Sotiates

Aquitani peoples on both sides of the Pyrenees.

The Sotiates were a people of Aquitania, around the modern town of Sos in Lot-et-Garonne. They were subdued in 56 BC by Caesar's legate Publius Crassus, against whom they fought under their chief Adiatuanos before the other Aquitanian peoples formed a coalition.

Name

They are mentioned as Sotiates (var. sontiates, sociates) by Caesar (mid-1st century BC), and as Sottiates by Pliny (1st century AD).

The suffix -ates is found in both Celtic ethnonyms and Aquitanian ethnonyms. The first element Soti- is obscure, and the name as a whole has no agreed sense.

The chief town appears as oppidum Sotiatum ('town of the Sotiates'), a genitive plural of the ethnonym. Whether the people were named after the place or the place after the people is disputed.

The city of Sos takes its name from the ancient tribe. It is attested as oppidum Sotiatum ('oppidum of the Sotiates') in the 1st century BC, and as archidiaconatus Socientis in the late 13th century.

Geography

The Sotiates held the country about Sos, in Lot-et-Garonne. In Pliny's list they follow the Elusates, with whom and the Oscidates they form a group in the country between Eauze and Lectoure.

Their chief town was the oppidum Sotiatum (modern Sos), at the confluence of the Gueyze and Gélise. It occupied a plateau some 100 metres above the Gélise and covered about 15 hectares, closed to the west by an earthwork rampart fronted by a ditch. Occupation levels are attested for the 6th, the 4th to 3rd and the 2nd to 1st centuries BC, and for the Augusto-Tiberian period.

History

The campaign of Crassus in 56 BC.

In 56 BC Publius Crassus led his army into the territory of the Sotiates. After a cavalry engagement and an ambush, he stormed their oppidum. Caesar reports that the Sotiate chief Adiatuanos then attempted a sortie at the head of six hundred soldurii, his sworn retainers, but was driven back and forced to surrender. Crassus marched on into the lands of the Vocates and Tarusates. Only after the fall of the Sotiates did the other Aquitanian peoples band together against the Romans.

Under the Empire the Sotiates lost their separate standing. Sos and its district were taken into the city of the Elusates, as an inscription found there shows.

Culture

The ethnic identity of the Sotiates is debated. Their way of life was close to that of the Gauls, and some scholars have held them to be a Gallic people settled on the frontier of Aquitania. Under their chief Adiatuanos they fought the armies of Crassus on their own, while the rest of the Aquitani formed a coalition. The name Adiatuanos is probably built on the Gaulish root adiantu- ('eagerness, desire, ambition', perhaps cognate with the Middle Welsh add-iant 'wish'), and may be read as 'zealously striving (for rulership)'.

Drachma minted by the Sotiates, 2nd–1st century BC.

Caesar reports that the chief was guarded by six hundred soldurii, which Xavier Delamarre and Pierre-Yves Lambert take for a Latinised form of a Gaulish *soldurio- ('body-guard, devoted'). The historian Nicolaus of Damascus, retelling the same episode as Caesar, calls the Sotiates Celts and renders the word soldurii as 'those who have taken a vow'. He also calls Adiatuanos king of the Sotiates, a title that recurs on coins attributed to the people, in the legend Rex Adietuannus. These coins were probably struck only after the conquest, however, and Caesar writes only that Adiatuanos summam imperii tenebat ('held the chief command'), a formula he uses elsewhere of war-leaders rather than kings. Joaquín Gorrochategui takes both the soldurii and the name of Adiatuanos for Gaulish rather than Aquitanian.

The Sotiates may equally have been an Aquitanian people Celticised before Caesar's arrival. A sword of Celtic (La Tène) type, found in a 3rd-century BC burial near Sotiatum, attests the spread of such prestige goods among the local population. Gorrochategui notes a deep Gallic influence over Aquitania, growing stronger away from the Pyrenees to the north and east, marked by Gallic personal and divine names, by ethnonyms in -ates, and later by the Romance place-names in -ac. Aquitanian personal names are nonetheless recorded at Sos itself, the northernmost such names known.

References

Notes

  1. ↑ Conversely, Theo Vennemann argues that the word is Aquitanian, since Caesar ascribes it to the local people, and that the first element of sol-durii may be the Basque zor ('debt').

Citations

  1. 1 2 Duval 1989, p. 729.
  2. 1 2 3 Gorrochategui 1984, p. 43.
  3. ↑ Caesar. Commentarii de Bello Gallico, 3:20:3, 3:21:1.
  4. ↑ Pliny. Naturalis Historia, 4:108.
  5. ↑ Falileyev 2010, s.v. Sotiates and Sotium.
  6. 1 2 Gorrochategui 2011, p. 31.
  7. 1 2 3 Falileyev 2010, s.v. Sotium.
  8. ↑ Falileyev 2010, s.v. Sotiates.
  9. ↑ Nègre 1990, p. 167.
  10. ↑ Duval 1989, pp. 729, 732.
  11. ↑ Beyneix & Couhade 1996, p. 57.
  12. 1 2 Gardes 2002, p. 54.
  13. ↑ Bost 2009, p. 35.
  14. ↑ Bost 2009, pp. 35–36.
  15. ↑ Gorrochategui 1984, p. 124.
  16. ↑ Duval 1989, p. 728.
  17. ↑ Bost 2009, p. 36.
  18. ↑ CIL XIII 548
  19. ↑ Bost 2009, p. 34.
  20. ↑ Brèthes 2012, p. 37: "Nos seules certitudes concernent le peuple des Sotiates qui vit, combat, bat monnaie et s’administre comme un peuple gaulois. Comme les Gaulois, il a donc un oppidum, un site fortifié utilisé en cas d’attaque, que l’on situe dans la région de Sos, en Lot-et-Garonne. Si nous ajoutons à ces faits troublants que ce peuple se bat seul contre Crassus sous les ordres de son roi Adiatuanos, alors que tous les autres peuples aquitains forment une coalition, nous pouvons émettre l’hypothèse qu’il pourrait s’agir de Gaulois installés aux marches de l’Aquitaine."
  21. ↑ Delamarre 2003, p. 32.
  22. ↑ Matasović 2009, p. 434.
  23. ↑ Delamarre 2003, p. 277.
  24. ↑ Lambert 2008, pp. 96–97.
  25. ↑ Peschel 1989, p. 274.
  26. 1 2 Gardes 2002, p. 63.
  27. ↑ Gorrochategui 1984, p. 52.
  28. ↑ Vennemann 2003, p. 695.
  29. ↑ Beyneix & Couhade 1996, p. 62.
  30. ↑ Gorrochategui 1984, pp. 54–55.

Primary sources

  • Caesar (1917). The Gallic War. Loeb Classical Library. Translated by Edwards, H. J. Harvard University Press.
  • Pliny (1938). Natural History. Loeb Classical Library. Translated by Rackham, H. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0674993648. {{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)

Bibliography

  • Beyneix, Alain; Couhade, Cynthia (1996). "Une sépulture à armement de type celtique à Sos-en-Albret (Lot-et-Garonne)". Études celtiques. 32 (1): 57–63. doi:10.3406/ecelt.1996.2084.
  • Brèthes, Jean-Pierre (2012). "Et l'Aquitaine devint romaine". Modèles Linguistiques. 33 (66): 29–45. doi:10.4000/ml.285. ISSN 2274-0511.
  • Bost, Jean-Pierre (2009). L'Empire romain et les sociétés provinciales: recueil d'articles. Scripta Antiqua. Bordeaux: Ausonius. ISBN 978-2-35613-014-3.
  • Delamarre, Xavier (2003). Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise: Une approche linguistique du vieux-celtique continental. Errance. ISBN 9782877723695.
  • Duval, Paul-Marie (1989) [1955]. "Les peuples de l'Aquitaine d'après la liste de Pline". Travaux sur la Gaule (1946–1986). Publications de l'École française de Rome. Vol. 116. Rome: École française de Rome. pp. 721–737.
  • Falileyev, Alexander (2010). Dictionary of Continental Celtic Place-Names: A Celtic Companion to the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World. Aberystwyth: CMCS Publications.
  • Gardes, Philippe (2002). "Territoires et organisation politique de l'Aquitaine pré-augustéenne. Pour une confrontation des sources". In Garcia, Dominique; Verdin, Florence (eds.). Territoires celtiques. Espaces ethniques et territoires des agglomérations protohistoriques d'Europe occidentale. Paris: Éditions Errance. pp. 48–65. ISBN 978-2-87772-219-3.
  • Gorrochategui, Joaquín (1984). Estudio sobre la onomástica indígena de Aquitania. Bilbao: Universidad del País Vasco. ISBN 84-7585-013-8.
  • Gorrochategui, Joaquín (2011). "Linguistique et peuplement en Aquitaine". L'âge du Fer en Aquitaine et sur ses marges. Aquitania. ISBN 978-2910763343.
  • Lambert, Pierre-Yves (2008). "Gaulois Solitumaros". Études celtiques. 36 (1): 89–101. doi:10.3406/ecelt.2008.2303.
  • Matasović, Ranko (2009). Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Celtic. Brill. ISBN 9789004173361.
  • Nègre, Ernest (1990). Toponymie générale de la France. Librairie Droz. ISBN 978-2-600-02883-7.
  • Peschel, Karl (1989). "Zur kultischen Devotion innerhalb der keltischen Kriegergemeinschaft". In Schlette, Friedrich; Kaufmann, Dieter (eds.). Religion und Kult in ur- und frühgeschichtlicher Zeit. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. pp. 273–282.
  • Vennemann, Theo (2003). Europa Vasconica – Europa Semitica. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-090570-0.

Further reading

  • Berrocal-Rangel, Luis; Gardes, Philippe (2001). Entre Celtas e Íberos. Real Academia de la Historia. ISBN 978-84-89512-82-5.