Raeti
Nation | Defunct
650 BCE to 200 CE
The Raeti (name variants: Rhaeti, Rheti, or Rhetii) is the collective "ethnic" name used by the ancient Romans to denote a number of Alpine tribes, whose language and culture may have derived, at least in part, from the Etruscans.
From not later than ca.
500 BCE, they inhabit the central parts of present-day Switzerland and the Alpine regions of north-central Italy.The etymology of the name Raeti is unknown.
It gives rise to the name of the Roman province of Raetia.Ancient sources characterize the Raeti as Etruscan people who were displaced from the Po valley and took refuge in the valleys of the Alps.
But it is more likely that they were predominantly Alpine indigenes who had spoken a tongue related to Etruscan for as long as the Etruscans themselves.The Raeti are divided into numerous tribes, but only some of these are clearly identified in the ancient sources.At least some of the Raeti tribes (those in northeastern Italy) probably spoke the Raetian language as late as the 3rd century CE.
Others (those in Switzerland) were probably Celtic-speaking by the time of the emperor Augustus (ruled 30 BCE - CE 14).The Raeti tribes, together with those of their neighbors to the North, the Vindelici, are subjugated by Roman forces, and their territories annexed to the Roman empire in 15 BCE.
The Roman province of Raetia et Vindelicia is named after these two peoples.
The Raeti tribes quickly become loyal subjects of the empire who contribute disproportionate numbers of recruits to the imperial Roman army's auxiliary corps.
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Livy (v. 34) describes how a horde of Gauls led by Bellovesus crossed the Alps around 600 BCE (Tarquinius Priscus was reigning in Rome) and occupied the territory between Milan and Cremona, identifying the local inhabitants of his own time, the Insubres, with these invading Gauls.
The Celtic presence in Italy is dated to at least the seventh century BCE if not before, however, Italian and French archeologists and scholars, based on archaeological sources, in particular compared with Livy's passage documenting the arrival of Bellovesus and his Insubres at the time of the reign of Tarquinius Priscus (sixth century BCE), along with the founding of Mediolanum, modern Milan, around 600 BCE in an area yet "inhabited by Insubres".
Scylax of Caryanda, a Greek traveler and geographer active between 522 and 485 BCE, mentions the presence of Celtic-speaking peoples settled in northeast Italy in his Periplus of Scylax.
The text, rewritten about a century later after the loss of the original by a pseudo-Scylax, tells of a journey along the shores of the Mediterranean made by a Greek traveler who describes the Celtic tribes on the coast just south of the settlements of the Veneti.
The date should be about 490 BCE, given the known dates in the life of Scylax.
Tiberius, after returning from the East in 19 BCE, had been married to Vipsania Agrippina, the daughter of Augustus’s close friend and greatest general, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, appointed praetor, and sent with his legions to assist his brother Drusus in campaigns in the west.
While Drusus focuses his forces in Gallia Narbonensis and along the German frontier, Tiberius combats the tribes in the Alps and within Transalpine Gaul, annexing Raetia, comprising Vorarlberg and Tirol states in present-day Austria, the eastern cantons of Switzerland, and parts of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg states in Germany, and Noricum, apparently as a bloodless conquest.
Roughly comprising modern central Austria and parts of Bavaria, Germany, the kingdom had been controlled by a Celtic confederacy that dominated an earlier Illyrian population.
At its greatest extent, it includes on the east Carnuntum (about twenty miles [thirty-two kilometers] east of Vindobona [now Vienna]), …
…Savaria (Szombathely, Hungary), and Emona, together with the portion of the tribe of the Taurisci that lives near the source of the Sava River.
Augustus’ nephews, the brothers Drusus and Tiberius, in annexing to the Roman domains the Celtic lands of Noricum and Rhaetia (in modern Austria), have ended the prehistoric Iron Age in the Alpine region, bringing into the borders of the empire Poetovio (modern Ptuj, Slovenia), and …
…Emona (Ljubljana, Slovenia), together with the portion of the tribe of the Taurisci that lives near the source of the Sava River.