r period, Timagenes, a thorough Greek both in diligence and
language, collected, from various writings facts which had been long
unknown, and guided by his faithful statements, we, dispelling all
obscurity, will now give a plain and intelligible relation of them.

3. Some persons affirm that the first inhabitants ever seen in these
regions were called Celts, after the name of their king, who was very
popular among them, and sometimes also Galatae, after the name of his
mother. For Galatae is the Greek translation of the Roman term Galli.
Others affirm that they are Dorians, who, following a more ancient
Hercules, selected for their home the districts bordering on the ocean.

4. The Druids affirm that a portion of the people was really indigenous
to the soil, but that other inhabitants poured in from the islands on
the coast, and from the districts across the Rhine, having been driven
from their former abodes by frequent wars, and sometimes by inroads of
the tempestuous sea.

5. Some again maintain that after the destruction of Troy, a few Trojans
fleeing from the Greeks, who were then scattered over the whole world,
occupied these districts, which at that time had no inhabitants at all.

6. But the natives of these countries affirm this more positively than
any other fact (and, indeed, we ourselves have read it engraved on their
monuments), that Hercules, the son of Amphitryon, hastening to the
destruction of those cruel tyrants, Geryon and Tauriscus, one of whom
was oppressing the Gauls, and the other Spain, after he had conquered
both of them, took to wife some women of noble birth in those countries,
and became the father of many children; and that his sons called the
districts of which they became the kings after their own names.

7. Also an Asiatic tribe coming from Phocaea in order to escape the
cruelty of Harpalus, the lieutenant of Cyrus the king, sought to sail to
Italy.[48] And a part of them founded Velia, in Lucania, others settled
a colony at Marseilles, in the territory of Vienne; and then, in
subsequent ages, these towns increasing in strength and importance,
founded other cities. But we must avoid a variety of details which are
commonly apt to weary.

8. Throughout these provinces, the people gradually becoming civilized,
the study of liberal accomplishments flourished, having been first
introduced by the Bards, the Eubages,[49] and the Druids. The Bards were
accustomed to employ themselves in celeb