The Aquitani (Latin for Aquitanians) were a people living in what is now Aquitaine, France, in the region between the Pyrenees, the Atlantic ocean and the Garonne. Julius Cæsar, 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 our Gauls, the third. All these differ from each other in language, customs and laws. The river Garonne separates the Gauls from the Aquitani[1]
Despite apparent cultural connections to Iberia, 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.[2]
The presence of what seem 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.[3] 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.
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); among them: