Historical Evidence of Iheric and Celtic Races in Spain and Gaul.
These two races were in possession of Spain during the very earliest times recorded in history, the Iberians occupying the north-western region (see Map, Fig. 112), and the Celts, or Gauls, extending in a broad band south of the Pyrenees along the Mediterranean shore; according to Ephorus and Eratosthenes, as far as Cadiz or Gadeira (μέχρι Γαδέιρων), and forming isolated settlements also in Portugal. When they are first brought before us, they had already been dwelling side by side long enough to form, by their union, the powerful nation of Celt-Iberi of Castile, defining the pure Iberian on the west from the pure Celt on the east. The former pre- dominated over the latter to such an extent as to give their name to the whole peninsula, although they were no longer masters of the district best known to the Phœnicians and ancient Greeks on the side of the Mediterranean. Here the Ligurians are to be counted among the inhabitants, if the statements of Thucydides be true, that they expelled the Sikanoi from the district of the river Sikanos. In the north the Vascones then, as now, held the Basque provinces of Spain.
The distribution of these two races in Gaul is similar to that which we have noted in Spain. Iberia was believed by the ancient Greeks to have extended before their time beyond the Pyrenees, as far to the north-east as the Rhone;[1] and Scyllax remarks incidentally that the Ligurians and mixed Iberians (Ἰβῆρες μίγαδες), dwelt on the shores of the Mediterranean, from the mouth of the above river as far as Emporium in Spain. To the
- ↑ Strabo, iii. 166.
