The Istrians, the Liburni, and the Illyrians were the nations most formidable, both by their corsairs and by their armies; their light and rapid barques covered the Adriatic, and troubled the navigation between Italy and Greece. In the year 524, the Illyrians sent to sea a hundred _lembi_,[296] while their land army counted hardly more than 5,000 men.[297] Illyria was poor, and offered few resources to the Romans, notwithstanding the fertility of its soil. Agriculture was neglected, even in the time of Strabo. Istria contained a population much more considerable, in proportion to its extent.[298] Yet she had, no more than Dalmatia and the rest of Illyria, attained, at the epoch of which we are speaking, that high degree of prosperity which she acquired afterwards by the foundation of Tergeste (_Trieste_) and Pola. The Roman conquest delivered the Adriatic from the pirates who infested it,[299] and then only, the ports of Dyrrhachium and Apollonia obtained a veritable importance. [Sidenote: Epirus.] VI. Epirus, a country of pastures and shepherds, intersected by picturesque mountains, was a sort of Helvetia. Ambracia (now _Arta_), which Pyrrhus had chosen for his residence, had become a very fine town, and possessed two theatres. The palace of the king (_Pyrrheum_) formed a veritable museum for it furnished for the triumph of M. Fulvius Nobilior, in 565, two hundred and eighty-five statues in bronze, two hundred and thirty in marble,[300] and paintings by Zeuxis, mentioned in Pliny.[301] The town paid also, on this occasion, five hundred talents (2,900,000 francs, [£116,000]), and offered the consul a crown of gold weighing a hundred and fifty thousand talents (nearly 4,000 kilogrammes).[302] It appears that before the war of Paulus Æmilius, this country contained a rather numerous population, and counted seventy towns, most of them situated in the country of the Molossi.[303]. After the battle of Pydna, the Roman general made so considerable a booty, that, without reckoning the treasury’s share, each foot-soldier received 200 denarii (about 200 francs [£8]), and each horse-soldier 400; in addition to which the sale of slaves arose to the enormous number of 150,000. [Sidenote: Greece.]