Product Code Database
The Aequi were an Italic peoples on a stretch of the Apennine Mountains to the east of Latium in central Italy who appear in the early history of ancient Rome. After a long struggle for independence from Rome, they were defeated and substantial Roman colonies were placed on their soil. Only two inscriptions believed to be in the Aequian language remain. No more can be deduced than that the language was Italic languages. Otherwise, the inscriptions from the region are those of the Latin-speaking colonists in Latin language. The colonial exonym documented in these inscriptions is Aequi and also Aequicoli ("colonists of Aequium"). The manuscript variants of the classical authors present Equic-, Aequic-, Aequac-. If the form without the -coli is taken as an original, it may well also be the endonym, but to date further evidence is lacking.
They occupied the upper reaches of the valleys of the Aniene, Tolenus and Himella, the last two being mountain streams running northward to join the Nera river.
They fought several wars against the Romans, among which was the Battle of Mount Algidus (458 BC). Their chief center is said to have been taken by the Romans about 484 BC.Diodorus Siculus xi.140 and again about 90 years later.D.S. xiv.106
Records of fighting between Romans and Aequi become much sparser in the second half of the 5th century BC. Likely the Aequi had gradually become a more settled people and their raiding petered out as a result.
In 390 BC, a Gaulish war band defeated the Roman army at the Battle of Allia and then sacked Rome. The ancient writers report that, in 389 BC, the Etruscans, Volsci, and Aequi all raised armies in the hope of exploiting this blow to Roman power. According to Livy and Plutarch, the Aequi gathered their army at Bolae. However, the Roman dictator, Marcus Furius Camillus, had just inflicted a severe defeat on the Volsci. He surprised the Aequian army and captured both their camp and the town.Livy, ; Plutarch, Camillus 33.1, 35.1 According to Diodorus Siculus, the Aequi were actually besieging Bolae when they were attacked by Camillus.D.S., xiv.117.4 According to Livy, a Roman army ravaged Aequian territory again in 388, this time meeting no resistance.Livy, Oakley (1997) considers these notices of Roman victories against the Aequi in 389 and 388 to be historical, confirmed by the disappearance of the Aequi from the sources until 304. Owing to the dispute in the sources, however, the precise nature of the fighting around Bolae cannot be determined. Bolae was a Latin town, but it was also the scene of much fighting between Romans and Aequi, and it changed hands several times. Either an (unreported) Aequian capture followed by Roman recapture, or a failed Aequan siege, are therefore possible.
The Aequi were not finally subdued until the end of the second Samnite war,Livy, , ; Diod. xx. 101 when they seem to have received a limited form of franchise.Cicero, Off. i. n, 35
All we know of their subsequent political condition is that after the Social War the folk of Cliternia and Nersae appear united in a res publica Aequiculorum, which was a municipium of the ordinary typeC.I.L. ix. p. 388 located in what is now the municipality of Pescorocchiano. The Latin colonies of Alba Fucens (304 BC) and Carsioli (298 BC) must have spread the use of Latin all over the district; through it lay the chief (and for some time the only) route (Via Valeria) to Lucera and the south.
At the end of the Republican period, the Aequi appear under the name Aequiculi or Aequicoli, organized as a municipium, the territory of which seems to have comprised the upper part of the valley of the Velino, still known as Cicolano (from Latin Ager Aequicolanus). It is probable, however, that they continued to live in their villages as before. Of these, Nersae (modern Civitella di Nesce) was the most considerable. Remains include large terrace walls.
|
|
