Aequian is an extinct Italic language presumed spoken by the people the Romans termed

Aequi 300px, Location of the Aequi (Equi) in central Italy, 5th century BC. The Aequi ( grc, Αἴκουοι and Αἴκοι) were an Italic tribe on a stretch of the Apennine Mountains to the east of Latium in central Italy who appear in the early hist ...

and Aequicoli living in the Alban hills of northeast

Latium Latium ( , ; ) is the region of central western Italy in which the city of Rome was founded and grew to be the capital city of the Roman Empire. Definition Latium was originally a small triangle of fertile, volcanic soil ( Old Latium) on w ...

and the central Apennines east of them during the early and middle

Roman Republic The Roman Republic ( la, Res publica Romana ) was a form of government of Rome and the era of the classical Roman civilization when it was run through public representation of the Roman people. Beginning with the overthrow of the Roman Ki ...

; 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 The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...

language family.

Corpus

Aequian is scantily documented by two inscriptions. Conway's publication of Italic inscriptions adds a gloss, several place names and several dozen personal names, but it does not distinguish which of these are certainly endonyms and which are Latin

exonyms An endonym (from Greek: , 'inner' + , 'name'; also known as autonym) is a common, ''native'' name for a geographical place, group of people, individual person, language or dialect, meaning that it is used inside that particular place, group, ...

in use by the Latin-speaking population. It is possible that they would have been the same in both cases, but such a hypothesis remains unproven. The Inscription of

Alba Fucens Alba Fucens was an ancient Italic town occupying a lofty location (1,000 m) at the foot of the Monte Velino, c. 6.5 km north of Avezzano, Abruzzo, central Italy. Its remains are today in the ''comune'' of Massa d'Albe. History It was ...

is a bronze plate inscribed with ''ALBSI PATRE''. Conway reconstructs the first word as *albe(n)si, a dative case. Baldi translates the text into Latin as ''Albano patri'', two datives, and into English as "To the (god named) Alban Father." The second document is the Inscription of Cliternia (Capradosso) in

Petrella Salto Petrella Salto ( Sabino: ) is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Rieti in the Italian region Latium, located about northeast of Rome and about southeast of Rieti Rieti (; lat, Reate, Sabino: ) is a town and ''comune'' in Lazio, ...

, an inscribed stone in a spring dissociated from context by nature (it rolled down a hill). CIL IX, 4171, according to . The text is: : VIA INFERIOR , PRIVATAST , T VMBRENI C F , : PRECARIO , ITVR , PECVS PLOSTRV , NIQVIS AGAT which is a notice stating that the road is private, passage by permission of Titus Umbrenus, son of Gaius, but beasts of burden are forbidden.

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Bibliography

* {{Italic languages Italic languages Languages of ancient Italy Languages attested from the 5th century BC Languages extinct in the 3rd century BC