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 BCE. 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. During the process of Romanization, the Aquitani gradually adopted Latin (Vulgar Latin) and the Roman civilization. Their old language, the Aquitanian language, was a precursor of the Basque language and the substrate for the Gascon language (one of the Romance languages) spoken in Gascony. 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: All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgae inhabit, the Aquitani another, those who in their own language are called Celts, in ours Gauls, the third. All these differ from each other in language, customs and laws. The river Garonne separates the Gauls from the Aquitani Despite apparent cultural and linguistic connections to (Vascones), the area of Aquitania, as a part of Gaul ended at the Pyrenees according to Caesar: Aquitania extends from the river Garonne to the Pyrenaean mountains and to that part of the ocean which is near Hispania: it looks between the setting of the sun, and the north star. The presence, on late Romano-Aquitanian funerary slabs and altars, of what seem to be the names of deities or people similar to certain names in modern Basque have 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 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.