Silures
Σίλυρες
Eth. Silures (Σίλυρες, Ptol. 2.3.24), a powerful and warlike people in the W. part of Britannia Romana, whose territory was bounded on the S. by the estuary of the Sabrina. The important towns of Isca and Venta belonged to them. Tacitus (Agr. 11) calls them descendants of the Iberi of Spain, and states that they had emigrated from Ireland into Britain; but there seems to be no foundation for this opinion. (Cf. Zeuss, Die Deutschen, p. 202.) Although subjugated by the Romans, they caused them continual alarm; and they were the only people of Britain who, at a later period, maintained their independence against the Saxons. (Beda, Hist. Ecc. 1.12, seq.; cf. Tac. Ann. 12.2, 31; Plin. Nat. 4.16. s. 30.)
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.