AEQUI, an ancient people of Italy, whose name occurs con stantly in Livy's first decade as hostile to Rome in the first three centuries of the city's existence. They occupied the upper reaches of the valleys of the Anio, Tolenus and Himella ; the last two being mountain streams running northward to join the Nar. They were not finally subdued until the end of the second Samnite War, when they seemed to have received a limited form of franchise. After the Social War the folk of Cliternia and Nersae appear united in a res publica Aequiculorum which was a municipium, (q.v.) of the ordinary type. The Latin colonies of Alba Fucens (3o4 B.c.) and Carsioli (298 B.c.) must have spread the use of Latin (or what passed as such) all over the district ; through it lay the chief (and for some time the only) route (via Valeria) to Luceria and the south. At the end of the republican period the Aequi appear, under the name Aequiculi or Aequicoli, organized as a municipium, the territory of which seems to have comprised the upper part of the valley of the Salto, still known as Cicolano.
Of the language spoken by the Aequi before the Roman con quest we have no record; but since the Marsi (q.v.) who lived farther east, spoke in the 3rd century B.C. a dialect closely akin to Latin, and since the Hernici (q.v.) their neighbours to the south-west, did the same, we have no ground for separating any of these tribes from the Latian group.
See the articles MARSI, VOLSCI, LATINI, and the references there given ; the place-names and other scanty records of the dialect are collected by R. S. Conway, The Italic Dialects, pp. 30o et seq. (1897).