Moesia, the governor of Macedonia was from the outset relieved of his command. There was hardly any fighting on Macedonian soil under the empire; only the barbarian Dardani on the upper Axius (Vardar) still at times pillaged the peaceful neighbouring province. There is no report, moreover, from this province of any local revolts. [Sidenote: Nationalities.] From the more southerly Greek districts this--the most northerly--stood aloof as well in its national basis as in the stage of its civilisation. While the Macedonians proper on the lower course of the Haliacmon (Vistritza) and the Axius (Vardar), as far as the Strymon, were an originally Greek stock, whose diversity from the more southern Hellenes had no further significance for the present epoch, and while the Hellenic colonisation embraced within its sphere both coasts--on the west with Apollonia and Dyrrachium, on the east in particular with the townships of the Chalcidian peninsula--the interior of the province, on the other hand, was filled with a confused mass of non-Greek peoples, which must have differed from the present state of things in the same region more as to elements than as to results. After the Celts who had pushed forward into this region, the Scordisci, had been driven back by the generals of the Roman republic, the interior of Macedonia fell to the share especially of Illyrian stocks in the west and north, of Thracian in the east. Of both we have already spoken previously; here they come into consideration only so far as the Greek organisation, at least the urban, was probably introduced--as in the earlier,[199] so also in the imperial period--among these stocks only in a very limited measure. On the whole, an energetic impulse of urban development never pervaded the interior of Macedonia; the more remote districts hardly reached--at least as in a real sense--beyond the village-system. [Sidenote: Greek polity.]