The Vascones (Latin, singular vasco[1][2]) were an ancient people who, at the arrival of the Romans, inhabited the region of present day Navarre, Lower La Rioja and north-western Aragon. It is likely that they are ancestors of the present-day Basques, to whom they left their name.
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Unlike the Aquitanians or Cantabrians, the Vascones seemed to have negotiated their status in the Roman Empire. In the Sertorian War, Pompey established his headquarters in their territory, founding Pompaelo. Romanization was rather intense in the area known as Ager Vasconum (the Ebro valley) but limited in the mountainous Saltus, where evidence of Roman civilization appears only in mining places, like Oiasso. The territory was also important for Romans as a communication knot between northern Hispania and southwestern Gallia.
The Vasconian area presents indications of upheaval (burnt villas, an abundance of mints to pay the garrisons) during the 4th and 5th centuries that have been linked by many historians to the Bagaudae rebellions against feudalization.
In the year 407, Vascon troops fought on the orders of Roman commanders Didimus and Verinianus, repelling an attack by Vandals, Alans and Suebi. In 409, the passage of the Germans and Sarmatians toward Hispania went unhindered. The Roman reaction to this invasion and unrest related to the Bagaudae was to give Aquitania and Tarraconensis to the Visigoths, in return for their services as allies by treaty (foederati). The Visigoths soon managed to expel the Vandals to Africa.
After chronicler Hydatius´s death in 469 no contemporary source exists reporting on the social and political situation in the Vasconias, as put by himself. At the beginning of the 4th century, Calagurris is still cited as a Vascon town. During the 5th and 6th century, the gap between town and the rural milieu widened, with the former falling much in decay. Since 581 and 587, chronicles start to mention Vascones again, this time hailing from the wilderness, as opposed to the towns that remain attached to Roman culture or under Germanic influence. By this time, Vascones are not cited confined to the ancient boundaries, but comprising a much larger territory, from Álava in the west to the Loire River in the north (7-8 centuries). The concept underlying the medieval naming Vascones points to a much wider reality than Strabo's former tribal definition, this time encompassing all Basque-speaking tribes.
In the seventh and eighth century the island of Oléron, along with Ré, formed the Vacetae Insulae or Vacetian Islands, according to the Cosmographia.[3] The Vaceti were the Vascones by another name.
The independent Vascones stabilised their first polity under the Merovingian Franks: the Duchy of Vasconia, whose borders to the south remained unclear. This duchy would eventually become Gascony. After the Muslim invasions and the re-incorporation of Gascony to the Frankish Kingdom under Charles Martel, the territory south of the Pyrenees was reorganized around Pamplona. When Charlemagne destroyed the walls of this city after a failed attempt to conquest Zaragoza, the Vascons annihilated his rearguard in the Battle of Roncevaux Pass (778). Some decades later the Kingdom of Pamplona was founded.