See GERMANY: A. D. 1809 (JULY-SEPTEMBER).
ILLYRIANS, The.
"Northward of the tribes called Epirotic lay those more
numerous and widely extended tribes who bore the general name
of Illyrians, bounded on the west by the Adriatic, on the east
by the mountain-range of Skardus, the northern continuation of
Pindus, and thus covering what is now called Middle and Upper
Albania, together with the more northerly mountains of
Montenegro, Herzegovina, and Bosnia. Their limits to the north
and north-east cannot be assigned. … Appian and others
consider the Liburnians and Istrians as Illyrian, and
Herodotus even includes under that name the Eneti or Veneti at
the extremity of the Adriatic Gulf. … The Illyrians
generally were poor, rapacious, fierce and formidable in
battle. They shared with the remote Thracian tribes the custom
of tattooing 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 immigrations. 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."
_G. Grote,
History of Greece,
part 2, chapter 25 (volume 3)._
ALSO IN:
_T. Mommsen,
History of Rome,
book 8, chapter 6._