The Provinces of the Roman Empire (Illustrated Edition). Theodor Mommsen
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provinces after the introduction of the unit of road–measure to a much greater extent than was the case in other countries of the empire. Augustus must have extended the Roman mile formally to Gaul and placed the itineraries and the imperial highways on that footing, but must have in reality left to the country the old road–measurement; and so it may have happened that the later administration found it less inconvenient to acquiesce in the double unit for postal traffic54 than to continue to make use of a road–measure practically unknown in the country.
Religion of the country.
Of far greater significance is the attitude of the Roman government to the religion of the country; in this beyond doubt the Gallic nationality found its most solid support. Even in the south province the worship of non–Roman deities must have held its ground long, much longer than, for example, in Andalusia. The great commercial town of Arelate, indeed, has no other dedications to show than to gods worshipped also in Italy; but in Fréjus, Aix, Nîmes, and the whole coast region generally, the old Celtic divinities were in the imperial epoch not much less worshipped than in the interior of Gaul. In the Iberian part of Aquitania also we meet numerous traces of the indigenous worship altogether different from the Celtic. All the images of gods, however, that have come to light in the south of Gaul bear a stamp deviating less from the usual type than the monuments of the north; and, above all, it was easier to manage matters with the national gods than with the national priesthood, which meets us only in imperial Gaul and in the British Islands,—the Druids (iv. 236)[iv. 225.]. It would be vain labour to seek to give any conception of the internal character of the Druidic doctrine, strangely composed of speculation and imagination; only some examples may be allowed to illustrate its singular and fearful nature. The power of speech was symbolically represented in a bald–headed, wrinkled, sunburnt old man, who carries club and bow, and from whose perforated tongue fine golden chains run to the ears of the man that follows him—betokening the flying arrows and the crushing blows of the old man mighty in speech, to whom the hearts of the multitude willingly listen. This was the Ogmius of the Celts; to the Greeks he appeared as a Charon dressed up as Herakles. An altar found in Paris shows us three images of the gods with annexed inscription; in the middle Jovis, on his left Vulcan, on his right Esus “the horrid with his cruel altars,” as a Roman poet terms him, and yet a god of commerce and of peaceful dealing;55 he is girded for labour like Vulcan, and, as the latter carries hammer and tongs, so he hews a willow tree with the axe. A frequently recurring deity, probably named Cernunnos, is represented cowering with crossed legs; on its head it bears a stag’s antlers, on which hangs a neck chain, and holds in its lap a money–bag; before it stand cattle and goats—apparently, as if it were meant to express the ground as the source of riches. The enormous difference of this Celtic Olympus—void of all chasteness and beauty and delighting in quaint and fantastic mingling of things very earthly—from the simply human forms of the Greek, and the simply human conceptions of the Roman, religion enables us to guess the barrier which stood between these conquered and their conquerors. With this were connected, moreover, very serious practical consequences; a comprehensive traffic in secret remedies and charms, in which the priests played at the same time the part of physicians, and in which, alongside of the conjuring and the blessing, human sacrifices occurred, and healing of the sick by the flesh of those thus slain. That direct opposition to the foreign rule prevailed in the Druidism of this period cannot at least be proved; but, even if this were not the case, it is easy to conceive that the Roman government, which elsewhere let alone all local peculiarities of worship with indifferent toleration, contemplated this Druidical system, not merely in its extravagances but as a whole, with apprehension. The institution of the Gallic annual festival in the purely Roman capital of the country, and with the exclusion of any link attaching it to the national cultus, was evidently a counter–move of the government against the old religion of the country, with its yearly council of priests at Chartres, the centre of the Gallic land. Augustus, however, took no further direct step against Druidism than that of prohibiting any Roman citizen from taking part in the Gallic national cultus. Tiberius in his more energetic way acted with decision, and prohibited altogether this priesthood with its retinue of teachers and healing practitioners; but it does not quite speak for the practical success of this enactment that the same prohibition was issued afresh under Claudius: it is narrated of the latter that he caused a Gaul of rank to be beheaded, simply because he was convicted of having brought into application the charms customary in his own country for a good result in proceedings before the emperor. That the occupation of Britain, which had been from of old the chief seat of these priestly actings, was in good part resolved on in order thereby to get at the root of the evil, will be fully set forth in the sequel (p. 185). In spite of all this the priesthood still played an important part in the revolt which the Gauls attempted after the downfall of the Claudian dynasty; the burning of the Capitol—so the Druids preached—announced the revolution in affairs, and the beginning of the dominion of the north over the south. But, although this oracle came subsequently to be fulfilled, it was not so through this nation and in favour of its priests. The peculiarities of the Gallic worship doubtless still exerted their effect even later; when in the third century a distinctive Gallo–Roman empire came into existence for some time, Hercules played the first part on its coins partly in his Graeco–Roman form, partly as Gallic Deusoniensis or Magusanus. But of the Druids there is no further mention, except only so far as the sage women in Gaul down to the time of Diocletian passed under the name of Druidesses and uttered oracles, and the ancient noble houses still for long boasted of Druidic progenitors on their ancestral roll. The religion of the country fell into the background still more rapidly perhaps than the native language, and Christianity, as it pushed its way, hardly encountered in the former any serious resistance.
Economic condition.
Southern Gaul, withdrawn more than any other province by its position from hostile assault, and, like Italy and Andalusia, a land of the olive and the fig, rose under the imperial government to great prosperity and rich urban development. The amphitheatre and the sarcophagus–field of Arles, the “mother of all Gaul,” the theatre of Orange, the temples and bridges still standing erect to this day in and near Nîmes, are vivid witnesses of this down to the present time. Even in the northern provinces the old prosperity of the country was enhanced by the lasting peace, which, certainly with lasting pressure of taxation, accrued to the land by means of the foreign rule. “In Gaul,” says a writer of the time of Vespasian, “the sources of wealth are at home, and flood the earth with their abundance.”56 Perhaps nowhere do equally numerous and equally magnificent country–houses make their appearance,—especially in the east of Gaul, on the Rhine and its affluents; we discern clearly the rich Gallic nobility. Famous is the testament of a man of rank among the Lingones, who directs that there should be erected for him a memorial tomb and a statue of Italian marble or best bronze, and that, among other things, his whole implements for hunting and fowling be burned along with him. This reminds us of the elsewhere mentioned hunting–parks enclosed for miles in the Celtic country, and of the prominent part which the Celtic hounds for the chase and Celtic huntsmanship play in the Xenophon of Hadrian’s time, who does not fail to add that the hunting system of the Celts could not have been known to Xenophon the son of Gryllos. To this connection belongs likewise the remarkable fact that in the Roman army of the imperial period the cavalry was, properly speaking, Celtic, not merely inasmuch as it was pre–eminently recruited from Gaul, but also because the manœuvres, and even the technical expressions, were in good part derived from the Celts; we see here how, after the disappearance of the old burgess–cavalry under the republic, the cavalry became reorganised by Caesar and Augustus with Gallic men and in Gallic fashion. The basis of this notable prosperity was agriculture, towards the elevation of which Augustus himself worked with energy, and which yielded rich produce in all Gaul, apart perhaps from the steppe–region on the Aquitanian coast. The rearing of cattle was also lucrative, especially in the north, particularly the rearing of swine and sheep, which soon acquired importance for manufactures and for export; the Menapian hams (from Flanders) and the Atrebatian and Nervian cloth–mantles (near Arras and Tournay) went forth in later times to the whole empire.
Culture of the vine.
Of special interest was the development of the culture of the vine. Neither the climate nor the government was favourable to it. The “Gallic winter” remained long proverbial among the inhabitants of the southern lands; as, indeed, it was on this side that the