Aquitani


The Aquitani were a tribe that lived in the region between the Pyrenees, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Garonne, in present-day southwestern France in the 1st century BC. The Romans dubbed this region Gallia Aquitania. Classical authors such as Julius Caesar and Strabo clearly distinguish the Aquitani from the other peoples of Gaul, and note their similarity to others in the Iberian Peninsula.
Their old language, the Aquitanian language, was a precursor of the Basque language and the substrate for the Gascon language spoken in Gascony. Between the 1st century and the 13th century, the Aquitani gradually adopted the Gascon language while part of the Roman Empire, then the Duchy of Gascony and the Duchy of Aquitaine.

History

At the time of the Roman conquest, Julius Caesar, who defeated them in his campaign in Gaul, describes them as making up a distinct part of Gaul:
Despite apparent cultural and linguistic connections to, the region of Aquitania extended only to the Pyrenees according to Caesar:

Relation to Basque people and language

Late Romano-Aquitanian funerary slabs and altars contain what seem to be the names of deities or people similar to certain names in modern Basque, which has led many philologists and linguists to conclude that Aquitanian was closely related to an older form of Basque. Julius Caesar draws a clear line between the Aquitani, living in present-day south-western France and speaking Aquitanian, and their neighboring Celts living to the north. The fact that the region was known as the Vasconia in the Early Middle Ages, a name that evolved into the better known form of Gascony, along with other toponymic evidence, seems to corroborate that assumption.

Tribes

Image:Map Gallia Tribes Towns.png|300px|thumb|Tribes in Aquitania
Although the territory originally inhabited by the Aquitani came to be known as Novempopulania in the late Roman Empire and the Early Middle Ages, this administrative designation does not reflect the earlier ethnic diversity of the region.
Ancient sources indicate that the number of Aquitanian tribes was considerably higher. Strabo mentions about twenty peoples in his Geography.
The lists provided by Pliny the Elder and Ptolemy, supplemented by scattered information in the works of Julius Caesar, allow the identification of more than thirty distinct ethnonyms.
By comparing these classical sources and incorporating epigraphic evidence, modern scholars generally estimate that pre-Roman Aquitania comprised approximately thirty-two or thirty-three tribes.

Aquitani tribes

Aquitani related peoples or tribes

In the southern slopes of western Pyrenees Mountains, not in Aquitania but in northern Hispania Tarraconensis: