300 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



Locrian, which had three tribes in the mountains of 

 northern Greece, and the colony of Osolean Locri in 

 Italy. All these came from the north-east of the 

 Euxine, where they had been neighbours of the A< 

 They had a legend of their first king's son having 

 rescued from a wolf by a serpent. Naupactis, 

 present Lepanto, was their sea-port; but original 

 they had been savages, clothed in the skins of wild 

 beasts, and having their wives in common, like the 

 Vascones. They had names and terms which were 

 likewise found in the Tyrhenian. Already, before the 

 arrival of the Gauls, properly so called, this people 

 having extended between the Cevennes and the sea- 

 coast, up to the mountains of Spain, was encountered 

 by other marine tribes, when, leaving some clans in 

 Corsica, in the Hieres Islands, and among the Iberian 

 families occupying the water Sycanis* (the lagoons 

 along the coast), they retreated to the Cottian Alps, 

 the centre of its national strength, where the present 

 Piedmont was in its possession. On the side of Italy, 

 the capital, Ticinum, now Pavia, was in the district of 

 the Loavian tribe, with the Libuans, on the banks of 



* Not unlikely a Teutonic word, SeeJcant, border of the 

 sea. This term would have no meaning, but for the la- 

 goons along the coast, only separated from the sea by a 

 continuous belt of shingle. Sicani, Sitaceni, and Siculi, in 

 this case, must mean maritime, coast men, water or sea 

 men, the same as Cantii, in Britain. Yet these names 

 again came from the Euxine Bosphorus, and according to 

 Pliilistus, cited by Dion. Halic., the Siculi were of the 

 same race as the Ligures, notwithstanding that Tiuicus 

 named them aborigines of Sicily. 



