Ancient Rome’s greatest enemy as many say was the Gauls. The Gauls lived in what is now Northern France. The Romans sent countless expeditions to Gaul to subdue the minor tribes that rejected Roman dominance. But none of them worked since the Gauls were actually a very powerful fighting force, if they worked together. You see the Gauls were extremely divided and warlike; the smallest embers start a wildfire in a blink. They took the smallest reasons and used them as an excuse to attack and annex the other tribes. Their nature was as easy to predict as the magnitude of an earthquake 20 years before it actually occurs. Sometimes they took Rome’s side while sometimes they were against it. They were an unstable ally and Rome decided that it would probably be much better off without them and war didn’t work.

They tried diplomacy but the turbulent nature of the politics inside Rome itself was getting in the way. After centuries of war there came a time when the Gauls sacked Rome itself! Not only did this weaken the military, but the “Gaul problem” was getting in the way of almost every field of governance: the economy, supplies, trade and contact with allies and contemporary civilisations. But now the problem was getting out of control and the Gallic tribes were winning victory after victory in the hills of their homeland.

The leader of the growing military machine of the Gauls was a charismatic new person: Vercingetorix. Vercingetorix was an extremely clever tactician and he knew all about the tricks and games of the Roman military and he studied each general and leader closely to take advantage of the weakness of their personalities. He was the mastermind behind most of the recent and major Roman defeats. When Rome finally found out about him they sent Julius Caesar to finish the Gauls once and for all.

After months of chasing and small skirmishes the Gauls ran out of supplies and chose to compensate at a medium sized town called Alesia. And it would be here that he would experience his first and last defeat. The residents of the town and the army of Vercingetorix lived side by side peacefully until the supplies started to die out and things started to get fishy. Soon there was nothing to eat or drink and there were fights and cannibalism was not unheard of. Amidst of all this chaos Vercingetorix found out that Caesar had built a  wooden wall five miles in circumference around the city and found out that he intended to starve the population out and then massacre them and his plan was working so far. But after several raids he managed to send out a small cavalry unit to send word out for help and reinforcements.  This ended in the Gauls regaining supplies and eventually fighting their way out. That became Caesars first and last defeat.  

The south slope of the plateau is inhabited since Neolithic times. Traces of “oppidum” Gauls are found to Corent and Gergovie 1 century BC, “oppidum” is the name given by Julius Caesar to habitat Celtic he meets during his military campaigns against Gaul. The oppidum is a city built on a site not easily accessible and also protected by stone ramparts of earth and wood. It is organized into specialized areas, home to a religious shrine, the villas of aristocrats and property Arverni handicrafts. His role is both defensive, political, economic and religious.
It is believed that the oppidum Gergovie may have been once the capital of the People Arverne. Traces of walls dating for some 500 years BC and others from the Gallic War, were found.
The Arverni are one of 60 people Gauls of Gaul independent.In 53 BC the Gallic tribes rebelled against the center with the Romans headed by a young fearless leader “Vercingetorix” taking refuge in the oppidum Arverne and stands up to Julius Caesar, inflicting his only defeat before the final victory Alesia.
After the conquest of Gaul, Caesar granted the city status Arverni free.
Although the name “Gergoie” appears on ancient parchments from 958, a vigorous controversy has long existed around Gergovie: the famous battle which gave its name to the site it is it really go? it did not happen rather Nemossos, Arverne nearby city that is now Clermont-Ferrand. Excavations have unearthed the remains of two Roman camps at Gergovie, corresponding to the texts of Julius Caesar, but some still doubt.
In 1795 the platform is shared between the residents and it Merdogne Napoleon III in 1865 and imposes installment called “Gergovie. But the city will soon abandoned in favor of Augustonemetum (Clermont Ferrand).
Gergovie is evident in its architecture through its viticultural; BC aristocrats Arverni imported their wines from Italy they did come in jars and the vineyards of the village enjoyed a boom during the Gallo-Roman and the vocation recovered its importance today.
A Gergovie you can visit the “House of Gergovie” among others and assist in a reconstruction of the battle on the big screen. You will attend Arverniales: archéofête the oppidum. And in a completely different kind Cervolix you will participate in the festival of kites.
And of course you can enjoy the many natural viewpoints of the plate and go to a profusion of circuits that are waiting for you to enjoy all the natural surroundings such as the trail from Le Puy Mardoux.
Welcome to the Gallic town of Auvergne.

This system of land holding and service may have formed the basis of European feudalism.  By the year 540 AD the Franks ruled most of the old Roman province of Gaul (modern day France). ‘Franks’ means ‘free’ as the Franks of Gaul were free of taxation.

The ruling family, known as the Merovingian dynasty is named after Clovis’ grandfather Merovaeus.  Clovis became a Christian and made Paris his capital city. The Holy Roman Emperor, Charlemagne, was king from 768 to 814.  After his death the Frankish empire began to break up.

Emperor Pertinax was murdered in 193 and a struggle began for a successor. A self proclaimed Emperor in Rome was Didius Julianus who found himself facing an alliance between Severus and Albinus. Didius was eliminated shortly after taking on the role of Emperor, and his death was quickly followed by the defeat of the Syrian governor in 194.Severus then conducted a successful campaign in the east, while Albinus returned to controlling his kingdom of Britannia (present day Great Britain).. Leaving at that time Albinus as the Caesar and so subsequent leader of the Romans.

Severus then tried to launch his own son as the Caesar and formed a new alliance with Marcus Aurelius, this broke the alliance and his allegiance to Albinus, at the same time he declared Albinus as being an enemy of the ruling Senate.

In the year 196, Clodius Albinus had been hailed as an emperor by those under his command and he took an army of 40,000 from Britannia to Gaul (present day France). Along the route he gathered up additional forces and arrived at Lugdunum where he set up his headquarters. He was joined there by two other Legions willing to fight on his side.

Severus had the allegiance of the armies of Danube and what is now known as Germany, Albinus struck first against the German forces, he defeated them but his victory was not as overwhelming as he had hoped and survivors still were able to join with the Severus force when it arrived. Albinus then planned to invade directly into Italy but Severus had the garrisons of the Alpine passes strongly reinforced. Albinus then prepared to face Severus at Lugdunum after first clashing at Tournus, the two armies were evenly matched in the battle of 197, but ultimately Severus won over in the end. The battle was fought over two days, at this time most battles were much shorter than this and usually lasted no more than a few hours at most, it was a bloody and drawn out fight with the advantage shifting from one side to the other over its course. Severus had the edge in cavalry numbers and this ultimately won him the battle.

It is not known if Albinus was defeated on the battlefield or if he escaped, within a short time he was dead. Whether from an enemy, or his own sword as was customary at that time it is not known. His body was taken to Severus and the head sent to Rome as a warning to others. The heads of Albinus family members were also dispatched to Rome.

As a result of this battle the strength of the forces in Britannia were severely depleted, this led to uprisings and incursions by other invading armies. During one of these uprisings Severus himself was in Britannia trying to restore order when he was killed near present day York in February 211, almost 14 years after he claimed victory over Albinus at Lugdunum.

She had the ability to make it appear that her victims had died of natural causes, a valuable resource in the cutthroat world of Roman commerce and politics. As a result, Locusta soon became a convenient and valuable conduit for other people’s ambitions. So though she was arrested many times she was never convicted of any crimes, her influential and powerful clients saw to that. 

On 1 January AD 49, the Emperor Claudius married his niece Agrippina, the sister of the previous Emperor, Caligula. This was despite incest being against Roman law. Agrippina was not only 20 years her husbands junior but also highly manipulative and extremely ambitious. She was particularly ambitious for her son Lucius Domitious Ahenobarbus, the future Nero. She meant her son to succeed Claudius as Emperor and that by doing so she would effectively rule in his name. Claudius, however, had a 14 year old son of his own by a previous marriage, Britannicus. Therefore, to achieve her ambitions she first had to be rid of her husband.

Claudius was always heavily guarded and his personal aide would always be at his side. He also had two food tasters. Agrippina knew that whatever fate befell Claudius she had to be above suspicion. She summoned Locusta.

Agrippina had decided that the only way to dispose of her husband was to poison him. She chose a night when his personal aide was indisposed due to illness and she had also brought off one of the food tasters. Knowing that if Claudius was guaranteed to eat anything it would be the mushrooms she had Locusta lace these with a deadly but invisible poison. She was also careful to ensure that Claudius drank a great deal of wine, guaranteeing that his guard was down, before she ordered the serving of the mushrooms. He did not even notice that the mushrooms had not even been tasted.

Claudius enthusiastically tucked into his favourite dish and before long was was doubled-up in great pain, unable to speak, and desperately gasping for earth. Agrippina played the dutiful and anguished wife sending people away and demanding that she personally take care of her husband who must have eaten something that disagreed with him. She now employed her secret weapon. Locusta had cleverly provided her with a feather soaked in a deadly poison. It had always been possible that the Emperor would fall ill before he had eaten enough mushrooms to kill him. The feather would finish the job.

Comforting her husband, Agrippina told those still present that running the feather up and down his throat would help to expel any deadly toxins. Instead Claudius died, either from the effects of the poison or perhaps by choking to death on the feather itself. Either way, Rome would need a new Emperor.

The always manipulative Agrippina now moved to ensure that the truth of what happened remained a secret. She had Locusta arrested and bribed the Law Courts to guarantee that she received a sentence of death. sentence.

The 64 year old Claudius had died on 13 October, 54 AD, that same day Agrippina’s son Lucius (Nero) was declared Emperor, but according to Claudius’s Will he would have to rule as joint Emperor with Britannicus. Agrippina was sanguine about this. She believed that she could handle Britannicus much as she could deal with her own son. After all, she was the one who would rule.

If nothing else the 16 year old Nero was a chip off the old block. He was every bit as cunning and ruthless as his mother. He was determined to rule alone and to do that he had to be rid of Britannicus. He had Locusta discreetly released from prison.

The Romans would always dilute their wine with water, and when the weather was cold they would do so with hot water. One evening during a family meal Britannicus complained that his wine was too hot. The wine had been tasted of course but there seemed to be little point in tasting the clear and obviously untampered with cold water that was added to the goblet. Britannicus began to convulse. Nero declined the offers of assistance and declared that Britannicus regularly had fits and that it would soon pass. When the convulsions did not cease Nero ordered that Britannicus be removed. He died soon after and Nero ordered the body be burned immediately.

Agrippina, who had been watching events, was in a panic. She was more than aware of what was going on and was terrified that she might be next. She had a very uncomfortable evening.

Nero was far more generous to Locusta than his mother had been. She was granted a full pardon for any previous crimes she may have committed, provided with land, and lavished with gifts and money. She continued to work on a contract basis and also opened her own school of poisoning, though she referred to it as herbal medicine. She enjoyed great success but it could only last as long as Nero survived. When he fell and was forced to commit suicide in 68 AD, Locusta fell with him.

As soon as she heard of Nero’s death Locusta went into hiding, but she too well known, and later in the year she was arrested. This time there was to be no pardon and she was sentenced to the horrible death that was put aside for poisoners. She was bound and taken to the arena where in full view of a baying public she was raped by a specially trained beast before being torn apart by half-starved and deliberately maddened wild animals.  

Roads and Trade

The Romans are famous for their roads. Some of their straight, paved trade routes still exist today, but were they the first to do this? Nope! Archaeologists have uncovered wooden and stone walkways built by Celtic craftsmen and engineers long before the Romans ever invaded Gaul. In fact, the “savage” Gauls seem to have been rather peaceful traders, far more civilised than the sadistic Romans. Shipping routes around the Mediterranean and beyond, stretching from the Black Sea to southern Britain, date back to the Greek Bronze Age (that’s around the 15th century BC, more than a thousand years before the Roman Republic came into being): wrecks have been found around Cyprus and Greek pottery found in Cornwall!

 Irrigation

The Egyptians had been shifting water from the Nile to their farmland for centuries, with the use of crane-like machines. The Greeks took things a bit further, thanks to the ingenious Archimedes who invented a machine for lifting water uphill, basically a screw in a tube. The Romans thoroughly ignored Archimedes’ work and even destroyed a lot of his papers when they invaded Syracuse!

Concrete

Roman concrete was very different to modern mixtures, but it allowed them to make incredible structures like the Flavian Amphitheatre (the Colosseum) and the Pantheon as well as more every day buildings, like the insula tower blocks found at Ostia. But did they invent it? No! That honour rests with the Parthians, the culture that grew from the Persian Empire after Alexander the Great destroyed a lot of it. The Parthians used it to make beautiful domed roofs, similar to those you can still see in the Middle East today.

Hygiene

Okay so we can thank the Romans for introducing public bathing to much of the world… but do we want to? Sure the baths were places to exercise, but the Greeks had already popularised gymnasia centuries before, and okay many baths were cleverly heated, but they certainly weren’t very clean. A mixture of dirt and oil floated on the top of the water, called “soilum” in Latin, yuck! The emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote that he never visited the baths since they contained nothing but oil, sweat and grease. Some big cities had sewers, Rome had its famous Cloaca Maxima, but smaller towns just had open drains. And then there’re the aqueducts. Now, Roman aqueducts were indeed incredible, spanning huge stretches of countryside on a continual slope. Frontinus boasts that their aqueducts were far greater than the idle pyramids or temples. But what were the aqueducts for? Well, unless you were rich enough to have a private stream pumped to your house, this fresh, clean mountain water went straight into the dirty baths and pretty fountains! Drinking water came from wells and cisterns, so if you didn’t use the baths (and public bathing was a rather peculiar Roman habit after all) you didn’t need aqueducts. So much for not being idle!

Image via Wikipedia

Organised Religion

Religion is a really messy area of Roman history (expect a full article on it from me in a week or so!) but the Romans would like us to think that they gave the world a more organised and civil way of worshipping, a view later exaggerated after Christianity took hold. We hear stories of the barbaric rituals of the Druids, burning innocent captives alive in enormous wicker men, or the ghastly fringe cults of Roman society, from the drunken worshippers of Bacchus to the blood soaked festivals of Cybele. Is this true? Well… what do you think? We now think that the reason the Druids were so vilified was that they presented a political threat to Rome: they were a aristocratic class of soothsayers, whose influence was far greater than that of the fledgling Imperial cults. As for the cults of Bacchus, Isis, Cybele and the like, well, we know less about them (they’re known as “mystery cults” for a reason!) but it’s pretty likely that they weren’t nearly as nasty as the sources claim, after all we have records of many upstanding citizens, even senators, involved in some of them. In the later years of the Empire, after Constantine’s conversion to Christianity, stories get even more lurid, painting tribes like the Vandals and the Huns as appalling monsters, while archaeological evidence (and sources from Gaulish and Gothic writers) suggest quite the opposite.

Civilisation

Okay, now I’m cheating a little bit, but Roman writers do rather like to paint themselves as more “civilised” than the rest of the world. Were they? Of course not! Even today we have a paradoxical view of Roman society; at once we think of mighty aqueducts, powerful generals, and noble statesmen, but at the same time vicious gladiatorial battles, decadent emperors, and ghastly persecutions. Which image is true? The answer is probably both. Although Roman writers didn’t like to admit it, the common people just loved seeing things get killed in horrible and messy ways, and later developed a taste for erotic aquatic displays, while the upper classes loved wine and women and were generally pretty hypocritical!

Let’s look at that in contrast with the rest of the world at the time. The Greeks preferred athletics and witty theatrical productions, busying themselves with art, mathematics and philosophy. We even have an amazing clockwork planetarium dating to the late Classical period, the likes of which wouldn’t be seen again for thousands of years. Okay so Greek men were rather keen on rowdy drinking parties and pretty young boys, but these were past times that didn’t involve people getting killed! Although the Romans were quite keen on some of the Greeks’ artworks, a lot of them only survive through Roman copies, but this interest meant a lot of statues were moved from their original home and lost, including priceless works like the chryselephantine (ivory and gold) statue of Athena from the Parthenon at Athens. The Parthians were a similarly arty bunch. They loved poetry and ornate costumes and were one of the most tolerant of societies of the time, allowing conquered nations to continue their customs, costumes and languages. We have cultures like Greece and Parthia to thank for a myriad of useful things, from safety-pins to trigonometry, from parasols to the alphabet. They even knew that the Earth went around the sun! But it wasn’t just the east that was civilised: the Vandals were very keen on poetry, the Goths liked intricate gold jewellery, the Gauls even allowed equal rights for men and women. So much for “civilised” Rome against the barbarians!

Image via Wikipedia

So What DID the Romans Do For Us?

Even the most revisionist historian has to give the Roman world quite a lot of credit, because despite not really being that different to the rest of the ancient world and certainly not being as great as they liked to think, they were pretty darn clever. We have enormous olive presses, some with beams the size of trees others using an ingenious screw technique, with channels and vats designed to strain off the unwanted material like amurca and seeds. They designed special carts which would not only cut corn but thresh it, separating the grain from the stalks, the original “combine harvester”. They turned food production into an industry on a monumental scale. Those not-so-useful aqueducts were also masterworks of engineering, carefully planned using gravity to draw water from the source to the city, where the channel would be separated and distributed by special water towers known as “castella”. Their roads too were admittedly far longer-lasting than their wooden Gaulish predecessors.

But what we really have to thank Rome for is helping the knowledge from cultures like Greece, Parthia and the Celtic tribes to spread. Under the empire, trade routes became not only better established but better protected, thanks to Rome’s formidable army, allowing new ideas, and indeed rather old ones, to spread from India to Britain and everywhere in between. We mustn’t forget the importance of the army, not only to the structure and society of the Roman world, but also to the spread of knowledge. Soldiers learnt to read, some even to write and they learnt how to build roads, aqueducts and other imperially-funded projects. The Romans may not have invented many of the things we give them credit for, and they might not have been the great civilising influence that we’re told about in school, but they were very good at letting certain ideas travel.

Want to learn more about the ancient world? Check out my “Bluffers Guides” to ancient history. More will be added soon.

Ancient Burma

In ancient Burma (modern-day Myanmar), on the night of the marriage, a group of man would gather around the house of the newly-wed couple. They would then hurl stones and other objects on the roof and through the windows, damaging the house sometimes injuring the people inside. All through the night, the attack would go on, and apparently there was no way of escaping the ordeal, once news of the marriage leak out. “It is difficult to conceive any reason for this extraordinary practice,” said a historian.

Ancient Gaul

At one time in ancient Gaul (modern-day France), when a man wanted to marry a woman, he had to pare his nail and send them to the latter. After this, they could already live together as man and wife.

Ancient Peru

In some parts of ancient Peru, when a girl was sought in marriage, the mother, in the presence of the bridegroom’s relatives would break her daughter’s virginity with a phallic-like object. This was to demonstrate to all present that the girl had been well cared and had preserved her virginity until then. It was a proof of the honor and respectability of the bride. It also signified that the subject had passed from childhood, and had become a woman ready for the responsibilities and duties of a wife. They believed that it was bad for a marriage if the husband would be the one to devirginize his bride.

Borneo

Another curious wedding rite was practiced among the Bornean tribe of Bindjoos. To be eligible for marriage, a young man must kill a member of an enemy tribe, and in the event of his wife dying, a second marriage depended upon a second killing.

South Africa

Among the Hottentots, a primitive tribe in South Africa, an ox will be killed for the celebration. However, they would not only eat the meat, but also smear themselves with the blood and fat, powder themselves with a stuff called bucku and paint their cheeks with red chalk. The priest in the wedding would alternately urinate on the bride and the groom. Afterward, he would bless the couple.

Ancient Persia

The nomadic tent-dwelling tribes of Persia (modern-day Iran) celebrated their nuptials in lonely deserts. As the bride was seeing conducted in solemn silence from the tent of her mother to her future home, the bridegroom would meet her halfway, carrying in his hand an orange or an apple. When he is sufficiently near to make sure of his aim, he would throw it at the veiled maiden with all his force- the harder he hits her, the more fortunate she would be esteemed.

Ancient India

The Punjabs of India once had an interesting marriage ritual for a widower taking his third wife. A sheep dressed up as a bride is led by the groom around the sacrificial fire, while the real bride rested nearby. This act was a precaution against a series of ill-luck which has supposedly caused by the death of two former wives. They did this to ensure the safety of the new wife. It was believed that the malicious jealousy of the first wife had caused the death of the second one, and this ceremony was supposed to to divert such evil influences to the substitute in the mock marriage.

And finally, the most unusual of these all, the Brahmans of southern India had this primitive custom of marriage to a tree. They believed that a younger brother should not marry before an older brother. And to fulfill this requirement, when there was no satisfactory bride in sight for an older brother, he was married to a tree, thereby giving the younger brother a chance to take a wife. They believed that it was actually the spirit residing in the tree to which the older brother was being wed.

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