Demetae

Indigenous British tribe of the Iron Age and Roman periods whose territory covered Pembrokeshire and much of Carmarthenshire in south-west Wales. The tribe was incorporated into the province of Britannia and became a civitas with the capital at Carmarthen (Moridunum Demetarum).

One of the five principal tribes of pre-Roman and Roman Wales, according to the geographer Ptolemy (2nd cent. AD), occupying the south-western extremity of the country between the Rivers Teifi and Tywi, largely coextensive with the territory later known as Dyfed. The Demetae appear to have offered little resistance to the Romans, and their homeland, known as Demetia, became a region of settled pastoralism. At the end of the 4th cent. AD Demetia was invaded by the Déisi from Ireland. Dewi Sant, patron saint of Wales, directed his main missionary activity towards portions of Demetia. The numerically superior Demetae eventually absorbed the Déisi.

Tribes of Wales at the time of the Roman invasion. Exact boundaries are conjectural.

The Demetae were a Celtic people of Iron Age Britain who inhabited modern Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire in south-west Wales, and gave their name to the county of Dyfed.

They are mentioned in Ptolemy's Geographia, as being west of the Silures. He mentions two of their towns, Moridunum (modern Carmarthen) and Luentinum (identified as the Dolaucothi Gold Mines near Pumsaint, Carmarthenshire).^[1] They are not mentioned in Tacitus' 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 in his 6th century polemic De Excidio Britanniae.^[2] This probably signifies the sub-Roman kingdom of Dyfed.

References

1. ^ Ptolemy, Geographia 2.2; Demetae at Roman-Britain.org
2. ^ Gildas, De Excidio Britanniae 31

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