Gaul

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Gaul gôl , Lat. Gallia, ancient designation for the land S and W of the Rhine, W of the Alps, and N of the Pyrenees. The name was extended by the Romans to include Italy from Lucca and Rimini northwards, excluding Liguria. This extension of the name is derived from its settlers of the 4th and 3d cent. BC—invading Celts, who were called Gauls by the Romans. Their cousins in Gaul proper (modern France) probably had been there since 600 BC, for the Greeks of Massilia (Marseilles) knew them. The Gaul in Italy was called Cisalpine Gaul [Cisalpine, from Lat.=on this side the Alps], as opposed to Transalpine Gaul; Cisalpine Gaul was divided into Cispadane Gaul [on this side the Po] and Transpadane Gaul.

Roman Rule

By 121 BC, Rome had acquired S Transalpine Gaul, and by the time of Julius Caesar it had been pacified. It was usually called the Province ( Provincia, hence modern Provence), and it included a strip 100 mi (160 km) wide along the sea from the E Pyrenees northeastward and up the Rhone valley nearly to Lyons. Julius Caesar conquered Gaul in the Gallic Wars (58 BC-51 BC). He is the best ancient source on Gaul, and he has immortalized its three ethnic divisions, Aquitania (S of the Garonne), Celtic Gaul (modern central France), and Belgica (very roughly Belgium). Aquitania was probably inhabited by the ancestors of the Basques, and the Belgae were probably Celts, like the rest of the Gauls.

On the basis of these distinctions, Augustus in 27 BC set up great administrative divisions: Narbonensis (the old Province), under the direct rule of the Roman senate; Aquitania, now extending from the Pyrenees to the Loire; Lugdunensis (Celtic Gaul), a central strip mainly between the Loire and the Seine; and Belgica, including most of the rest. The latter three provinces were administered from Lugdunum (now Lyons), capital of Lugdunensis. Upper and Lower Germany were taken from Gaul; these included the upper Rhine, Alsace, W Switzerland, the Franche-Comté, E Belgium, S Netherlands, and the Rhineland.

In Roman Gaul it often became customary to call the chief center of a tribe or the country around it by some form of the tribe's name. Many of these names survive today. The principal tribes of Gaul (with the modern survivals or locations) were: Abrincati (Avranches); Aedui; Allobroges; Ambiani (Amiens); Andecavi (Angers, Anjou); Atrebates (Arras); Baiocassi (Bayeux); Bellovaci (Beauvais); Bituriges (Bourges, Berry); Cadurci (Cahors, Quercy); Carnutes (Chartres); Catalauni (Châlons); Cenomani (Le Mans, Maine); Eburovici (Évreux); Helvetii; Lemovices (Limoges, Limousin); Lingones (Langres); Lexovii (Lisieux); Meldae (Meaux); Namnetes (Nantes); Nervii; Parisii (Paris); Petrocorii (Périgueux, Périgord); Pictones or Pictavi (Poitiers, Poitou); Redones (Rennes, Breton Roazon ); Remi (Reims); Ruteni (Rodez); Santones (Saintes); Senones (Sens); Sequani, in the Franche-Comté; Silvanecti (Senlis); Suessiones (Soissons); Treveri (Trier, French Trèves ); Tricassi (Troyes); Turones (Tours, Touraine); Veneti (Vannes, Breton Gwened ).

Effects of Roman Rule

Although the Romans had won political control over Gaul, they never succeeded in imposing Roman culture throughout the land. Various provinces differed greatly in the degree to which they accepted Roman culture. The only serious attempt to rebel politically against Rome was the uprising of Postumus (AD 257), but Gallo-Roman civilization was too strong to fall before anything but the Germans of the 5th and 6th cent.

The villa system spread (see feudalism ). A landed aristocracy grew up, employing the laborers, who made up the principal part of the population. The influence of Christianity and the ravages of Germanic invaders forwarded the local organization around the cities. The greatest testimony to the stability and thoroughness of the culture of Roman Gaul is the survival of the Latin language as French. However, an indication of regionalism is that Provençal, also a Romance language, survived in S France for centuries. For history see France .

Bibliography

See S. Dill, Roman Society in Gaul in the Merovingian Age (1966); R. Latouche, Caesar to Charlemagne (tr. 1968); H. Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne (tr. 1968); J. J. Hatt, Celts and Gallo-Romans (tr. 1970); E. James, Origins of France: From Clovis to the Canetians, AD 500-1000 (1982); P. Geary, Before France and Germany (1988).

Gaul [L Gallia]. English name for the land in antiquity populated by P-Celtic-speaking peoples, south and west of the Rhine, west of the Alps, and north of the Pyrenees, approximately coextensive with the modern nations of France, Germany west of the Rhine, Belgium, and western Switzerland. The culture and language of the Celts extended across the Alps into Cisalpine Gaul [L Gallia Cisalpina], what is today northern Italy down to the Apennines; at various times Celtic dialect was also spoken in much of northern Europe, from Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, much of the Balkans, to Galatia in what is today Turkey. Little can be known about the Gauls from the meagre surviving documents in the Gaulish language, but we can see obvious parallels with Welsh, Cornish, and Breton as well as more remote links to Old Irish. Most of what we know about Gaul derives from the sometimes prejudiced views of classical commentators, beginning with Julius Caesar, who conquered the country 59–50 BC. The historical leader of Gaulish resistance, Vercingetorix, has been the focus of many legends. Recent archaeological evidence has demonstrated that the Gauls were far less barbaric than the conquering Romans implied.

Most gods of Gaul are known to us by Roman names. Tacitus (2nd cent. AD) used the phrase interpretatio romana for the process under which the Romans described the gods of the Celts as if they were indeed Roman divinities. Thus a native god whose name is lost to us is now referred to as Gaulish Mercury, Gaulish Mars, etc. Iconographic evidence shows that the ancient Gauls acceded to this forced identification by portraying their gods with Roman affects. Modern commentators have coined the phrase interpretatio celtica to describe the reverse phenomenon in which the Celts adapted Roman gods into their own belief systems, venerating the god under a Latin name but adding a Celtic epithet. Caesar determined six principal gods of the Gauls and ranked them as he perceived a Gaulish pantheon: Mercury, Apollo, Mars, Jupiter, Minerva, and Dis Pater (Pluto). Modern commentators doubt that the Gauls clearly differentiated the functions of particular gods or of any pantheon that was propitiated throughout their culture. The names of other native gods survive in inscriptions at various shrines and in other classical commentators, but these also are called into question. The god Teutates cited by Lucan (1st cent. AD) may simply derive from the ‘god of the tribe’; cf. teutā, ‘tribe’; OIr. túath, ‘people, tribe, nation’.

See Olwen Brogan, Roman Gaul (Cambridge, Mass., 1953); Jean-Jacques Hatt, Celts and Gallo-Romans, trans. James Hogarth (London, 1970); J. L. Brunaux, The Celtic Gauls: Gods, Rites and Sanctuaries (London, 1978); H. D. Rankin, Celts and the Classical World (London, 1987); Pierre-Yves Lambert, La Langue gauloise: description linguistique, commentaire d'inscriptions choisies (Paris, 1994). See also Bibliography under ‘Ancient and Continental’.

2. Alternate spelling of Macpherson's Goll 2.

Gaul An ancient region of Europe, corresponding to modern France, Belgium, the south Netherlands, south-west Germany, and northern Italy. The area was settled by groups of Celts, who had begun migration across the Rhine in 900 BC, spreading further south beyond the Alps from 400 BC onwards and ousting the Etruscans. The area south of the Alps was conquered in 222 BC by the Romans, who called it Cisalpine Gaul. The area north of the Alps, known to the Romans as Transalpine Gaul, was taken by Julius Caesar between 58 and 51 BC, remaining under Roman rule until the 5th century AD. Within Transalpine Gaul the southern province, parts of which had fallen to the Romans in the previous century, became known as Gallia Narbonensis.

Gaul (French: Gaule; Latin: Gallia) An ancient region which in Roman times comprised most of modern France (Gallia Aquitania in the south‐west, Gallia Transalpina ‘Gaul beyond the Alps’ or Narbonensis in the south‐east, and Gallia Celtica or Lugdunensis in the centre), parts of Belgium and western Germany (Gallia Belgica) and northern Italy (Gallia Cisalpina ‘Gaul this Side of the Alps’), that was inhabited by the Gauls after whom it was named.

Gaul Ancient Roman name for the land n of the Pyrenees, s and w of the Rhine and w of the Alps. In 900 bc, tribes of Celts began to migrate across the Rhine and spread s. In 222 bc, the Romans conquered the region s of the Alps, calling it Cisalpine Gaul. By 121 bc, Rome captured the area n of the Alps, known as Transalpine Gaul. In the Gallic Wars (58–51 bc), Caesar completed the conquest of Gaul.

Gaul an ancient region of Europe, corresponding to modern France, Belgium, the south Netherlands, SW Germany, and northern Italy. The area south of the Alps was conquered in 222 bc by the Romans, who called it Cisalpine Gaul. The area north of the Alps, known as Transalpine Gaul, was taken by Julius Caesar between 58 and 51 bc; the southern province of Transalpine Gaul became known as Gallia Narbonensis.

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