European Kingdoms

Anesiates (Ligurians)

Alpine Tribes (Intro) Alpine Tribes Alpine Groups (Pre-Roman) Aquitani Tribes Celtic Tribes Rome

Prior to domination by Rome, the Alpine region contained various populations which had a complex, obscure, and ethnically-multilayered history. Two major ethnic groups were recorded (aside from intrusions by the Etruscans and Veneti), these being the Euganei on the north Italian plain and the Alpine foothills, and the Raeti in the Trentino and Alto Adige valleys.

There were a great many more minor groups, all of which seem to have formed part of the initial phase of the Golasecca culture. Generally they belonged to one or the other of these though, or to the coastal Ligurians who had gradually penetrated the Alps from the south, but who also extended a considerable way westwards along the Mediterranean coast.

There were many groups in Southern Europe which formed the Ligurian people, with not even a confederation uniting them all (see feature link). In fact, many Ligurian groups formed confederations in their own right. The Anesiates are one of the most obscure of Ligurian groups, known primarily by their neighbours - which included the Ausuciates and Orobi to their south, and to the north by the Bergalei. They occupied mountainous territory just to the north of Bergamo (which itself is about sixty kilometres to the north-east of Milan).

The first century BC writer, Livy (Titus Livius Patavinus), wrote about the initial Celtic breakthrough into Italy through the western Alps, with the story dated to about 600 BC. Continuous waves of Celts followed that path over the next two or three hundred years to create a substantial Celtic population across the north Italian plain.

This pushed out previously-dominant Etruscans and certainly would also have compressed the main Ligurian population southwards (primarily) towards the coast. Clearly it pushed some Ligurian groups northwards too. The Vindelici are one of the largest such groups, but the Anesiates and also Aneuniates certainly qualify.

Some hypotheses suggest that the Anesiates oppidum was the originator for the hamlet of Nese, part of the community (commune) of Alzano Lombardo about ten or eleven kilometres to the north-east of Bergamo. The name is certainly valid as a remnant of the Anesiates name. That name may have been based on that of a local stream, the Nesa. This forms a small valley, at the end of which sits the hamlet and also neighbouring communes such as Nembro.

The area contains plenty of evidence of pre-Roman settlements, some as early as the fifth century BC, with them usually being ascribed to Ligurian tribes such as the Orobi. The Pleiades map also places the Anesiates here, between Nese and Alzano di Sopra, with both hamlets being just to the north of Alzano Lombardo proper.

(Information by Trish Wilson, with additional information from The History of Rome, Volume 1, Titus Livius (translated by Rev Canon Roberts), from The Histories, Herodotus (Penguin, 1996), from Les peuples préromains du Sud-Est de la Gaule: Étude de géographie historique, Guy Barruol (De Boccard, 1999), from Encyclopaedia Britannica (Eleventh Edition, Cambridge (England), 1910), from Encyclopaedia of the Roman Empire, Matthew Bunson (1994), from Die Kelten in Österreich nach den ältesten Berichten der Antike, Gerhard Dobesch (in German), from Urbanizzazione delle campagne nell'Italia antica, Lorenzo Quilici & Stefania Quilici Gigli (in Italian), from La frontiera padana, Mauro Poletti (in Italian), and from External Links: Indo-European Chronology - Countries and Peoples, and Indo-European Etymological Dictionary, J Pokorny, and Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, William Smith (1854, Perseus Digital Library), and The Natural History, Pliny the Elder (John Bostock, Ed), and L'Arbre Celtique (The Celtic Tree, in French), and Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz or Dictionnaire Historique de la Suisse or Dizionario Storico dell Svizzera (in German, French, and Italian respectively), and Le Alpi (Università di Trento), and Pleiades (Ancient World Mapping Center and Institute for the Study of the Ancient World).)

c.600 BC

The first century BC writer, Livy (Titus Livius Patavinus), writes of an invasion into Italy of Celts during the reign of Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, king of Rome. This event will reshape the Alpine populations into a pattern which is familiar to Romans of the first century BC.

The Ligurian coastline of modern Italy owes its name to the Ligurian people, a pre-Indo-European grouping which probably consisted of several influences prior to being Latinised by the Romans

As archaeology seems to point to a start date of around 500 BC for the beginning of a serious wave of Celtic incursions into Italy, this event has either been misremembered by later Romans or is an early precursor to the main wave of incursions, probably as a result of the same apparent overpopulation which doubtless forces the start of migration into Iberia around a century earlier than this.

That overpopulation is very evident in Gaul, as this is the direction from which the Celts travel. Their advance into the Po Valley means confrontation with Etruscans who dwell between the Apennines and the Alps.

It also forces the Ligurians southwards, and the ancestors of the Anesiates and Lepontii northwards, while the Raeti also have to relocate, concentrating themselves in the Alps (according to Pliny the Elder).

It is possible that the Ligurian relocation serves to fracture once-large tribes into the many smaller units which are later recorded in the western Alps (and beyond in the case of a potential component of the Cantabri tribe).

The origins of the Euganei, Ligurians, Raeti, Veneti, and Vindelici are confused and unclear, but in the last half of the first millennium BC they were gradually being Celticised or were combining multiple influences to create hybrid tribes (click or tap on map to view full sized)

25 - 15 BC

Augustus determines that the Alpine tribes need to be pacified in order to end their warlike behaviour, alternately attacking or extracting money from Romans who pass through the region, even when they have armies in tow.

He wages a steady, determined campaign against them during the Alpine Wars, and in a period of ten years he 'pacifies the Alps all the way from the Adriatic to the Tyrrhenian seas' (written by Augustus himself).

14 BC

Emperor Augustus creates the province of Alpes Maritimae (the maritime, or seaward, Alps). It has its capital at Cemenelum (modern Nice, although this is switched in 297 to Civitas Ebrodunensium, modern Embrun). The history of the Alpine region's population of Celts and Celto-Ligurians and also Ligurians is now tied to that of the empire.

The Tropaeum Alpium ('Trophy of the Alps') stands majestically in the commune of La Turbie on the French Riviera, overlooking the principality of Monaco, and marking the final victory over the Alpine tribes by Augustus