Meanwhile, when Augustus gave laws to the conquests of Cæsar, he
introduced a division of Gaul equally adapted to the progress of the
legions, to the course of the rivers and to the principal national
distinctions, which had comprehended above a hundred independent states.
The Province in which Chartres (Autricum) now found itself embraced the
country between the Loire and the Seine, and was styled Celtic Gaul, or,
as it soon came to be known, Gallia Lugdunensis, borrowing its name from
the celebrated colony of Lugdunum or Lyons. The principal towns of this
Province were still Chartres, Dreux, and, above all, Orléans, to which
the Emperor Aurelian was later on to give his name when he separated it
from the territory of the Carnutes, and raised it to the rank of a city.
For the rest, there were a great number of villages and strongholds even
in Cæsar’s day scattered about in the clearings of the forest. These
would increase in size and importance as the great Roman roads running
from Dieppe to Dreux, from Rouen to Paris, and from Paris to Autun, were
built, and as the country grew more settled. For Druidism, which had
long shown itself a disturbing influence and an irreconcilable factor,
was at length proscribed by Tiberius and Claudius, and thereafter, Dion
Cassius assures us, the Loire could be navigated in as much security as
the Po or Rhone. ‘The blue waters of the fair-haired Carnutan’ grew
familiar, not only to the Roman merchant and official, but also to the
Roman poet and traveller.[7]
But if the legend of the Druidical Virgin be indeed true, it would
appear that the Druids, equally with the Romans, had done something to
prepare the soil for the seed of Christianity. As to the first sowers of
that seed there is some dispute, and also as to the first sowing, which
some date from the first century, others from the third.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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