Status and Role

After the conquest, Caesar left Gaul for Italy in 50 B.C. having lain the administrative foundations of the new province. Following his normal habit of treating vanquished peoples according to their attitude during the war, he established three categories: the "stipendiaries" who were subjected to the rigours of tribute, the "free" tribes, exempt from any fiscal charge and, finally, the "federates" who were considered privileged.

Caesar conferred the status of "free" to the Biturige, the same as ten other tribes, amongst whom figured the Santons from the Saintes region and the Trévires from Tréves in Germany.

It fell to Augustus to set up a more precise structure for the new administration. He divided Gaul into three provinces: the Aquitaine, the Lyonnais and Belgium.

Each of these provinces contained a number of different Gaulish tribes. Each tribe constituted, in Roman terms, a civitas, an administrative unit composed of a territory and a capital.

In this way the Biturige territory became the civitas Biturigum and the oppidum of Avaricum became its capital.

The Name of Argentomagus

The site is first mentioned as Argantomago in two transport documents, the Table of Peutinger and Antonin's Itinerary.

The Table of Peutinger is a schematic map of roads throughout the Roman Empire, so-called because of the name of its first owner, Conrad Peutinger of Augsburg, a diplomat, archaeologist and historian (1465-1547). This medieval copy of an antique map was discovered in Worms at the end of the 14th century.

Given to Peutinger in 1508, it is today kept in the Vienna library. It consists of a roll of eleven parchment sheets bound together unfurling to a length of 6.8 metres and a width of .34 metres.

Antonin's Itinerary is small guide book not unlike those booklets which travellers in the days of coaches would have consulted to find out distances between destinations.

The meaning of the name Argentomagus is problematic given that it appears to be an association of the words argentum (silver) and the Gaulish term magus. The name should therefore mean "silver field" or "silver market".