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The Istrians attacked the camp in a fog, and, having driven the Romans to the shore, sat down to eat and drink. While they were incapacitated in consequence, the Romans returned and killed most of them. The following year they entered Istria again, sacking and devastating the country.
About 1,500 of the hunters for gum are Istrians and Dalmatians good diggers, but bad colonists; for years of work do not attach them to the country, and almost always they take their savings home to the fringing islands and warm bays of the Adriatic.
One must be prosaic indeed whose imagination remains unstirred by a journey across this historic plain, which has been invaded by Celts, Istrians, and Romans; Huns, Goths, and Lombards; Franks, Germans, and Austrians in turn.
Wherever the circumstances admit, Homer is directly translated; e. g. the burial of those that fell at Heraclea is described after the model of the burial of Patroclus, and under the helmet of Marcus Livius Stolo, the military tribune who fights with the Istrians, lurks none other than the Homeric Ajax; the reader is not even spared the Homeric invocation of the Muse.
It was not, however, to be supposed that the Illyrians and Istrians, who had been so long accustomed to piracy, and who in fact derived nearly all their wealth from this source, would totally abstain from it.
This extension of their dominions was followed by a successful war with the Istrians, which made them masters of all the western parts of the Mediterranean Sea; and by an equally successful war with Nabis, the tyrant of Sparta, who was compelled to deliver up his fleet to them, as well as all the sea-ports of consequence on the coast of Sparta.
When the Romans founded Aquileia they were forced to take measures to ensure safe navigation and to prevent danger to the new colony. Therefore, in 178 B.C., an expedition against the Istrians was undertaken under the Consul Aulus Manlius Vulso, but without the authorisation of the Senate, the army being transported by ship to the environs of Muggia.
The Byzantines used Istria as a base in the final operations against the Goths till 555, when they were conquered. This was the period when so many basilicas were built in that country, in gratitude for the securing of freedom to the province from the yoke of the Arians, and for the re-establishment of the "Holy Republic," the inaccurate term which the Istrians used for the Byzantine Government.
In the battle which followed, 4,000 Istrians were left on the field, and the rest took refuge in the cities, and asked for peace. The negotiations were broken off owing to the Consul Claudius proceeding in an irregular manner, and Nesactium was vigorously besieged with two fresh legions.
Because of the fertility of these singular depressions, and their immunity from the cold winds which in winter sweep the surface of the Karst, they are utilized by the peasants for growing fruits, vegetables and, in some cases, small patches of grain, being, in effect, sunken gardens provided by Nature as though to recompense the Istrians, in some measure, for their discouraging struggle for existence.
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