Rhaetian people in the context of "Confederation"

The concept of Italic peoples is widely used in linguistics and historiography of ancient Italy. In a strict sense, commonly used in linguistics, it refers to the Osco-Umbrians and Latino-Faliscans, speakers of the Italic languages, a subgroup of the Indo-European language family. In a broader sense, commonly used in historiography, all the ancient peoples of Italy are referred to as Italic peoples, including the non-Indo-European ones, as Rhaetians, Ligures and Etruscans. As the Latins achieved a dominant position among these tribes, by virtue of the expansion of the Roman civilization, the other Italic tribes adopted Latin language and culture as part of the process of Romanization.

Tyrsenian (also Tyrrhenian or Common Tyrrhenic), named after the Tyrrhenians (Ancient Greek, Ionic: Τυρσηνοί Tyrsenoi), exonym used by the ancient Greeks to refer to the Etruscans, is a language family of closely related extinct ancient languages, proposed by linguist Helmut Rix in 1998, that has gained acceptance. The family would consist of the Etruscan language of northern, central and south-western Italy, and eastern Corsica; the Raetic language of the Alps, in northern Italy and Austria, named after the Rhaetian people; and the Lemnian language attested in Lemnos in the northern Aegean Sea. Camunic in northern Lombardy, between Etruscan and Raetic, may belong to the family as well, but evidence of such is limited. The Tyrsenian languages are generally considered Pre-Indo-European, and more specifically Paleo-European.

Raetia or Rhaetia (/ˈriːʃ(i)ə/ REE-sh(ee-)ə, Latin: [ˈrae̯.ti.a]) was a province of the Roman Empire named after the Rhaetian people. It bordered on the west with the country of the Helvetii, on the east with Noricum, on the north with Vindelicia, on the south-west with Transalpine Gaul and on the south with Venetia et Histria, a region of Roman Italy.

It thus comprised the districts occupied in modern times by eastern and central Switzerland (containing the Upper Rhine and Lake Constance), southern Germany (Bavaria and most of Baden-Württemberg), Vorarlberg and the greater part of Tyrol in Austria, and part of northern Lombardy in Italy. The region of Vindelicia (today eastern Württemberg and western Bavaria) was annexed to the province at a later date than the others. The northern border of Raetia during the reigns of emperors Augustus and Tiberius was the River Danube. Later the Limes Germanicus marked the northern boundary, stretching for 166 km north of the Danube. Raetia was connected to Italy across the Alps over the Reschen Pass, by the Via Claudia Augusta.