Gallia Aquitania

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Aquitania
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Provincia Gallia Aquitania
Province des Gaules, Aquitaine
Burdigala)
Historical eraAntiquity
• Established after the Gallic Wars
27 BC
• Visigoth conquest
5th century
Succeeded by
Aquitania Prima
Aquitania Secunda
Novempopulania
Today part ofFrance
imperial province of Gallia Aquitania (Aquitaine
, Fr.)

Gallia Aquitania (

province of the Roman Empire. It lies in present-day southwest France, where it gives its name to the modern region of Aquitaine. It was bordered by the provinces of Gallia Lugdunensis, Gallia Narbonensis, and Hispania Tarraconensis.[2]

Tribes of Aquitania

Fourteen

Celtic tribes and over twenty Aquitanian tribes occupied the area from the northern slopes of the Pyrenees in the south to the Liger (Loire) river in the north. The major tribes are listed at the end of this section.[3][4] There were more than twenty tribes of Aquitani, but they were small and lacking in repute; the majority of the tribes lived along the ocean, while the others reached up into the interior and to the summits of the Cemmenus Mountains, as far as the Tectosages
.

The name Gallia Comata was often used to designate the three provinces of Farther Gaul, viz. Gallia Lugdunensis, Gallia Belgica, and Aquitania, literally meaning "long-haired Gaul", as opposed to Gallia Bracata "trousered Gaul", a term derived from bracae ("breeches", the native costume of the northern "barbarians") for Gallia Narbonensis.

Most of the Atlantic coast of the Aquitani was sandy and thin-soiled; it grew millet, but was unproductive with respect to other products. Along this coast was also the gulf held by the Tarbelli; in their land, gold mines were abundant. Large quantities of gold could be mined with a minimum of refinement. The interior and mountainous country in this region had better soil. The Petrocorii and the Bituriges Cubi had fine ironworks; the Cadurci had linen factories; the Ruteni and the Gabales had silver mines.[citation needed]

According to Strabo, the Aquitani were a wealthy people. Luerius, the King of the Arverni and the father of Bituitus who warred against Maximus Aemilianus and Dometius, is said to have been so exceptionally rich and extravagant that he once rode on a carriage through a plain, scattering gold and silver coins here and there.[3]

The Romans called the tribal groups

civitates
. These administrative groupings were later taken over by the Romans in their system of local control.

Aquitania was inhabited by the following tribes: Ambilatri, Anagnutes,

Vellavi
, Venami.

Gallia Aquitania and Rome

Narbo.[2] Some of the region falls into modern Provence
, still recalling the Roman name.

The main struggle (58–50 BC) against the Romans came against Julius Caesar under Vercingetorix at Battle of Gergovia (a city of the Arverni) and at the Battle of Alesia (a city of the Mandubii). The Gaulish commander was captured at the siege of Alesia and the war ended. Caesar seized the remainder of Gaul, justifying his conquest by playing on Roman memories of savage attacks over the Alps by Celts and Germans. Italy was now to be defended from the Rhine.[3]

Caesar named Aquitania the triangle shaped territory between the Ocean, the Pyrenees and the

Gallia.[8] Aquitania lay under the command of a former Praetor, and hosted no legions.[9]

Sestertius of Hadrian found in the Garonne near Burdigala, from a shipwreck of 155/56 AD

More so than Caesar, Strabo insists that the primeval Aquitani differ from the other Gauls not just in language, institutions and laws ("lingua institutis legibusque discrepantes") but in body make-up too, deeming them closer to the Iberians.[10] The administrative boundaries set up by Augustus comprising both proper Celtic tribes and primeval Aquitani remained unaltered until Diocletian's new administrative reorganization (see below).

The Arverni often warred against the Romans with as many as two to four hundred thousand men. Two hundred thousand fought against Quintus Fabius Maximus Allobrogicus and against Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus. The Arverni not only had extended their empire as far as Narbo and the boundaries of Massiliotis, but they were also masters of the tribes as far as the Pyrenees, and as far as the ocean and the Rhenus (Rhine).

Late Roman Empire and the Visigoths

Early Roman Gaul came to an end late in the 3rd century. External pressures exacerbated internal weaknesses, and neglect of the Rhine frontier resulted in barbarian invasions and civil war. For a while Gaul, including Spain and Britain, was governed by a separate line of emperors (beginning with

Aquitania Secunda (see – Burdigala; the later Bordeaux) and Aquitania Tertia, better known as Novempopulania ("land of the nine peoples"), with its see in Elusa (Eauze). Novempopulania originated in boundaries set up by Caesar for the original Aquitania, who had kept some kind of separate sense of identity (Verus' mission to Rome aimed at demanding a separate province). After this restructuring, Gaul enjoyed stability and enhanced prestige.[2]
After the trans-Rhine invasion December 31 406 by 4 tribes (Alans, Sueves, Asding and Siling Vandals), the offices of the Gallic prefecture were moved from Trier to Arles even though the Rhine frontier was subsequently restored and under Roman control till 459 when Cologne was taken by the Franks. Roman attention had been shifted to the south to try to control the invaders and keep them from the Mediterranean, a policy which failed after the Vandals started to harass the coasts from their bases in southern Spain from the early 420s.

In the early 5th century, Aquitania was invaded by the Germanic

Aëtius (454) and a worsening debility on the part of the western government created a power vacuum. During the 460s and 470s, Visigoths encroached on Roman territory to the east, and in 476, the last imperial possessions in the south of Aquitania were ceded to the Visigoths. The Visigothic Kingdom later expanded over the Pyrenees and into the Iberian Peninsula
.

From 602, an independent

Duchy of Vasconia (or Wasconia) was formed, under a Frankish-Roman elite, in the former Visigothic stronghold of south-west Aquitania (i.e. the region known later as Gascony
).

Known governors

References

  1. ^ Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879). "Aquitania". A Latin Dictionary. Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University.
  2. ^ a b c John Frederick Drinkwater (1998). "Gaul (Transalpine)". The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization. Ed. Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth. Oxford University Press. Oxford Reference Online.
  3. ^ a b c Strabo: The Geography, The Aquitani.
  4. ^ Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Bk. 4.
  5. ^ Caesar, Commentaria de bello gallico, I 1. See C.B. Krebs (2006), "Imaginary Geography in Caesar's Bellum Gallicum," AJP 127: 111-36.
  6. .
  7. ^ Matthew Bunson (1994). Encyclopedia of the Roman Empire. Facts on File, New York. p. 169.
  8. ^ The Histories of Appian, The Civil Wars
  9. ^ Livius.org, Provinces (Roman) Archived 2016-12-26 at the Wayback Machine.
  10. .
  11. ^ P. Heather. (1996). The Goths, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford.
  12. ^ H. Sivan. (1987). "On Foederati, Hospitalitas, and the Settlement of the Goths in AD 418", American Journal of Philology 108 (4), 759-772.
  13. ^ Unless otherwise stated, the names of the governors from 69 to 138 are taken from Werner Eck, "Jahres- und Provinzialfasten der senatorischen Statthalter von 69/70 bis 138/139", Chiron, 12 (1982), pp. 281-362; 13 (1983), pp. 147-237
  14. ^ a b Ronald Syme, "A Lost Legate of Aquitania", Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, 79 (1988), pp. 181-187
  15. ^ Unless otherwise stated, the names of the proconsular governors from 141 to 177 are taken from Géza Alföldy, Konsulat und Senatorenstand unter der Antoninen (Bonn: Rudolf Habelt Verlag, 1977), pp. 252f
  16. ^ Paul Leunissen, Konsuln und Konsulare in der Zeit von Commodus bis Severus Alexander (Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1989), pp. 204f
  17. ^ a b Leunissen, Konsuln und Konsulare, p. 283