Note 1361 — Chapter XVI · —Influences Of A Mountain Environment

The less civilized mountain peoples, whose tastes or low economic status unfit them for emigration, solve the problem of a deficient food supply by raiding the fields and stores of their richer neighbors. Predatory expeditions fill the history of primitive mountain peoples, and of the ancient occupants of highland regions which are now devoted to honest industry. The ancient Alpine tribes were one and all, from the Mediterranean to the Danube, "poor and addicted to robbery," as Strabo says. He analyzes their condition with nice discrimination. "The greater part [of the Alps], especially the summits of the mountains inhabited by robbers, are barren and unfruitful, both on account of the frost and the ruggedness of the land. Because of the want of food and other necessaries, the mountaineers have sometimes been obliged to spare the inhabitants of the plains, that they might have some people to supply them."1361 The freebooters usually descended into the lowlands of Italy, Gaul and Helvetia, but the pass peoples lay in wait for their prey on the mountain roads. Strabo described the same marauding habits arising from the same cause among the mountaineers of northern Spain,1362 the Balkan range,1363 and the highlands encircling the Mesopotamian plains.1364