In passing from the countries known to have been inhabited by the Iberian race, into the other parts of Gaul, we enter, as M. de Humboldt observes, a new region; a new topographical language displays itself, and scarcely a name occurs bearing any analogy to the forms of Euskarian words.

as

In various parts of Italy some Euskarian names occur, Uria, Astura, Asta, Biturgia. A considerable number of the old names of places in Italy bear a near resemblance to the old Spanish names of rivers, tribes, and fortified towns. From this it is an obvious conjecture that the aboriginal people of Italy were akin to the Iberi. Some historical testimony to this effect is to be found, as we shall hereafter find occasion to observe.

I shall now proceed to a more particular survey of the population of Spain.

SECTION IV. Of the Celtic Nations in Spain.

The Celtic nations in Spain may be considered as three divisions or principal settlements of the Celtic race in that country, without taking any account of tribes principally of Iberian descent, which, from the names of the districts or towns inhabited by them, may be conjectured to have been more or less intermixed with clans of Celtic origin. The three divisions of the Celtic people in Spain are, first, tribes intermixed with Iberians, in the mountainous countries near the centre of the peninsula, named Celtiberians. Secondly, the Celtici of the south-western extremity, occupying the southern parts of modern Portugal. Thirdly, the Celts near the Nerian promontory, or in the modern Gallicia, so named, probably, from its Gaulish inhabitants.

1. The high mountainous region in the central parts of Spain, near the sources of the great rivers which flow towards the different coasts, and the valleys near the upper courses of the rivers Durius, the Tagus, the Anas, was inhabited by the Celtiberians. Their country, as we are informed by Strabo, was of great extent, and of various surface; most of it hilly, and intersected by many rivers. The

Celtiberi were the most warlike people in Spain, and were celebrated for their bravery and the obstinacy with which they resisted the arms of Rome, under their chieftain Viriathus, or as Strabo calls him, Uriathus. Posidonius reported that a tribute of 600 talents was exacted from the Celtiberi, an argument that they were a numerous and rich people, though inhabiting a country which is termed by Strabo-aρáλνπρоν -hard to cultivate. Polybius asserted that Tiberius Gracchus destroyed three hundred cities of the Celtiberi; on which relation Strabo observes, that the country is incapable of containing so many, by reason of its barrenness and the rudeness of the people: "neither do the Spaniards,' as he says, "generally dwell in large cities, but in rural villages, with the exception of those who inhabit the coast of the Mediterranean." The Celtiberi had however some towns which were judged by Strabo worthy of the name of cities. The whole nation was divided into four tribes, of which the Arevaci, dwelling towards the south-east, and near the Carpetani and the sources of the Tagus, were the most powerful; their capital, Numantia was the most celebrated. Segida and Pallantia were likewise cities of the Arevaci. Scgobriga and Bilbilis, the former bearing a Celtic, the latter an Euskarian name, were also cities of the Celtiberi. Celtiberia was celebrated for a breed of horses of great speed and variegated in colour, which, according to Strabo, changed their hue when brought into the outer parts of Spain.

The Celtiberians are described by Diodorus, who represents them as fierce and rude people. He says, they wore black, rough cassocks, made of wool like goats'-hair, and brazen helms, adorned outside with plumes, armed with daggers and two-edged swords.*

Among the traits recorded of the Celtiberians we find some, although few, indications of their Celtic origin.+ Diodorus says that their favourite drink was made of honey, as was the metheglin of the ancient Britons. Their cavalry were accustomed to alight on the field of battle, and, like the

* Diodorus, lib. v.

VOL. III.

+ Strabo, lib. iii.

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Celtici of the Anas. A tradition preserved by that geographer reported that an expedition had been made into their country by an army from the nations of Bætica, the Celtici having joined their forces to those of their neighbours the Turduli. After passing the river Limæus, the allied armies quarrelled, and the Celtici having dispersed themselves over the country remained in possession of it.

It has been observed by M. de Humboldt that the ancient writers term the Celts of Spain not Celti, but Celtici. From this remark, however, he ought to have excepted Strabo and Diodorus, who call them Kéλro, by the same denomination which they give to the people of Gaul. On the question whether the Celtic tribes were invaders of the Iberian territory, or inhabited Spain before the Euskaldunes, I shall offer a few remarks in the sequel.

SECTION V.-Iberian Tribes in Spain.

Paragraph 1.-Of the Turdetani and Turduli.

The country to the eastward of the Anas, and the Celtic districts bordering on that river, was termed Bætica, from the river Bætis, the Guadalquivir, which flows through it. It had the name of Turdetania, from its inhabitants, who were the Turdetani and Turduli. * Some writers considered them as different tribes, among whom Polybius reported that the Turduli were neighbours of the Turdetani towards the north. They were not distinguished in the time of Strabo, who says that their country was extremely rich and fertile, and second to no part of the world in all natural advantages. Turdetania comprehended most of the south of Spain, reaching from the river Anas to the mountainous country of the Oretani or La Mancha. It was said to contain, according to Strabo, two hundred cities, the principal of which were Gades or

* Strab. p. 161.

+Ptolemy, on the other hand places the Turduli to the south and eastward of the Turdetani. This double termination is elsewhere found in old Spanish names: the Basistani and Bastuli were one people.

Cadiz, Corduba or Cordova, and Hispalis, a Roman colony. The country was very productive. The exports of corn, wine, and oil were so considerable, that the ships in which they were brought to Ostia, the port-town of Rome, were nearly as numerous as those from Africa.* Among the exports were great quantities of gold and silver, the produce of mines in Turdetania, and tin from the mountainous country inhabited by barbarians above Lusitania. The Turdetani were the most civilized people in Spain and affected Roman manners. On the Bætis especially they spoke Latin, and forgot their native language. According to Strabo the river Bætis was in earlier times named the Tartessus, marking the site of the Phoenician settlement. Tartessus is mentioned by Herodotus as a place of great power and opulence at the period of the earliest voyages of the Phocæans in the Western Mediterranean. +

The same geographer informs us that the Turdetani were the most learned people in Spain; they were acquainted with the use of letters, and preserved among them records of antiquity and poems and laws composed in metre, handed down from a period, as they declared, of six thousand years.‡ Strabo adds "that the other nations of Spain likewise practised the art of writing, not with one form of characters; neither was their language the same." He does not inform us whether this difference of idiom amounted only to variety of dialect, or constituted an entire diversity. We have reason to believe, from the names of places, and the researches of M. de Humboldt, that there was no essential difference; that all the Spaniards spoke dialects of the Euskarian speech, except the Celtic people and those Iberian tribes whose idioms were

Strab. lib. iii. p. 192.

+ Herod. lib. i. c. 163

So the vulgar reading of Strabo imports. But Niebuhr has well remarked, that the expression νόμους ἐμμέτρους ἐξακισχιλίων ἐτῶν would not even be Greek, and he proposes to read πv for тv; meaning that the laws of the Turdetanians were contained in six thousand verses, or π. Yet Niebuhr refers this literature of the Turdetanians to an era when the West, as he says, was still subsisting with all its original peculiarities, before it experienced any influence from Asia. And was there ever such a time? The alphabet of the Spaniards was Phoenician.

intermixed with the Celtic. These however constituted, as it would appear, no small part of the native tribes of the Peninsula.

The Turduli and Turdetani were situated in part to the eastward of the Bætis, and therefore within the limits of the pure Iberian speech, according to Humboldt's demarcation. Their cities bore Euskarian and not Celtic names. To the northward of Turdetani were the Vettones, the Oretani and Carpetani, and beyond Mount Orospeda the Sedetani. To the northward of all these was Celtiberia, before described.

Paragraph 2.-Of the Lusitanians.

"Lusitania, says Strabo, is to the northward of the Tagus, containing the greatest of the Iberian nations who resisted the Romans for the longest time. To the southward it is limited by the Tagus, to the west and north by the ocean; eastward by the Carpetani, Vettones, Vaccæi, and Callaici, celebrated nations. Some formerly termed them Lusitanians. The Callaici border on the Asturians and Iberians; the other nations on the Celtiberi." It is not to be wondered at that the Lusitanians, who had Celtic people to the south and north, and Celtiberians for their eastern neighbours, should have partaken in the intermixture of Celtic with their language, and it is probable that at one time the Iberian part of the Lusitanian nation was under the dominion of Celts. We cannot otherwise account for the existence of so many places in the Lusitanian territory with evidently Celtic names. In the list of Lusitanian inland towns given by Ptolemy, in the fifth chapter of his second book, there are several names which are undoubtedly Celtic, as well as those belonging to their neighbours, the Callaici and Vettones. Strabo describes the Lusitani as in great part a lawless, predatory people, living like banditti in mountainous places, accustomed to cut off the right hand of their prisoners. He says that they were addicted to sacrifices, and accustomed to prophesy from the entrails of the victim, without cutting them out.*