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36-481: The diocese comprised the following provinces: Aquitanica I , Aquitanica II , Novempopulana (Aquitanica III), Narbonensis I , Narbonensis II , Viennensis and Alpes Maritimae . The diocese was established during the reforms of Diocletian who reigned from 284-305. It is attested early in the reign of Constantine I in the Verona List which has been dated to around 314. In 402 an annual provincial assembly,

72-426: A city, possibly the seat of a bishop; other pagi were administered from a vicus that might be no more than a cluster of houses and an informal market; yet other pagi in the areas of the great agricultural estates ( latifundia ) were administered through the villa at the center. The historian of Christianity Peter Brown has pointed out that in its original sense paganus meant a civilian or commoner, one who

108-536: A community within a larger polity ; Julius Caesar , for instance, refers to pagi within the greater polity of the Celtic Helvetii . The pagus and vicus (a small nucleated settlement or village) are characteristic of pre-urban organization of the countryside. In Latin epigraphy of the Republican era , pagus refers to local territorial divisions of the peoples of the central Apennines and

144-577: A great victory over the Gauls of Aquitania in 38 BC. It was the smallest region of all three mentioned above. A land extension stretching to the Loire River was added by Augustus , following the census conducted in 27 BC, based on Agrippa's observations of language, race and community according to some sources. At that point, Aquitania became an imperial province and it, along with Narbonensis, Lugdunensis and Belgica, made up Gallia . Aquitania lay under

180-790: A minimum of refinement. The interior and mountainous country in this region had better soil. The Petrocorii and the Bituriges Cubi had fine ironworks; the Cadurci had linen factories; the Ruteni and the Gabales had silver mines. According to Strabo, the Aquitani were a wealthy people. Luerius, the King of the Arverni and the father of Bituitus who warred against Maximus Aemilianus and Dometius,

216-572: A nation was not a natural unit (Caesar differentiated between proper Gauls (Celtae), Belgae and Aquitani ). In order to protect the route to Spain, Rome helped Massalia ( Marseille ) against bordering tribes. Following this intervention, the Romans conquered what they called Provincia , or the "Province" in 121 BC. Provincia extended from the Mediterranean to Lake Geneva , and was later known as Narbonensis with its capital at Narbo . Some of

252-512: A term derived from bracae ("breeches", the native costume of the northern "barbarians") for Gallia Narbonensis. Most of the Atlantic coast of the Aquitani was sandy and thin-soiled; it grew millet , but was unproductive with respect to other products. Along this coast was also the gulf held by the Tarbelli; in their land, gold mines were abundant. Large quantities of gold could be mined with

288-483: A verbal root, "fasten" ( pango ); it may be translated in the word as "boundary staked out on the ground". In semantics , * pag- used in pāgus is a stative verb with an unmarked lexical aspect of state resulting from completed action: "it is having been staked out", converted into a noun by -us , a type recognizable in English adjectives such as surveyed, defined, noted, etc. English does not use

324-591: A worsening debility on the part of the western government created a power vacuum. During the 460s and 470s, Visigoths encroached on Roman territory to the east, and in 476, the last imperial possessions in the south of Aquitania were ceded to the Visigoths. The Visigothic Kingdom later expanded over the Pyrenees and into the Iberian Peninsula . From 602, an independent Duchy of Vasconia (or Wasconia )

360-433: Is assumed to express local social structures as they existed variously. As an informal designation for a rural district, pagus was a flexible term to encompass the cultural horizons of "folk" whose lives were circumscribed by their locality: agricultural workers, peasants, slaves. Within the reduced area of Diocletian's subdivided provinces, the pagani could have several kinds of focal centers. Some were administered from

396-409: Is said to have been so exceptionally rich and extravagant that he once rode on a carriage through a plain, scattering gold and silver coins here and there. The Romans called the tribal groups pagi . These were organized into larger super-tribal groups that the Romans called civitates . These administrative groupings were later taken over by the Romans in their system of local control. Aquitania

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432-673: The Concilium septem provinciarum , was established in Arles . In 407, the Vandals and their allies invaded Gaul, devastating the region until they departed for the Iberian peninsula in 409. The Visigoths were brought in as foederati to aid the Romans against them, and in 418 emperor Honorius allowed them to settle in Aquitania around Toulouse . Although nominally Roman subjects,

468-628: The civitas of Rotomagus (Rouen), which formed the pagus Rotomagensis ( Roumois ); in addition there were the pagi Caletus ( Pays de Caux ), Vilcassinus (the Vexin ), the Tellaus ( Talou ); Bayeux , the pagus Bajocassinus ( Bessin , including briefly in the 9th century the Otlinga Saxonia ); that of Lisieux the pagus Lexovinus ( Lieuvin ); that of Coutances the p. Corilensis and p. Constantinus ( Cotentin ); that of Avranches

504-504: The pagus under the Carolingian Empire to be the territory held by a count, but Carolingian sources never refer to counts of particular pagi , and from the 10th century onwards the "county" or comitatus was sometimes explicitly contrasted to the pagus . Unlike the comitati , the centers of which are often identifiable as the count's seat, towns are not known to have derived any special political significance from serving as

540-520: The 3rd century. External pressures exacerbated internal weaknesses, and neglect of the Rhine frontier resulted in barbarian invasions and civil war. For a while Gaul, including Spain and Britain, was governed by a separate line of emperors (beginning with Postumus ). However, there had still been no move to gain independence. In an attempt to save the Empire, Diocletian reorganized the provinces in 293, with

576-586: The Alps by Celts and Germans. Roman policy henceforth called for Italy to be defended by guarding the distant Rhine River. Caesar named Aquitania the triangle shaped territory between the Ocean, the Pyrenees and the Garonne river. He fought and almost completely subdued them in 56 BC after Publius Crassus 's military exploits assisted by Celtic allies. New rebellions ensued anyway up to 28–27 BC, with Agrippa gaining

612-722: The Goths were practically independent, a fact which was formally recognized by the Western Empire in 475, just one year before its end. In 462 Ricimer ceded them also the province of Narbonensis Prima, while the Goths proceeded to occupy the remaining provinces east of the Rhone in 477. Henceforth, the lands that had comprised the diocese of the Seven Provinces became part of the Visigothic Kingdom . Aquitania

648-486: The Romans with as many as two to four hundred thousand men. Two hundred thousand fought against Quintus Fabius Maximus Allobrogicus and against Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus . The Arverni not only had extended their empire as far as Narbo and the boundaries of Massiliotis, but they were also masters of the tribes as far as the Pyrenees, and as far as the ocean and the Rhenus ( Rhine ). Early Roman Gaul came to an end late in

684-473: The Visigoths . According to some sources the Visigoths were Roman foederati and Flavius acted to reward them under the principle of hospitalitas (i.e. the Roman legal framework under which civilians were required to provide quarters to soldiers). However, in 418, an independent Visigothic Kingdom was formed from parts of Novempopulania and Aquitania Secunda . The death of the general Aëtius (454) and

720-599: The command of a former Praetor , and hosted no legions. More so than Caesar, Strabo insists that the primeval Aquitani differ from the other Gauls not just in language , institutions and laws (" lingua institutis legibusque discrepantes ") but in body make-up too, deeming them closer to the Iberians . The administrative boundaries set up by Augustus comprising both proper Celtic tribes and primeval Aquitani remained unaltered until Diocletian 's new administrative reorganization (see below). The Arverni often warred against

756-697: The establishment of the Diocesis Viennensis in the south of Gaul, comprising the former Gallia Aquitania and Gallia Narbonensis. At the same time, Aquitania was divided into Aquitania Prima , with its see (capital) in Avaricum Biturigum (Bourges), Aquitania Secunda (see – Burdigala ; the later Bordeaux) and Aquitania Tertia , better known as Novempopulania ("land of the nine peoples"), with its see in Elusa (Eauze). Novempopulania originated in boundaries set up by Caesar for

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792-471: The grounds that neither the well nor the hill-fort appear in the meaning of pāgus . The word pagus is the origin of the word for country in Romance languages , such as pays ( French ) and país ( Spanish ), and more remotely, for English " peasant ". Corresponding adjective paganus served as the source for " pagan ". In classical Latin , pagus referred to a country district or to

828-691: The north. The major tribes are listed at the end of this section. There were more than twenty tribes of Aquitani, but they were small and lacking in repute; the majority of the tribes lived along the ocean, while the others reached up into the interior and to the summits of the Cemmenus Mountains, as far as the Tectosages . The name Gallia Comata was often used to designate the three provinces of Farther Gaul, viz. Gallia Lugdunensis, Gallia Belgica, and Aquitania, literally meaning "long-haired Gaul", as opposed to Gallia Bracata "trousered Gaul",

864-546: The noun: "the surveyed", but Latin characteristically does. Considering that the ancients marked out municipal districts with boundary stones, the root meaning is nothing more than land surveyed for a municipality with stakes and later marked by boundary stones, a process that has not changed over the millennia. Earlier hypotheses concerning the derivation of pāgus suggested that it is a Greek loan from either πήγη , pége , 'village well', or πάγος , págos , 'hill-fort'. William Smith opposed these on

900-469: The original Aquitania, who had kept some kind of separate sense of identity (Verus' mission to Rome aimed at demanding a separate province). After this restructuring, Gaul enjoyed stability and enhanced prestige. After the trans-Rhine invasion December 31 406 by 4 tribes (Alans, Sueves, Asding and Siling Vandals), the offices of the Gallic prefecture were moved from Trier to Arles even though the Rhine frontier

936-634: The ostensible centers of pagi . The majority of modern French pays are roughly coextensive with the old counties (e.g., county of Comminges , county of Ponthieu , etc.) For instance, at the beginning of the 5th century, when the Notitia provinciarum et civitatum Galliae was drawn up, the Provincia Gallia Lugdunensis Secunda formed the ecclesiastical province of Rouen , with six suffragan sees; it contained seven cities ( civitates ). The province of Rouen included

972-447: The p. Abrincatinus ( Avranchin ); that of Sez the p. Oximensis ( Hiémois ), the p. Sagensis and p. Corbonensis (Corbonnais); and that of Evreux the p. Ebroicinus (Evrecin) and p. Madriacensis (pays de Madrie ). The Welsh successor kingdom of Powys derived its name from pagus or pagenses , and gives its name to the modern Welsh county . The pagus was the equivalent of what English-speaking historians sometimes refer to as

1008-656: The region is now a part of modern Provence , named after the Roman district. The main struggle against the Romans occurred from 58 to 50 BC when Vercingetorix fought against Julius Caesar at the Battle of Gergovia (a city of the Arverni) and at the Battle of Alesia (a city of the Mandubii). Vercingetorix was captured at the siege of Alesia after which the war ended. Caesar seized the remainder of Gaul, justifying his conquest by playing on Roman memories of savage attacks over

1044-460: The reign of Diocletian (284–305 AD) onwards, the pagus referred to the smallest administrative unit of a province . These geographical units were used to describe territories in the Merovingian and Carolingian periods, without any political or administrative meaning. Pāgus is a native Latin word from a root pāg- , a lengthened grade of Indo-European * paǵ- ,

1080-539: The traditional religions of antiquity. The concept of the pagus survived the collapse of the Empire of the West. In the Frankish kingdoms of the 8th–9th centuries, however, the pagus had come to serve as a local geographical designation rather than an administrative unit. Particular localities were often named as parts of more than one pagus , sometimes even within the same document. Historians traditionally considered

1116-593: Was a province of the Roman Empire . It lies in present-day southwest France , where it gives its name to the modern region of Aquitaine . It was bordered by the provinces of Gallia Lugdunensis , Gallia Narbonensis , and Hispania Tarraconensis . Fourteen Celtic tribes and over twenty Aquitanian tribes occupied the area from the northern slopes of the Pyrenees in the south to the Liger ( Loire ) river in

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1152-473: Was excluded from power and thus regarded as of lesser account; away from the administrative center, whether that was the seat of a bishop, a walled town or merely a fortified village, such inhabitants of the outlying districts, the pagi , tended to cling to the old ways and gave their name to "pagans"; the word was used pejoratively by Christians in the Latin West to demean those who declined to convert from

1188-533: Was formed, under a Frankish -Roman elite, in the former Visigothic stronghold of south-west Aquitania (i.e. the region known later as Gascony ). Pagus In ancient Rome , the Latin word pagus (plural pagi ) was an administrative term designating a rural subdivision of a tribal territory, which included individual farms, villages ( vici ), and strongholds ( oppida ) serving as refuges, as well as an early medieval geographical term. From

1224-628: Was inhabited by the following tribes: Ambilatri, Anagnutes, Arverni , Ausci , Basabocates, Belendi, Bercorates, Bergerri , Bituriges Cubi , Bituriges Vivisci , Cadurci , Cambolectri Agesinates, Camponi, Convenae , Cocossati, Consoranni, Elusates , Gabali , Lassunni / Sassumini, Latusates / Tarusates, Lemovices , Monesi, Nitiobroges / Antobroges, Onobrisates, Oscidates montani, Oscidiates campestres, Petrocorii , Pictones , Pindedunni / Pinpedunni, Ruteni , Santones , Sediboniates, Sennates, Sibyllates, Sottiates, Succasses, Tarbelli , Tornates / Toruates, Vassei, Vellates, Vellavi , Venami. Gaul as

1260-462: Was soon lost to the Franks , with only the southern coastal strip ( Septimania ) retained by the Goths. This Ancient Rome –related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Gallia Aquitania Gallia Aquitania ( / ˈ ɡ æ l i ə ˌ æ k w ɪ ˈ t eɪ n i ə / , Latin: [ˈɡalːi.a akᶣiːˈtaːni.a] ), also known as Aquitaine or Aquitaine Gaul ,

1296-773: Was subsequently restored and under Roman control till 459 when Cologne was taken by the Franks. Roman attention had been shifted to the south to try to control the invaders and keep them from the Mediterranean, a policy which failed after the Vandals started to harass the coasts from their bases in southern Spain from the early 420s. In the early 5th century, Aquitania was invaded by the Germanic Visigoths . The Emperor Flavius Honorius conceded land in Aquitania to

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