Ligures

Common card · No. 233869

The Ligures or Ligurians (Latin: Ligures, singular Ligus or Ligur; Ancient Greek: Λίγυες, romanized: Lígues) were an ancient people of the north-western Mediterranean, centred on north-western Italy and extending along the neighbouring coast of south-eastern Gaul. Their name was among the oldest mentioned by ancient writers, being attested from the archaic Greek geographers down to the Roman conquest. In a narrow sense, the name belonged to a population of north-western Italy, where a distinctive material culture is recognisable from the Bronze Age. The chief markers of Ligurian identity here were an indigenous cremation rite and distinctively non-Celtic onomastics. Another ancient tradition, going back to the 6th century BC, applied the name Ligyes to a much broader and largely unknown area inhabited by 'barbarians' in the far west. The earliest Greek geographers placed them at the edge of the known world, in a semi-mythical setting similar to that of the Ethiopians and Scythians. Such...

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