The Gauls are a subgroup of Celtic-speaking peoples or Celts. Numerous Gaulish (Gallic) tribes lived in a region known as Gaul, as defined by the Romans. (The Latin version is Gallia; the French is Gaule.) The Gauls were the Celts with whom the Romans had the most contact over the centuries: those who lived in present-day France, Belgium, Switzerland, the Netherlands, western Germany, and northern italy. Mainland peoples not discussed as Gauls are the Celtic tribes living on the iberian Peninsula (the Celtiberians) and those living in other regions of central and eastern Europe as well as Asia Minor. Celtic peoples on the British Isles are discussed as Britons, Irish, and Scots.
The Gauls—and the other various Celticspeaking peoples—were the descendants of the tribes of the Bell Beaker and other Bronze Age cultures and before that of the peoples of the Neolithic cultures that developed after the introduction of farming practices to Europe. The Hallstatt culture and the La Tene art style became important developments for those peoples who are grouped together as Celts.
The Gauls spoke dialects of Gaulish (Gallic), one of the branches of Continental Celtic (the others are Lepontic and Celto-Iberian). The other Celtic language family is known as Insular Celtic, dialects spoken on the British Isles. Gaulish is known primarily from references to tribes, places, and individuals in the writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Only a few inscriptions have been found. The great majority of evidence for Continental Celtic consists of the names of persons, tribes, and places recorded by Greek and Latin writers. Only in Gaul and in northern Italy are inscriptions found, and their interpretation is in most cases doubtful. The longest inscription is the Coligny calendar, preserved on two bronze tablets found in 1897 at Bourg in eastern France, a lunar calendar.
Continental Celtic seems to have been very similar to Latin, so much so that when sending confidential messages during wartime Roman officers would write in Greek so that if their letters fell into the hands of Gallic warriors, they would be illegible. The similarity between Latin and Continental Celtic may have contributed to the latter’s disappearance, because it would have been so easy for Gauls to learn Latin and to use it when writing. Latin may even have served as a lingua franca among different Gallic tribes in territories far apart whose regional dialects made it hard to understand one another. Latin was in all probability the language of the marketplace, law, government, and the wealthy, while Gaulish continued to be spoken only in backward rural areas.
The Coligny calendar is a lunar calendar with months of 29 days; the lunar time reckoning of the Gauls is mentioned by Julius Caesar in his writings. Given the nature of the evidence, knowledge of these languages is confined largely to the sound system and a small part of the vocabulary, and no certain conclusions can be reached as to their historical development or the differences between them.
Gallic Incursions into Italy
Although the Roman historian Livy of the first-centuries B. C.E. and C. E. reported a migration that occurred as early as 600 b. c.e. is suspect, there is evidence of some movement of prehistoric Hallstatt groups—peoples ancestral to the Celts—through Alpine passes to the Lombard lake district in the sixth and fifth centuries B. C.E.; typical Hallstatt burials have been found there. But the main thrust southward was at the end of the fifth century b. c.e. as successive waves of Celts arrived, each bypassing the territories of their brethren to move ever farther south. Tribes named in accounts include the Insubres, who conquered the territory around Milan; the Cenomani, who entered Brescia and Verona; the Leponti around Lake Maggiore, and the Libici and Saluvii. The Boii and Lingones passed on, moving south of the Po. Among the last to arrive, the Senones went to umbria and the Adriatic coastal zone.
Whole families accompanied this movement and settled to farm the rich Po valley; the second-century b. c.e. Greek historian Polybius, who lived in Rome, describes fertile fields growing wheat, barley, millet, and vines, through which pigs roamed. Large numbers of small cemeteries from this time document a population scattered thinly across the countryside. There continued to be warrior burials as
Gauls time line
GAULS
Location:
Present-day France and parts of Belgium and Netherlands; western Germany; northern Italy; Switzerland
Time period:
Fifth century b. c.e. to fifth century c. e.
Ancestry:
Celtic
Language:
Gaulish (a branch of Continental Celtic)
B. C. E.
Late fifth-early fourth century Celtic tribes cross Alps into northern Italy and occupy territory.
C. 390 Celtic tribes attack Rome.
332-331 Treaty between Romans and Senones
Third century Roman conquest of Gallia Cisalpina in northern Italy
118 Founding of Roman colony of Narbo Martius in Gaul Transalpina
58-50 Julius Caesar leads Romans in Gallic Wars; in 52 he suppresses revolt led by Vercingetorix of Arverni.
49 Caesar confers Roman citizenship on pacified inhabitants of Gallia Cisalpina.
27 Romans reorganize Gaul.
C. E.
260 Peoples in Gaul, Spain, and Britain form independent Gallic empire. 273 Roman emperor Aurelian reclaims Gaul for Rome. fifth century Germanic tribes occupy much of Gaul.
486 Clovis I of Franks captures last Roman outposts in Gaul.
Gauls living in southern France crafted this statue of a male warrior in the late first century b. c.e. (Drawing by Patti Erway)
In the homeland, in some cases the accoutrements including Etruscan body armor, an innovation, as Celts typically fought naked.
For a time the Apennine Mountains served as a barrier to further movement. Meanwhile to the south of the Apennines the Romans were engaged in acquiring the territories of the Etruscans. No sooner had their annexation been completed, however, than Gallic war bands appeared, having burst through the Appenine barrier. These tribesmen are thought to have originated in the Rhine-Moselle region in present-day eastern France and western Germany. They overran the former Etruscan cities with an impetus that quickly moved them all the way to the gates of Rome itself in 390 (or 387) b. c.e.
The Gauls laid waste much of the region around Rome, which held out for seven months until the Gauls moved off. Raiding continued throughout the Italian Peninsula for 60 years, during which many Gauls became employed as mercenaries for various local tyrants. By the 330s b. c.e. the raids had largely ceased; in 332-331 b. c.e. the Romans concluded a treaty with the Senones.
During the third century b. c.e. the Romans regained territory to the north all the way to the Po River valley. A description by Polybius of a major battle during these campaigns, at Telamon in 225 B. C.E., gives a sense of the primal clash of cultures represented by the two sides. Part of the shock cast by the Gallic warriors resulted from their fighting without armor and entirely naked, as though they were invulnerable, in one account appearing to be “insane gods.” The Gauls also showed a keen appreciation of the psychology of fear in their use of sound—innumerable horns, called carnexes, fashioned with fierce animal heads at their mouths, and trumpets accompanied the roars of the warriors—and in their theatrical threatening gestures. Had the Romans been able to understand the Gauls’ language, no doubt they would have been further impressed by the imprecations hurled at them by the poets who always accompanied Gallic warriors to battle, improvising satiric verses to discomfit and confuse the enemy. The Gauls fought with improvisatory flamboyance—war to them was as much an art as anything else. The Roman fighting spirit, on the other hand, depended upon organization, discipline, training, and esprit de corps.
In the end, however, Roman discipline won out and large territories settled by the Gauls were annexed. The Gauls were not all ousted from these territories. One tribe, the Boii, returned north through the Alps and settled finally in Bohemia in the present-day Czech Republic, which takes its name from them.
Impetus for the Roman Conquest of Gaul
The early successes of the Gauls in Italy and the terror felt by the populace of Rome on beholding the Gaulish warriors at their gates are part of the impetus for the Roman conquest of Gallic France: The need to extend the Pax Romana as far as possible into barbarian territories so as to prevent another such invasion. Other developments in Italy were also involved in the Roman drive for empire to the west and north. The Roman social hierarchy maintained itself through military adventures. The almost constant warfare over time depopulated the Italian countryside as small farmers and laborers were drafted into the army; even those whose service had ended often moved to the cities, disinclined to resume a rural existence. As a result land was increasingly in the hands of large estate holders, who depended on slave labor. Land was a major focus of investment among the aristocracy, who poured the spoils of their wars into developing their estates until much of Italy became planted as vineyards. The amount of wine produced was far more than the domestic market could absorb, so that Roman wine merchants looked to the Gauls, whose passion for wine was legendary. As a result the constant need for new military horizons, the growing population of increasingly restive war veterans in Italy who wanted land on which to settle, and the need of merchants for stable markets in barbarian regions all created incentives for Roman expeditions in several directions, including toward the coastal strip of present-day southern France.
The Romans originally defined Gaul as consisting of two main divisions: Gallia Cisalpina, “Gaul this side of the Alps” (in present-day northern Italy), and Gallia Transalpina, “Gaul across the Alps.”
Gallia Cisalpina, or Cisalpine Gaul, in present-day northern Italy, was also called Gallia Citerior, or Near or Hither Gaul, to distinguish it from Gallia Ulterior, or Far or Farther Gaul. During the third century b. c.e. the Romans wrested control of Gallia Cisalpina from the Gallic tribesmen who had earlier invaded the northern area of the Italian Peninsula. The Romans established colonies in the various Gallic towns. In the first century B. C.E. the region was subdivided into Gallia Cispadana (“Gaul this side of the Padana, or Po River”) and Gallia Transpadana (“Gaul across the Po River”).
Gallia Transalpina, or Transalpine Gaul, was defined as practically all of France and Belgium and parts of the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland. (It later became known as Gallia Celtica, Gallia Proper, or Gaule.)
By 121 B. C.E. Rome ruled the southern part of Transalpine Gaul. Originally called Provincia Romana (from which is derived the modern name Provence), it comprised a strip some 100 miles wide from the eastern Pyrenees on the present Spanish-French border northeastward along the northern Mediterranean and up the Rhone valley nearly to Lyon. The importance of this region to the Romans was twofold. It furnished the main route of their armies to Iberia (present-day Spain), which during the second century B. C.E. was a major focus of Roman ambitions because of its wealth of gold, silver, and agricultural products. It also became an increasingly important market both for Roman wine and for manufactured products such as pottery. The Romans founded what is thought to be its first colony of Narbo Martius (present-day Narbonne) in southern France on the coast in 118 B. C.E. This region would later become known as Gallia Narbonensis.
After 120 B. C.E. an alliance with the Aedui against the Allobroges and the Arverni gave the Romans control of the Rhone River valley. The Gallic tribes in the rest of Transalpine Gaul—that is, the territory from the Rhine River and the Alps westward to the Atlantic Ocean—now faced the threats of the Germans pressing from the east westward toward and across the Rhine, and of the Romans from the south. The Germanic Cimbri invaded Bohemia, the land of the Boii, and Noricum, a Celtic kingdom in the eastern Alps (not thought of as part of Gaul), and in 118 B. C.E. defeated a Roman army sent to Noricum. Joined by another Germanic tribe, the Teutones, the Cimbri continued their raids, pushing into italy, where they were defeated by the Roman armies in 102 and 101 B. C.E.
The Campaigns of Julius Caesar
The Roman general Julius Caesar conquered Transalpine Gaul and eventually pushed on to the British isles, where he spent two seasons campaigning against the Britons. in his political efforts to gain permission from the Roman senate to lead an army into Gaul Caesar was helped by the abiding trauma in the Roman psyche caused by the Gallic invasions of the fourth century B. C.E. The Romans perceived the continuing Gallic threat and growing Germanic threat and voted Caesar all the powers he needed to carry out his campaigns in what became known as the Gallic Wars.
The migration of the Celtic Helvetii westward into the territory of the Arverni from Switzerland prompted Caesar’s first military campaigns northward in 58 B. C.E. He drove them back to their homeland. Some Celtic tribes, such as the Aedui, appealed for his help in defeating the attacking Sequani and their allies, the Germanic Suebi under Ariovistus.
Instead of helping the Aedui, Caesar kept his legions in Gaul, campaigning against the tribes of northern Gaul—whom he called the Belgae—in 57 b. c.e. The next year he moved against the tribes in Armorica (modern Brittany in western France) and Aquitania in southwestern France, securing the region in 55 b. c.e. Caesar led his troops across the Rhine in that year and for 18 days made war on the Germanic SUGAMBRI, Tencteri, and Usipetes. He then led two legions across the English Channel and landed at Dover, but high tides and storms as well as raiding Britons forced him back to the mainland, where he suppressed a revolt of the Belgae. In 54 b. c.e. he mounted a second assault on the British isles with five legions and advanced as far as the Thames. Another Gallic revolt forced his return to Gaul. In 53 b. c.e. he battled tribes living near the Rhine, including the Menapii and Nervii. In 52 b. c.e. he suppressed a Gallic revolt of the Arverni and allied tribes led by Vercingetorix (see sidebar, p. 291). Gaul was pacified by the end of 50 b. c.e. In 49 B. C.E. Caesar conferred Roman citizenship on the inhabitants of Gallia Cisalpina.
Caesar’s campaigns devastated Gallic society; he treated rebellion and resistance with extreme ruthlessness. The elders of one tribe, the Veneti, were all executed and the rest of the population sold into slavery. His soldiers decimated an army of Nervii reported to number 60,000 men in Belgica, leaving only some 500 alive; their Council of 600 was reduced to three. Caesar did show leniency toward the surviving women, children, and elders, who had fled to the forests, allowing them to return to their settlements and giving orders to neighboring tribes to leave them in peace. After vanquishing the Aduatuci in an assault that reportedly killed 4,000, Caesar sold what is estimated at 53,000 survivors into slavery He encouraged the wholesale slaughter by his soldiers of the Carnutes because they had killed the Roman traders living with them; of a supposed 40,000 men, women, and children, only 800 survived. No doubt as a result of those losses there was little Gallic resistance for many years.
Emperor Tiberius was obliged to suppress a rebellion of the nobles in 21 C. E., but the assimilation of the Gallic aristocracy was secured when the emperor Claudius i made them eligible for seats in the Roman senate and appointed them to governing posts in Gaul. The first Gauls to serve in the Roman senate were from the Aedui tribe.
Over the next two centuries there were a number of revolts in Gaul. Because of increasing Germanic incursions, the Romans had limes—a type of fortification—built from the Middle Rhine to the Upper Danube. Germanic invaders breached this line during the reign of the emperor Marcus Aurelius in 161-180 C. E.
Yereingetorix: Visionary of a United Caul
Vercingetorix, an Arverni nobleman, is the most famous of all the Gauls. His name in Gaulish means “overking” (ver-rix) of “warriors” (cingetos). His name has also been transcribed from Gaulish as Fearcuincedorigh. Vercingetorix’s name indicates he led warriors of many different tribes in battle—as many as 30, including Arverni neighbors in the Loire country and from other parts of Gaul as well. In this way he was able to counter Julius Caesar’s strategy of divide and conquer the tribes. His uncle, worried about Roman retribution, expelled him from the Arverni town of Gergovia on the Gergovie plateau, but Vercingetorix raised support from other young warriors and returned, proclaiming himself chief of his tribe.
By 53 B. C.E. the Roman legions had pacified Gaul except for scattered resistance. The first action in the general Gallic revolt was small, the killing of several Roman merchants at Cenabum (modern Orleans) in 53 B. C.E. Vercingetorix, who used cavalry as well as foot soldiers, led raids in Provincia Romana in southern France late that year. To prevent the Romans from living off the land, Vercingetorix had Gallic towns and fields burned. He also was masterful in using natural fortifications to defend against pursuing armies. Caesar’s forces drove the Gauls out of the province, then crossed the Cevennes in January 52 B. C.E. and attacked Arverni towns. They laid siege to Gergovia on the plateau of Gergovie. The powerful Aedui had at first refrained from supporting the revolt of the Arverni, their traditional enemies, but joined in time to force abandonment of the siege.
A Roman victory on theVingeanne River forced the rebels to retreat northward to Alesia, a town of the Mandubii, to the northwest of present-day Dijon. Caesar mounted a siege. After the failure of a Gallic relief force to break through Caesar’s doughnut-shaped fortification—an outer defensive perimeter of 14 miles to defend against Gallic reinforcements and an inner wall of 11 miles protecting siege weapons to attack Alesia—the rebels, although outnumbering the Romans six to one, suffered staggering losses and surrendered in October 52 B. C.E.
After being held as a prisoner in the Tullianum at Rome for five years, Vercingetorix, the Gallic freedom fighter who had had a vision of a united Gaul, was publicly beheaded in 46 B. C.E. as a part of Caesar’s victory celebrations.
Some of the Roman legions stationed along the Rhine revolted after 192 C. E. Further instability was caused by an economic recession, which raised prices in the region. In 260 peoples in Gaul, Spain, and Britain became part of an independent Gallic empire, governed by Marcus Cassianius Latinius Postumus from Trier (or Treves, named after the Treveri) on the Moselle River in present-day Germany In 273 Emperor Aurelian reclaimed Gaul for Rome. Yet Germanic tribes remained a threat, reaching as far as Spain. Emperor Diocletian, who ruled in 284-305, and his successors attempted to reorganize the administration and revitalize the defense of Gaul, but in the fourth century more and more Germanic tribes were making inroads. By the fifth century the Visigoths ruled Aquitania, the Franks ruled Belgica, and the Burgundii ruled the Rhine region. By the early sixth century the Romans had no presence in Gaul. In 486 the Frankish king Clovis I captured the last Roman outposts in Gaul.
CULTURE (see also Celts)
Economy
The Gauls were as powerfully affected by trade with the Romans as their Celtic ancestors, the Hallstatt and La Tene tribes, had been by trade with the Greeks and Etruscans in the sixth and fifth centuries b. c.e. The Roman trade was on a much larger scale numerically than that of the Greeks and Etruscans had been. Fleets of merchant ships sailed up river routes deep into the interior of Gaul and along the Atlantic seaways to Brittany and southern Britain during the first century b. c.e. At such ports as Tolosa (Toulouse) and Chalon-sur-Saone wine was decanted from amphorae into barrels or skins for safe transport farther inland; enormous numbers of discarded and smashed amphorae were dumped into rivers. Roman merchants took up residence in Gallic oppida (towns). The Aude-Garonne River route was important because it led to the Atlantic sea routes.
After the Roman conquest trading routes by sea with their inherent dangers fell into disuse, replaced by the well-maintained roads of the Romans. Trading patterns changed markedly at this time.
Government and Society Gaul Reorganized Caesar wrote a detailed account of the country and its inhabitants, distinguishing regions according to their native inhabitants, whom he classified north to south as Belgae, Celtae (or Galli), and Aquitani.
Emperor Augustus reorganized Gaul on the basis of his classifications, establishing new provinces in 27 b. c.e.: Narbonensis (or Gallia Narbonensis, the “old province”) in the south, under the direct rule of the Roman senate; Aquitania (Gallia Aquitania), extending from the Pyrenees to the Loire; Lugdunensis (or Gallia Celtica), a central region mainly between the Loire and the Seine; and Belgica (or Gallia Belgica) in the northeast. Aquitania, Lugdunensis, and Belgica were referred to collectively as Tres Gallia (Three Gauls) or Gallia Comata, (long-haired Gaul) and were administered from Lugdunum (now Lyon), the capital of Lugdunensis.
There were numerous tribes in the region, Germanic in addition to Celtic (or tribes of an ethnic mix). Some of the Celtic peoples in this region have been mentioned. The Romans founded colonies (coloniae) of Roman citizens.
Gauls living in northern France crafted this bronze plaque in the first century C. E. (Drawing by Patty Erway)
These were organized into civitates (singular, civitas), self-governed regions based largely on tribal territories. Each civitas had a capital, often at the location of a Gallic oppidum (town), although new towns were sometimes established.
As trade with the Romans increased, even before the Roman conquest of Gaul changes were occurring in Gallic society The importance of kingship decreased in favor of municipal authority. Gallic tribes formed senates in Roman style. Magistrates of the tribal oppida wielded ever more power; according to Caesar among the Aedui the chief magistrate, Vergobretos, ruled for years although his was an annual appointment; he was prevented from founding a dynasty by rules that prohibited any member of his family from taking office during his lifetime and prevented him from leading Celtic-style raids abroad by the requirement that he not leave tribal territory while he held office. It is possible that these political innovations had been fostered by the Romans, for it was in their interest that the Gauls settle down and find gratification in wealth from trade rather than in proving their warrior prowess in raids.
In common with the rest of Celtic Europe the Gauls began to establish large defended settlements called oppida (singular, oppidum)—the word Caesar used—during the mid-second century b. c.e. Much larger than the hill forts of the past oppida had orderly street grids. Many of the houses in Gaul were rectangular, as opposed to the circular dwellings, roundhouses, found on the British Isles.
The importance of the oppida in Gallic society actually aided Caesar in his conquest, for laying siege to such defended strongholds was a particular strength of the Roman armies, and once these centers of tribal power were taken, further resistance became minimal. This situation stands in sharp contrast to that of the Germanic tribes that the Romans would face in later years, whose settlements were thinly dispersed, and whose armies retreated into the forests. And the martial energies of the Gauls, which earlier in their history more than matched that of the Germans, had all been subsumed into peaceful pursuits.
The Gauls produced a wide range of crafts, including pottery, glass beads, and bracelets and other iron work, produced in industrial-scale quantities. Coins were minted as well.
In general the Gauls shared many gods and religious practices with Celts in other regions of the Celtic world, such as the British Isles. The fact that the Druids oversaw judicial matters as well as religious underscores how little separation there was between sacred and secular life among Celts. Part of their influence over political affairs lay in their role as prophets and seers.
The primary source of information for the Celtic gods of Gaul is the passage in Caesar’s Commentarii de hello Gallico (The Gallic War) in which he lists five of them and their functions: Mercury, Jupiter, Mars, Apollo, and Minerva. Yet he uses the names of equivalent Roman gods rather then Gallic native names. Mercury is the most important Gallic god according to Caesar, his interpretation verified by the great number of images and inscriptions relating to Mercury He is the inventor of the arts and the patron of travelers and of merchants; Jupiter rules the realm of the gods; Mars directs war; Apollo repels disease; and Minerva oversees handicrafts. It is possible that in addition to these gods the Gauls had particular local gods, although various deity names might be alternate names of principal deities. In this regard the Gallic god Taranis, a thunder god, has been associated with Jupiter; Teutates, with Mars and Mercury both; Belatucadrus, with Mars; Grannos with Apollo; and Sul with Minerva.
Many Gallic monuments show a pairing of male deity and female consort, possibly symbolic of the coupling of the protector god of the tribe or nation with the fertility mother goddess. It is difficult to distinguish between individual goddesses and mother goddesses, Matres or Matronae, who figure so prominently in Celtic iconography; they are symbolic of fertility and the seasonal cycle of nature. The Mothers usually appear as a triad (and sometimes pentad) of seated and smiling young women, wearing long robes and holding baskets of fruit on their laps, but there are many variations on this theme. At Arles in Provence near Marseilles (formerly Massalia) a large Roman cemetery, called Alyscamps, contains tombstones with reliefs of the Matres. A festival still held in the spring at Arles, possibly inspired by an earlier festival in honor of the Matres, is called The three Maries of the Sea, in which statues of the Virgin Mary, Mary
Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene are carried out to sea in a boat to bless the waters for the start of the navigational season.
The greatest of all Roman poets, Virgil of the first century B. C.E., whose family were farmers, may well have been of Gallic descent; his work owes little to Celtic literary tradition, however, being fully informed by Greco-Roman models and traditions. Possibly a trace of Gallic culture may be detected in his Georgies, a poetic treatise on farming that shows a keen appreciation of the natural world and of the farmer’s joy in the bounty of the harvest. His earlier Eclogues, on the other hand, a set of pastoral poems, are firmly in the Greek tradition. Other “Roman” writers born in the territory of Gallia Cisalpina include the poets Gaius Valerius Catullus, also of the first century B. C.E.; the historian Livy of the first centuries b. c.e. and C. E.; and the statesmen and writers Pliny the Elder of the first century C. E. and Pliny the Younger of the first-second century c. E. It is not known whether their ancestry was Gallic, however. These writers, as Virgil did, worked in the classical Roman literary tradition.
Although the Romans had won political control over Gaul, following their usual procedure, they did not try to impose Roman culture; rather a new Gallo-Roman culture developed on its own, more through Gallic emulation of the Romans than by imposition. A strong Roman influence on the Gallic tribes, brought about by trade, had long predated the conquest. The Romans strengthened this influence by building towns and roads throughout Gaul, financed by taxing the old Gallic landowning class. The Gallic oppida with their municipal authorities were well on the way to becoming true urban centers by the end of the Roman period. The villa system became an important component of the economy and society of Gaul and in some regions laid the groundwork for the feudal estates of the Middle Ages. A landed aristocracy grew up, part Gallic, part Roman, employing the laborers who made up the principal part of the population. At the same time the Romans promoted the development of a middle class of merchants, tradesmen, and government bureaucrats. Moreover, as mentioned, Roman religion became intertwined with Celtic religion as different Celtic gods were identified with gods of the Roman pantheon. Gallo-
Roman religious centers in some cases later became the loci of Christian churches. For example, the town of Lugdunum, present-day Lyon, which took its name from the Celtic god Lugh, became the first Christian center in Gaul in the second century C. E. Arles, the site of a large Celtic cemetery, was another. Both towns had bishoprics by the second and the third centuries C. E., respectively. The Latin language survived in Gaul by evolving into French. Perhaps the most important contribution of the Gauls to the preservation of Roman culture was the survival among them of the Latin language as it evolved into French.
Further Reading
Jean-Louis Brunaux. The Celtic Gauls: Gods, Rites and Sanctuaries (London: Seaby, 1988).
Frantz Funck-Brentano. The History of Gaul: Celtic, Roman, and Frankish Rule (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1994).
Kate Gilliver. Caesar’s Gallic Wars (Osceola, Wisc.: Motorbooks International, 2002).
Ramon L. Jimenez. Caesar against the Celts (Rockville Centre, N. Y.: Sarpedon, 1996).
Ralph Whitney Mathisen. Roman Aristocrats in Barbarian Gaul: Strategies for Survival in an Age of Transition (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993).
J. H. C. Williams. Beyond the Rubicon: Romans and Gauls in Republican Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
Greg Woolf. Becoming Roman: The Origin of Provincial Civilization in Gaul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
World History
