Chapter Four

chapter four LUGDUNUM The provincial centre at Lugdunum is the earliest enclosure of its kind in the Latin west and in several ways a deviation from the pat- tern observable in the Iberian peninsula. In the first place the sanctuary is situated on the outskirts of Lugdunum, outside the territory of the colony rather than within the perimeter of the city as at Tar- raco or Narbo (Vol. II, 1, Pl. CIX).1 Despite its proximity on the hill of Fourvière, Lugdunum had in principle no direct link with the enclave, so that in this instance there is no possibility of any connection with the civic forum of Lugdunum, the exact site of which continues to evade final detection.2 Equally unusual, the provincial worship of which it was the focus was formally that of three provinces: Lugdunensis, Aquitania and Belgica, a privileged case for which there is no clear parallel else- where in the Roman empire. This interprovincial character becomes less striking on closer inspection, however, once it is recalled that the establishment of the Altar of the Three Gauls, to all appearances in 12 rather than 10 B.C.,3 took place only a year or so after the tripar- tite division of Gaul in ca. 16–13 B.C.4 At the time the new arrange- ment can hardly have appeared as definitive as it does today in retro- spect. The fact that by Strabo’s account sixty Gallic civitates were originally represented at the sanctuary5 clearly shows that the centre served a broad ethnic unity on which had been imposed an administrative system that cut across tribal divisions artificially. In practice therefore the enclave must originally have served as the regional hub of Gallia Comata,6 the territory of which stretched broadly from the Pyrenees to 1 For details of the locality see Audin (1956) 149–52; Pelletier–Rossiaud (1990) 15–16, 43–4, 121–4. 2 See in general Mandy (1987). 3 Vol. III, 1, 13–19. 4 Fishwick, Provinces (1994) 119–21. 5 Tacitus, Ann. 3, 44, mentions 64 tribes in connection with the revolt of A.D. 21; this figure presumably includes the four civitates later attached to Germania Superior. For discussion see Vol. III, 2, 55, 58–9. 6 Contra Le Roux (1994) 403, objecting that at the Confluence the assembly did not correspond to a provincial structure. It did, however, correspond to an inter-provincial, 106 chapter four the Rhine. It is worth repeating in this connection that among surviv- ing titles of the federal priests the term Tres Galliae appears only from the time of Vespasian,7 whereas Gallia Comata appears to have been equivalent to Tres Galliae under the early empire until the advent of the Flavians.8 i. The Site The location chosen for the sanctuary of the Three Gauls was the south slope of what today is the hill of Croix-Rousse at Lyons.9 Here, a kilometer or so upstream from the Roman colony, stood the pagus Condatensis,10 an area of about two hectares, the exact boundaries of which are uncertain but evidently extended over the Canabae and down to the banks of the Saône and the Rhone (Vol. I, 2, Pl. LXIII a). Within this pagus the site of the sanctuary may well have already been a separate district of some 400m2 set aside for religious purposes and with its own administration.11 An altar dedicated to Diana Aug(usta) in honour of the pagus reveals that it was erected by a magister of the pagus serving for the second time, who on the occasion of its dedication gave two denarii, instead of a dinner, to each of the honorati present— presumably officials who have peformed some public function at the pagus.12 The site itself was granted by decree of the pagani of Condate. federal structure. 7 Vol. III, 1, 149. 8 Vol. III, 1, 92. 9 See now in general Tranoy–Ayala (1994) 171–89 with fig. 2, documenting finds. For a reconstruction of one sector of the sanctuary near the site of the Hôtel du Parc see Richard (1999) 383–8, especially 386ff., noting that the federal sanctuary extended at least to rue Sainte-Catherine. By and large present conception of the sanctuary rests on the largely intuitive reconstruction of A. Audin, who conjectured a vast esplanade, dominated by a cliff face resulting from the cleavage of the hill: id.(1979) 91. For the fragility of many of the hypotheses underlying this picture see Tranoy–Ayala, o.c. 183–5, stressing the need for a new programme of prospection and archaeological exploration. In particular they take the sanctuary to have been bordered at least to the south by a zone of habitation—so on the lines of the sanctuary at Olympia with its scatter of varied buildings, as Richard observes, o.c. 391. 10 On the term Condate (=confluence) see Tranoy–Ayala, o.c. 173–4, arguing that the existence of a pagus does not imply the presence of dwellings, of which there is no tangible trace before 10 B.C. 11 Allmer–Dissart (1889–93) 2, 47–9 ad no. 109; Pelletier–Rossiaud (1990) 98.See now Dondin–Payre (1998) 57; ead.(1999) 179, 211–13. 12 CIL 13, 1670 cf. p. 228. Dedicated to an Augustan God, the altar itself is assigned to the second century by Hirschfeld on the basis of its letter-forms..

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