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The Aquitanians (Latin: Aquitani) were a people living in what is now southern Aquitaine and southwestern Midi-Pyrénées, France, called Gallia Aquitania by the Romans in the region between the Pyrenees, the Atlantic ocean, and the Garonne, present-day southwestern France. They were an ancient non-Indo-European population that lived in the northern slopes of the Pyrenees. They spoke the Aquitanian language, related to Old Basque. Classical authors such as Julius Caesar and Strabo clearly distinguish them from the other peoples of Gaul and Hispania (the Iberian Peninsula). With the process of Romanization, in the centuries of Roman Empire, they adopted the Latin Language (Vulgar Latin) and Roman civilization. Their old language, the Aquitanian language, was the substrate for the Gascon language (one of the Romance languages) spoken in Gascony.
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History
At the time of the Roman conquest, Julius Caesar, who defeated them in his campaign in Gaul, describes them as making up a distinct part of Gaul:
All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgæ inhabit, the Aquitani another, those who in their own language are called Celts, in ours Gauls, the third. All these differ from each other in language, customs and laws. The river Garonne separates the Gauls from the Aquitani
Despite apparent cultural and linguistic connections to Iberia (Vascones) and to Iberians, the area of Aquitania, as a part of Gaul ended at the Pyrenees according to Cæsar:
Aquitania extends from the river Garonne to the Pyrenæan mountains and to that part of the ocean which is near Spain: it looks between the setting of the sun, and the north star.
Relation to Basque people and language
The presence of what seems to be names of deities or people in late Romano-Aquitanian funerary slabs similar to modern Basque have led many philologists and linguists to conclude that Aquitanian was closely related to an older form of Basque. The fact that the region was known as Vasconia in the Early Middle Ages, a name that evolved into the better known form of Gascony, along with other toponymic evidence, seems to corroborate that assumption.
Tribes
Although the country where the original Aquitanians lived came to be named Novempopulania (nine peoples) in the late years of the Roman Empire and Early Middle Ages (up to the 6th century), the number of tribes varied (about 20 for Strabo, but comparing with the information of other classical authors such as Pliny, Ptolemy and Julius Caesar, the total number were 32 or 33):
Aquitani related peoples or tribes
In the southern slopes of western Pyrenees Mountains, not in Aquitania but in northern Hispania Tarraconensis: