The Vascones were an ancient people who, at the arrival of the Romans

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

, inhabited the region of present day Navarre

Navarre

Navarre , officially the Chartered Community of Navarre is an autonomous community in northern Spain, bordering the Basque Country, La Rioja, and Aragon in Spain and Aquitaine in France...

, Lower La Rioja and north-western Aragon

Aragon

Aragon is a modern autonomous community in Spain, coextensive with the medieval Kingdom of Aragon. Located in northeastern Spain, the Aragonese autonomous community comprises three provinces : Huesca, Zaragoza, and Teruel. Its capital is Zaragoza...

. It is likely that they are ancestors of the present-day Basques

Basque people

The Basques as an ethnic group, primarily inhabit an area traditionally known as the Basque Country , a region that is located around the western end of the Pyrenees on the coast of the Bay of Biscay and straddles parts of north-central Spain and south-western France.The Basques are known in the...

, to whom they left their name.

Roman period

Unlike the Aquitani

Aquitani

The Aquitani were a people living in what is now Aquitaine, France, in the region between the Pyrenees, the Atlantic ocean and the Garonne...

ans or Cantabri

Cantabri

The Cantabri were a pre-Roman Celtic people which lived in the northern Atlantic coastal region of ancient Hispania, from the 4th to late 1st centuries BC.-Origins:...

ans, the Vascones seemed to have negotiated their status in the Roman Empire

Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....

. In the Sertorian War

Sertorian War

The Sertorian War was a conflict of the Roman civil wars in which a coalition of Iberians and Romans fought against the representatives of the regime established by Sulla. It takes its name from Quintus Sertorius the main leader of the opposition to Sulla. The war lasted from 80 BC to 72 BC. The...

, Pompey

Pompey

Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, also known as Pompey or Pompey the Great , was a military and political leader of the late Roman Republic...

 established his headquarters in their territory, founding Pompaelo

Pamplona

Pamplona is the historial capital city of Navarre, in Spain, and of the former kingdom of Navarre.The city is famous worldwide for the San Fermín festival, from July 6 to 14, in which the running of the bulls is one of the main attractions...

. 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

Oiasso

Oiasso, Oiasona or Oiarso was a Basque Roman town located on the left bank of the Bidasoa estuary in the Bay of Biscay . Archaeological evidence unearthed recently pinpoints the core area of Oiasso in the old quarter of Irun by the Spanish-French border, where harbour and bath remains have been...

. The territory was also important for Romans as a communication knot between northern Hispania

Hispania

Another theory holds that the name derives from Ezpanna, the Basque word for "border" or "edge", thus meaning the farthest area or place. Isidore of Sevilla considered Hispania derived from Hispalis....

 and southwestern Gallia

Gaul

Gaul was a region of Western Europe during the Iron Age and Roman era, encompassing present day France, Luxembourg and Belgium, most of Switzerland, the western part of Northern Italy, as well as the parts of the Netherlands and Germany on the left bank of the Rhine. The Gauls were the speakers of...

.

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

Bagaudae

In the time of the later Roman Empire bagaudae were groups of peasant insurgents who emerged during the "Crisis of the Third Century", and persisted particularly in the less-Romanised areas of Gallia and Hispania, where they were "exposed to the depredations of the late Roman state, and the great...

 rebellions against feudalization

Feudalism

Feudalism was a set of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries, which, broadly defined, was a system for ordering society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.Although derived from the...

.

Early Middle Ages

In the year 407, Vascon troops fought on the orders of Roman commanders Didimus and Verinianus, repelling an attack by Vandals

Vandals

The Vandals were an East Germanic tribe that entered the late Roman Empire during the 5th century. The Vandals under king Genseric entered Africa in 429 and by 439 established a kingdom which included the Roman Africa province, besides the islands of Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia and the Balearics....

, Alans

Alans

The Alans, or the Alani, occasionally termed Alauni or Halani, were a group of Sarmatian tribes, nomadic pastoralists of the 1st millennium AD who spoke an Eastern Iranian language which derived from Scytho-Sarmatian and which in turn evolved into modern Ossetian.-Name:The various forms of Alan —...

 and Suebi

Suebi

The Suebi or Suevi were a group of Germanic peoples who were first mentioned by Julius Caesar in connection with Ariovistus' campaign, c...

. In 409, the passage of the Germans

Germanic peoples

The Germanic peoples are an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group of Northern European origin, identified by their use of the Indo-European Germanic languages which diversified out of Proto-Germanic during the Pre-Roman Iron Age.Originating about 1800 BCE from the Corded Ware Culture on the North...

 and Sarmatians

Sarmatians

The Iron Age Sarmatians were an Iranian people in Classical Antiquity, flourishing from about the 5th century BC to the 4th century AD....

 toward Hispania went unhindered. The Roman reaction to this invasion and unrest related to the Bagaudae

Bagaudae

In the time of the later Roman Empire bagaudae were groups of peasant insurgents who emerged during the "Crisis of the Third Century", and persisted particularly in the less-Romanised areas of Gallia and Hispania, where they were "exposed to the depredations of the late Roman state, and the great...

 was to give Aquitania

Gallia Aquitania

Gallia Aquitania was a province of the Roman Empire, bordered by the provinces of Gallia Lugdunensis, Gallia Narbonensis, and Hispania Tarraconensis...

 and Tarraconensis

Hispania Tarraconensis

Hispania Tarraconensis was one of three Roman provinces in Hispania. It encompassed much of the Mediterranean coast of Spain along with the central plateau. Southern Spain, the region now called Andalusia, was the province of Hispania Baetica...

 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

Basque language

Basque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...

 tribes.

In the seventh and eighth century the island of Oléron

Oléron

Île d'Oléron is an island off the Atlantic coast of France , on the southern side of the Pertuis d'Antioche strait....

, along with Ré

Re

Re, bre, moré is an interjection common to Cypriot Greek, the languages of the Balkans, Turkish, and Venetian, with its "locus... more in the Greek world than elsewhere". It is used in colloquial speech to gain someone's attention, add emphasis, insult, or express surprise or astonishment, like...

, formed the Vacetae Insulae or Vacetian Islands, according to the Cosmographia

Aethicus Ister

Aethicus Ister was the protagonist of the 7th/8th-century Cosmographia written by a man of church Hieronymus. It describes the travels of Aethicus around the world, and includes descriptions of foreign peoples in usually less than favourable terms...

. The Vaceti were the Vascones by another name.

The independent Vascones stabilised their first polity under the Merovingian Franks: the Duchy of Vasconia

Duke of Gascony

The Duchy of Vasconia , later known as Gascony, was a Merovingian creation: a frontier duchy on the Garonne, in the border with the rebel Basque tribes...

, whose borders to the south remained unclear. This duchy would eventually become Gascony

Gascony

Gascony is an area of southwest France that was part of the "Province of Guyenne and Gascony" prior to the French Revolution. The region is vaguely defined and the distinction between Guyenne and Gascony is unclear; sometimes they are considered to overlap, and sometimes Gascony is considered a...

. After the Muslim invasions and the re-incorporation of Gascony to the Frankish Kingdom under Charles Martel

Charles Martel

Charles Martel , also known as Charles the Hammer, was a Frankish military and political leader, who served as Mayor of the Palace under the Merovingian kings and ruled de facto during an interregnum at the end of his life, using the title Duke and Prince of the Franks. In 739 he was offered the...

, 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

Battle of Roncevaux Pass

The Battle of Roncevaux Pass was a battle in 778 in which Roland, prefect of the Breton March and commander of the rear guard of Charlemagne's army, was defeated by the Basques...

 (778). Some decades later the Kingdom of Pamplona

Kingdom of Navarre

The Kingdom of Navarre , originally the Kingdom of Pamplona, was a European kingdom which occupied lands on either side of the Pyrenees alongside the Atlantic Ocean....

 was founded.

External links

• Vascones in the Auñamendi Encyclopedia, by Bernardo Estornés Lasa.