was
traversed by Roman merchants _magno cum periculo magnisque cum
portoriis_.[1246] The Salassi, who inhabited the upper Dora Baltea Valley
and hence controlled the Little St. Bernard wagon road leading over to
Lugdunum or Lyons, regularly plundered or taxed all who attempted to
cross their mountains. On one occasion they levied a toll of a drachm
per man on a Roman army, and on another plundered the treasure of Caesar
himself. After a protracted struggle they were crushed by Augustus, who
founded Aosta and garrisoned it with a body of Praetorian cohorts to
police the highway.[1247] The Iapodes in the Julian Alps controlled the
Mount Ocra or Peartree Pass, which carried the Roman wagon road from
Aquileia over the mountains down to the valley of the Laibach and the
Save. This strategic position they exploited to the utmost, till
Augustus brought them to subjection as a preliminary to Roman expansion
on the Danube.[1248]

Turning to another part of the world, we find that the Afghan tribes
commanding the passes of the Suleiman Mountains have long been
accustomed to impose transit duties upon caravans plying between
Turkestan and India. The merchants have regularly organized themselves
into bands of hundreds or even thousands to resist attack or exorbitant
exactions. The Afghans have always enforced their right to collect tolls
in the Khaibar and Kohat passes, and have thus blackmailed every Indian
dynasty for centuries. In 1881 the British government came to terms with
them by paying them an annual sum to keep these roads open.[1249] Just to
the south the Gomal Pass, which carries the main traffic road over the
border mountains between the Punjab and the Afghan city of Ghazni, is
held by the brigand tribe of Waziris, and is a dangerous gauntlet to be
run by every armed caravan passing to and from India.[1250] The Ossetes of
the Caucasus, who occupy the Pass of Dariel and the approaching valleys,
regularly preyed upon the traffic moving between Russia and Georgia,
till the Muscovite government seized and policed the road.[1251]

[Sidenote: Strategic power of pass states.]

The strategic importance of pass peoples tends early to assume a
political aspect. The mountain state learns to exploit this one
advantage of its ill-favored geographical location. The cradle of the
old Savoyard power in the late Middle Ages lay in the Alpine lands
between Lake Geneva and the western tributaries of the Po River. This
location control