Augustodunum (Autun)

In a previous post I have discussed how Bibracte (Mont-Beuvray) was the most important fortified settlement (oppidum) of the Gallic tribe of the Aedui for about a century. Then, roughly between 20 BCE and 10 CE, Bibracte was abandoned. Its citizens left for a new city, founded by the Romans. This city was Augustodunum, currently known as Autun. In the streets of Autun many traces of the Roman past are visible. Below I will take you on a tour of, among other things, two Roman city gates and a theatre. Today Autun is just a small city, with less than 15,000 inhabitants. What is remarkable is that the city was much larger in the Roman era. Augustodunum had at least 30,000 inhabitants and perhaps even more. This also made the city much larger than ancient Bibracte, which had a population of 10,000 at most. Like Bibracte, Augustodunum was an important centre of metalworking.

History

The conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar was a bloody and even genocidal affair. This makes it all the more remarkable that, after that conquest had been completed, there were relatively few rebellions and the process of Romanisation started quickly. Part of this process was the disappearance of the old fortified settlements or oppida. By building new cities, based on the Roman model, the Romans encouraged this development. We do not know when exactly Augustodunum was founded. The city was, however, clearly named after the emperor Augustus (27 BCE-14 CE). In 27 BCE he had split Roman Gaul into three provinces: Lugdunensis, Aquitania and Belgica. We know that Augustus personally travelled to Gaul in 16 BCE. The most important reason for his visit was an invasion the previous year by a coalition of Celto-Germanic tribes. These had inflicted an ignominious defeat upon the governor Marcus Lollius, a defeat in which the eagle of Legio V Macedonica had been lost.[1]

Another reason for the presence of the emperor was, according to historian Cassius Dio, that Augustus’ popularity in Rome had plummeted.[2] The marauding tribes quickly offered a truce, so that there was no need for any more violence. Augustus mainly used his time in Gaul to get his house in order there. The province was for instance suffering from the rapacious activities of a certain Licinus, a former Gallic slave who had managed to get himself appointed as a Roman procurator. Augustus granted several cities in Gaul and Spain the status of a colonia. It follows that the founding of Augustodunum in 16-14 BCE makes perfect sense chronologically. The name of the new city means something along the lines of “fortress of Augustus”. There were many more cities in Gaul of which the name ended in -dunum. Just think of Lugdunum (Lyon) and Noviodunum (Nevers), the latter of which was also a settlement of the Aedui.

In the year 21, so a couple of years of the death of Augustus, a certain Julius Sacrovir of the Aedui rebelled against the Romans. The cause of the rebellion was a major debt crisis in Gaul. According to Velleius Paterculus, whose account is not always reliable, the rebellion was a minor affair: he claimed that news of the Roman victory had reached the people of Rome before news of the war.[3] The truth was a little bit more complicated. Sacrovir managed to capture Augustodunum and arm a large number of followers. He was, however, ultimately defeated by Gaius Silius, the Roman governor of Germania Superior. After the defeat, Sacrovir and the other leaders took their own lives.[4]

Augustodunum prospered as a centre of metalworking in the first and second centuries, but the city did not escape the misery of the Crisis of the Third Century. In the third century Augustodunum was part of the “Gallic Empire”, ruled by Marcus Cassianius Latinius Postumus, a Batavian Roman who considered himself the legitimate Roman emperor. Postumus was murdered in 269, after which Augustodunum rebelled against his successor Victorinus and defected to the ‘real’ Roman emperor Claudius Gothicus. But Claudius did not send any military aid, and so in 269 or 270 Victorinus managed to suppress the revolt. Augustodunum was besieged, taken and pillaged.

The first known bishop of Augustodunum was a certain Reticius. Of him we know that the emperor Constantine the Great requested him to participate in the synod of Rome in 313, while in 314 he took part in the council of Arelate. In the late fifth century Autun got its first cathedral, which was dedicated to Saint Nazarius (Saint-Nazaire), a fairly obscure saint from Milan. This cathedral no longer exists; in 1195 it lost its status as a cathedral to the pilgrim’s church of Saint-Lazare, a beautiful example of Romanesque architecture which can be found in the southwestern part of Autun. In Late Antiquity, Augustodunum still played its part in a number of historical events. It was here that, in the year 350, the usurper Magnentius (350-353) was proclaimed emperor. The legitimate emperor Constans – youngest son of Constantine the Great – fled, but was defeated and killed. On 24 June 356 the caesar (junior emperor) Julianus, a nephew of Constantine, arrived at Augustodunum. He held a war council in the city prior to his successful campaign against the Germanic Alemanni. Lastly, in 532, the kingdom of the Burgundians came to an end after a battle that was fought near Augustodunum. The Burgundian army was defeated by that of the Franks on that occasion.

The “temple of Janus”

Our exploration of ancient Augustodunum started just outside Autun, north of the river Arroux. The terrain that we visited was situated outside the walls of the Gallo-Roman city, but it was certainly part of it and densely populated to boot. Nowadays we still find the remains of a Gallo-Roman temple here. It is commonly known as the temple of Janus, but that is actually a misnomer, based on an erroneous interpretation of the French name of the location, i.e. la Genetoye. That name refers to the presence of broom in the area (genêt in French, hence Plantagenet). It has no connection whatsoever with the god Janus. At the temple an inscription was found of a certain Gaius Camellius Ascanius in which he declares to have fulfilled his vow for the benefit of his daughter Avita’s help. The deity invoked in the inscription is Ieniecus (DEO IENIECO), who is unfortunately completely unknown.

Of the temple two of the four walls of the cella – the room containing the statue of the deity – are still intact. The cella was surrounded on all sides by colonnades, but these are all gone. The remains are 24 metres high and 16 metres wide. The history of the temple probably goes back to the third century BCE, but the building of which we see the remains nowadays is younger. It was erected in the first century CE. The temple was not the only building in this area, on the contrary. Archaeological surveys have given us a pretty clear picture of what this part of Augustodunum looked like. The temple was surrounded by a Roman theatre in the north, workshops and stores in the west and Roman baths in the south. The size of the theatre is remarkable: it had a diameter of 116 metres. Admittedly, this is not that large if you compare the theatre to other theatres in the Roman world, but one should keep in mind that Augustodunum had another theatre in the city itself! Cities with two theatres were fairly rare. That fact that Augustodunum had two, is a clear indication of how large and prosperous the city was.

City gates

After visiting the temple remains we crossed the river and entered Augustodunum through the Porte d’Arroux, one of the four known city gates and the most northern of the four. According to the Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus (fourth century) Augustodunum had “huge ancient walls”[5], and upon seeing the Porte d’Arroux I was instantly inclined to believe him. Although the two towers of the gate are now gone, we can still see the four passageways. The two in the centre were meant for heavy carts, while the two on the sides could be used by pedestrians. The Porte d’Arroux had sandstone foundations, but is itself made entirely of limestone. The gate arose during the early days of Augustodunum, so it definitely dates from a year BCE.

If you walk south from the Porte d’Arroux, you follow the ancient cardo maximus, the main road running north to south. In the centre of the city it intersects the decumanus maximus, which runs east to west. We walk towards east and arrive at the second gate that has been preserved, the Porte Saint-André. This gate also has four passageways, two large ones in the middle and two smaller ones at the sides. The Porte Saint-André was used by people travelling in the direction of Andematunnum (Langres) and Vesontio (Besançon), the principal cities of the Lingones and Sequani respectively. Of this gate the tower on the right side has been preserved. In the Middle Ages it was converted into a Christian church dedicated to Saint Andrew the Apostle. The church is currently used by a Protestant congregation. Of the other two Roman gates of Augustodunum the southern Porte de Rome has disappeared entirely. According to this article one of the towers of the western gate, the Porte Saint-Andoche, has been preserved, but I have not been able to verify this claim.

Theatre and Pierre de Couhard

From the Porte Saint-André we walked to the Roman theatre that stood within the city walls. This was a larger building than the theatre outside the city (see above). It had a diameter of 148 and could accommodate about 15,000 spectators. Presumably it was built in the late first or early second century. Just north of it stood an amphitheatre, but regretfully not even a trace of it survives. A conspicuous little building near the theatre is the so-called Maison des Caves Joyaux. A lot of sculptures from funerary monuments around Augustodunum was incorporated into this nineteenth-century house. In the vicinity of the theatre we also find Légion VIII Augusta, an association of reenactors that like to recreate the battle of this historical legion. The eighth legion took part in Julius Caesar’s Gallic War. In the Imperial era it was based in Argentoratum (Strasbourg) for many centuries.

The last “thing” we visited was a rather odd monument south of the city that is known as La Pierre de Couhard. The monument consisted of a square base with a height of 10.5 metres onto which a pyramid with a height of 22.65 metres was placed. Nowadays the pyramid is an amorphous mass with a silly tip, but note that even the remains of the Pierre de Couhard are still about 25 metres high. As this was the location of a cemetery in Antiquity, there can be no doubt that it was once a funerary monument. However, the monument never had a burial chamber, so that it may have been a cenotaph. Not far from the Pierre de Couhard we find a plaque commemorating the last battle fought near Autun, which took place during the Franco-German war of 1870-1871. After their defeat and the removal of their emperor Napoleon III, the French had received aid from the famous Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882). He led the so-called Army of the Vosges, which on 1 December 1870 defeated a Prussian attack on Autun. The text on the plaque is – as one might expect – both in French and Italian.

Notes

[1] Cassius Dio, Book 54.19-21; Suetonius, Life of Augustus 23; Velleius Paterculus, Book V.97.

[2] Cassius Dio, Book 54.16-18.

[3] Velleius Paterculus, Book V.129.

[4] Timothy Venning, A Chronology of the Roman Empire, p. 382.

[5] Ammianus Marcellinus, Book 15.11.