Aequi

The Aequians were a company based in the ancient folk in Italy, whose name appears in Livy as an opponent of Rome in the first three centuries.

They lived in the upper valleys of the Anio and the Tolenus and Himella, mountain rivers, the northward flow to the Nar. It is reported that their main settlement area was conquered by the Romans around 484 BC for the first time ( Diodorus xi. 40) and 90 year later ( id. xiv. 106), but that it only at the end of the Second Samnitenkriegs ( were finally subjugated by 300 BC) ( Livy ix 45, fx i;. . Diodorus xx 101), as they appear to a limited form of participation was given (Cicero, De officiis i n, 35). .

All that is known about the political conditions of the aftermath is that the population of Cliternia and Nersae as a united res publica Aequiculorum who was an ordinary municipium (CIL ix. P. 388 ) occurred. The Latin colonies of Alba Fucens (304 BC) and Carsioli (298 BC) must have spread the use of Latin throughout the region through which the main ( and sometimes the only ) route ( Via led Valeria ) to Luceria and the South.

The language of Aequians before the conquest by the Romans is unknown; but since the Marsi further east in the 3rd century BC a Latin dialect closely related languages, as well as the Hernici, its neighbor to the southwest, there is no reason to exclude one of these strains from the Latin group. If one could be sure of the origin of q in their name and on the relations between the short and the long form ( the i in Aequiculus is long - Virgil, Aeneid vii 744 -. Thing seems to connect to the locative of aequum ( level), so that the name could mean inhabitants of the plain - although they certainly lived mainly in historical times in the mountains), one would know whether they belonged to the group of q- or p- dialects, that is, whether they to Latin, which the original q preserved, belonged, or dialect of Velitrae, commonly called Volskisch ( the Volscians were always allies of the Aequians ), had been in which, as in the Iguvinischen panels and the Samnite dialects, the original q changed into a p. There is no definitive proof of whether the q in Latin aequus an Indo- q as in Latin quis, Umbro Volskisch pis, or an Indo- k u as in equus ( Umbrian EKVO ). The derived adjective Aequicus it seems more attributable to the Volscian as the Sabini, but it is not clear whether this adjective was ever used as a real Ethnikon; the name of the tribe is always Aequi or Aequicoli.

Towards the end of the Republic enter the Aequians under the name Aequiculi or Aequicoli, organized as a municipium, to where their territory the headwaters of the Salto, is now known as Cicolano been. It is likely that as they used also lived in their villages, of which the most important Nersae, the modern Nescè was. The polygonal terraced walls that still existed in the district in a remarkable number were described in Roman releases (1903), 147f. ,.

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