Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/296

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STRABO.
CASAUB. 189.

facility of the transport by land, from thence the merchandise is easily conveyed by the Loire. This river flows from the Cevennes into the ocean. From Narbonne the voyage to the Aude[1] is short, but the journey by land to the river Garonne longer, being as much as 700 or 800 stadia. The Garonne likewise flows into the ocean. Such is what we have to say concerning the inhabitants of the Narbonnaise, who were formerly named Kelts. In my opinion the celebrity of the Kelts induced the Grecians to confer that name on the whole of the Galatæ; the vicinity of the Massilians may alsoliave had something to do with it.[2]

CHAPTER II.

1. We must now speak of the Aquitani and the fourteen Galatic nations pertaining to them, situated between the Garonne and the Loire, some of which extend to the river Rhone and the plains of the Narbonnaise. Generally speaking, the Aquitani may be said to differ from the Galatic race, both as to form of body and language, resembling more nearly the Iberlans: They are bounded by the Garonne, and dwell between this river and the Pyrenees. There are above twenty nations which bear the name of Aquitani, small and obscure, the major part of them dwelling by the ocean, and the remainder in the interior and by the extremities of the Cevennes, as far as the Tectosages. This district, however, being too small, they added to it the territory between the Garonne and the Loire. These rivers are nearly parallel with the Pyrenees, and form with them two parallelograms, bounded on the remaining sides by the ocean and the mountains of the Cevennes.[3] Both of these rivers are navigable for a distance

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  2. The whole of Gaul bore the name of Keltica long before the Romans had penetrated into that country. After their conquest of the southern provinces, they distinguished them from the rest of Keltica by conferring on them the name of Gallia Narbonensis. Aristotle gave the name of Kelts to the inhabitants of the country near Narbonne. Polybius tells us that the Pyrenees separated the Iberians from the Kelts; while Diodorus Siculus fixed the position of the Kelts between the Alps and the Pyrenees.
  3. "Strabo," says Gosselin, "always argues on the hypothesis that the