LIGU´STICUM MARE
LIGU´STICUM MARE (
το Λιγυστικὸν πέλαγος,
Strab. ii. p.122), was the name given in ancient times to that part of the Mediterranean sea which adjoined the coast of Liguria, and lay to the N. of the Tyrrhenian sea.
The name was applied (like all similar appellations) with considerable vagueness, sometimes as limited to what is now called the
Gulf of Genoa, in which sense it is termed the LIGUSTICUS SINUS by Florus (
3.6.9),--at others in a much wider sense, so that Pliny speaks of Corsica as an island “in Ligustico mart.” Some of the Greek geographers included under the name the whole extent from the frontiers of Spain to those of Etruria, comprising the MARE GALLICUM of the Romans, or the modern
Gulf of Lyons. The more limited use of the name seems, however, to have been the more usual, at all events in later times, and is elsewhere adopted by Pliny himself. (
Plin. Nat. 3.5. s. 10,
6. s. 12; Strab.
l.c. ;
Ptol. 3.1.3; Agathem. 1.3; Dionys. Per. 76 ; Priscian,
Per. 80.)
[
E.H.B]
