5. Romanization of Gaul
Having glanced at the negative side of Gallic Romanization, it is important to look a little closer at the positive side, in order to form an idea of the extent of Gallo-Roman education.
How mighty the Roman impress was is seen in the many Roman roads, the amphitheatres, the inscriptions where Gauls very often appear as priests of Rome and Augustus, in the famous altar at Lyons, mentioned by Juvenal,[160] on which the sixty peoples of Gallia Comata inscribed their names after the pacification of the country by Drusus in 12 B.C., and which formed the common sanctuary for the province, and was the scene of regular rhetorical contests in Latin and in Greek.[161] And the speech of Claudius to the Senate[162] shows how eager the emperors were to speed on the rapidly advancing Romanization of Gaul.
Traditionally, Aquitaine was the first to be Romanized. Ammianus remarks that the shores of the Aquitanians were easily accessible to merchants, and that their characters were soon degraded to effeminacy, so that they easily passed under Roman domination.[163] But Lyons was the real centre of systematic Romanization. Thence Latin spread widely among the Gauls, who have left us no record of their Gallic Latin.[164] By the fifth century the victory of Latin was complete. It was the language of civilization, of government, of society. Slaves brought from all parts of the world made a common language between master and servant a necessity. Soldiers settled in Gaul spread its influence. Finally, it was the official language of the Church and (a fact which was most important for its propagation) of the School.[165]
It is a tribute to the thoroughness of Caesar’s work that when Classicus rebelled in A.D. 70[166] his associates were two Julii, one of whom tried to pass himself off as a descendant of the Dictator, while the other assumed the insignia of the Roman Emperor. So mighty was the Roman name that even its enemies in attacking it desired a part of its glory. ‘Between Classicus and the first Buonaparte’, says Freeman,[167] ‘no man again dreamed of an Empire of the Gauls.’ And Strabo had some justification when he spoke of the Gauls as δεδουλωμένοι καὶ ζῶντες κατὰ τὰ προστάγματα τῶν ἑλόντων αὐτοὺς Ῥωμαίων.[168]
Not that the feeling against Rome entirely disappeared. The Gauls objected to the luxury of the Roman emperors,[169] and we have such incidents as the Treveri shutting their gates to Decentius, brother of Magnentius.[170] Lampridius speaks of ‘Gallicanae mentes ... durae ac pertorridae, et saepe imperatoribus graves’.[171] Zosimus tells us that after the fall of the usurper Constantine[172] in A.D. 411 the whole of the Armorican land cast out its Roman rulers. But in the main the Roman machine worked efficiently enough by keeping the border tribes busy with feuds among themselves, and the mass of the people with oppressive exactions. There are many references to the loyalty of Gaul, from the exulting cry of Cicero in the Philippics[173] to the enthusiasm of Rutilius Namatianus. Pliny[174] calls Narbonensis ‘Italia verius quam provincia’. Claudian represents the whole of Gaul as fighting for Stilicho,[175] Gaul which supplies the Empire with soldiers.[176] Before him the panegyrists of the emperors—the majority of whom were Gauls—had been loud in their testimonies of Gaul’s loyalty. The orator of Autun[177] boasts (A.D. 311) that his city, rejoicing then in the imperial title of ‘Flavia Aeduorum’, had been the only one to join the Romans of its own free will—though Caesar records the subjugation of the Aedui in much the same way as that of the other tribes. Of purer fidelity than Massilia or Saguntum, the Aedui are ‘ingenua et simplici caritate fratres populi Romani’. The hollowness of the speaker’s rhetoric deceives no one; but it shows that there was at least a large part of Gaul which considered such speeches ‘the correct thing’, and that confidence in Rome’s destiny was widely felt: the fate-appointed eternal city, whose menacing enemies had all been rooted out.[178] Much more genuine is Rutilius. He feels that Gaul is his native country,[179] but the enthusiasm he shows for Rome is more than the mere official utterance of a Praefect of the City. There is real inspiration in his lines, in spite of Gibbon’s opinion that he was only an ‘ingenious traveller’.[180]
Te canimus semperque, sinent dum fata, canemus:
sospes nemo potest immemor esse tui,
obruerint citius scelerata oblivia solem,
quam tuus ex nostro corde recedat honos.[181]
Even if conquered peoples chafe under the yoke of Rome at first, Rutilius is confident that it is all for their good:
Profuit invitis, te dominante, capi.
The great achievement of the Empire is that it made a city of the world: ‘urbem fecisti quod prius orbis erat’. Rome, he maintains, is greater than her deeds: ‘Quod regnas minus est quam quod regnare mereris’. And as her buildings dazzle his sight, he exclaims in admiration:
Ipsos crediderim sic habitare deos.[182]
The whole of Gaul was not equally loyal. While the South remained predominantly Roman to the end, the North, ‘audax Germania’, Claudian calls it,[183] was less friendly, and its hostility increased as time went on.
The Aeduan panegyrist, who implores help for the future from the Emperor Constantine, while he thanks him for the benefits of the past, shows the bearing of physical features upon this difference between North and South.[184] In contrast with the cultivated fields of the South, its ‘viae faciles’, its ‘navigera flumina’, we find in Belgica ‘vasta omnia, inculta squalentia, multa tenebrosa, etiam militaris vias ita confragosas et alternis montibus arduas atque praecipites, ut vix semiplena carpenta, interdum vacua, transmittant’. The roads are very bad (regionum nostrarum aditum atque aspectum tam foedum tamque asperum), and even an ardent panegyrist must admit that loyalty is damped, when, in addition to an exiguous harvest, you must experience difficulties of transport. It is remarkable how important a part the road plays in the Roman Empire, one way or another. Here, barbarism on the one hand and bad roads on the other proved a formidable combination against civilization. It is not surprising to find, therefore, that as we go north traces of Gallo-Roman schools become fewer, inscriptions bearing on education almost non-existent, and Greek almost unknown.
But the testimony of literature to the Romanization of Gaul is far less eloquent than that of the extant remains. The modern traveller in Provence might well be tempted to exclaim with Pliny ‘Italia verius quam provincia’. The theatres and amphitheatres at Fréjus and Arles, the arch and theatre at Orange, the temple of Augustus and Livia at Vienne, and above all the Maison Carrée, the Porta Augusta and the Thermae at Nîmes, and the neighbouring Pont du Gard, challenge comparison with the great buildings of Italy and even of Rome herself. And these are but the most notable examples of evidence which may be found in less degree in almost every village of Provence.
Outside the ‘old province’, though the evidence is naturally less impressive in bulk and less widely spread in area, yet the walls and gates of Autun, the amphitheatre at Paris, the Porte de Mars at Reims, the arch at Langres, the Porte Noire and amphitheatre at Besançon, and the theatre at remote Lillebonne, tell the tale of Roman influence on the Tres Galliae; and to these must be added the great buildings of Trèves which, as an imperial capital, occupies a place apart.
And what is writ large on these great monuments is written no less unmistakably in the contents of the French museums. That of the world-famous statues of Venus three come from Narbonensis is significant of the taste of Gallic connoisseurs. These great masterpieces were of course imported, but the discoveries at Martres Tolosanes attest the existence of local schools of sculpture.[185] Even if the reliefs of Gallic tombstones in the north and centre diverge somewhat sharply from the Roman convention in preferring the naturalistic to the allegorical in their choice of subject, yet the form is predominantly classical. And the readiness of Gaul to learn the industrial arts of Italy is strikingly proved by its pottery. The manufacture of the red ‘Arretine’ ware or ‘terra sigillata’ was already flourishing among the Ruteni in the first century A.D., and met with such success that it was actually exported to Italy, and finally displaced the home product.[186] In this useful if humble art, Gaul, like Greece, took captive her captor.
The causes of this all but complete Romanization are not far to seek. The sword of Caesar was mighty and its argument efficient. Part of this argument the Romans always retained, but as time went on they mingled diplomacy with their militarism. The altar at Lyons had its persuasive side, though the spirit that moved the orator’s tongue was no doubt quickened by the scourge and the river in the background. Yet imperial policy is as clearly seen here as in the utterances of the panegyrists, who are regularly employed to publish the prince’s praises. Caracalla’s extension of the citizenship to provincials is part of the same policy (A.D. 212).
Not to exterminate the barbarian tribes, but to bring them within the Empire as cultivators and soldiers, was the aim of the later emperors[187]—an aim which they sometimes followed with ruthless cruelty.[188] Of Constantine the panegyrist says that he entirely cleared Batavia of the Franks who had occupied it, and made them live among Romans, so that they might lose not only their arms but also their savage temper.[189] He brought the barbarous Franks from their original homes in the distant North to till the soil and to fill the armies of the Roman Empire.[190]
Moreover, as Glover[191] remarks, the schoolmaster of the West was the ally of the Empire. The elaborate system of imperial protection in the schools had in view the important object of Romanizing the growing generation. Besides, by increasing lines of communication, by rendering news and books accessible, by making intercourse secure, the emperors helped forward Roman influence. The security which the provincial felt in the protection of the Eternal City was one of the strongest pillars of loyalty. The effect of Alaric’s success upon minds like those of Jerome and Augustine, critical as they were of Pagan Rome, is some measure of the confidence which people felt in her power. Yet even after Rome had deserted the Gauls in the great invasions of the fifth century, we have the picture of Sidonius’s passionate ardour for the Roman name and his bitter grief when he ceased to be a Roman citizen in 475.
‘Birth in the Gallic provinces during the fourth century brought with it no sense of provincial inferiority. Society was thoroughly Roman, and education and literature more vigorous, so far as we can judge, than in any other part of the West.’[192] While we agree with this in the main, it may be questioned whether the Roman did not sometimes tend to look on the Gaul as a mere provincial. In the first century we find Pliny saying that he is pleased to hear that his books are being sold at Lyons, where he evidently does not expect so civilized a thing as a book-shop.[193] Symmachus, in the fourth century, writes[194] to a friend in Gaul ‘rusticari te asseris ... non hoc litterae tuae sapiunt’, and adds sarcastically ‘nisi forte Gallia tua dedux Heliconis’. And Cassiodorus (sixth century) implies that there were some who thought that Latin literature should be confined to Rome. ‘You have found Roman eloquence’ he writes to a friend, ‘not in its native place, and you have learned oratory from your Cicero in the country of the Celts. What are we to think of those who maintain that Latin must be learnt at Rome and Rome only? Liguria too sends forth her Ciceros.’[195] A protest of this kind as late as the sixth century suggests that the idea of provincialism was pretty strong. One of the panegyrists,[196] a Gaul[197] of uncertain name,[198] illustrates this same tendency. And though his words are probably as insincere as his praise of the Emperor, yet they imply a tradition which he found it expedient to recognize.
‘Full well I know how much we provincials lack of Roman intelligence. For, indeed, to speak correctly and eloquently is the Roman’s birthright ... our speech must ever flow from their fountain.’[199]