European Kingdoms

Dripsinates (Euganei?) (Alpines)

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.

The Euganei were not part of the West Indo-European migration into southern Central Europe between about 3500-2500 BC. Instead they may have borne a degree of relationship with the Etruscans of north-western Italy (although the Celtic Encyclopaedia lists them as Ligurians).

Knowledge of the Dripsinates has always been available, but it is only thanks to intense archaeological activity over the course of the 2010s and into the 2020s that a fuller history has come to light. This includes evidence which points to the original settlement possibly dating back to the Italian Neolithic. Its population seemingly remained unfiltered or altered to any great extant until the Late Bronze Age arrival of West Indo-Europeans.

Inscription evidence mentions the 'Dripsinates' folk name and Dripsinum as a place name. The latter has been linked to the modern town of Trissino in the valley of the River Agno to the west of Vicenza (ancient Vicetia). Its people may have been one of the Euganeae gentes which were mentioned by Cato, and later by Pliny the Elder. They were assigned to the jurisdiction of neighbouring major towns in 89 BC, following the end of the Social War.

The Dripsinates should have been attributed to Vicetia, but what is known is that later on, perhaps in the Augustan era of early Roman empire, the Dripsinates acquired self-governing status. The civitas of Dripsinatium was thereafter ruled by duumvirs and aediles, and its citizens were enrolled into the Collina urban tribe of Rome, one of the four main Roman tribal units.

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(Information by Trish Wilson, with additional information by Peter Kessler, 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 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: 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).)

c.2200 BC

Unusually for pre-Roman inhabitants of northern Italy, the Dripsinates have tentatively been linked with the Polada culture of the Italian Bronze Age. Around this point in time this culture succeeds the widespread West Indo-European-driven Bell Beaker culture which itself had already replaced the earlier Remedello culture.

Polada culture dwellings were typically raised on piles, largely because such settlements were often located near marsh areas or besides lakes (External Link: Creative Commons Licence 3.0)

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.

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 in southern Germany which doubtless forces the start of migration into Iberia around a century earlier.

The Celtic advance into the Po Valley also forces the Raeti to relocate into the Alps (according to Pliny the Elder). Unfortunately for the Euganei they now lose Verona to the far bigger and more technologically advanced Cenomani.

An idealised illustration of Gauls on an expedition, from A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times Volume I by Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

This would seem to make it possible for the Catubrini to arrive as they also later occupy Euganei territory. The 'lost' Euganei presence is confirmed by archaeology which uncovers votive offerings in Lagola. This location of notable archaeological interest is downstream from Calalzo di Cadore, part of the commune of Cadore.

222 BC

By the time that Rome has finally won the Gallic War in northern Italy by subjugating the Celtic tribes there, those very Gauls have been present in the region for over three hundred years.

The Insubres tribe at least may have integrated to an extent with surrounding Etruscans, Italics (most likely the Umbri), Ligurians, and Raeti, providing the external influences which eventually subsume the original identity of the Euganei, Ligurians, and Raeti.

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)

91 - 89 BC

The Etruscans, Frentani, Hirpini, Iapyges, Lucani, Marrucini, Marsi, Paeligni, Picentes, Samnites, Umbri, and Vestini fight the Social War (Italian War, or Marsic War) against Rome.

The war is the result of increasing inequality in Roman land ownership, and the spark for conflict is delivered by the assassination of the reforming Marcus Livius Drusus. The Euganei are conquered at the same time as the war ends in 89 BC, which gains the iron ore mines for Rome.

This marks a clear dividing line between the preceding Celtic dominance of the Alpine region and increasing Roman dominance. Celticisation is replaced with Latinisation with the result that non-Indo-European elements in the Alpine region largely seem to lose their native language within a century or two.

The fact that the Roman empire soon unquestionably controls the entire Alpine region probably hastens the final decline and disappearance of non-Indo-European traits, customs, and languages here.

Verona was initially the chief citadel of the Euganei, before they were forced out by the more powerful Celtic tribe of the Cenomani, probably in the sixth or fifth centuries BC

Later the Dripsinates acquire self-governing status. The civitas of Dripsinatium is then governed by duumvirs and aediles, and its citizens are enrolled into the Collina urban tribe of Rome, one of the four main Roman tribal units. In other words they are absorbed under Roman administrative and cultural domination.