The arrangement made by Augustus lasted until the time of Diocletian, when the two Alpine provinces were abolished, and the watershed became the boundary between Italy and Gaul. At this time we find the name Liguria extended as far as Milan, while in the 6th century the old Liguria was separated from it, and under the Lombards formed the fifth Italian province under the name of Alpes Cottiae. In the middle ages the ancient Liguria north of the Apennines fell to Piedmont and Lombardy, while that to the south, with the coast strip, belonged to the republic of Genoa.
(T. As.)
Archaeology and Philology.—It is clear that in earlier times the Ligurians occupied a much more extensive area than the Augustan region; for instance Strabo (i. 2, 92; iv. 1, 7) gives earlier authorities for their possession of the land on which the Greek colony of Massalia (Marseilles) was founded; and Thucydides (vi. 2) speaks of a settlement of Ligurians in Spain who expelled the Sicani thence. Southward their domain extended as far as Pisa on the coast of Etruria and Arretium inland in the time of Polybius (ii. 6), and a somewhat vague reference in Lycophron (line 1351) to the Ligurians as enemies of the founders of Agylla (i.e. Caere) suggests that they once occupied even a larger tract to the south. Seneca (Cons. ad Helv. vii. 9), states that the population of Corsica was partly Ligurian. By combining traditions recorded by Dionysius (i. 22; xiv. 37) and others (e.g. Serv. ad. Aen. xi. 317) as having been held by Cato the Censor and by Philistus of Syracuse (385 B.C.) respectively, Professor Ridgeway (Who were the Romans? London, 1908, p. 3) decides in favour of identifying the Ligurians with a tribe called the Aborigines who occupy a large place in the early traditions of Italy (see Dionysius i. cc. 10 ff.); and who may at all events be regarded with reasonable certainty as constituting an early pre-Roman and pre-Tuscan stratum in the population of Central Italy (see [Latium]). For a discussion of this question see [Volsci]. Ridgeway holds that the language of the Ligurians, as well as their antiquities, was identical with that of the early Latins, and with that of the Plebeians of Rome (as contrasted with that of the Patrician or Sabine element), see [Rome]: History (ad. init.). The archaeological side of this important question is difficult. Although great progress has been made with the study of the different strata of remains in prehistoric Italy and of those of Liguria itself (see for instance the excellent Introduction à l’histoire romaine by Basile Modestov (Paris, 1907, p. 122 ff.) and W. Ridgeway’s Early Age of Greece, p. 240 ff.) no general agreement has been reached among archaeologists as to the particular races who are to be identified as the authors of the early strata, earlier, that is, than that stratum which represents the Etruscans.
On the linguistic side some fairly certain conclusions have been reached. D’Arbois de Jubainville (Les Premiers habitants de l’Europe, ed. 2, Paris, 1880-1894) pointed out the great frequency of the suffix -asco- (and -usco-) both in ancient and in modern Ligurian districts, and as far north as Caranusca near Metz, and also in the eastern Alps and in Spain. He pointed out also, what can scarcely be doubted, that the great mass of the Ligurian proper names (e.g. the streams Vinelasca, Porcobera, Comberanea; mons Tuledo; Venascum), have a definite Indo-European character. Farther Karl Müllenhof in vol. iii. of his Deutsche Alterthumskunde (Berlin, 1898) made a careful collection of the proper names reserved in Latin inscriptions of the Ligurian districts, such as the Tabula Genuatium (C.I.L. i. 99) of 117 B.C. A complete collection of all Ligurian place and personal names known has been made by S. Elizabeth Jackson, B.A., and the collection is to be combined with the inscriptional remains of the district in The Pre-Italic Dialects, edited by R. S. Conway (see The Proceedings of the British Academy). Following Kretschmer Kuhn’s Zeitschrift (xxxviii. 97), who discussed several inscriptions found near Ornavasso (Lago Maggiore) and concluded that they showed an Indo-European language, Conway, though holding that the inscriptions are more Celtic than Ligurian, pointed out strong evidence in the ancient place names of Liguria that the language spoken there in the period which preceded the Roman conquest was Indo-European, and belonged to a definite group, namely, languages which preserved the original q as Latin did, and did not convert it into p as did the Umbro-Safine tribes. The same is probably true of Venetia (see [Veneti]), and of an Indo-European language preserved on inscriptions found at Coligny and commonly referred to the Sequani (see Comptes Rendus de l’Ac. d’Insc., Paris, 1897, 703; E. B. Nicholson, Sequanian, London, 1898; Thurneysen, Zeitschr. f. Kelt. Phil., 1899, 523). Typically Ligurian names are Quiamelius, which contains the characteristic Ligurian word melo- “stone” as in mons Blustiemelus (C.I.L. v. 7749), Intimelium and the modern Vintimiglia. The tribal names Soliceli, Stoniceli, clearly contain the same element as Lat. aequi-coli (dwellers on the plain), sati-cola, &c., namely quel-, cf. Lat. in-quil-inus, colo, Gr. πολεῖν, τέλλεσθαι. And it should be added that the Ligurian ethnica show the prevailing use of the two suffixes -co- and -ati-, which there is reason to refer to the pre-Roman stratum of population in Italy (see [Volsci]).
Besides the authorities already cited the student may be referred to C. Pauli, Altitalische Studien, vol. i., especially for the alphabet of the insc.; W. Ridgeway, Who were the Romans? (followed by the abstract of a paper by the present writer) in The Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. iii. p. 42; and to W. H. Hall’s, The Romans on the Riviera and the Rhône (London, 1898); Issel’s La Liguria geologica e preistorica (Genoa, 1892). A further batch of Celto-Ligurian inscriptions from Giubiasco near Bellinzona (Canton Ticino) is published by G. Herbig, in the Anzeiger f. Schweizer. Altertumskunde, vii. (1905-1906), p. 187; and one of the same class by Elia Lattes, Di un’ Iscriz. ante-Romana trovata a Carcegna sul Lago d’ Orta (Atti d. r. Accad. d. Scienze di Torino, xxxix., Feb. 1904).
(R. S. C.)
[1] The dividing line between Liguria and Etruria was the lower course of the river Macra (Magra), so that, while the harbour of Luna was in the former, Luna itself was in the latter.
LI HUNG CHANG (1823-1901), Chinese statesman, was born on the 16th of February 1823 at Hofei, in Ngan-hui. From his earliest youth he showed marked ability, and when quite young he took his bachelor degree. In 1847 he became a Tsin-shi, or graduate of the highest order, and two years later was admitted into the imperial Hanlin college. Shortly after this the central provinces of the empire were invaded by the Taiping rebels, and in defence of his native district he raised a regiment of militia, with which he did such good service to the imperial cause that he attracted the attention of Tsêng Kuo-fan, the generalissimo in command. In 1859 he was transferred to the province of Fu-kien, where he was given the rank of taotai, or intendant of circuit. But Tsêng had not forgotten him, and at his request Li was recalled to take part against the rebels. He found his cause supported by the “Ever Victorious Army,” which, after having been raised by an American named Ward, was finally placed under the command of Charles George Gordon. With this support Li gained numerous victories leading to the surrender of Suchow and the capture of Nanking. For these exploits he was made governor of Kiangsu, was decorated with a yellow jacket, and was created an earl. An incident connected with the surrender of Suchow, however, left a lasting stain upon his character. By an arrangement with Gordon the rebel wangs, or princes, yielded Nanking on condition that their lives should be spared. In spite of the assurance given them by Gordon, Li ordered their instant execution. This breach of faith so aroused Gordon’s indignation that he seized a rifle, intending to shoot the falsifier of his word, and would have done so had not Li saved himself by flight. On the suppression of the rebellion (1864) Li took up his duties as governor, but was not long allowed to remain in civil life. On the outbreak of the rebellion of the Nienfei, a remnant of the Taipings, in Ho-nan and Shan-tung (1866) he was ordered again to take the field, and after some misadventures he succeeded in suppressing the movement. A year later he was appointed viceroy of Hukwang, where he remained until 1870, when the Tientsin massacre necessitated his transfer to the scene of the outrage. He was, as a natural consequence, appointed to the viceroyalty of the metropolitan province of Chihli, and justified his appointment by the energy with which he suppressed all attempts to keep alive the anti-foreign sentiment among the people. For his services he was made imperial tutor and member of the grand council of the empire, and was decorated with many-eyed peacocks’ feathers.