Illyrian Wars (1.3-1.4)

The Illyrian tribes are many, as is natural in so extensive a country; and celebrated even now are the names of the Scordisci and the Triballi, who inhabited a wide region and destroyed each other by wars to such a degree that the remnant of the Triballi took refuge with the Getæ on the other side of the Danube, and, though flourishing until the time of Philip and Alexander, is now extinct and its name scarcely known in the regions once inhabited by it. The Scordisci, having been reduced to extreme weakness in the same way, and having suffered much at a later period in war with the Romans, took refuge in the islands of the same river. In the course of time some of them returned and settled on the confines of Pannonia, and thus it happens that a tribe of the Scordisci still remains in Pannonia. In like manner the Ardiæi, who were distinguished for their maritime power, were finally destroyed by the Autarienses, whose land forces were stronger, but whom they had often defeated. The Liburni, another Illyrian tribe, were next to the Ardiæi as a nautical people. These committed piracy in the Adriatic Sea and islands with their light, fast-sailing pinnaces, from which circumstance the Romans to this day call their own light, swift biremes liburnicas.

The Autarienses were overtaken with destruction by the vengeance of Apollo. Having joined Molostimus and the Celtic people called Cimbri in an expedition against the temple of Delphi, the greater part of them were destroyed by storm, hurricane, and lightning just before the sacrilege was committed. Upon those who returned home there came a countless number of frogs, which filled the streams and polluted the water. The noxious vapors rising from the ground caused a plague among the Illyrians which was especially fatal to the Autarienses. At last they fled from their homes, and as the plague still clung to them (and for fear of it nobody would receive them), they came, after a journey of twenty-three days, to a marshy and uninhabited district of the Getæ, where they settled near the Bastarnæ. The god visited the Celts with an earthquake and overthrew their cities, and did not abate the calamity until these also fled from their abodes and made an incursion into Illyria among their fellow-culprits, who had been weakened by the plague. While robbing the Illyrians they caught the plague and again took to flight and plundered their way to the Pyrenees. When they were returning to the east the Romans, mindful of their former encounters with the Celts, and fearful lest they should cross the Alps and invade Italy, sent against them both consuls, who were annihilated with the whole army. This calamity to the Romans brought great dread of the Celts upon all Italy until Gaius Marius, who had lately triumphed over the Numidians and Mauritanians, was chosen commander and defeated the Cimbri repeatedly with great slaughter, as I have related in my Celtic history. Being reduced to extreme weakness, and for that reason excluded from every land, they returned home, inflicting and suffering many injuries on the way.