Gallia Narbonensis

• 1. Introduction

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  Between the Pyrenees and the Alps, and wrapping around the Gulf of Lion, lay Gallia Narbonensis. The Roman province covered most of the Rhône river's drainage basin in what is now southern France. The Cévennes hills closed off its northern edge. Rome valued the land above all for the harbor town of Massilia, today's Marseille, a Roman civitas that began as a Greek trading colony. Positioned between Hispania and Rome itself, the province turned that geography, plus its own economic output, into centuries of strategic value.

  What nickname did Romans use for this land, one that set it apart from every other province they held? Which local kingdoms and tribes stood between Rome and full control of the region? And what finally ended Rome's hold on these hills and river valleys?

• 2. A Province By Many Names

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  Gnaeus Pullius Pollio conducted a census containing the first recorded use of the name Gallia Narbonensis. The term most likely took hold during the Augustan era. Before that, the territory was called Gallia Transalpina, or Transalpine Gaul, distinguishing it from Cisalpine Gaul on the Italian side of the mountains. The province was later renamed after its capital, Colonia Narbo Martius, known colloquially as Narbo, sited where modern Narbonne now stands.

  Romans themselves usually skipped both formal names. They called the territory Provincia Nostra, meaning Our Province, or simply Provincia, the Province, since this was Rome's first province established north of the Alps. That name survived into modern French as Provence, Provença in Occitan, now naming the eastern part of the region.

  That naming legacy was still centuries away in 218 BC, when Rome's first soldiers set foot in Transalpine Gaul.

• 3. Forging The Province

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  Greek settlers founded Massalia around 600 BC, planting the seeds of Hellenistic culture among the Celtic tribes of Gaul. Roman soldiers first arrived in Transalpine Gaul in 218 BC. According to the historian Livy, Rome tried at that time to build an alliance against Carthage across both Gaul and Hispania, without success. Hannibal's Carthaginian army crossed the Rhône that same year, routing the Gaulish tribes in its path.

  Massalia, known to the Romans as Massilia, had already allied itself with Rome, trading intelligence and the use of its fleet in exchange for protection. In return, Rome demanded a strip of Massilian land to build a road toward Hispania, meant for moving troops. Roman soldiers then landed at Massilia to defend the city. Once Rome held territory in Hispania, it handed control of that road back to the city. That decision cost the praetor Lucius Baebius his life: the Ligures killed him on the road to Hispania in 189 BC.

  Two Gaulish peoples, the Arverni and the Allobroges, threatened the Mediterranean coast from the north. The Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus, later given the added name Allobrogicus, campaigned against them in the First Transalpine War of 125-121 BC. He defeated the Allobroges and the Arverni, whose king Bituitus fell at the Battle of the Isère River. The loss broke Arverni power and secured the coast for Rome. The territory became a Roman province in 121 BC.

  The Romans founded Narbonne on the coast in 118 BC. In the same years they built the Via Domitia, the first Roman road in Gaul, linking Gaul to Hispania. They also built the Via Aquitania, running toward the Atlantic through Tolosa, modern Toulouse, and Burdigala, modern Bordeaux. These roads turned Narbonne into a crossroads and a serious trading rival to Massilia. Decades later, during the Sertorian War of 80-72 BC against the breakaway general Quintus Sertorius, Gallia Narbonensis served as a key military base. That campaign pushed Rome to formally organize the province, a key step in its Romanisation.

  That organization set the stage for a new kind of Roman power in Gaul, one a young Julius Caesar would soon put to use.

• 4. Caesar's Gateway

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  Sharing a direct border with Italia gave Gallia Narbonensis three strategic advantages. It controlled the land route to the Iberian Peninsula and formed a buffer against Gaulish raids on Italy. It also held the trade routes running through the Rhône valley to Massilia's markets.

  Julius Caesar launched his Gallic Wars from the provincial capital, Narbo. He rebuilt the city and founded two others, Fréjus, then called Forum Julium, and Arles. Caesar also granted Roman citizenship to many communities across the province.

  In 49 BC, Massilia backed Pompey in the civil war against Caesar. Once Caesar won, the city lost its independence and came fully under Roman rule.

  The Second Triumvirate carved up Roman territory in 40 BC. Lepidus received Narbonese Gaul along with Hispania, Mark Antony held the rest of Gaul, and Octavian took Africa, Sardinia, and Sicily.

  Once Octavian became Emperor Augustus, he reorganized Gallia Narbonensis into a senatorial province run by a proconsul. By the late first century BC, the old pattern of fortified hilltop villages had mostly vanished from the province. Small farms replaced them across open countryside, a shift likely made possible by the relative peace of the early empire. Defensible high ground was simply no longer a necessity.

  Centuries later, the empire would redraw the province's borders and its name entirely.

• 5. The Province Fades

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  Emperor Diocletian's reorganization of the empire in 314 AD dissolved Gallia Narbonensis as a standalone province. He merged it with Gallia Aquitania into a new unit called Dioecesis Viennensis, the Diocese of Vienne, governed from Vienne rather than Narbo. That diocese was later renamed Dioecesis Septem Provinciarum, the Diocese of the Seven Provinces. The new name reflects how Diocletian had changed the word province to mean a smaller unit than it once did.

  Between 462 and 477 AD, the Visigothic Kingdom absorbed Gallia Narbonensis and its surrounding territory. That takeover ended Roman political control there for good. Afterward, the Visigoths' new territory became known as Septimania.

  Behind that political collapse sits a long, gap-ridden list of the men who governed the province, several known only from a fragment of a name.

• 6. Names Etched In Stone

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  Gnaeus Pullius Pollio governed the province from 18 to 16 BC, the earliest name on the list of proconsuls. That list is pieced together from missing and damaged records, and most of its dates are only approximate. Several names survive only in pieces, such as L. V…dius Bassus, who governed around the year 77. Another, recorded only as …dius Titti filius, served sometime in the second century.

  Other governors are documented more fully. Marcus Cincius Saturninus governed sometime between 16 BC and 12 AD, and Titus Vinius took the post around 54 to 60. Aulus Larcius Priscus held it from 103 to 109.

  One entry, dated to 210, records only that its holder was allegedly killed for supporting Geta, without preserving his name at all. The list trails off in the mid-third century with a governor named Gaius Seius Calpurnius Quadratus Sittianus. That exact name appears earlier too, attached to an entry on the list dated before 150.