In earliest times, the land now known as Croatia was inhabited by seafaring pirates known to the Romans as the Dalmatian Tribes (Such as the Histri, Liburni and the Delmatae), until the Romans formally conquered and annexed the territory in 9AD, calling it the province of "Dalmatia" named after these tribes. During the more than 400 years of Roman rule, the province of Dalmatia would become Romanized: with the Roman invaders mixing with the natives and their descendants adopting a Roman lifestyle even after the collapse of the Roman state in 476 AD.