Avienius in the context of "Volsinii"

The Iberians (Latin: Hibērī, from Greek: Ἴβηρες, Iberes) were an ancient people indigenous to the eastern and southern coasts of the Iberian Peninsula. They are described in Greek and Roman sources (among others, by Hecataeus of Miletus, Avienius, Herodotus and Strabo). Roman sources also use the term Hispani to refer to the Iberians.

The term Iberian, as used by the ancient authors, had two distinct meanings. One, more general, referred to all the populations of the Iberian peninsula without regard to ethnic differences (Pre-Indo-European, Celts and non-Celtic Indo-Europeans). The other, more restricted ethnic sense and the one dealt with in this article, refers to the people living in the eastern and southern coasts of the Iberian Peninsula, which by the 6th century BC had absorbed cultural influences from the Phoenicians, Carthaginians and the Greeks. This pre-Indo-European cultural group spoke the Iberian language from the 7th to at least the 1st century BC. The rest of the peninsula, in the northern, central, and northwestern areas, was inhabited by Vascones, Celts or Celtiberians groups and the possibly Pre-Celtic or Proto-Celtic Indo-European Lusitanians, Vettones, and Turdetani.

The Massaliote Periplus or Massiliote Periplus is a now-lost merchants' handbook, possibly dating from as early as the 6th century BC, describing the sea routes used by traders from Phoenicia and Tartessus in their journeys around Iron Age Europe.

Historian Adolf Schulten proposed it as a theoretical reconstruction of a sixth-century BC periplus, or sailing manual, and believed it had been versified in the lines of the Ora Maritima (The Maritime Shores), preserved by the Roman poet Avienus, who wrote down parts of it much later, during the 4th century AD. Schulten dated it to the 6th century BC. It describes an account of a sea voyage from Oestriminis, modern Pointe du Raz, to Greek colony Massalia, modern Marseille, along the western Mediterranean, made by Eutimenes of Masalia.