The Avatici (Gaulish: *Auaticoi) were a Gallic tribe dwelling near the Étang de Berre, between the mouth of the Rhône river and Massilia (modern Marseille), during the Roman period.
[4] Their territory stretched from the eastern part of the mouth of the Rhône river to the west of Massilia, and from the Mediterranean Sea to the Crau in the north.
[7][8] Beyond [the mouth of the Rhône] are the canals leading out of the Rhone, famous as the work of Gaius Marius whose distinguished name they bear, Lake Mastromela and the town of Maritima of the Avatici, and above are the Stony Plains, where tradition says that Hercules fought battles, the district of the Anatilii, and inland those of the Dexivates and Cavares.
The location of the settlement is not precisely indicated by the sources, but most scholars place it in modern Martigues, possibly at the site of Tholon, on the coast of the Étang de Berre.
[9][10][6] Ptolemy, and later the Ravenna Cosmography, calls it a Colonia, but this is likely an error since both Mela and Pliny (who used sources from the Augustan period) refer to the settlement as an oppidum in the 1st century AD.