ABSTRACT
THE ninth regio of Italy in Augustus' division of Italy was more extensive than the modern Liguria. It extended from the river Var in the west, some distance beyond Ventimiglia, to the river Magra on the east which enters the sea in the gulf of Spezia; northwards from the coast it ran beyond the northern slopes of the maritime Alps and the Apennines to the river Po, which formed the boundary as far down-stream as to a point just beyond the confluence of a southern tributary the Staff ora, Clastidium (Casteggio) a little further east being counted Ligurian by Livy.l But if a considerable but scattered body of ancient testimony may be trusted, Ligurians (Atyv€s, Ligures) were originally spread over a still much more extensive area in western Europe including, in addition to the Augustan Liguria, territory extending into central Italy on the south and east, and into Spain on the west. It thus comprised a large part of southern Gaul, of north-western and central Italy and of the valley of the Po. The northern confines of the Ligurians were but vaguely defined, but extended at least as far north as the Canton Ticino in Switzerland; and before they were separated first by the Etruscans and then by the Gauls, they must have stretched at least as far east as the Oglio and the Ticino, the western boundaries of the Rreti and the Veneti. To this wide extent of the Ligurians we must add the Ligurian element in the population of Corsica and Elba. Ligurian pedlars, called "Sigunnai" or "Sigunnes," seem to have been known even down into the valley of the Danube, but the Atyv€s of Asia Minor must surely be unconnected. Of a very
127 extensive territory, then, the Ligurians of historical times possessed but remnants, the strip of coast between the gulf of Genoa and the Apennines, together with the mountain valleys of the Apennines themselves, and of the Alps, where isolated fragments of them might be found as far east as the upper Ticino around Bellinzona.1 To these they had been restricted by successive conquerors-the Etruscans, the Gauls, and finally the Romans.
