Celtici of the Anas. A tradition preserved-«by,. tthat geographer
reported that an expedition had been made intpitheir
eonntry by an arm|||rQm the-nations of Baetica, tho^Celtici
having ijoined their: forcea to thosej-pf their neighbours the
Turduli. After passing th e river Limaeus, the allied armies
quarrelledi and the Celtici having dispersed themselves oyer
the country remained in possession oftit..
It has been observed by M. de Humboldt that the ancient
writers term the Celts .of ^Spain not Celti, but Celtici.. .From
4his remark, however, , he ought to have excepted Strabo and
Diodorus** who call-them K<Xrot, by the sapie denomination
which thejr give to the people of Gaul. On the question
whether the Celtic tribes were invaders- of the.Iberian territory,
or inhabited Spain before the Euskaldupes,- I shall offer
a few remarks in the sequel.
S ection V .— Iberian Pribes'tfi Spain. ■ "
Paragraph 1.—Of the Turdetani and Turduli..
The country to the eastward of the Anas, and the Cqlt’fc
districts bordering ^ that river, was termedjBmiidh^^rom
the river Baetis, the Guadalquivir, which flows th rb u g lit. I t
had the name of Turdetania, • from its inhabitants, who
were the Turdetani and Turduli. * - Some writcrs considered
them as different tribes, among whom Polybiuslrepoited that
the Turduli were neighbours of the Turdetani towards the
north.fr They-were not distinguished in th&rime o f 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. I t 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 Aouble.terminatiob is elsewhere foundmold Spanish names:
the Basistani and Bastuli were one people, j
Cadiz, Corduba or Cördova, and Hispalis, a Roman colony.
The country‘ waé' ^èry'rproducti've. The exports of corn,-wine,
and oil were so considerable, that the ships .in which
they ’W^re^bröught riof Ostia/, the port-town of Rome, were
nearly as numerous a s ' those • from Africa. * Among c the
exports were great' quantities of gold and silver, the produce
of mines in Turdetania*, and tin from thetnountainous country
Inhabited by barbarians hroféwmsitania. The Turdetani were
th'êsmost civilized people in Spain and affected Roman manners.
On the Baetfs‘“especially they spoke Latin* and forgot their
native lahgüagë.’ According Strabo the river Baetis was
in earlier timefsf named the Tartessus,' marking the site of the
P iMnician sfeftlëmliht. Tartesshs is'raeiittone'ii by Herodotus
3s.a place(of ‘great”phwbr and.opulence at the periodiof the
earliestsyoyagesrof the Phdcseahs in the* Western Mediterra-
tean.*f*
"l.The same ^geographer informs- us that the Turdetani were
^'ê/most learned people in Spain; theyV'wérë acquainted with
the use^pf letters', and ’preserved among them records of
antiquityrand poems" and laws compSpd ^ n ófèïre^ handed
Jown from. a peripd|Cas they de,c|a|edj. of six thousand years.J
Strabo apds.-f that thp other nations'of >%ain likewise practised
.thr art .of writing,- pot with pnfe;-T®®^of. characters; neither
w,as their language the same.” He does not inform us whether
this difference ’of^idiqm amounted only^ito variety-of dialect,
.orconstituted an entire diversity. We hayp«reason to believe/
from the names-'of places, and the researches' of M. de
Humhol^i that tfe re was no, < essential differ|hcfe j' that all
thfiSpaniards spoke dialects of'the Euskarian speech, except
the Celtic people and those Iberian tribes whose idioms-were
* Strab. lib; iliw p. 192.
+ Herod, lib. i. c. 163
* So the vulgar reading of Strabo imports. But Niebuhr has welt remarked,
that the. expression vó/j,ovq. &miêi-fK)VQ è r tö v would ;not even, be
Greek, and he proposes to read e irw v for' WS>p; ’meaning that the laws of
the Turdetanians were contained in six thousand verses, or tmij. Yet Niebuhr
refers this literature of the Turdetanians to an era wheif ,the West, as he says, was
still subsistings vnth all its original peculiarities, before it experienced any influence
Iröin' Asia. And was there evef such a time ? The alphabet of the Spaniards
was Phoenician.