Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/200

 184 LiGuraA. Iheria, thus pointing to a still wider extension of their power. (Thuc. vi. 2.) But while the Ligu- rian settlements to the W. of the Rhone are more obscure and uncertain, the tribes that extended from that river to the Maritime Alps and the confines of Italy — the Salyes, Oxybii, and Deciates — are as- signed on good authority to the Ligurian race. (Strab. iv. pp. 202, 203 ; Pol. xxxiii. 7, 8.) On their eastern frontier, also, the Ligurians were at one time more widely spread than the limits above described. Polybius tells us that in his time they occupied the sea-coast as far as Pisae, which was the first city of Etruria: and in the interior they held the momitain districts as far as the confines of the Arretines. (Pol. ii. 16.) In the narrative of their wars with Rome in the 2nd centuiy B.C., as given in Livy, we find them extending to the same limits : and Lycophron represents them at a much earlier period as stretch- ing far down the coast of Etruria, before the arrival of the Tyrrhenians, who wrested from them by force of arms the site of Pisae and other cities. (Lycophr. Alex. 1356.) The population of Corsica also is ascribed by Seneca, and probably with good reason, to a Ligurian stock. [Corsica.] On the N. of the Apennines, in hke manner, it is probable that the Ligurians were far more widely spread, before the settlement of the Gauls, who occupied the fertile plains and drove them back into the moun- tains. Thus the Laevi and Libici, who occupied the banks of the Ticinus, appear to have been of Ligurian race (Plin. iii. 17. s. 21; Liv. v. 35): the Taurini, who certainly dwelt on both banks of the Padus, ■were unquestionably a Ligurian tribe ; and there seems much reason to assign the same origin to the Salassi also. In regard to the national affinities or origin of the Ligurians themselves, we are almost wholly in the dark. We know only that they were not either Iberians or Gauls. Strabo tells us distinctly that they were of a different race from the Gauls or Celts who inhabited the rest of the Alps, though they re- sembled them in their mode of life. (Strab. ii. p. 128.) And the same thing is implied in the marked distinction uniformly observed by Livy and other Roman writers between the Gaulish and Ligurian tribes, notwithstanding their close geographical proximity, and their frequent alliance in war. Dio- nysius says that the origin and descent of the Ligurians was wholly unknown, and Cato appears to have acquiesed in a similar conclusion. (Dionys. i. 10; Cato, ap. Serv. ad Aen. xi. 715.) But all ancient authors appear to have agreed in regarding them as one of the most ancient nations of Italy; and on this account Philistus represented the Siculi as a Ligurian tribe, while other authors assigned the same origin to the Aborigines of Latium. (Dionys. 1. 10, 22.) Several modern writers have maintained the Celtic origin or affinity of the Ligurians. (Cluver. Ital. pp. 49 — 51; Grotefend, Alt.-Italien, vol. ii. pp. 5—7.) But the authority of Strabo seems decisive against any close connection between the two races : and it is impossible, in the absence of all remains of their language, to form even a reason- able conjecture as to their more remote affinities. A fact mentioned by Plutarch {Mar. 19), according to whom the Ligurians in the army of Marius called themselves in their own language Ambrones, though curious, is much too isolated and uncertain to be re- ceived as reasonable proof of a common origin with the Gauls of that name. The name of the Ligurians appears to have been LIGURIA. obscurely known to the Greeks from a very early period, for even Hesiod noticed them, in conjunction with the Scythians and Aethiopian.«, — evidently as one of the most distant nations of the then known world. (Hesiod. ap. Strab. vii. p. 300.) But from the time of the foundation of the flourishing Greek colony of Massilia, which speedily extended not only its commerce but its colonies along the shores of Liguria, as well as those of Iberia, the name of the Ligurians must have become familiar to the Greeks, and was, as we have seen, well known to Hecataeus and Aeschylus. The Ligurians seem also from an early period to have been ready to engage as mer- cenary troops in the service of more civilised nations; and we find Ligm-ian auxiliaries already mentioned in the great army of the Carthaginian general Hamilcar, in B.C. 480. (Herod, vii. 165; Diod. xi. 1.) The Greek despots in Sicily continued to recruit their mercenary forces from the same quarter as late as the time of Agathocles. (Diod. xxi. 3.) The Greeks of Jlassilia founded colonies along the coast of Liguria as far as Nicaea and the Portus Herculis Wonoeci, but evidently never established their power far inland, and the mountain tribes of the Ligurians were left in the enjoyment of undis- turbed independence. It was not till the year 237 b. c. that the Ligu- rians, for the first time, came into contact with the arms of Rome ; and P. Lentukis Caudinus, one of the consuls of the following year, was the first who cele- brated a triumph over them. (Eutrop. iii. 2 ; Liv. Eint. XX.; Fast. Ca^nt.') But the successes of the Romans at this period were evidently very partial and incomplete, and though we find one of the con- suls for several years in succession sent against the Ligurians, and the name of that people appears three times in the triumphal Fasti (b. c. 233 — 223), it is evident that nothing more was accomplished than to prevent them from keeping the field and compel them to take refuge in the mountains (Zonar. viii. 18, 19). The Ligurian tribes with whom the Romans were at this time engaged in hostilities were exclusively those on the N. of the Apennines, who made common cause with the neighbouring Gaulish tribes of the Boians and Insubrians. These petty hostilities were for a time interrupted by the more important contest of the Second Pu,nic War. During that struggle the Ligurians openly sided with the Carthaginians : they sent support to Han- nibal, and furnished an important contingent to the army with which Hasdi-ubal fought at the Metanrus. Again, before the close of the war, when Mago landed in their territory, and made it the base of his operations against Cisalpine Gaul, the Ligurians espoused his cause with zeal, and prepared to sup- port him vrith their whole forces (Liv. xxii. 33, xxvii. 47, xxviii. 46, xxix. 5). After the untimely fate of JIago, and the close of the war, the Romans were in no haste to punish the Ligurians and Gauls for their defection, but those nations were the first to take up arms, and, at the instigation of the Car- thaginian Hamilcar, broke out into open hostilities, (B.C. 200), and attacked the Roman colonies of Plaeentia and Cremona. (Liv. xxxi. 10.) From this time commenced the long series of wars between the Romans and Ligurians, which continued with little intermission forabove eighty years. It would be impossible to give here any detailed account of these long protracted, but desultory hostilities ; in- deed we possess, in reality, very little information con- cerning them. So long as the books of Livy are pre-