Cæsar, when he was appointed commander of the Gauls in B.C. 59, found their central point of Paris inhabited by a Cymric or Celtic population, which he calls Gauls in his language but Celts in their own, and separated from the Belgæ by the Seine and Marne. Cæsar wrote the place “Lutetia,” and when he convoked the inhabitants of Gaul to this town the neighbouring tribe was designated as “Parisii,” and allied to the powerful clan of the Senones. With reference to the meaning of the word “Parisii,” M. Bulet, in the “Dictionnaire Celtique,” says that “bar” or “par” means in Celtic a boat (_bateau_), and that the low Bretons call the cargo of a boat “far.” Herodotus (book ii., 96), in his description of the method of floating boats down stream on the Nile by means of a raft fastened on in front with a stone dragging behind, calls the boat “baris,” and says that some of them are many thousand talents burthen. They were probably flat-bottomed, and similar to those now seen on the rivers. The Celtic word “par,” signifying a boat, might well have produced the name Parisii, meaning boatmen, men who passed all their life in the “baris.” The most ancient emblem of Lutetia which has been preserved from antiquity is that of the prow of a boat which one sees sculptured on the springing of the vault of the Roman palace of the Thermes, built on the left bank of the Seine; the powerful association of the Nautæ Parisiaci, which is found at the head of the Parisian Navigation represented by the prow of a boat, has therefore a direct Celtic or Gallic origin. Living only in rude cabins the early inhabitants naturally possessed no public building. Cæsar therefore conceived the idea of convoking the Gaulish chiefs into one central place or forum, and ordered to be built a “Suggestum,” a tribune from which he could harangue the assembled headmen. This is considered by some French architects as the earliest indication of their _édilité naissánte_. As further evidence of their building and engineering capability, the inhabitants of Lutetia threw out bridges to join their island to the main banks of the river. Cæsar frequently refers to the bridges built by the Gauls, such as the one at Melun, on the Seine, another across the Allier, near Vichy, of which ancient foundations and piers have been found, another at Orléans, and of such slender construction as to have especially attracted his attention, and, finally, the bridge of Lutetia across the main arm of the Seine, the predecessor of the present Pont Notre Dame, which has also left traces of its ancient piers.