The prelude to this great aggregate of action was formed by the measures which Caesar the Younger, so soon as he had his hands free in Italy and Spain, undertook on the upper coasts of the Adriatic and in the inland region adjacent to them. In the hundred and fifty years that had elapsed since the founding of Aquileia, the Roman merchant had doubtless from that centre possessed himself more and more of the traffic; yet the state, directly as such, had made little progress. Considerable trading settlements had been formed at the chief ports of the Dalmatian coast, and also, on the road leading from Aquileia into the valley of the Save, at Nauportus (Upper Laybach); Dalmatia, Bosnia, Istria, and Carniola were deemed Roman territory, and the region along the coast at least was actually subject; but the founding of towns in a legal sense still remained to be done, quite as much as the subduing of the inhospitable interior. Here, however, another element had to be taken into account. In the war between Caesar and Pompeius the native Dalmatians had as decidedly taken part for the latter as the Roman settlers there had taken the side of Caesar; even after the defeat of Pompeius at Pharsalus, and after the Pompeian fleet had been driven from the Illyrian waters (iv. 456) {iv. 434.}, the natives continued their resistance with energy and success. The brave and able Publius Vatinius, who had formerly taken a very effective part in these conflicts, was sent with a strong army to Illyricum, apparently in the year before Caesar's death, and that merely as the vanguard of the main army, with which the Dictator himself intended to follow in order to overthrow the Dacians, who just then were putting forth their rising power (iv. 305) {iv. 291.}, and to regulate the state of affairs in the whole domain of the Danube. The execution of this plan was precluded by the daggers of the assassins. It was fortunate that the Dacians did not on their part penetrate into Macedonia; Vatinius himself fought against the Dalmatians unsuccessfully, and sustained severe losses. Thereafter, when the republicans took up arms in the East, the Illyrian army joined that of Brutus, and for a considerable time the Dalmatians remained free from attack. After the overthrow of the republicans, Antonius, to whom, in the partition of the empire, Macedonia had fallen, caused the insubordinate Dardani in the north-west and the Parthini on the coast (eastward from Durazzo) to be put to rout in the year 715 {39.}, when the celebrated orator Gaius Asinius Pollio gained triumphal honours. In Illyricum, which was under Caesar, nothing could be done so long as the latter had to direct his whole power to the Sicilian war against Sextus Pompeius; but after its successful termination Caesar personally threw himself with vigour into this task. The small tribes from Doclea (Cernagora), as far as the Iapydes (near Fiume), were in the first