With the exception of some portions of what is now called Middle Albania, the territory of these tribes consisted principally of mountain pastures with a certain proportion of fertile valley, but rarely expanding into a plain. The Autariatæ had the reputation of being unwarlike, but the Illyrians generally were poor, rapacious, fierce, and formidable in battle. They shared with the remote Thracian tribes the custom of tattooing[5] their bodies and of offering human sacrifices: moreover, they were always ready to sell their military service for hire, like the modern Albanian Schkipetars, in whom probably their blood yet flows, though with considerable admixture from subsequent emigrations. Of the Illyrian kingdom on the Adriatic coast, with Skodra (Scutari) for its capital city, which became formidable by its reckless piracies in the third century B. C., we hear nothing in the flourishing period of Grecian history. The description of Skylax notices in his day, all along the northern Adriatic, a considerable and standing traffic between the coast and the interior, carried on by Liburnians, Istrians, and the small Grecian insular settlements of Pharus and Issa. But he does not name Skodra, and probably this strong post—together with the Greek town Lissus, founded by Dionysius of Syracuse—was occupied after his time by conquerors from the interior,[6] the predecessors of Agrôn and Gentius,—just as the coast-land of the Thermaic gulf was conquered by inland Macedonians. [5] Strabo, vii, p. 315; Arrian, i, 5, 4-11. So impracticable is the territory, and so narrow the means of the inhabitants, in the region called Upper Albania, that most of its resident tribes even now are considered as free, and pay no tribute to the Turkish government: the Pachas cannot extort it without greater expense and difficulty than the sum gained would repay. The same was the case in Epirus, or Lower Albania, previous to the time of Ali Pacha: in Middle Albania, the country does not present the like difficulties, and no such exemptions are allowed (Boué, Voyage en Turquie, vol. iii, p. 192). These free Albanian tribes are in the same condition with regard to the Sultan as the Mysians and Pisidians in Asia Minor with regard to the king of Persia in ancient times (Xenophon, Anab. iii, 2, 23). [6] Diodor. xv, 13: Polyb. ii, 4.