Les Bébryces d’Occident ont-ils existé ?

Abstract

On the borderland of myth and history the western Bebryces seem to discourage all attempts at identification. Seen alternately as a legendary construction of the Greeks – they are to be found in epic poems dealing with Herakles feats in the West- or as a real ethnic group settled on the margins of the Iberian area, they gave rise to a bibliography all the more vast as their importance in the sources is modest. We wish to formulate here a new proposal founded on a comparison with two other peoples of the area, the Tasgoduni of the Toulouse area and the Spanish Volciani of the Pyrenean foothills, whose existence is more solidly established. Such a comparison allows us to see in the Bebrukes a historic people linked to the settlement of the Volcs in Southern Gaul and Spain during the IIIrd c. B.C.

Keywords

• Bebryces
• Tasgoduni
• Volciani
• Volcae Tectosages
• Celts
• Iberians