In Corsica we find Iberians and Ligurians: in Sicily, before the time of the Sicelians, Sicanians, who were afterward driven back by the Sicelians into the western and southern parts of the island. All historians agree in calling the Sicanians too Iberians: the only dispute was as to their home. They themselves asserted that they were a native primitive race: herein Timæus sided with them, and seemed to Diodorus to have proved it incontrovertibly. Thucydides however assures us it was a settled point, that they had been expelled by Ligurians from Iberia: and Philistus concurred with him. The positive language in which Thucydides expresses his judgement, “this is ascertained as truth,” in the mouth of a man like him, gives great weight to the traditions of western Europe: it can have been only Ligurian or Hispanian traditions, that he admitted as decisive. But even he might be misled by the genealogical prejudice; and where the supposed colony has no similar tradition, the declarations of the pretended original people can scarcely be admitted as evidence: in such cases vanity is very apt to bias.

On the other hand there is no doubt as to the Sicelians, that they themselves deduced their descent by emigration from the Oenotrians. Some Morgetes also inhabited the island; but history names only the more important kindred people.

That the Elymians were Trojans, passed for undoubted; only a tradition introduced Phocians also among the authors of their race. Hellanicus alone brought them from Italy.