the Scythians. Such descriptions covered a shifting, ill-defined area and their ethnic value is much debated, since several of the peoples reckoned Ligurian, especially in southern Gaul, bore unmistakably Celtic names.

The ancient Ligures are usually held to descend from the Bronze Age population of north-western Italy, though a self-aware people organised on a tribal basis probably took shape only in the Iron Age, under Etruscan and Greek stimulus. From the 7th century BC, contact with the Etruscans