214 HISTORY OF GREECE. Philip was thus relieved from enemies on the coast, arid had his hands free to deal with the Illyrians and Pivonians of the in- terior. He marched into the territory of the Paxmians (seem- ingly along the upper course of the river Axius), whom he found weakened by the recent death of their king Agis. He defeated their troops, and reduced them to submit to Macedonian suprema- cy. From thence he proceeded to attack the Illyrians a more serious and formidable undertaking. The names Illyrians, Pceon- ians, Thracians, etc., did not designate any united national masses, but were applied to a great number of kindred tribes or clans, each distinct, separately governed, and having its particular name and customs. The Illyrian and Paaonian tribes occupied a wide space of -territory to the north and north-west of Macedonia, over the modern Bosnia nearly to the Julian Alps and the river Save. But during the middle of the fourth century before Christ, it seems that a large immigration of Gallic tribes from the west- ward was taking place, invading the territory of the more north- erly Illyrians and Pasonians, circumscribing their occupancy and security, and driving them farther southward ; sometimes impel- ling them to find subsistence and plunder by invasions of Mace- donia or by maritime piracies against Grecian commerce in the Adriatic. 1 The Illyrians had become more dangerous neighbors to Macedonia than they were in the time of Thucydides ; and it seems that a recent coalition of their warriors, for purposes of in- vasion and plunder, was now in the zenith of its force. It was un- der a chief named Bardylis, who had raised himself to command from the humble occupation of a charcoal burner ; a man re- nowned for his bravery, but yet more renowned for dealings rigidly just towards his soldiers, especially in the distribution of plunder. 2 Bardylis and his Illyrians had possessed themselves of a consid- erable portion of Western Macedonia (west of Mount Bermius), 1 See the remarks of Nicbuhr, on these migrations of Gallic tribes from the west, and their effect upon the prior population established ct7 r ejn th* Danube and the ^Egean Sea (Niebuhr, Vortrage iiber altc Gcscb'cMe, voL iii. p. 225, 281 ; also the earlier work of the same author Kleine Schriften, Untersuchungen iiber die Gschichte der Skythen, p. 375).
- Theopompus, Fragm. 35, cd. Didot; Cicero de Officiis, ii. 11 : Diolor
ivi. 4.
