Gaul

Gaul became the most Romanised of the empire’s Celtic provinces and the Gauls themselves have a fair claim to being regarded as the truest heirs of Roman culture in the west. The Gauls never lost their distinct identity, but by the end of Roman rule they had ceased to be Celtic in any meaningful sense. The most Romanised part of Gaul was the southern province of Gallia Transalpina, which was renamed Narbonensis after Caesar conquered the rest of Gaul. Because of their long contacts with the Greeks of Massalia and their already Mediterraneanised economy, the Gauls of this region became de-tribalised and almost entirely Romanised in culture and language. The thoroughgoing nature of Romanisation here gave Provence a distinctive cultural and linguistic identity that endured right through the Middle Ages and made its absorption into the kingdom of France a sometimes bloody affair. If Narbonensis was civilised Gaul, northern Gaul was long regarded as a barbaric region, sometimes nicknamed Gallia Comata, ‘Long-Haired Gaul’.

The assimilation of Gallia Comata into the Roman system began in 27 Bc when it was divided into three provinces, Gallia Belgica, Gallia Lugdunensis and Gallia Aquitania, known collectively as Tres Gallia, the Three Gauls. The Gauls had little fight left in them after Caesar had finished with them, but a number of small rebellions in the first century ad fed the Roman’s anxieties and prejudices about them, so creating a barrier to their complete assimilation. The most serious of these rebellions was led by the Batavian chiefjulius Civilis in ad 69 in an attempt to create an independent ‘Empire of the Gauls’. Civilis was actually a Romanised German and most of his supporters were Germans from both sides of the Roman frontier: he got very little support from the Gauls themselves. The Gallic provinces were divided up into administrative districts called civitates and elective magistracies and other Roman institutions of civil government were introduced. The native aristocracy was encouraged to seek public office by the offer of Roman citizenship, which brought many legal privileges, as a reward. Roman Gaul was governed by Gauls. The civitates were based on the Iron Age tribal territories and their capitals were usually the old tribal oppida. If the site of the oppidum was unsuitable, because it was on a confined hilltop for example, then the Romans founded a new town nearby. The civitas capitals survive today as modern towns, and it is a sign of the durability of tribal identities under Roman rule that their modern names are derived from the tribal names rather than the names that the Romans gave to them. Hence Paris (Roman Lutetia) was the capital of the civitas of the Parisii, while Reims (Roman Durocortorum) was the capital of the Remi. To encourage the adoption of a Romanised lifestyle, the civitas capitals were given all the usual amenities of Roman civilisation, such as baths, aqueducts, metalled roads, theatres, amphitheatres and Classical-style temples.

A symbolic landmark in the Romanisation of Gaul was the decision of the emperor Claudius (r. 41-54) to allow members of the Gallic aristocracy to become senators, making it possible for them to identify themselves with the empire’s ruling class. The privilege was first extended to Rome’s long-time allies, the Aedui. In practice few Gauls were actually appointed to the Senate as the old Roman families guarded their status jealously. The aristocracy first became bilingual in Gaulish and Latin, but Latin eventually took over completely. Late Roman Gaul produced many important literary figures, including the poets Sidonius Apollinaris, Ausonius and (St) Paulinus of Nola, all of whom wrote in Latin. Even among the lower classes, Gaulish was beginning to give way to Latin in Narbonensis as early as the first century ad. Gaulish disappeared from public inscriptions in the rest of Gaul around the same time (implying widespread literacy in Latin); it continued to be the first language of the majority into the fourth century, however. By the middle of the fifth century a Latin vernacular, the forerunner of French, was beginning to take over, but in Auvergne and Armorica (Brittany), and perhaps a few other areas, the common folk still spoke Celtice or Gallice. The Roman state cults, often assimilated with local deities, spread across Gaul but traditional Celtic cults continued to flourish. Iron Age sanctuaries, such as those at Ribemont-sur-Ancre and Gournay, continued to be used, and elaborated, through the Roman period, and there is some evidence that human sacrifice and the head cult survived despite official prohibitions. Traditional Celtic temples and sanctuaries continued to be built, though now using stone, brick and concrete in the Roman manner. Most were simple buildings consisting of a central shrine surrounded by an ambulatory, but they occasionally reached massive proportions, as with the so-called Temple ofjanus at Autun.

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Plate 16 Roman walls at Carcassonne (late third century ad) Source: John Haywood