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The Lacetani were an ancient Iberians (pre-Ancient Rome) people of the Iberian Peninsula (the Roman Hispania).
There remains some doubt whether their naming is not a corruption of either Laietani or Iacetani, the names of two neighboring peoples.
In three points of Pliny the elder's geographical description of Hispania Citerior, variant readings with the name Lacetani exist, but more often these are reconstructed as one of the others: Laeetani, where he located them, with the Indigetes, after the Cessetani around Tarraco and the Ilergetes around Subur, on the river Llobregat;Pliny, Natural History, 3.4.22 ,24. For manuscript variations, including Lacetani, Laetani and Laletani, see: and less cryptically, Iacetani immediately following, when Pliny lists the Ausetani, Iacetani and Cerretani along the Pyrenees;The manuscripts have readings among which Lacetani is recurring. See Mayhoff, p. 240, and Sillig, p. 217. Iacetani again, where they appear as a tributary of Rome in the conventus of Caesaraugusta.
Ptolemy located some ten towns among those in a territory, of the Lacetani or the Iacetani.Ptolemy Geographia 2.6.72, reads Ἀκκητάνοι or Ἰακκητανοὶ, but Stückelberger et al note that the Lacetani are probably meant: (2025). 9783796537035, Schwabe. ISBN 9783796537035 For an older critical edition see For a more readable listing and a reconstructed map, They included:
Most of these names have recently been tentatively related to early Indo-European roots, rather than Iberian language or Celtic language words. Another study concluded that an Indo-Europen layer is significant, some Vasconian is also found, and a possible Iberian layer may be hidden due to the limited knowledge of this language. The names, recorded by Roman writers, may reflect the languages of the settlements of their own time, or merely an older layer of names that were retained by newer populations.
Sallust's Histories has Lacetania as a territory that Pompey claimed to have recovered from Sertorius in 76 BCE.Sallust, Histories, 2.82B = "Letter of Gnaeus Pompeius", 2.5 (Loeb Classical Library 1965 edition, pages 416-417) Strabo mentions the country's place in Roman internal wars: Sertorius and Pompey's war, the defeat of Pompey's generals in the Battle of Ilerda in Caesar's Civil War, and later battles of Sextus Pompey and Caesar's generals. Cassius Dio turns a light on the locals' alliances in the latter two. Once, writing that, "...it was with difficulty that he Caesar, managed to obtain provisions, inasmuch as he was in a hostile territory and unsuccessful in his operations. ... After, the victory was announced to the Spaniards with so much intentional exaggeration that it led some of them to change and take the side of Caesar."Cassius Dio: 41.20-21 (Loeb Classical Library, trans. Cary, 1916) And again, that when Sextus Pompey fled from Hispania Baetica after the Battle of Munda, "he first came to Lacetania and concealed himself there. He was pursued, to be sure, but eluded discovery because the natives were kindly disposed to him out of regard for his father’s memory. Later, when Caesar had set out for Italy and only a small army was left in Baetica, Sextus was joined both by the natives and by those who had escaped from the battle; and with them he came again into Baetica, because he thought it a more suitable region in which to carry on war."Cassius Dio: 45.10.1 (Loeb Classical Library, trans. Cary, 1916)
An even more obscure name has been brought into the mix. Martial in his epigrams recalled Laletana as a kind of cheap wine: "...Ask an innkeeper for Laletanian lees if you take more than ten drinks, Sextilianus."Martial, 1.26. (1993). 9780674995550, Harvard university press. ISBN 9780674995550 For the older Ker translation: Epigrams, 1.26; 1.49; 7.53 In another epigram, welcoming one Licinianus on his retirement from Rome's senate, Martial painted a scene from this country's life: "And when rimy December and winter wild shall howl with the hoarse North Wind, you will go back to the sunny shores of Tarraco and your own Laletania. There you will slaughter deer snared in soft-meshed toils and native boars and run the cunning hare to death with your stout horse (stags you will leave to the Vilicus). The nearby wood shall come down right to your hearth and its girdle of grimy brats. The hunter will be invited; shout from close by, and a guest will come to share your dinner..."Martial, Epigrams, 1.49. Here the manuscripts vary between Leletania and Lacetania. Hübner (1866) regarded those with the form Laletania as the better ones. Others suspected Laletania is a corruption of Laietani. See For Licinianus see In a third epigram, Laletanae sapae wine appear as part of a list.Martial, 7.53, and see Galán Vioque, p. 322-323. Pliny made a similar note about a certain wine from Hispania as one from high yield Viticulture.Pliny, Natural History, 14.8.71. Hübner (1866) claimed that his proposed reading, Laeetana, is found in the better manuscripts, although the modern editions vary between lasetana, lasitana, lasitania and lusitana only. For manuscript variations, see: Editors have shifted to Hübner's emendation from Niccolo Perotti's one, Laletana, made in analogy with Martial's text. It appeared posthumously on his Cronu copiae: . Sipontino's was contested by Ermolao Barbaro, who preferred to leave the reading Lusitana, and attribute Pliny's wine to Lusitania, but this idea was not received: . This term is most likely a variation on Laietani rather than Lacetani. The focal point of Martial's Laletania might be found through recent research on Laeetanian wine-making, which became a major export industry in the relevant period. The Licinia gens family was a prominent grower, as gleamed from stamped amphoras, and their estates have been identified with the ruins in Lliçà (the current municipalities Lliçà d'Amunt and Lliçà de Vall), and possibly also in Granollers. (2025). 9781407302706 ISBN 9781407302706
Guido Barbieri favored the view that all three people existed (and he too was not decided about the Laletani). The name is too widely used to be regarded as a collection of transmission errors. The description of the Lacetani as living at the foot of the Pyrenees, with the Ausetani, Laeetani and Suessetani on their east, the Cerretani on their north, and Ilergetes on their west (across the river Segre River), was taken as consistent and complementing across several geographical passages from Livy, Pliny and Strabo. The Iacetani's territory as much farther, still west of the Ilergetes, and fixed around Iacca. Other passages were interpreted as confused in the original texts: Ptolemy's list of cities, of which about seven are tentatively identified, as Lacetanian territories, which Ptolemy must have confusedly ascribed to the Iacetani; Pliny's listing of cities under the conventus of Caesaraugusta and that of Tarraconensis; and since the Laeetani, on the coast, turn out to be adjacent to the Lacetani, Barbieri found the references to the episodes of Pompey and Sextus Pompey as ambiguous in their localization; however, Hannibal's episode agrees with the geographical descriptions, and Cato's has to be assigned to the real Lacetani, too. Finally, the Lacetani may actually be a substituent of the Ilergetes, or at least closely related, which would explain both the double identification of Indibilis and Mandonius, and why Greek geographers did not list them by name.
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