III. While the Republic protected its northern frontiers against the Gauls and Ligures, and combated the influence of Carthage in Sardinia and Corsica, she undertook, against a small barbarous people, another expedition, less difficult, it is true, but which was destined to have immense consequences. The war of Illyria, in fact, was on the point of opening to the Romans the roads to Greece and Asia, subjected to the successors of Alexander, and where Greek civilisation was dominant. Now become a great maritime power, Rome had henceforward among her attributes the police of the seas. The inhabitants of the eastern coasts of the Adriatic, addicted to piracy, were destructive to commerce. Several times they had carried their depredations as far as Messenia, and defeated Greek squadrons sent to repress their ravages.[499] These pirates belonged to the Illyrian nation. The Greeks considered them as barbarians, which meant foreigners to the Hellenic race; it is probable, nevertheless, that they had a certain affinity with it. Inconvenient allies of the kings of Macedonia, they often took arms either for or against them; intrepid and fierce hordes, they were ready to sell their services and blood to any one who would pay them, resembling, in this respect, the Albanians of the present day, believed by some to be their descendants driven into the mountains by the invasions of the Slaves.[500] The king of the Illyrians was a child, and his mother, Teuta, exercised the regency. This fact alone reveals manners absolutely foreign to Hellenic and Roman civilisation. A chieftain of Pharos (_Lesina_), named Demetrius, in the pay of Teuta, occupied as a fief the island of Corcyra Nigra (now _Curzola_), and exercised the functions of prime minister. The Romans had no difficulty in gaining him; moreover, the Illyrians furnished a legitimate cause of war by assassinating an ambassador of the Republic.[501] The Senate immediately dispatched an army and a fleet to reduce them (525). Demetrius surrendered his island, which served as a basis against Apollonia, Dyrrhachium, Nutria, and a great part of the coast. After a resistance of some months, the Illyrians submitted, entered into an engagement to renounce piracy, surrendered several ports, and agreed to choose Demetrius, the ally of the Romans, for the guardian of their king.[502]