Aturus

Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography

A´TURUS(Adour), as Lucan (Luc. 1.420) names it, or ATURRUS (Auson. Mosell. 5.467), a river of Aquitania. Vibius Sequester has the name Atyr (ed. Oberl. p. 68), which is the genuine name, unless we should write Atur. The Adur of Sussex is the same name. Ptolemy's form Aturis is the Aquitanian word with a Greek termination. The Aturus is the chief river of Aquitania. It drains some of the valleys on the north face of the western part of the Pyrenees, and has a course of about 170 miles to the Bay of Biscay, which it enters below Bayonne. The town of Aquae Augustae was on the Aturus. The poets call the river Tarbellicus, from the name of the Tarbelli, an Aquitanian people who occupied the fiat coast north of the mouth of the Adour.
It seems that there was a tribe named Atures (Tibull. 1.7, according to the emended text) or Aturenses: probably this was a name given to the inhabitants of the banks of the Atur.
[G.L]

Related Words