Rhaetian people
The Raeti (/ˈriːtaɪ/ REE-ty; spelling variants: Rhaeti, Rheti or Rhaetii) were a confederation of Alpine tribes, whose language and culture were related to those of the Etruscans.
Before the Roman conquest, they inhabited present-day Tyrol in Austria, eastern Switzerland and the Alpine regions of northeastern Italy.
The Raeti tribes quickly became loyal subjects of the empire and contributed disproportionate numbers of recruits to the imperial Roman army's auxiliary corps.
The Roman geographer Pliny the Elder, writing in AD 70, suggests that the people were named after "Raetus", a leader at the time of their supposed "expulsion" from the Po Valley.
It has also been suggested that the name Raeti may be connected with Reitia, a major goddess who was revered in northeast Italy and is attested in a number of inscriptions on votive tablets of the Veneti people.
[7] If this historiography is correct, then the displacement from the Po valley would have taken place in the period 600–400 BC, when major migrations of Celtic tribes from Gaul resulted in the Celtisation of that entire region.
[8] But the traditional "migration theory" espoused by classical authors and, until the 1960s, by most modern scholars, is no longer considered the only possible explanation for socio-linguistic change.
The Raeti are believed by many scholars to have spoken, originally at least, the Raetian language, an extinct tongue known only from a series of inscriptions, written in a variant of the Etruscan alphabet.
[10] According to Livy, the "sound" of the Raeti's original Etruscan tongue (sonum linguae) had become corrupted as a result of inhabiting the Alps.
Celticisation also finds support in the Roman practice of twinning the Raeti with their neighbours to the North, the Vindelici, who are regarded by most historians to have been Celtic- speakers.
The territories of the two peoples were combined for administrative purposes from an early stage and eventually, under the emperor Claudius (ruled 41-54), as the province of Raetia et Vindelicia.
[12] Further support for the hypothesis that the northern Raeti tribes converted to Celtic speech before the Roman imperial era is provided by the distribution of Raetian inscriptions.
[13] The Raetic inscriptions indicate that Raetian survived as late as the 3rd century AD, suggesting the existence at that time of Raeti tribes, at least in northeast Italy, which had not converted to Celtic speech.
However, a Raetian origin for Romansch is uncertain, as Rhaeto-Romance languages appear most closely related to the Gallo-Romance group, strengthening the argument that at least some of the Raeti had adopted Celtic speech before Latinisation.
The Breuni and Genauni are classified as Illyrian by Strabo, while a number of tribes in the region have plausible Celtic etymologies: e.g. Caturiges from catu- ("fight" or "warriors") and Nantuates from nantu- ("valley") respectively.
Taking those that did get named that inhabited the territories of Raetia et Vindelicia province and Venetia et Histria regio of N. Italy, and eliminating those tribes considered probably Celtic by scholars (Medulli, Ucenni, Caturiges, Brigiani, Sogionti, Ceutrones, Uberi, Nantuates, Sedunes, Veragri),[26] the following list of possible Raeti tribes results: The Raeti, together with their probably Celtic neighbours to the North, the Vindelici, were subdued by the Roman emperor Augustus' stepsons and senior military commanders Tiberius and Drusus in a two-pronged campaign in 15 BC.
Strabo wrote that the Alpine tribes as a whole adapted easily to Roman rule and had not rebelled in the 33 years that had elapsed since the initial conquest.
[35] According to the epigraphic record, the early Julio-Claudian period of the Roman Empire (30 BC - AD 37) saw the formation of at least 10 auxiliary infantry regiments from the Raeti tribes (the cohortes Raetorum).
