wider sense (and specially for financial purposes) it took in Noricum and Moesia, as coming within the sphere of the governors of Illyricum proper.
MOESIA AND THRACIA. — The governors of Macedonia under the Republic were constantly troubled by the hostilities of the rude Illyric and Thracian peoples on the north and east. The Dardanians of the upper Margus, the Dentheletae of the Strymon, the Triballi between the Timacus and the Oescus, the Bessi beyond Rhodope were troublesome neighbors. The lands between the Danube and Mount Haemus, which now form the principality of Bulgaria, were inhabited by the Moesians, and beyond the Danube was the dominion of the Dacians, whom the Romans had reason to regard as a most formidable enemy. The Thracians in the south, the Moesians in the centre, and the Dacians in the north, were people of the same race, speaking the same tongue. It was evidently a very important matter for the Roman government to break this line, and to bring Moesia and Thrace directly or indirectly under Roman sway, so as to make the Ister the frontier of the Empire.
The occasion of the conquest of Moesia was an invasion of the Bastarnae, a powerful people, perhaps of German race, who lived between the Danube and the Dniester, in 29 B.C.. As long as they confined their hostilities to the Moesians, Dardanians, and Triballi, the matter did not concern the governor of Macedonia, Marcus Licinius Crassus, grandson of the rival of Pompey and Caesar. But when they attacked the Dentheletae, allies of Rome, he was called on to interfere. The Bastarnae retired at his command, but he followed them as they retreated and defeated them where the river Cibrus flows into the Danube. But at the same time he turned his arras against Moesia, and reduced, not without considerable toil and hardships, almost all the tribes of that country. He had also to deal with the Serdi, who dwelt in the centre of the peninsula under Mount Scomius, in the direct way between Macedonia and Moesia. These he conquered, and took their chief place, Serdica, which is now Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. He was also compelled to reduce the unfriendly tribes of Thrace. In that country the worship of Dionysus was cultivated with wild enthusiasm, and the possession of one specially venerable grove, consecrated to that god—perhaps the very grove in which Alexander the Great had once sacrificed— was a subject of discord between two powerful rival tribes, the Odrysae and the Bessi. The Bessi were then in possession; but Crassus took the sacred place from them and gave it to the friendly Odrysae, and constituted their prince the representative of Roman power in Thrace, with lordship over the other peoples, and protector of the Greek towns on the coast. Thus Thrace became a dependent kingdom.
That Moesia also became, at first, a dependency of the same kind, before she became a regular province, seems likely. The Greek cities on the coast were probably placed under the protection of the Thracian kingdom, while the rest of Moesia and Triballia may have been united under one of the native princes. After 27 B.C. it would doubtless have devolved upon the governor of Illyricum, no longer upon the governor of Macedonia, to intervene in case of need.
The submission of the Thracians was not permanent, and the Odrysians were not equal to the task imposed upon them. The Bessi longed to recover the sanctuary of Dionysus, and a sacred war broke out in 13 B.C., which resulted in the overthrow of the princes of the Odrysae. The suppression of this insurrection ought perhaps to have devolved upon the governor of Illyricum, but he had his hands full in his own province; the proconsul of Macedonia had no army at his disposal. Accordingly recourse was had to the troops stationed in Galatia, and Lucius Piso, the imperial legatus in that province, was summoned to cross into Europe and quell the insurgents who were threatening to invade Asia, having established themselves in the Thracian Chersonese (11 B.C.). Piso put down the revolt successfully, and it was probably soon after this that Moesia was converted into a regular Roman province, though Thrace still remained under the rule of the dependent Odrysian prince Rhoemetalces, who, with his son Cotys, was devotedly attached to Rome and unpopular in Thrace.
Thrace, though not yet Greek, must even now be reckoned to the Greek half of the Roman world. But its close connection with Moesia naturally led us to consider it in this place, rather than in the following chapter. Moesia itself belonged partly to the Latin, and partly to the Greek division. The cities which grew under Roman influence in western Moesia were Latin; the cities on the coast of the Pontus were Greek, and formed a distinct world of their own. But most of the inhabitants of these cities were not Greeks, but Getae and Sarmatians, and even the true Greeks were to some extent barbarised by intercourse with the natives. The poet Ovid, who was banished to Tomi, gives a lively description of the wild life there—the ploughmen ploughing armed, the arrows of ferocious marauders flying over the walls of the town, natives clad in skins, and equipped with bow and quiver, riding through the streets. Getic continued to be spoken in Moesia long after the Roman conquest, like Illyric in Illyricum; and Ovid says that it was quite needful for any one resident in Tomi to know it. He wrote himself a poem in the Getic tongue; and we should be glad to barter some of his Latin elegiacs for his exercise in that lost language.
The subjugation of the vast extent of territory, reaching from the sources of the Rhine to the mouths of the Danube, was a military necessity. The conquest of each province, while it served some immediate purpose at the time, was also part of an immense scheme for the