In those days, when all ships were of moderate draught, even ocean-going vessels could navigate the Rhone from Marseilles to Lyons; smaller boats could continue to within thirty miles of the upper Rhine; after-a short haul over level land goods could sail by a hundred cities and a thousand villas into the North Sea. Similar overland leaps led from the Rhone and the Saône to the Loire and the Atlantic, from the Aude to the Garonne and Bordeaux, from the Saone to the Seine and the English Channel. Trade followed these waterways and created cities at their meeting points. France, like Egypt, was the gift of her streams.
In a sense French civilization began with “Aurignacian man” 30,000 years before Christ; for even then, as the caves of Montignac attest, there were artists capable of rich color and vivid line. From that Old Stone Age of hunting and herding, France passed, about 12,000 B.C., to the settled life and tillage of the Neolithic Age, and, after ten long millenniums, to the Age of Bronze. About 900 B.C.. a new race, “Alpine” and roundheaded, began to filter in from Germany and spread across France to Britain and Ireland and down into Spain. These “Celts” brought with them the Halstatt iron culture of Austria, and about 550 B.C.. they imported from Switzerland the more developed iron technology of La Tene. When Rome became conscious of France she named it Celtica; only in Caesar’s time was this changed to Gallia, Gaul.
The immigrants displaced some native groups and settled down in independent tribes whose names still lurk in the cities they built.I The Gauls, said Caesar, were tall, muscular, and strong;23 they combed their rich blond hair back over their heads and down the nape of their necks; some had beards, many had powerful mustaches curling around their mouths. They had brought from the East, perhaps from the ancient Iranians, the custom of wearing breeches; to these they added tunics dyed in many colors and embroidered with flowers, and striped cloaks fastened at the shoulders. They loved jewelry and wore gold ornaments—even if nothing else—in war.24 They liked abundant meat, beer, and undiluted wine, being “intemperate by nature” if we may believe Appian.25 Strabo calls them “simple and high-spirited, boastful . . . insufferable when victorious, scared out of their wits when defeated”; 26 but it is not always a boon that our enemies should write a book. Poseidonius was shocked to find that they hung the severed heads of their foes from the necks of their horses.27 They were easily aroused to argument and combat, and sometimes, to amuse themselves at banquets, they fought duels to the death. “They were,” says Caesar, “our equals in valor and warlike zeal.”28 Ammianus Marcellinus describes them as
at all ages fit for military service. The old man marches out on a campaign with courage equal to that of the man in the prime of life. … In fact a whole band of foreigners will be unable to cope with one Gaul if he call in his wife, who is usually far stronger and fiercer than he, above all when she swells her neck, gnashes her teeth, and poising her huge arms, begins to rain down blows and kicks like shots from a catapult.29
The Gauls believed in a variety of gods, now too dead to mind anonymity. Belief in a pleasant life after death was so keen as to be in Caesar’s judgment an important source of Gallic bravery. On the strength of it, says Valerius Maximus, men lent money to be repaid in heaven; and Poseidonius claimed to have seen Gauls at a funeral write letters to their friends in the other world and throw them upon the pyre so that the dead man might deliver them;30 we should enjoy a Gaul’s opinion of these Roman tales. A priestly class, the Druids, controlled all education and vigorously inculcated religious belief. They conducted a colorful ritual, in sacred groves more often than in temples; and to appease the gods they offered human sacrifice of men condemned to death for crime; the custom will appear barbarous to those who have not seen an electrocution. The Druids were the only learned, perhaps the only literate, part of the community. They composed hymns, poems, and historical records; they studied “the stars and their movements, the size of the universe and the earth, and the order of nature,”31 and formulated a practicable calendar. They served as judges and had great influence at the courts of the tribal kings. Pre-Roman, like medieval, Gaul was a political feudalism clothed in theocracy.
Under these kings and priests Celtic Gaul reached its zenith in the fourth century B.C. Population expanded with the productivity of the La Tène techniques, and the result was a series of wars for land. About 400 B.C. the Celts, who already held most of central Europe as well as Gaul, conquered Britain, Spain, and north Italy. In 390 they pushed south to Rome; in 278 they pillaged Delphi and conquered Phrygia. A century later their vigor began to wane, partly through the softening influence of wealth and Greek ways, partly through the political atomism of feudal barons. Just as in medieval France the kings broke the power of the barons and established a unified state, conversely, in the century before Caesar, the lords of the manors broke the power of the kings and left Gaul more fragmentary than before. The Celtic front was pushed back everywhere except in Ireland; the Carthaginians subdued the Celts in Spain, the Romans drove them out of Italy, the Cimbri and Teutones overran them in Germany and southern Gaul. In 125 B.C.. the Romans, eager to control the road to Spain, conquered southern Gaul and made it a Roman province. In 58 B.C. the Gallic leaders begged Caesar to help them repel a German invasion. Caesar complied and named his own reward.
Caesar and Augustus reorganized Gaul into four provinces: Gallia Narbonensis in the south, known to the Romans as provincia, and to us as Provence, then largely Hellenized through the Greek settlements on the Mediterranean coast; Aquitania in the southwest, chiefly Iberian in population; in the center Gallia Lugdunensis, overwhelmingly Celtic; and in the northeast Belgica, predominantly German. Rome recognized and abetted these ethnic divisions to forestall united revolt. The tribal cantons were retained as administrative areas; the magistrates were chosen by owners of property, whose allegiance was secured by Rome’s support of them against the lower classes; and Roman citizenship was granted as a prize to loyal and useful Gauls. A provincial assembly of representatives chosen from every canton met each year in Lyons; at first it limited itself cautiously to the ritual of Augustan worship, but soon it passed on to sending requests to the Roman governors, then recommendations,.then demands. The administration of justice was taken out of the hands of the Druids, who were suppressed, and France received Roman law. For almost a century Gaul submitted peacefully to the new yoke; for a moment in A.D. 68, and again in 71, revolt flared under Vindex and Civilis; but the people gave scant support to these movements, and the love of liberty yielded to the enjoyment of prosperity, security, and peace.
Under the Pax Romana Gaul became one of the richest parts of the Empire. Rome marveled at the wealth of the Gallic nobles who entered the Senate under Claudius, and a century later Florus contrasted the flourishing economy of Gaul with the decline of Italy.33 Forests were cleared, swamps were drained, agriculture was improved even to the introduction of a mechanical reaper,34 and the grape and the olive spread into every canton of Gaul. Already in the first century Pliny and Columella praised the wines of Burgundy and Bordeaux. There were large estates tilled by serfs and slaves and owned by the forerunners of medieval feudal lords; but there were also many small proprietors, and wealth was more evenly distributed in ancient Gaul, as in modern France, than in almost any other civilized state. Progress was especially rapid in industry. By A.D. 200 Gallic potters and ironworkers were stealing the markets of Germany and the West from Italy, Gallic weavers were doing the largest textile business in the Empire, and the factories of Lyons were turning out not only commercial glass, but wares of artistic excellence.35 Industrial techniques were handed down from father to son and formed a precious part of the classical heritage. Over 13,000 miles of road, built or improved by Roman engineers, teemed with transport and trade.
Enriched with this expanded economic life, the towns of ancient Celtica became the cities of Roman Gaul. In Aquitania the capital, Burdigala (Bordeaux), was one of the busiest of Atlantic ports; Limonum (Limoges), Avaricum (Bourges), and Augustonemetum (Clermont-Ferrand) were already rich; the last paid Zenodotus 400,000 sesterces for a colossus of Mercury.36 In Gallia Narbonensis there were so many cities that Pliny described it as “more like Italy than a province.”37 Farthest west was Tolosa (Toulouse), famous for its schools. Narbo (Narbonne), capital of the province, was in our first century the greatest city of Gaul, the chief port of exit for Gallic goods to Italy and Spain; “here,” Sidonius Apollinaris would say, “are walls, promenades, taverns, arches, porticoes, a forum, a theater, temples, baths, markets, meadows, lakes, a bridge, and the sea.”38 Farther east, on the great Via Domitia from Spain to Italy, lay Nemausus (Nîmes). Its pretty Maison Carrée was raised by Augustus and the town to commemorate his grandsons Lucius and Caius Caesar; its inner colonnade is lamentably sunk into the cella wall, but its free Corinthian columns are as lovely as any in Rome. The amphitheater, which seated 20,000, is still the scene of periodical pageantry. The Roman aqueduct that brought Nîmes fresh water became in time the Pont du Gard, or Bridge of the Gard River; standing today as a gigantic ruin in the rugged countryside beyond the city, its massive lower arches contrast to fine effect with the smaller arches above them to make the structure a revealing witness of Rome’s engineering art.
Eastward on the Mediterranean, at the mouth of the Rhone, Caesar founded Arelate (Aries), in the hope that it would replace rebellious Massalia as a shipbuilding center and port. Massalia (Marseilles), already old when Caesar was born, remained Greek in language and culture until his death. Through its harbor Hellenic agriculture, arboriculture, viticulture, and culture had entered Gaul; here, above all, western Europe exchanged its goods for those of the classic world. It was one of the great university centers of the Empire, especially renowned for its school of law. It declined after Caesar, but maintained its ancient status as a free city, independent of the provincial governor. Farther east were Forum Iulii (Fréjus), Antipolis (Antibes), and Nicaea (Nice)—this in the little province of the Maritime Alps. Sailing up the Rhone from Arelate the traveler came to Avenio (Avignon) and Arausio (Orange); here a powerful arch survives from Augustus’ days, and an immense Roman theater still hears ancient plays.
The largest of the Gallic provinces was Gallia Lugdunensis, named from Lugdunum (Lyons), its capital. Situated at the confluence of the Rhone and the Saône, and at the crossing of great highways built by Agrippa, the city became the trading center of a rich region and the capital of all Gaul. Iron, glass, and ceramic industries helped to sustain a population of 200,000 in our first century.40 Northward lay Cabillonum (Chalon-sur-Saône), Caesarodunum (Tours), Augustodunum (Autun), Cenabum (Orléans), and Lutetia (Paris). “I have spent the winter” (357-58), writes the Emperor Julian, “in our beloved Lutetia, for so the Gauls term the little town of the Parisii, a small island in the river. . . . Good wine is grown here.”41
Belgica, which included parts of France and Switzerland, was almost entirely agricultural; its industry was for the most part attached to the villas whose numerous remains suggest a baronial life of comfort and luxury. Here Augustus founded the cities now known as Soissons, St. Quentin, Senlis, Beauvais, and Trèves. The last, Augusta Trevirorum, rose to prominence as the headquarters of the army defending the Rhine; under Diocletian it replaced Lyons as the capital of Gaul, and in the fifth century it was the greatest city north of the Alps. It is still rich in classic remains—the Porta Nigra in its Roman wall, the Baths of St. Barbara, the Tomb of the Secundini family at nearby Igel, and the crude reliefs on the fortress blocks of neighboring Neumagen.
In and around these towns life slowly changed its surface and obstinately renewed its elements. The Gauls kept their character, their breeches, and for three centuries their language. Latin triumphed in the sixth century, chiefly through its use by the Roman Church, but it was already being clipped and nosed into French. In Gaul Rome achieved her greatest triumph in the transmission of civilization. Great French historians like Jullian and Funck-Brentano 43 have thought that France would have fared better without the Roman conquest, but a still greater historian believed that the Roman conquest was the sole alternative to a German conquest of Gaul. If Caesar had not won there, says Mommsen,
the migration of peoples would have occurred 400 years sooner than it did, and would have come at a time when Italian civilization had not become naturalized either in Gaul, or on the Danube, or in Africa and Spain. Inasmuch as the great Roman general and statesman with sure glance perceived in the German tribes the rival antagonists of the Romano-Greek world; inasmuch as with firm hand he established the new system of aggressive defense, down even to its details, and taught men to protect the frontiers of the Empire by rivers and artificial ramparts … he gained for the Greco-Roman culture the interval necessary to civilize the West.44
The Rhine was the frontier between classic and primitive civilization. Gaul could not defend that frontier; Rome did; and that fact determined the history of Europe to this day.