north-west it extended as far as the ocean, but its northern frontier is undefined, as might be expected from the imperfect sources of accurate geographical knowledge possessed by the Greeks. The rich mines of copper, tin, and lead, might have tempted the adventurers of those days to penetrate into the western Pyrenees; or sailors returning from the amber coast of the Baltic, or the tin-producing districts of Brittany or of Cornwall, may have brought back news of the Iberic tribes on the coast of Aquitaine; but the region to the south-west of the great trade route from the Phocæan colony of Marseilles, through Celtic Gaul to Britain, inhabited by warring tribes, is not likely to have been well known to the ancient geographers. Their varying statements as to the northern frontier are justly interpreted by Dr. William Smith "to express the fact in ethnography that the Iberian race extended beyond the boundaries of Spain, and that they were to a great extent intermingled with the Celts in western Europe."[1] In the time of Strabo the Pyrenees formed the northern boundary of Iberia.
When Cæsar conquered Gaul, the Iberian Aquitani possessed the region bounded by the river Garonne, the Cevennes, and the Pyrenees. The subsequent addition by Augustus to Aquitania of the fourteen tribes inhabiting the district between the Garonne and the Loire, was probably due to the fact that their manners and customs were more akin to the Aquitani than to the Celtee, and that therefore they were more easily governed from the same centre as the former, than from that of the latter. They are considered by Dr. Broca, on ethnological grounds, to be a mixed race, like
- ↑ Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, i. 1078; Article "Hispania."
