Aequian | |
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Native to | Aequian country |
Region | Latium, east-central Italy |
Era | attested 5th to 3rd century BC[1] |
Indo-European
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Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | xae |
xae | |
Glottolog | aequ1239 aequ1238 code retired |
Abraham Ortelius's map of ancient Latium, published in 1595 |
Aequian is an extinct Italic language presumed spoken by the people the Romans termed Aequi and Aequicoli living in the Alban hills of northeast Latium and the central Apennines east of them during the early and middle Roman Republic; that is, approximately from the 5th to the 3rd century BC, when they were defeated by the armies of Rome and were subsequently Romanized. As the area was heavily colonized by Latin speakers from Rome, most of the inscriptions from there are in Latin. Two undated inscriptions appear to be in a different dialect, termed Aequian by the scholars with the presumption that in fact they represent the language of the entire pre-Roman tribe. Not enough text survives to deduce any more than that it belonged to the Italic branch of the Indo-European language family.[citation needed]