Caesar’s Ambiguity and the Social Aspects of Celtic Urbanism
p. 221-240
Résumés
Research into the definition of Celtic urbanization based on ancient sources has not seen much development in recent times. In the past, often the description of the oppida in Caesar’s De Bello Gallico has been used in order to define urban Celtic settlements. Yet, this approach has rightfully been taken with caution in the last years. Caesar’s text is now considered ambiguous. For one, this ambiguity derives from Caesar’s intentions to win the Gallic war at any costs: this might have ended in a seemingly objective narrative of the Commentarii, hiding in fact certain truths. A second less discussed ambiguity is based on the question whether there is only one meaning to important terms used as urban markers in Caesar’s work, or if we need to assume a variety of meanings to them. Identifying a certain development in the meaning of urban markers in the De Bello Gallico could allow for a renewed discussion of Caesar’s view on Celtic urbanism. Based on a review of recent developments in Quantitative Linguistics and by applying basic word distributions on the corpus of the De Bello Gallico, the terms urbs, oppidum, civitas, oppidani and civis are analyzed. The study supports an understanding of Celtic urbanism, which is primarily defined by the social sphere of the settlements, as opposed to their locational or architectural aspects.
La définition d’urbanisation celtique basée sur les sources anciennes n’a pas beaucoup évolué dans les temps récents. Pour une description des sites urbains celtiques on s’est souvent fondé sur les caractérisations des oppida données par César dans le De Bello Gallico. Pourtant, cette approche a été prise avec prudence au cours des dernières années. Le texte de César est maintenant considéré ambigu. D’une part, cette ambiguïté découle de l’intention de César de gagner à tout prix la guerre des Gaules : cela pourrait aboutir à un récit apparemment objectif des Commentarii, dissimulant en fait certaines vérités. Une deuxième ambiguïté, moins discutée, concerne l’existence d’une ou de plusieurs significations des termes considérés comme marqueurs urbains dans le De Bello Gallico. L’identification d’un certain développement de ces marqueurs pourrait permettre une nouvelle discussion sur le point de vue de César sur l’urbanisme celtique. Les termes urbs, oppidum, civitas, oppidani et civis sont analysés à partir d’une révision des développements récents dans la linguistique quantitative et en appliquant des distributions de mots dans le corpus du De Bello Gallico. Cette étude renforce une interprétation de l’urbanisme celtique, qui est principalement définie par la sphère sociale des sites, en opposition à leur localisation ou à leurs aspects architecturaux.
Entrées d’index
Mots-clés : urbs, oppidum, civitas, De Bello Gallico, urbanisation celtique
Keywords : urbs, oppidum, civitas, De Bello Gallico, Celtic urbanization
Texte intégral
1A subject that repeatedly caught Professor D. Vitali’s interest during his academic career, were his inquiries into ancient sources in order to examine whether they could enlighten the historical and archaeological context of his research (e.g. Vitali, 2001; Vitali, 2004). Most importantly, he produced an ample bibliography on the origins of the Celts in Italy, confronting the ancient sources with the material culture. In our contribution, we will also discuss the ancient sources concerning the Celts, hereby focusing on the term “oppidum” and its possible meaning at the time the De Bello Gallico was written. Moreover, we will follow and expand on the methods applied by O. Buchsenschutz and I. Ralston (Buchsenschutz and Ralston, 1986) in a short but classic statistical analysis, where they tried to make sense of the quantitative distribution of the very term in Caesar’s work.
2Research into the definition of Celtic urbanization based on ancient sources has not seen much development in the last twenty years. Many articles (see Lukas, 2014 for reference) discussed the definition of urban Celtic settlements, labeling them as oppida, when they seemed to follow the description of these places in Caesar’s De Bello Gallico.
3Concerning the most recent years, we can cite S. Schreiber (Schreiber, 2008), I. F. Ortega (Ortega, 2013) and M. Fernández-Götz (Fernández-Götz, 2018). M. Fernández-Götz solely refers to the much cited, yet now already thirty years old work by A. Boos and summarizes that Caesar does not provide one precise definition of the term “oppidum”, which moreover is applied differently depending on different situations (Boos, 1989). The author concludes that “from his [caesar] account we can deduce that he referred to economic and political centers that occupied the most important position among the hierarchy of gallic agglomerations, going as far as using the latin term ‘urbs’ for places such as alesia, gergovia and avaricum” (Fernández-Götz, 2018, p. 26).
4Even though also S. Schreiber (Schreiber, 2008) only refers to the work of A. Boos, he differentiates two main Caesarian aspects of oppidum: a large site with an elevated topography and settlements of rather urban character. Hereby Schreiber underlines the political intention of Caesar’s text: to influence his “mostly uninformed audience” into thinking that the Celtic oppida were in fact urban settlements.
5I. F. Ortega undertakes a more nuanced analysis, while still referring to Boos, but also including the work of M. Tarpin (Tarpin, 1999; Tarpin, 2000) who, by studying the usage of the term “oppidum” in ancient Roman legal texts went beyond its employment in the Caesarian corpus only. With Ortega, we see that Caesar’s seemingly imprecise usage of “oppidum” was indeed determined by his intentions towards a specific audience. Moreover, by integrating legal texts to his analysis, the word “oppidum” gains in precision towards identifying fortified/unfortified urban places of Roman, Latin or Barbaric origin, with at least juridical and symbolic importance1 (Ortega, 2013, p. 181).
6Reviewing these recent reflections on the usage of “oppidum” in the De Bello Gallico, it becomes evident that a clear definition of the term cannot be established based on this source alone. In order to gain a better understanding on Caesar’s terminological background, in what follows we will briefly assess the either most relevant ancient texts, written prior or contemporary with the De Bello Gallico, which report on the term “oppidum”.
7Relevant for our discussion are mainly M. Terentius Varro (116-27 B.C.), who is the author of De Lingua Latina, and Cornelius Nepos (110-25 B.C.), a biographer discussing the term “oppidum” in his work Agesilaus. In the De Lingua Latina, an etymological, grammatical treatise comprising five books, Varro traces the term “oppidum” back to the word “ops”, signifying “power” or “strength”, but also “help” or “support”. When taking the plural form “opes” into account, the term can also convey the meaning of “riches” and “property”. Connecting these words to a supposed urban context, the interpretation of a rich town comes to mind. With a further variation of the root, we recognize “Opis” as the name of a protective divinity of Rome (De Lingua Latina, 5, 141). Based on Varro, “oppidum” could therefore be interpreted as a protected place (Schulze-Forster, 1989, p. 29; Ortega, 2013, p. 174). Also, Nepos indicates the necessity that an “oppidum” generally required a fortification. Writing about Sparta, Nepos describes it as an “oppidum sine muris”, necessarily implying that the common oppidum does in fact have a fortification (Agesilaus, 6, 1). In discussing Sparta, it was therefore necessary to further specify the place as to its lack of the generally supposed fortification (Schulze-Forster, 1989, p. 29).
8Although of a much later date, the work of Maurus Servius Honoratus (late 4thearly 5th centuries A.D.) is still of interest, as he gives a definition of “oppidum” in his commentaries on the works of Virgil (In Vergilii Aeneidem commentarii), which is frequently quoted in the context of research into the Iron Age oppida. Servius states:
“Some distinguish an oppidum from a village or a castle depending on its size; others think that it is a place which is enclosed by a rampart, a ditch and other fortifications; some think it is a place containing buildings like sanctuaries, a public place, a market and a surrounding wall2” (In Vergilii Aeneidem commentarii, 9, 605).
9Based on this the term “oppidum” can be derived from “ab oppositione murorum”, which would then allow to identify the described place as a necessarily fortified space (Schulze-Forster, 1989, p. 29). In discussing Servius’ definition, already E. Kornemann had pointed out that, in order to understand the term “oppidum”, it is necessary to identify an older usage of it purely in the sense of “castle” (Kornemann, 1939, p. 709 and f.). Servius did indeed refer to the “aborigines” – the early inhabitants of the Italian peninsula. For these, the defensive character of the “oppidum” would have played the most important role and only in later times, the term has been extended adding further urban characteristics to its meaning (Schulze-Forster, 1989, p. 30; Boos, 1989, p. 56). If “oppidum” therefore is a term that grew in meaning from “castle” to a settlement with urban character, we need to understand an “oppidum” at least as a place with the potential to develop urban characteristics. In that sense, the possibility of becoming urban seems to extend the meaning of the term “oppidum”. Besides castles developing into towns, places may also be attributed with urban character simply by adding rhetorical urban value in the moment that they are conquered by Roman forces. These places then would have never received this label under peaceful conditions (Buchsenschutz and Ralston, 1986, p. 386). In consequence, it is necessary to always examine the rhetorical context when discussing the usage of “oppidum” and its interpretation as an urban space.
10In order to gain a better understanding of the term “oppidum”, M. Tarpin has gone beyond the review of the mentioned authors and analyzed earlier definitions of terms designating settlements (Tarpin, 1999). In a later contribution, Tarpin has also discussed the issue concerning the correlation of “oppidum” with “urbs” (Tarpin, 2000).
11According to M. Tarpin, when discussing the urban character of a settlement, it is not enough to only take the physical or material configuration of a place into account, but it is furthermore important to discuss the social constitution of the inhabited space. M. Tarpin traces this idea back to Plato (Protagoras, 321d-322d), who gives an account on the origin of society as rooted in mythology. Following Plato, human beings would be understood as being unable to constantly live together. It is only with the creation of a sense of lawfulness and correct behavior that humans would achieve an urban level of communal organization. By means of this understanding, the city could not only be seen as accumulation of houses, but would necessarily be constituted as human community. In consequence, material manifestations of society (e.g. oppidum) is only to be seen as a secondary characteristic. M. Tarpin underscores this line of thought by further quoting Lucretius (De Rerum Natura, 5, 1019-1027), following whom the origin of civilization and the urban phenomenon would have to be seen in the emergence of social relationships of people who are not already connected through family ties. Hereby the urban society, once it is created, would not be restricted to the immaterial difference of persons living inside and outside of that community. Moreover, the construction of the city would be a necessary constitutive step for the society (Tarpin, 2009, p. 185).
12Following these considerations, the study of the term “oppidum” cannot only be an endeavor to examine the physical properties of a specific site. Moreover, it is necessary to study the social implications in defining a site’s population, which is configured mainly by its immaterial characteristics and less by its quantifiable physical features.
13In that respect, it should now be of interest to extend the analysis of texts discussing urban places by explicitly discussing the urbanites in context : the analysis of the “oppidum” together with the analysis of its “oppidani”. As has already been noted by S. Schreiber (Schreiber, 2008, p. 41), an oppidum would not originally need to have been created as an urban place, but through the presence of its inhabitants and their reciprocal relation with the place, the oppidum as a whole becomes the identifying object of the population. The oppidum, although not an urban space initially, would then receive the connotation of urban gradually over time. In this analysis, we can see the combination of the earlier stated potential oppidum-in-development and its physical expression in space.
14As we have seen, the term “oppidum” is based on multiple sources, yet Late Iron Age archaeology has generally employed the term based on its usage in the De Bello Gallico, Julius Caesar’s description of the bellicose activities of the roman armies in ancient Gaul during the years 58 until 51 B.C. While Caesar’s text is famously the only one that actually deals with the settlements that could be identified in central Europe during the late Roman Republic3, the limitation to such a small literary base has further shortcomings. Reconsidering our initial statements on discussions of the term in recent literature, it does seem downright inevitable that conclusions end up stating only the ambiguity of the term – as it has been done, without discussing the multiple meanings that the stated ambiguity entails. As we have seen, the urban character of the Celtic settlements needs to be discussed in combining the physical and the social character of the place and society in question. In consequence we can now focus on the De Bello Gallico, in order to retrieve some of the ambiguity and discuss the multitude of meaningful correlations of “oppidum” in an attempt to identify possible social connotations.
15Hereby we have to deal with at least two main levels of ambiguity. The first level of ambiguity depends on Caesar’s intentions in writing the Commentarii. These have a certain influence on the description of the Gallic urban context and in consequence diminish the credibility of the De Bello Gallico as a reliable historical source. The second level of ambiguity is based on whether there is only one meaning to each term in Caesar’s work, or if we need to assume a variety of meanings of these terms, which would make the entire endeavor of understanding the term “oppidum” even more complex.
16As far as intentionality goes, a lot has been written about Caesar’s reasons for writing his Commentarii (e.g. most recently Welch, 1998 ; Schadee, 2008). Hereby, the most obvious reasoning is based on his general political aspirations and him writing the Commentarii in order to provide reason enough for the populus romanus to support him further. In that context, he had also been confronted with criticisms that his actions in Gaul lacked legal status. In writing the Commentarii, assuming that a critical mass in Rome would read them, he might have been able to secure his status as acting in the interest of the Roman people and would have been immune to any further prosecution (e.g. Ramsey, 2009, p. 41). In that sense, the Commentarii can be understood as having been addressed primarily to the general populace of Rome and only on a secondary level towards the senate as an official report on his sanctioned actions. With Cicero’s De Provinciis Consularibus, published in 56 B.C., we do have a literary source at hand that does evaluate Caesar’s actions in that respect – understanding them as actions that support the necessities of the Roman people and putting Caesar into the light of a nearly selfless protector of the will of the people (De Provinciis Consularibus, XII, 29 ; Steel, 2001, p. 158-159).
17A less explicit reason to write the Commentarii reflects on the need to examine the world lying beyond the frontiers of the Roman territories. The Roman people, in the middle of the last century B.C., were very much unaware of the world that lay north of the Provincia Narbonensis, let alone the area beyond the Rhine. Caesar’s intention to conquer these regions entails not only the redefinition of the political map, but it is also an attempt to redefine the geographical and cultural context in these areas (Schadee, 2008). Caesar’s method hereby is to describe the unknown by analogy of the neighboring known. When describing the Belgae, he does so by showing their similarities with the Gauls, highlighting those aspects where the Belgae are more barbarous. Once the Belgae are conquered, it is the Germani who are somehow similar to the Belgae, yet rougher, while initially the Germani had been considered most distinct from the Gauls (Schadee, 2008, p. 167). In that sense conquering new territories in the De Bello Gallico is never only political, but always also an advancement of knowledge – “an intellectual conquest that heralded military domination” (Schadee, 2008, p. 169). After Caesar’s expeditions into Germania and Britannia, it then becomes clear that Gaul is the ideal candidate for ingestion and addition to the roman world. By moving his legions around northern Europe, Caesar was able to distinguish compatible and less compatible candidates for integration into the Roman world and when he had finished his evaluation, Gaul was finally described and had become a known territory. As H. Schadee puts it : “Gaul could be remoulded on a Roman model” (Schadee, 2008, p. 177). In consequence, in bringing the war to Gaul, Caesar attempted to remove the unknown from the map of Northern Europe and bring Gaul closer to the Roman world.
18The second level of ambiguity refers to the use that Caesar makes of linguistic terms in his work : is there a singular meaning to the terms used in the De Bello Gallico, or are there various readings ? In general, it has been attempted to examine the De Bello Gallico as a consistent whole in order to understand a unique meaning of the term “oppidum” in that context. It is important to note that the De Bello Gallico cannot be considered as one unique piece of work. While it has always been recognized that at least the eighth book of the De Bello Gallico has not been authored by Caesar but by Aulus Hirtius, it seems moreover uncertain as to when the singular books have been written and more importantly when they have been published. There are three distinct modes of publication of the Commentarii, which have been discussed in the past : either they have been published in sequence and in very close temporal proximity to the events actually happening, or they have been published as installments of sets of books (Books I–II, III–VI, and VII : Radin, 1918), or there has been only one single publication after the end of the Gallic wars (Kraus, 2009, p. 160). The mode of publication is relevant to our question, as it has an impact on our understanding of whether there is only one crystallized meaning of any term mentioned in the De Bello Gallico – a possibility in case that its text has been edited as one unique work prior to its singular publication – or whether the meaning of terms was bound to change throughout the work.
19There exist a number of reasons why we should think the De Bello Gallico has been published at least in sets of books or even in a yearly sequence. In the past, mostly stylistic reasons have been brought forward to underscore the differences in between the single books. One example can be found in the seventh book, which “deviates palpably from the previously distinctive style” (Gotoff, 1984, p. 3), narrating the events in a much less objective manner than before. Another change is Caesar’s tendency to increasingly transport the opinions of the Gauls towards Book VII. The number of speeches among Gauls with no Romans present is exactly half of all speeches in Book VII, whereas in the beginning there are nearly no speeches held by Gauls without any Romans present (Dalström, 2015, p. 92).
20Concerning purely historical reasoning, E. Fantham states that the Commentarii surely had begun as records, but they were soon infused with Caesar’s own command of rhetoric and loaded argument (Fantham, 2009, p. 151). Furthermore, yearly publication is underlined by the fact that Caesar needed approval in Rome for continuing his endeavor in Gaul. If he had decided to not be present in the public eye – publishing the Commentarii only after the end of the war – he most definitely would not have strengthened his position and the public eye would have wandered off4.
21Most recently, developments in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP) have allowed for further investigation into the authorship of texts. While distributional statistics are mainly used for English language texts, they have also been examined for other languages, including Latin texts5 (Field, 2016 ; Zhang, Cohen and McGill, 2018).
22In the case of the De Bello Gallico, distributional semantics have been employed in order to investigate who wrote the different books. A book-by-book comparison (fig. 1) has shown that Books I to VII are more similar to each other than to Book VIII (Zhang, Cohen and McGill, 2018, p. 40). While Latin generally poses many problems on the study of stylistic and therefore personal differences in writing, in another NLP study, Field has shown that the use of a cum-clause or an ablative absolute in Latin provides a reliable basis to determine different authorships. The comparison of cum-clause-frequency and ablative-absolute-frequency over all books of the De Bello Gallico has shown that the first seven books show a steady stylistic development towards the usage of ablative absolutes as opposed to cum-clauses, while Book VIII is using mostly cum-clauses (Field, 2016, p. 68). As a conclusion, both studies in NLP underline the fact that Book VIII has in fact been authored by someone else than Julius Caesar – Aulus Hirtius.
Fig. 1: Scatter plot of similarity measures in between the eight books of the De Bello Gallico.

After Zhang, Cohen and McGill 2018.
23Furthermore, by examining the results of Zhang, Cohen and McGill (Zhang, Cohen and McGill, 2018) in detail, the similarity measures (fig. 2) also show a certain sequential affinity the books have to each other. Although it is not always the nearest neighbor (Book I for Book II, Book II for Book I and Book III, Book III for book II and Book IV, etc.) that is the most similar according to similarity analysis, a more or less clear tendency can be recognized from Book I to Book VII. In figure 2, the strongest similarity is highlighted in red, while the lowest similarity is shown in green. While it is clear that Book VIII is the least similar book for all books, Book I is most similar to Book II, Book II is most similar to Book IV, Book V is most similar to Book IV, Book VI is most similar to Book V and Book VII is most similar to Book V. In our opinion, these measures can be read as an indicator for gradual development and point towards yearly publication of the De Bello Gallico.
24In regards to the discussion on whether the first seven books of the De Bello Gallico have been written in one moment in time as opposed to the competing theory or that they would have been written in regular intervals over the entire duration of the war, the latter theory sees some support based on the NLP analysis.
Fig. 2 — Table with NLP-similarity-measures.

After Zhang, Cohen and Mcgill, 2018, p. 40.
25In order to analyze the content of the De Bello Gallico in further detail and to understand the meaning(s) of “oppidum” considering the ambiguity of intentionality as well as the ambiguity of employment of terms through the years, we will now expand on an idea developed by O. Buchsenschutz and I. Ralston who used basic statistical measures in order to analyze the ancient source (Buchsenschutz and Ralston, 1986). In their conclusion, the authors stated that the interpretation of “oppida” as “grosses bourgades” can only be held up for the first six books of the De Bello Gallico. It is in the seventh book that a transformation of meaning would have taken hold and certain “oppida” – these that have actually been conquered by the Romans – are then qualified by the term “urbs”.
26The idea to use statistical measures in textual analysis of ancient sources is not new and already Harmand quantified the distribution of topics in the De Bello Gallico to a certain extent. Harmand states that
“la question de la rédaction unique ou des rédactions successives des livres I-VII du BG est importante dans cette optique car c’est d’elle que dépend la possibilité de savoir si la connaissance de la Gaule correspond dans l’œuvre à un état déterminé de l’information ou s’il est possible qu’il y ait eu évolution et perfectionnement des acquis au fil des livres” (Harmand, 1973, p. 524).
27Now that we can positively assume the sequential publication of the different books, it is possible to focus on the distribution of terms in the De Bello Gallico6, which might help to convey a certain meaning or change of meaning in the term “oppidum”. In reference to the conclusions of O. Buchsenschutz and I. Ralston, this analysis should add to our understanding of whether Caesar simply talked about places that have been conquered and are in some cases then also rhetorically transformed into urbs, or if he referred to a social reality and some kind of urban patterning. Initially we will not differentiate in regards to the respective author of the sections in question (Caesar or Hirtius), but it will be necessary to clarify the implications of the difference in authorship before reaching any conclusions.
Fig. 3 — Table with general statistics for the books of the De Bello Gallico.

After Dalström, 2015, p. 92.
28In analyzing the general root “oppid-7” in all books (containing “oppidum” as well as “oppidani”, fig. 4) we can see that these words show a strong distribution in Books I-III and Books VII-VIII (fig. 5). In Books IV-VI these terms can only be found 8 times in total. The highest proportions of the terms are found in Book II (0,7 % relative frequency) and Books VII and VIII (each 0,6 % relative frequency). The latter book actually contains more than half (113) of the overall findings (178) of the root.
Fig. 4 — Quantification of declinations with the root “oppid-” in all books of the De Bello Gallico.

Lukas/Camurri.
Fig. 5 — Distribution of “oppid-” by book.

Lukas/Camurri.
29As we can see in figure 3, the books of the De Bello Gallico vary strongly in length, so that a comparison of basic quantifications tends to skew the result. Figure 6 shows a distribution of all declined forms of “oppidum” relative to the overall amount of words in each book (fig. 6). Contrary to what could be expected, based on the relative length of the books, there is no clear tendency concerning a stronger representation of “oppidum” towards Book VII-Book II does actually show a slightly stronger concentration in that respect. Books III and VIII also show a strong presence of the term.
30At least concerning the question of whether we can attest for a change in usage of the term throughout the BG, this result does not allow for any conclusion beyond the fact that “oppidum” is of strong interest in Books II and VII.
Fig. 6 — Distribution of “oppidum” and declinations by words per book.

Lukas/Camurri.
31The term “civitas” is another important term in order to define either the “state”hood or the “tribe” to which a certain “oppidum” belongs to. While Moore has discussed the problems of tribe attribution extensively (Moore, 2011), “civitas” in its connotation of “state” contributes strongly to the question of whether the Celtic urban areas where embedded in a higher order organization that could either be understood as a city-state or tribal-state. Figure 7 shows the overall distribution of “civitas” relative to the overall amount of words in each book, without any disposition of a statistically relevant stronger presence in any of the books (fig. 7).
32In that respect, it seems that “civitas” is well distributed and used in many different contexts. As Harmand states, it seems that the author did not want to trouble his readers by too much “diversification excessive de la terminologie” (Harmand, 1973, p. 560). In other words, “civitas” does not seem to be indicative at least in the sense of any change in meaning throughout the De Bello Gallico.
Fig. 7 — Distribution of “civitas” and declinations by words per book.

Lukas/Camurri.
33As opposed to “civitas” – or the population taken in its entirety – the singular citizen – “civis” – is rarely present throughout the work and declinations are restricted to its dative plural (n=4) and genitive plural (n=3), showing only one co-occurrence in Book VIII, chapter 24. “Civis” is generally used in respect to Roman institutions, which is clearly the case for a Roman citizen in Book VII, 17 and 42. In Book VIII, 24, “civium” refers to the inhabitants of the Roman colonies and it is at least unclear whether this refers exclusively to Roman citizens or extends to all citizens living in the Roman colonies8. In contrast to this, in the speech of Critognatus, held during the battle of Alesia (Book VII, 77), “civium” is used in reference to Gauls who are asking for surrender to the Romans9. While this is the first case of a term for citizen referring to a non-Roman, it needs to be borne in mind that the term is used in a direct speech of a Gaul and not of the author himself. Then in Book VII, 38, “civibus” is used in reference to Gauls – in this case to the citizens of the Carnutes – whom the “traitor” Guturvatus does not trust with his life10, flees but is still processed at a later stage. “Civibus” is again a reference to Gauls in Book VIII, 47, in this case, countrymen of the tribe of the Atrebates, of which Comius is a representative and who is an agent in the passage11.
34Apart from declinations of “civitas” and “civis” – which show the highest distribution of words with root “civi-” (n=225) – also the word “civilis” is present, although only once, in the introduction to Book VIII, where Aulus Hirtius talks about the civil war (bello ciuilis) and the need to fill the gap in Caesar’s account which lies in between Book VII of the Gallic Wars and Book I of the Civil War.
35While “civis” does only render a reflection on the citizen in general terms, the term that determines the specific inhabitant of the oppidum, is the “oppidani”. Figure 8 shows the distribution of words with the root “oppidan-” (fig. 8). Interestingly the root does not share a similar distribution as words indicating the actual place of a settlement : the term is quite exclusively present in the final Books VII and VIII.
36In order to shed light on the meaning of the terms it is not only of importance to count the isolated appearance of a term, but to put it into context with other significant terms. Based on the existing distributions, it is necessary to examine the co-occurrence of the term “oppidum” (and all declinations) together with “civitas” and with “oppidani” in detail.
Fig. 8 — Distribution of “oppidani” and declinations by books.

Lukas/Camurri.
37In the De Bello Gallico, 34 chapters12 show co-occurrences of “oppid-” and “civitas”. In most cases, the co-occurence is part of an introduction, related to a background narration situating the account in the context of a state and a relevant town within the state – in order to localize the story and continue with the story of the actual events. As long as co-occurrences appear in these general sections, there is no deeper involvement or social context to be stated or interpreted.
38Following what we saw concerning the single occurrence of “oppidum” and “civitas”, both terms are rather insensitive to any development in the narration, the fact that the combination of both terms is used simply as introductory information does not surprise. In consequence, “civitas” (even in co-occurrence with “oppid-”) is not conclusive to further our understanding of urban patterns in Gaul.
39The situation for co-occurrences of “oppidum” and “oppidan-” is quite different : 15 chapters of the De Bello Gallico show occurrences of these terms. Besides chapters VII, 13, VIII, 27 and VIII, 39, these are mostly sections that have not already seen cooccurrences of “oppid-” and “civitas”. Interestingly, a certain number of chapters do moreover coincide with the findings of “civis”.
40As we can see in figure 8, only Books II, VII and VIII actually contain the term “oppidani” and in Book II the occurrence is limited to Caesar’s brief interaction with the inhabitants of Bibrax (Remi) (Caes., BG, II, 7) and the Aduatuci (Caes., BG, II, 32). In Book VII we find three chapters – two of which solely dealing with the changing ideas of the inhabitants of Noviodunum (in chapter 12 willing to lower their weapons only to be convinced by Vercingetorix to keep up the fight, and in 13 again intimidated, while Caesar moves on to Avaricum), and one chapter presenting the frightened inhabitants of Melodunum, immediately rendering their town at the arrival of Caesar’s legate Labienus.
41In contrast to these rare, early combinations of “oppidum” and “oppidani”, Book VIII boasts with 10 chapters13 containing co-occurences of the terms in telling the events of the siege of Uxellodunum. In general, it seems that the “oppidani” have taken the place of what has been attributed to the “oppidum” of the previous books – it is not anymore the built space that is at the center of the battle and which is being besieged, now the inhabitants are the focal point of the narration. Of specific interest is chapter 32, Book VIII, where we also see a mention of “cives” in context with Uxellodunum and its inhabitants. Following what has been stated in regard to the general usage of forms of “civis” in the De Bello Gallico, the “cives” here present can be seen as a strong indicator that the Roman perception of the Gauls had shifted in respect to earlier books.
42Before summing up and concluding on the results of the present analysis, some remarks need to be made on the question of the Gallic urbes in the De Bello Gallico. While Harmand (Harmand, 1970, p. 114 and f.) would have us believe that the introduction of the substantive “urbs” in Book VII was a reaction of certain elements in the Roman public towards the Commentarii (Harmand, 1961, p. 44) or maybe a negative opinion by the publishers of the bulletins concerning the usage of “oppidum” (Harmand, 1970, p. 77-80), in Iron Age archaeology the term has mostly excited the interpretations towards accepting an objective assessment that the Gallic oppida did actually inspire cityscapes in the Roman minds during the De Bello Gallico. In contrast to this, already O. Buchsenschutz and I. Ralston (Buchsenschutz and Ralston, 1986) are cautious in that respect and contextualize the “urbs” in accordance with Strabo as a first-aid-kit for the defeated settlements in Gaul (e.g. concerning the oppidum Vindalium : Tarpin, 2009, p. 186) – if they already have lost the battle, at least let them have the (rhetoric) status of an urban place !
43This idea is moreover underscored by the popular employment of “urbs capta” narrations in the De Bello Gallico. The “urbs capta” motive is familiar in epic and rhetorical theory already since Homer (Keitel, 2012, p. 40). In the Commentarii, this motive is present in one-word mentions (e.g. Caes., BG, 1, 5), in brief narratives (e.g. Caes., BG, II, 12) to full-scale description as in the sieges of Gergovia and Alesia (Kraus, 2009, p. 172). Interestingly it is exactly these places, extensively besieged by Caesar, that receive the label “urbs” in the aftermath14.
44Together with the remarks of O. Buchsenschutz and I. Ralston, casting doubt on the “urbs” designation of a small number of oppida, the recurrence of the rhetorical
45“urbs capta” motive in the De Bello Gallico makes it even more difficult to understand the usage of the term “urbs” in Caesar’s narrative as an actual reference to a supposed urban status of any settlement. In Iron Age archaeology the occurrence of “urbs” as a term substituting “oppidum” in some rare cases, has spurred the imagination of not a small number of archaeologists to believe that Caesar honestly put some of the Gallic oppida on a similar level as Rome. At this point it might be more reasonable to simply accept the determination of some oppida as urbes on the basis of the authors usage of a rhetorical measure following the recurrent “urbs capta” motive and looking for statements concerning Gallic urbanism in different passages of the De Bello Gallico.
Conclusion
46In order to understand whether Caesar identified urban characteristics, either in the Celtic settlements or at least in the Celtic population, we have examined the distribution of the term “oppidum” in the De Bello Gallico within the context of the definition of the term by authors of the late Roman Republic. In this way it was possible to trace Caesar’s oft stated ambiguity in his work, and analyze whether this ambiguity rendered an image of the oppida as an urban place based only on rhetoric or on actual urban aspects visible in late Iron Age Gaul. As a first result, we can see that those markers (“oppidum”, “civitas”), that are traditionally perceived as indicators for urban space are not reliable for an actual transformation towards a Gallic urbanism. Secondly, “oppidum” as a traditional term to indicate a complex settlement is mentioned throughout the De Bello Gallico and at certain times, it is accompanied by the term “urbs” in order to reinforce its value as a place that by defeat, by conquering, becomes ingested into the Roman World. The attribution of “urbs” hereby does not state that these places are urban, but that they are to be considered a valuable to-be-Roman node in the network of important Roman places. This in fact seems to be a central residue of Caesar’s intentionality within the De Bello Gallico, in order to inform his audience about Gaul and define it as a potential Roman space. In consequence, all these terms do tell us about the potential to be Roman, but unfortunately not about the actual situation in pre-conquest-Gaul.
47As we have seen, the De Bello Gallico can be considered a dynamic work as it had been made available to its audience in regular intervals. The meaning of terms used in the text is therefore also necessarily dynamic. The results from Natural Language Processing by Field (Field, 2016, p. 67) and Zhang, Cohen and McGill (Zhang, Cohen and McGill, 2018) show how the authors’ opinion on the Gallic places described in the Commentarii might have changed over the years. This development in meaning is mostly visible in the transition towards Book VIII authored by Aulus Hirtius. It has been stated in the past that Hirtius can be considered as a more objective narrator when compared to Caesar. He would even contradict Caesar’s decisions and shed light on the subordinated legates (Welch, 1998). Although Hirtius’ contribution to the De Bello Gallico has often been dismissed on the basis of aesthetic criteria – blaming him to strongly trying to imitate Caesar’s original and exemplary way of writing in Book 1 –, he does offer a unique contemporary voice (Cluett, 2009, p. 197). In contrast, Caesar’s account is only to be described as objective in a rhetorical way at best.
48While all this explains the difference in word-use in Book VIII, it seems moreover that a certain aspect of description of the Gallic society did not only change when the authors switched. Beginning with the last book authored by Caesar himself, “oppidan-” terms are being used to describe how actions in the oppida in question are executed – in this way the oppidani are the agents of their towns. In consequence, “oppidani” is not a disconnected generalized label like “civitas” and “oppida”. The oppidani fill the spaces with life, mostly by co-occurring in the same sentence as their “civitas” or the “oppidum” they inhabit.
49As a result, it is interesting to note, that the definition of the urban space as a located place in the Gallic landscape does not show any modification and its objective meaning is not traceable in the De Bello Gallico. What does change is the description of the social component. The inhabitants of the oppida – initially nearly invisible – receive an important role towards the end of the narration. While the distribution of the terms “civitas” and “oppidum” remains constant throughout the work, their meaning does only see modification when seen in context with the actors living in these places : the civis and the oppidani. Based on this, we can assume that there is a primary social connotation to the phenomenon of Celtic urbanism, which is already visible in the De Bello Gallico. In that respect, the stronger impact of the social sphere as opposed to locational or architectural aspects could point into a direction to describe the urban patterns in Gaul on a more social basis than Caesar would have ever wanted us to believe.
Bibliographie
Des DOI sont automatiquement ajoutés aux références bibliographiques par Bilbo, l’outil d’annotation bibliographique d’OpenEdition. Ces références bibliographiques peuvent être téléchargées dans les formats APA, Chicago et MLA.
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Notes de bas de page
1 “un identificador genérico de ciudades, al margen de su origen romano, latino o bárbaro y al margen de si aparecen amuralladas o no, pero que tiene en cuenta su importancia simbólica y jurídica, pues nunca se asoció a poblaciones menores o poco importantes” (Ortega, 2013, p. 181).
2 “Oppidum quidam a vico castelloque magnitudine secernunt; alii locum muro fossave aliave qua munitione conclusum; alii locum aedificiis constitutum, ubi fanum, comitium, forum et murus sit” (translation after Schulze-Forster, 1989, p. 30).
3 While treating a similar geographical area, Strabo’s Geography has the defect of being edited at a later stage and does only allow to be used as a corrigendum in our discussion. Thollard has pointed out, that the information contained in Strabo’s work dates to an interval in between 23 B.C. and 18 A.D. (Thollard, 2009, p. 9).
4 Cf. Wiseman, 1998 for an extensive discussion on the necessity that the De Bello Gallico was published in intervals (see Meier, 1982 or previously Gelzer, 1921 supporting a singular publication of the entire work).
5 For a summary of available methods see Zhang, Cohen and McGill, 2018, p. 30.
6 We use the same edition of the De Bello Gallico, which has been used by Field for her natural language processing study (Perseus-ID: 1999.02.0002). The edition is accessible on the Perseus platform: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/
7 Tool: http://taporware.ualberta.ca/; RegExp for Root “oppid” (town, urban): oppid[a-z]+\b, RegExp for root “oppidan” (urban): oppidan[a-z]+\b.
8 “Titum Labienum ad se evocat; legionem autem XV, quae cum eo fuerat in hibernis, in togatam Galliam mittit ad colonias civium Romanorum tuendas [...]” (Caes., BG, VIII, 24).
9 “’Nihil’ inquit ‘de eorum sententia dicturus sum, qui turpissimam servitutem deditionis nomine appellant, neque hos habendos civium loco neque ad concilium adhibendos censeo‘” (Caes., BG, VII, 77).
10 “Qui etsi ne civibus quidem suis se committebat, tamen celeriter omnium cura quaesitus in castra perducitur” (Caes., BG, VIII, 38).
11 “Nam cum Antonius in hiberna venisset, civitasque Atrebatum in officio esset, Commius, qui post illam vulnerationem, quam supra commemoravi, semper ad omnes motus paratus suis civibus esse consuesset [...]” (Caes., BG, VIII, 47).
12 Caes., BG, I, 10; II, 3; II, 4; II, 12; II, 14; II, 27; II, 31; III, 9; III, 15; III, 21; VI, 4; VI, 34; VII, 4; VII, 13; VII, 15; VII, 17; VII, 19; VII, 20; VII, 28; VII, 36; VII, 54; VII, 55; VII, 57; VII, 65; VII, 71; VII, 76; VII, 77; VII, 88; VIII, 3; VIII, 5; VIII, 24; VIII, 26; VIII, 27; VIII, 39.
13 Caes., BG, VIII, 27; VIII, 32; VIII, 33; VIII, 34; VIII, 37; VIII, 39; VIII, 40; VIII, 41; VIII, 42; VIII, 43.
14 Uxellodunum is never labeled an “urbs” in the De Bello Gallico, but the siege of this settlement has of course not been described by Caesar and we have only Aulus Hirtius account of the event. Therefore, Uxellodunum not having been defined as “urbs” might be caused by it being part of a different narration.
Auteurs
Doctoral Student, University of Chicago, Department of Anthropology
Archaeologist, PhD, University of Bologna

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