It was, however, not limited to these towns. It appears not seldom in
provincial towns of lower legal status, such as were not uncommon in
Britain, in Gaul, and in some other districts. Four instances may be
quoted from the two provinces just named. In the first, Autun, the
town-planning is explained by the establishment of the town full-grown
under Roman official influence. Unfortunately, however, little is
known of the buildings, and it is difficult to judge of the actual
character of the place. In the second case, Trier, we may conjecture a
similar official origin. At Silchester, official influence seems also
to have been at work, and it is not impossible that the fourth case,
Caerwent, may be explained by the same cause. In these two latter,
however, it is more important to observe the nature of the towns,
which is better known than that of any others in western Europe. For
they embody a type of urban life which is distinct from any that
occurs in Italy or in the better civilized districts of the Empire,
and which illustrates strikingly one stratum of provincial culture.
_Autun_ (fig. 29).
Caesar won northern and central Gaul for the Roman Empire; it fell to
Augustus to organize the conquered but as yet unromanized lands. Among
many steps to that end, he seems to have planted new native towns
which should take the places of old native tribal capitals and should
drive out local Celtic traditions by new Roman municipal interests.
These new towns did not, as a rule, enjoy the full Roman municipal
status; northern Gaul was not quite ripe for that. But they were
plainly devised to help Romanization forward, and their object is
declared by their half-Roman, half-Celtic names--Augustodunum (now
Autun), Caesaromagus (Beauvais), Augusta Suessionum (Soissons),
Augusta Treverorum (Trier), and the like.[103] Of two of these, Autun
and Trier, we chance to know the town-plans. The reader will notice a
certain similarity between them.
[103] Hirschfeld, _Haeduer und Arverner_ (_Sitzungsber. der
preuss. Akademie_, 1897, p. 1102). Similar hybrid names have
been created by the English in India, mostly on the North-west
Frontier, where alone they have planted new inhabited
sites--Lyallpur, Abbotabad, Edwardesabad, Robertsganj, and the
like. But these are almost all small places or forts, and their
names represent no policy of Anglicization.
[Illustration: FIG. 29. AUTUN.
After H. de Fontenay, 1889.]
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