The Demetae were a Celtic people of

Iron Age The Iron Age () is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progre ...

and Roman period, who inhabited modern

Pembrokeshire Pembrokeshire ( ; ) is a Principal areas of Wales, county in the South West Wales, south-west of Wales. It is bordered by Carmarthenshire to the east, Ceredigion to the northeast, and otherwise by the sea. Haverfordwest is the largest town and ...

and

Carmarthenshire Carmarthenshire (; or informally ') is a Principal areas of Wales, county in the South West Wales, south-west of Wales. The three largest towns are Llanelli, Carmarthen and Ammanford. Carmarthen is the county town and administrative centre. ...

in south-west

Wales Wales ( ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by the Irish Sea to the north and west, England to the England–Wales border, east, the Bristol Channel to the south, and the Celtic ...

. The tribe also gave their name to the medieval

Kingdom of Dyfed The Kingdom of Dyfed (), one of several Welsh petty kingdoms that emerged in 5th-century sub-Roman Britain in southwest Wales, was based on the former territory of the Demetae (modern Welsh ''Dyfed''). The royal line was founded by Irish ...

, the modern area and county of Dyfed and the distinct dialect of Welsh spoken in modern south-west Wales,

Dyfedeg or is one of the four traditional dialects of the Welsh language. Spoken in south-west Wales, the language takes its name from the Iron Age tribe the Demetae, who would also give their name to the post-Roman Kingdom of Dyfed. Writing in 1900, ...

Etymology and relationship to Dyfed

The tribal name Demetae is thought to derive from a Common Celtic element related to the modern Welsh word ''defaid'' (sheep) as well as the Ancient Brythonic word ''defod'' (wealth, property or riches). This element persists in the name for the area of West Wales that the tribe inhabited, with the post-Roman

(

proto-Celtic Proto-Celtic, or Common Celtic, is the hypothetical ancestral proto-language of all known Celtic languages, and a descendant of Proto-Indo-European. It is not attested in writing but has been partly Linguistic reconstruction, reconstructed throu ...

*dametos
') a clear continuation of the Pre-Roman etymon. The name even survived the Norman conquest of Wales and the introduction of the Shire system, with Thomas Morgan noting that the Welsh inhabitants of

still referred to the area as ''Dyfed'' in the nineteenth century. This etymology is supported by the tribal area being especially noted for the cultivation of sheep, from which the Demetae would have generated much of their wealth. Even in the modern era, etymologists and antiquarians such as William Baxter noted the names Dyfed and Demetae derived as "a country fit for the pasture of sheep" and that the local people were noted for their cultivation of large numbers of sheep and goats from ancient times.

History

The Demetae are mentioned in

Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy (; , ; ; – 160s/170s AD) was a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were important to later Byzantine science, Byzant ...

's '' Geographia'', as being west of the Silures. He mentions two of their towns, Moridunum (modern

Carmarthen Carmarthen (, ; , 'Merlin's fort' or possibly 'Sea-town fort') is the county town of Carmarthenshire and a community (Wales), community in Wales, lying on the River Towy north of its estuary in Carmarthen Bay. At the 2021 United Kingdom cen ...

) and Luentinum (identified as the Dolaucothi Gold Mines near Pumsaint, Carmarthenshire). They are not mentioned in

Tacitus Publius Cornelius Tacitus, known simply as Tacitus ( , ; – ), was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historians by modern scholars. Tacitus’ two major historical works, ''Annals'' ( ...

' accounts of Roman warfare in Wales, which concentrate on their neighbours the Silures and Ordovices. Vortiporius, "tyrant of the Demetae", is one of the kings condemned by

Gildas Gildas (English pronunciation: , Breton language, Breton: ''Gweltaz''; ) — also known as Gildas Badonicus, Gildas fab Caw (in Middle Welsh texts and antiquarian works) and ''Gildas Sapiens'' (Gildas the Wise) — was a 6th-century Britons (h ...

in his 6th century polemic ''

De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae (English: ''On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain'') is a work written in Anglo-Latin literature, Latin in the late fifth or sixth century by the Britons (historical), British religious polemicist Gildas. It is a sermon in three parts condemnin ...

''.

, ''De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae'' 31 This probably signifies the sub-Roman

petty kingdom A petty kingdom is a kingdom described as minor or "petty" (from the French 'petit' meaning small) by contrast to an empire or unified kingdom that either preceded or succeeded it (e.g. the numerous kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England unified into t ...

of Dyfed.

References

{{Authority control Dyfed History of Pembrokeshire Prehistoric Wales Celtic Britons Historical Celtic peoples