II.]

THE BASQUES.

77

But

It cannot be denied that Basque philology may occasionally throw light on Iberic history, but it requires careful handling to make etymology a safe ground for historical inference. The town Graccuris was founded by and named after Sempronius Gracchus, and it lay in a district of the Vascones which is at this day occupied by their descendants the modern Basques. We may venture to divide the name thus, Grace-uris; and if we suppose uris to be the Latinized form of the Basque word uria, a town, then Graccuris would signify the town of Gracchus. whether this etymology be true or not, it is pretty certain that the name is a Basque compound, and Graccuris an Iberic town. We may also with considerable confidence assert as much of the neighbouring town Calaguris, though we are altogether at sea with respect to its etymology. Now a place called Calaguris occurs in Aquitania, not many miles south of Toulouse; and on the strength of the name I think we may infer, that at one time there were Ibēres settled in that neighbourhood; and it is important to be able to fix upon any locality in Aquitania as distinctly Iberic. There are not many other examples which I could submit to a critical reader with as well grounded an assurance of their being accepted.

When the Romans established their dominion in Spain, a mixed language, the Celtiberian, seems to have been in general use, though in certain localities dialects purely Celtic, or purely Iberic, continued to be spoken. What were the peculiar characteristics of the Celtiberian it is difficult to say, owing to the few specimens of the language that have come down to us, but it is probable that it was largely made up of Celtic. The Phoenician settlements in the south and east of the Peninsula must have weakened the influence of the Iberic dialects there spoken, long before the Celtibēres worked their way to the Mediterranean The country running along the southern front of the Pyrenees was no doubt then, as at present, the stronghold of Basque customs and the Basque language; and

when Strabo (3. 3) distinguishes the Ibēres from the Astures and the Celtibēres, he probably applied the term Ibēres to a Basque-speaking people, while by Astures he indicated a Celtic race, and by Celtiberes the mixed race speaking Celtiberian. The whole people now speaking Basque must be less than a million in number, and it may be doubted if they were much more numerous at the time in question.

CHAPTER III.

THE Ligures the same people as the Ligues of Greek history; Ligues settled in Asia Minor, south of Colchis; Ligures settled in the north of Italy; their extension westward along the coasts of the Mediterranean. Ligues in the basin of the Ebro; Ligues in Baetica near Cadiz; Spain called by Eratosthenes the Liguan foreland; Hesiod seems to have used the term Ligues as a general name for the Celtic race. The outlying races of the world Aithiopes, Indoi, Skuthai, Kelto-Skuthai, &c.; mistakes that have arisen from not sufficiently attending to the significance of the terms KeltoSkuthai, Galato-Skuthai, &c. Ambrones, the name of one of the races that accompanied the Cimbri in their invasion of Italy, 113 B.C.; the name recognized by the Italian Ligures as that of their own race; a people named Ambrones settled north of the Carpathians; the names Ambron, Umbri, &c., not unknown in Celtic districts in Asia. - Aedui Ambarri one of the Celtic tribes that crossed the Alps in the reign of Tarquinius Priscus; claimed kindred with certain of the Ligures of Italy; considered by some writers to be akin to the Umbri. Races settled in central Italy after the expulsion of the Siculi. Greek writers of the fourth and fifth centuries B.C. seem to have looked on Italy as mainly occupied by three native races, the Oinōtroi, the Opikoi, and the Ombrikoi. The Oinōtroi the early Greek settlers of southern Italy. The Opikoi the same people as the Osci of Latin history; origin of the name; Oscan dialects more or less spoken both in central and in southern Italy; Sabines, Samnites, the . 'Aborigines,' and the Latins all Oscan races. - The Ombrikoi the same people as the Umbri of the Latins; according to Herodotus occupied the whole of northern Italy; descended from the ‘Old Galli'; akin to, if not identical with, the Ligures. The Rasenu and later Tyrrheni. The Ligurian races penetrated into Europe by way of the Danube; origin of the names Umbri, Ambrones, &c.; Veneti, the last of the Ligurian races that reached Italy; expelled a Greek people called the Euganei. Geography of the Euxine and its neighbourhood; the Danube, the Borysthenes, and the Phasis. - Dates of the several Ligurian migrations up the Danube.

THE name of Ibēres is found mixed up with that of a people whom the Romans called the Ligures, and the Greeks, according to a well-known letter-change, the Ligues. The fortunes of the two races have been strangely blended for

more than 3000 years, though they appear to have been from the first aliens to each other in blood and language.

According to Herodotus (7. 72) there were Ligues in the army of Xerxes. They were armed like the Paphlagonians, who, according to Josephus (Ant. 1. 6), were descended from Gomer, and known by the name of Riphath. Perhaps we should not be altogether justified in concluding from this circumstance that the Ligues were akin to the Paphlagonians, but we may safely infer that they were subjected to the same social and political influences, and probably located in the same neighbourhood.

In his commentary on Dionysius Periegetes (76), Eustathius intimates that some of the Kolkhian Ligues were descendants of the European tribe of that name, and he tells us Lycophron shows this when he gives us the history of Kutaia, a Ligurian town among the Kolkhoi.' I think we may gather that in the opinion of these Greek antiquaries the Asiatic Ligues were settled in some district intermediate between the Paphlagones and the Kolkhoi; and the same causes which drove the Iberes 2 to seek a new home west of the Euxine may, though probably at a somewhat later period, have driven thither also a portion of the Ligues.

Roman history generally represents the Ligures as settled in the mountainous country which fills the north-west corner of Italy. But at an earlier period they were to be traced much further westward. The Greeks gave the name of Ligues to the tribe of the Salues who dwelt round Marseilles, and called the country Ligustike, or the Ligurian country (Str. 4); and many a battle with the 'Ligures' had to be fought before the safety of the infant colony was secured. According to Stephanus Byzantinus, Hecataeus made the Elisukoi,' a race of Ligues, and Avienus (Ora

1 The custom of deriving Asiatic races from the more celebrated races bearing the same name in Europe was common among the later Greek historians. Strabo is notorious for his blunders in this respect.

2 Chap. II. p. 56.

III.]

LIGURES AND LIGUES.

81

Maritima, 585) locates the 'Elisykes' round Narbonne, and describes them as the earliest inhabitants of the district. The Bebrukes, whom Dio Cassius (Frag. Vales. 6) fixes near Narbonne, and who are mentioned in the poem ascribed to Scymnus of Chios1 as settled between the Spaniards and the Greeks of Marseilles, may have been a tribe of Elisukoi, or perhaps that people under another name.

Scylax commences his coast-survey at the Straits, and passes thence eastward along the coasts of Spain. He tells us After the Iberes follow the Ligues and the mixed Ibēres, as far as the river Rhone. The coasting from the Liguan Emporion to the Rhone takes two days and one night.' The Ligues here mentioned must have been the people who, according to Thucydides (6. 2), drove the Ibēres from the river Sikanos; and Emporion, which lay a little north of the modern Barcelona, must have taken from them the name of Liguan. The 'mixed Ibēres,' who dwelt further eastward, were in all probability subject to the Ligues among whom they lived; and we may conjecture that this latter people gained their ascendancy in these districts when others of their countrymen turned the eastern extremity of the Pyrenees, and drove the Ibēres. from the Sikanos, that is, as we have shown elsewhere 2, from the basin of the Ebro. The small tribes, which in the time of Strabo (4. 1. 12, p. 186) were mingled with the Volcae Arecomisci, must have been the remains of the ancient tribes displaced by the intrusive Volcae; in other words, remains of the Ligues and the Ibēres of whom we are now speaking.

If from the basin of the Ebro we pass to the opposite corner of the Peninsula, we there also find traces of Ligurian occupation. Stephanus Byzantinus has the entry, 'Ligustine: a city of the Ligues, bordering on Western Ibēria, and in the neighbourhood of Tartessos 3. The inhabitants.

1 v. 201 Geogr. Min. 1. p. 204.

2 Vide Chap. II. p. 57.

The received text has Tarsos, but scholars are generally agreed that we should read Tartessos.

G