In the three Gauls, on the other hand, there were no towns of Roman and Latin rights, or rather there was only one such town[40] there, which on that account belonged to none of the three provinces or belonged to all--the town of Lugudunum (Lyons). On the extreme southern verge of imperial Gaul, immediately on the border of the municipally-organised province, at the confluence of the Rhone and the Saone, on a site equally well chosen from a military and from a commercial point of view, this settlement had arisen in the year 711 {43.} during the civil wars, primarily in consequence of the expulsion of a number of Italians settled in Vienna.[41] Not having originated out of a Celtic canton,[42] and hence always with a territory of narrow limits, but from the outset composed of Italians and in possession of the full Roman franchise, it stood forth unique in its kind among the communities of the three Gauls--as respects its legal relations, in some measure resembling Washington in the North American Federation. This unique town of the three Gauls was at the same time the Gallic capital. The three provinces had not any common chief authority, and, of high imperial officials, only the governor of the middle or Lugudunensian province had his seat there; but when emperors or princes stayed in Gaul they as a rule resided in Lyons. Lyons was, alongside of Carthage, the only city of the Latin half of the empire which obtained a standing garrison after the model of that of the capital.[43] The only mint for imperial money, which we can point to with certainty in the West for the earlier period of the empire, is that of Lyons. Here was the headquarters of the transit-dues which embraced all Gaul; and to this as a centre the Gallic network of roads converged. But not merely had all government institutions, which were common to Gaul, their native seat in Lyons; this Roman town became also, as we shall see further on, the seat of the Celtic diet of the three provinces, and of all the political and religious institutions associated with it--of its temples and its yearly festivals. Thus Lugudunum rapidly rose into prosperity, helped onward by the rich endowment combined with its metropolitan position and by a site uncommonly favourable for commerce. An author of the time of Tiberius describes it as the second in Gaul after Narbo; subsequently it takes a place there by the side of, or before, its sister on the Rhone, Arelate. On occasion of the fire, which in the year 64 laid a great part of Rome in ashes, the Lugudunenses sent to those burnt out a subsidy of 4,000,000 sesterces (£43,500), and when the same fate befel their own town next year in a still harder way, the whole empire paid its contribution to them, and the emperor sent a like sum from his privy purse. The town rose out of its ruins with more splendour than before; and it has for almost two thousand years remained amidst all vicissitudes a great city up to the present day.