Sardinia and Corsica were likewise inhabited by people who were partly of Iberian descent.

Pliny enumerates three tribes as the principal inhabitants of Sardinia he terms them Ilienses, Balari, and Corsi. The Ilienses of Pliny were termed by Strabo Ioläenses. A myth respecting their origin reported them to have descended from the sons of Hercules, who came to the island under Iolaus. The barbarous inhabitants whom they found there, and among whom they took up their abode, were, according to Strabo, Etruscans. Several other writers mention the Ilienses or Iolaenses, as Diodorus, Aristotle, and Pausanias, and they are represented by some as Trojans, by others as Greeks. From Strabo, however, we learn that they were barbarous inhabitants of the mountainous parts of the island, who dwelt in caves, and scarcely cultivated the ground, but supported themselves by predatory attacks upon their more industrious neighbours, and chiefly upon the people of the opposite coast of Pisa. Strabo terms them Diagebres. He says that there were four tribes of those mountaineers in Sardinia, the Tarati, Sossinati, Balari, and Aconites. Pausanias, who has given a long and detailed account of Sardinia, terms the inhabitants of the mountainous parts in general Balari. He says that after the Carthaginians had conquered the island, the higher districts in the interior remained in the possession of the Balari. They were descended from a mixture of Iberians and Libyans. The first city that was founded in the island of Sardinia was Nora, which was built by Iberians. * Solinus confirms this account, which represents the early population of Sardinia to have been partly Libyan and partly of Iberian origin.†

Euski. But we shall hereafter show that the Oscans were of a very different stock. Their characters were but a slight modification of the Etruscan. Between the Etruscans, who were a trading people, and the Bætic Spaniards, it is likely that intercourse existed.

* Pausan, in Phocicis, 10.

+ The Phœnicians, however, colonized Sardinia at an early period, and it was afterwards conquered and held in subjection by the Carthaginians, till the first Punic war. They built the towns of Calaris, Sulchi, and Caralis.-Pausan (10. 17.-Diodor. 4, 29. 5. 15, 15, 24.) Polybius (i. 79.) Cicero expressly declares, that the Sardinians in his time were considered as in great part Carthaginians, (Cicero pro Scauro, c. 14, 18.) See Gesenius Script. Ling. Phon. Mon. p. 154. A Phœnician or rather Punic inscription in Sardinia has been illustrated by Gesenius.

The population of Corsica, called by the Greeks Cyrnos, is said likewise by ancient writers to have been in part Iberian and partly Libyan. Eustathius, in his commentary on Dionysius, says, that the first inhabitants of the Isle of Corsica were Iberians.* Isidore and Servius say that it was peopled by Ligurians, but Pausanias derives its primitive inhabitants from Lybia. The former account is confirmed by the philosopher Seneca, who was himself a native of Spain, and was banished to the Isle of Corsica. He remarked that the Corsicans resembled the Cantabri in Spain in their dress, and retained some relics of their old Iberian language, although the island was much frequented by Ligurians and Greeks.

SECTION VII.-Observations on the Origin of the Celtic and Iberian Inhabitants of Spain.

It has been a general opinion that the Iberians were the aboriginal inhabitants of the entire Spanish peninsula, and that the Celtic tribes, who occupied some parts of it, were invaders from the other side of the Pyrenees, who forced their way among the earlier and less warlike inhabitants, and gained possession of some provinces. Against this opinion strong doubts have been raised.

That the Celti were invaders of Spain, and long posterior to the Iberi, and that these were the aborigines, was the general persuasion of ancient writers. Strabo mentions the Celti among the foreign invaders, who gained a footing in the peninsula, and he speaks of the Celtiberians, as having been originally Celts. Appian says that the Celta, at some time or another, passing over the Pyrenees and mixing their dwellings with the Iberians, acquired thence the name of Celtiberi.+ Diodorus seems to have obtained the same report;+ he says that the Iberians and Celts, after long wars about the possession of the country, at length made peace and agreed to inhabit it in common, and their races becoming intermixed,

* Eustath. ad Dionys. Perieg. 458.

+ Appian. Bell. Hisp. 256.

Diodor. Bblioth. lib. v. c. 309.

the name of Celtiberi thence originated. Lucan has alluded to the same tradition, as likewise Silius Italicus.*

It has been observed by Niebuhr and by M. de Humboldt, that this opinion, though prevalent among the Greek and Roman writers, appears rather to have been taken up by them as a probable way of accounting for the existence of Celtic people in Spain, and as an obvious inference, than derived from any historical tradition. No reference has been given to ancient authority, or even to local tradition, for such an event as the passage of Gauls into Spain. In the recorded instances of Celtic migrations into Italy, Germany, and the East, we are always told what tribes emigrated, and some attempt has been made to affix a particular period to such events. In the instance of the Celti of Spain, no intimation of time has been given. We are not informed from what part of Gaul they emigrated, or at what conjuncture, or under what circumstances. The local positions in which the Celtic tribes of Spain were found, have been thought to weigh strongly against the opinion that they entered the country as conquerors. We trace them where we should rather expect to find the relics of a primitive population, in the mountainous fastnesses of the interior, where the nature of the country would seem likely to afford them a retreat secure from foreign invaders, and in the remote extremities of the peninsula, near the western promontories, which would naturally be the last refuge of people flying from more powerful enemies. The results of M. de Humboldt's researches tend to support the same argument. It appears to have been proved by these researches that the Celtic people had been at one time more widely spread, that they had given way to the Iberians, through a great part of the peninsula, where they had left no other vestiges of their existence, than the names of places or of tribes. * Lucan says:-"Profugique à gente vetusta

Gallorum Celtæ miscentes nomen Iberis."

Silius Italicus:- "At Pyrenæi frondosa cacumina montis

Turbata

Divisos Celtis late prospectat Iberos."

And,

،، Venere et Celtae sociati nomen Iberis."

Luc. 4, 9. Silius 415-340. Ritson, p. 21

Throughout Lusitania and the north-western part of Spain, fortresses bearing Celtic names remained, though the people were Iberians. These facts lead us to the inference, that Celtic tribes once occupied a great part, namely the western half of the peninsula, before the Euskaldunes gained possession of it and while the latter were the inhabitants of Bætica, Turdetania and the other eastern and southern provinces, where the Celts appear never to have had the least footing. If, then, we follow the evidence of facts, and of facts alone, we should conclude that the Celta were the oldest inhabitants of the west and the Iberians of the eastern parts of Spain. The question, which people arrived first in the peninsula is thus stripped of its chief interest, but we find the prevalent ideas of the vast antiquity of the Iberian people reduced on this view of the subject within much narrower limits. It is fair to conclude that the Euskaldunes cannot have preceded the Celts by many ages, since otherwise they would have spread themselves over the whole peninsula, which, on this hypothesis, they did not. Now the arrival of the Celts is almost an historical event, since we trace the Celtic race from the East by philological proofs.

Whence then originated the Euskaldunes, since they also are to be regarded as foreigners, and not among those races whom, for want of direct proof to the contrary, we admit, pending the discusssion, to have been indigenous? With regard to this question we have hardly grounds for a probable conjecture: all that remains to us for the early history of the Iberians is, that people of that race once inhabited a country which afterwards became the abode of the Ligurians. This very ancient tradition, recorded as we had seen by many writers, directs us to the confines of Gaul and Italy. In parts of Italy M. de Humboldt has traced what appear to be vestiges of the Euskarian language in the names of ancient towns. the alphabet used in early times in different parts of Spain, and termed perhaps erroneously Celtiberian, is allied, as Gesenius has shown, to the old Oscan and Etruscan letters, we seem to find in this fact another connecting link between ancient Spain and Italy, and that country, or the adjoining and southern part of Gaul, presents the most specious claim to be regarded as the

As

mother-land of the Euskaldunes. But we shall be disappointed in any attempt to trace the kindred of this race among the old Italic nations, or to find any dialect akin to the Euskarian, among the known languages of the Italian tribes.*

An insurmountable difficulty opposes, as it has been observed by a late writer, the supposition newly maintained, that the Celts preceded the Iberians in the possession of Spain. Had that been the fact, valiant bands of hardy Celtic mountaineers could never have been expelled from the fastnesses of the Pyrenees by the less warlike Iberians. Yet this whole tract of mountains was occupied solely by tribes of the pure race of the Euskaldunes. See Diefenbach's Versuch einer genealogischen Geschichte der Kelten. Stuttgart, 1840.