Vienna (Vienne)

The "Garden of Cybele"

Vienna (modern Vienne): Roman city in Gallia Narbonensis.

Vienna was situated on the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Gère. It was founded by the Gallic tribe of the Allobroges, whose oppidum was on the Pipet and Sainte-Blandine hills. The Allobroges were subdued by the Romans in 120 (the conquering consul Quintus Fabius Maximus received the surname Allobrogicus), and they settled closer to the river, but the defenses offered by the oppidum became necessary again when the Cimbri and Teutones appeared in the Provence. When Marius had defeated these Germannic tribes, order was restored.

In 61 BCE, the Allobroges, led by a man named Catugnatus, revolted and the inhabitants of Vienna expelled the Roman living in their city; the exiles founded Lugdunum (modern Lyon) and did not return when order was for the second time restored. In 58 BCE, Julius Caesar decided to pacify the area for good, which eventually led to the conquest of all of Gaul. Vienne remained an important town (its territory stretched towards Geneva) but Lugdunum became the more important city. Animosity between the two towns continued for more than a century. In 69 CE, the populace of Lyon asked the emperor Vitellius to destroy Vienne, which fortunately did not happen.

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The Temple of Augustus

The emperor Augustus gave Vienna, which had by now become the capital of the increasingly romanized Allobroges, the rank of colonia. This meant that the inhabitants were from now on all Roman citizens. It could also serve as new home for exiles, like the Judaean king Herod Archelaus. In 35, the first man from Vienna, Decimus Valerius Asiaticus, reached the consulship.

As a colonia, the city was now called Colonia Julia Augusta Florentia Viennensium. As was customary, the grateful new Romans dedicated a shrine to the emperor, the temple of the divus Augustus et diva Roma, "the divine Augustus and the goddess Roma" (satellite photo). (The temple was also called Temple of Augustus and Livia.) In Claudius' speech on civil rights for the Gauls, the city is called "beautifully decorated and powerful", and the poet Martial says the same in one of his epigrams (7.87: pulchra Vienna).

"La Pyramide"

Although the city suffered from Alamannic raids in the third century, it survived, and became capital of the province of Viennensis in the early fourth century, when the emperors Diocletian and Maximian created smaller provinces. Only Trier was in fourth-century Gaul more important, and Vienna remained important until it was captured by the Burgundians, who settled in this area after their capital Worms had in 435 been sacked by Aetius and the Huns.

There are several ancient monuments in modern Vienne, like the theater (satellite photo), the Temple of Augustus, and the "Garden of Cybele", where the mysteries of this goddess where performed. Another monument is known as "la pyramide" and was once an element of the hippodrome of Vienna. According to a local story, this monument was the tomb of Pontius Pilate, who was believed to have been sent into exile to Gaul. Of course this is a nothing but a pious legend, but the the confusion is understandable: the emperor Augustus ordered Herod Archelaus, the incapable ruler of Judaea about a generation before Pilate, to settle in Vienna.

Vienna used to have a very long wall, more than seven kilometers long; in the third century, a second wall of two kilometers long was erected.