they removed from the coast and settled in the interior, the modern Herzegovina, where they began to cultivate the soil, but, unused to their new calling, pined away in that inclement region.  At the same time an attack was directed from Macedonia against the Scordisci, who had, it may be presumed, made common cause with the assailed inhabitants of the coast.  Soon afterwards (625) the consul Tuditanus in connection with the able Decimus Brutus, the conqueror of the Spanish Callaeci, humbled the Japydes, and, after sustaining a defeat at the outset, at length carried the Roman arms into the heart of Dalmatia as far as the river Kerka, 115 miles distant from Aquileia; the Japydes thenceforth appear as a nation at peace and on friendly terms with Rome.  But ten years later (635) the Dalmatians rose afresh, once more in concert with the Scordisci.  While the consul Lucius Cotta fought against the latter and in doing so advanced apparently as far as Segestica, his colleague Lucius Metellus afterwards named Dalmaticus, the elder brother of the conqueror of Numidia, marched against the Dalmatians, conquered them and passed the winter in Salona (Spalato), which town henceforth appears as the chief stronghold of the Romans in that region.  It is not improbable that the construction of the Via Gabinia, which led from Salona in an easterly direction to Andetrium (near Much) and thence farther into the interior, falls within this period.

The Romans Cross the Eastern Alps and Reach the Danube

The expedition of the consul of 639, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, against the Taurisci(12) presented more the character of a war of conquest.  He was the first of the Romans to cross the chain of the eastern Alps where it falls lowest between Trieste and Laybach, and contracted hospitable relations with the Taurisci; which secured a not unimportant commercial intercourse without involving the Romans, as a formal subjugation would have involved them, in the movements of the peoples to the north of the Alps.  Of the conflicts with the Scordisci, which have passed almost wholly into oblivion, a page, which speaks clearly even in its isolation, has recently been brought to light through a memorial stone from the year 636 lately discovered in the neighbourhood of Thessalonica.  According to it, in this year the governor of Macedonia Sextus Pompeius fell near Argos (not far from Stobi on the upper Axius or Vardar) in a battle fought with these Celts; and, after his quaestor Marcus Annius had come up with his troops and in some measure mastered the enemy, these same Celts in connection with Tipas the king of the Maedi (on the upper Strymon) soon made a fresh irruption in still larger masses, and it was with difficulty that the Romans defended themselves against the onset of the barbarians.(13) Things soon assumed so threatening a shape that it became necessary to despatch consular armies to Macedonia.(14) A few years afterwards the consul of 640 Gaius Porcius Cato