Iapodes

The Iapodes (or Iapydes, Japodes; Greek: Ἰάποδες; Serbo-Croatian: Japodi) were an ancient people who dwelt north of and inland from the Liburnians, off the Adriatic coast and eastwards of the Istrian peninsula.

They occupied the interior of the country between the Colapis (Kupa) and Oeneus (Una) rivers, and the Velebit mountain range (Mons Baebius) which separated them from the coastal Liburnians.

[1] Their territory covered the central inlands of modern Croatia and Una River Valley in today's Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The ancient written documentation on inland Iapodes is scarcer than on the adjacent coastal peoples (Liburni, Delmatae, etc.)

Elsewhere, and especially in the main Iapodian area of the Lika highlands in Croatia, definite Celtic artifacts are scarce and explicable merely by commercial exchanges.

Romans said of the Iapodes that they were a warlike race addicted to plundering expeditions,[1] but other archaeological documentation confirms their main economical activity was mining and metallurgy.

That attracted the pragmatic Romans to conquer their country, whose river valleys were also a natural way for strategic communications between the Adriatic and Pannonia.

In 129 BC, Gaius Sempronius Tuditanus attacked the Iapodes and was nearly defeated, but Decimus Iunius Brutus arrived and rescued him, and he celebrated a triumph.

Due to the rich and extensive forests of their mountainous country, their houses were mostly wooden huts, and they rarely used stone constructions except in some major fortifications.