Antiquity

Before history

Provence was inhabited very early, and three Lower Palaeolithic sites bear witness to it. At the Vallonnet cave, at Roquebrune, people left behind around -950,000 a pebble-tool industry and the remains of the animals they dragged there, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, large bovid, even a whale stranded on the beach. At the Escale cave, at Saint-Estève-Janson, fires were kept alight around -600,000, perhaps lit by human hand. At Terra Amata, on the hill of Nice, hearths survive around -400,000 in a remarkable state of preservation.

Then comes art. The paintings of the Cosquer cave, at Cassis, date back to -20,000, and the cave's entrance now lies beneath the sea, which kept it hidden from view until 1991. Already at this time Provence follows its own course: Agulhon and Coulet note that the Solutrean remains unknown east of the Rhône and that the Magdalenian does not cross the Durance, both replaced here by local industries.

The Neolithic confirms this singularity. It is in Provence that the earliest known evidence of sheep domestication is found, at Châteauneuf-lès-Martigues. Megalithic burials follow, including the hypogea of Arles, then the first perched villages enclosed by ramparts, the camps of the Bronze Age, and the countless oppida of the Iron Age.

Before Marseille: Ligurians, Phoenicians, Rhodians

When history begins to observe this land, at the start of the sixth century BC, it is occupied by a people whom the ancient Greeks call the Ligurians, a mysterious people about whom, in the end, little is known for certain. The Ligurians live in oppida perched on rocky spurs, watchposts and refuges, and they have no writing. Of their language nothing survives beyond indirect traces in place names.

Even before the founding of Marseille, these shores had already received visits from sailors come from afar. Phoenicians touch there from the eleventh century BC onward, but their settlements remain precarious. Firmer are the traces left by the navigators of Rhodes, in the eighth and seventh centuries BC: a Rhodian trading post had been established at Marseille itself, half a century before the arrival of the Phocaeans.

The founding of Marseille and its first crisis

In 594 BC, Ionian sailors from Phocaea land in a cove of the Ligurian coast and found Massalia. From this event onward, the history of Provence becomes, for four centuries, almost exclusively Greek and Marseillais. The city establishes a trading post on the lower course of the Rhône and becomes the Mediterranean outlet for the tin trade coming from Cornwall.

This prosperity meets a brutal halt. The Phocaean fleets, allied with those of Alalia in Corsica, are scattered by the combined Carthaginians and Etruscans off Sardinia, and Corsica falls into Etruscan hands. But Marseille recovers quickly, carried by the decline of rival powers in the western Mediterranean, and rebuilds its network of trading posts.

The Celto-Ligurian confederation and Entremont

From the middle of the fifth century BC, Celts settle durably in the hinterland of Marseille. A legend tells how their chief, Catumandus, is said to have laid siege to Marseille with the help of neighbouring Ligurian tribes, before giving up on the warning of a dream and concluding a treaty of friendship with the city. Behind this legend can be glimpsed a real understanding between the Massaliotes and the newcomers.

Out of this encounter is born a Celto-Ligurian confederation that gives western Provence a political unity it had never known before, directed from Entremont, a stronghold overlooking the Arc valley. A nearby religious centre, Roquepertuse, bears sculptures of Greek influence, proof that the cultural contribution of Marseille also nourished this world that remained independent of it. "This confederation gave western Provence a political unity, and even, one might say, a nationhood that this country had never before known," writes Busquet.

Marseille appeals to Rome

Marseille trades, and trade earns it hostile neighbours. From its founding it had to defend itself against the Ligurians, and its relations with the Salluvii, good for the most part, never sheltered it from attack. Three times it turns to Rome. In 181 and again in 154, the Romans intervene against the Oxybii and the Deceates, on the eastern coast. In 125, the Salluvian attack, backed by the Vocontii from beyond the Durance, is the greatest danger the city has known, and its call for help goes out at once.

Rome answers, and this time it does not leave. The Senate sends the consul Fulvius Flaccus, who defeats the Ligurians, then marches against the Vocontii and returns to deal with the Salluvii. The following year, the consul Sextius Calvinus arrives with a fresh army, and the gesture amounts to a declaration: instead of relieving his predecessor's troops, he joins them. Rome intends to settle. In 122, Sextius Calvinus founds at the foot of Entremont the town that will bear his name, Aquae Sextiae. Marseille had asked for help, it had brought in a master.

The invasion of the Cimbri

At the end of the second century BC, a people from the north, the Cimbri, set themselves in motion across Germania and threaten the territories that Rome had just conquered. After wandering toward Aquitaine and then Spain, they fall back. Rome sends the consul Marius to await them at the borders of the Provincia: settled near Arles, he has a navigable canal dug between the Gulf of Fos and the city, the Fossae Marianae. In 105 BC, the Cimbri destroy two Roman armies near Orange, before Marius finally crushes them in 102, near Aix, along with the Teutons who had joined them.

Roman exploitation and the revolts

Roman domination was no boon for the peoples subjected to it: "never perhaps was the exploitation of conquered lands more unbridled than in the last century of the Republic," writes Busquet. The soil became the property of the Roman people, its former owners retaining only a use of it burdened with charges. Marseille, a federated and independent city, escaped this regime, but not the peoples of the interior, struck with new taxes and unbounded requisitions of grain.

Two revolts bear its trace. In 90 BC, the Salluvii rise up and are punished by the army of C. Cecilius. In 83, a new revolt, wider in scope, spreads to the Celtic tribes of the Transalpine region and to the north of Spain, and is put down by Valerius Flaccus.

Provence becomes Roman

The rupture between Caesar and Pompey forces Marseille to choose, and its tradition carries it to Pompey's side. Caesar besieges the city in the spring of 49, takes it after five months and a naval blockade, and settles its capitulation without mercy. It surrenders its arms, its siege engines, its ships and its treasury, its walls are torn down, and it loses all its outlying territories and all its colonies, except Nice. It keeps the title of free city and its institutions. Busquet judges the formula for what it is worth: "however free it was declared, it was henceforth subject beneath the appearances of independence."

Then comes what changes the country for centuries. To reward his soldiers, Caesar founds on provincial land colonies of veterans, settled by Tiberius Nero. Narbonne goes to the men of the Tenth Legion, Arles to those of the Sixth, and the movement extends to Béziers, Orange and Vienne. On the eastern coastline, Fréjus receives the veterans of the Eighth and a port destined for a military future. The territory of the Salluvii, broken by a century of repression, is divided: the western part to Arles, the eastern part to Fréjus, and the central part, that of Entremont, left to the Salluvii around Aix.

Arles is the favoured one. It receives a name that says everything, Colonia Julia Paterna Arelate Sextanorum, the greater part of the possessions torn from Marseille, the Camargue, the Étang de Berre, Tarascon. Busquet sees in this the calculation of a man who knew what he was doing: Caesar "made one city the heir of the other and enlarged Arles to make it the chief instrument of romanization in Transalpine Gaul." The land distributed to the colonists was not grouped around the chief town but scattered across the whole territory, which avoided driving out the former farmers en masse and mixed the newcomers with the people of the country. Assimilation lay in the method itself.

The country is then covered with stone. Arles has its amphitheatre from Caesar's own time, before Rome itself, and its theatre, and a circus, and a triumphal arch, and ramparts whose crescent-shaped gates still betray a Greek eye. The other colonies follow. After Actium, in 31, Octavian stations part of his fleet at Fréjus. The roads come next, and from the year 12 the via Julia Augusta links Liguria to Fréjus by way of Vintimille, La Turbie and Cimiez. Once the Alps are pacified, the province of the Alpes-Maritimes takes Cimiez as its chief town, Nice having remained Massaliote. Under Augustus and his successors, thirty-seven colonies with Latin rights are created, including Aix, which will later obtain Roman rights, while Avignon, Cavaillon, Apt, Carpentras, Digne and Riez receive Latin rights.

The significance of this must be weighed. Provence had been Greek through Marseille, Ligurian through its tribes, Celtic through a thin layer of newcomers. It becomes Roman through settlement, through land and through law, with a density of colonies that few regions of Gaul have known. The rest of its history will flow from this, down to the outline of the dioceses, still traced today by the boundaries of these cities.

The language of this period

Of the language of the Ligurians nothing survives beyond indirect clues. Busquet states it as a plain fact, without possible detour: "Of their language, we know nothing, apart from what obscure elements of toponymy provide us." The place names of the coastline and that of a great river, however, keep the trace of the Dorian navigators of Rhodes, attested by Greek geographers and historians from the fourth century onward.

Greek Marseille speaks Greek for centuries, but its institutional grip eventually gives way before Rome. Two inscriptions show the city administered by duumvirs and decurions: it has abandoned its timouchoi and its regime of Greek origin for the Latin municipal regime. Busquet dates this event to 212 or 213, on the strength of Caracalla's edict granting citizenship to all free men of the Empire. The shift of the common language follows one that moved even faster, that of personal names: as early as the previous century, natives of the country entering the municipal curiae had already abandoned their Gaulish names for Latin gentilicia. Latinization advances quickly for a province that turned Greek late: three quarters of the inscriptions that Antiquity left there are Latin inscriptions.

The Council of Arles of 314

The Edict of Milan, in 313, changes the condition of Christianity throughout the Empire. The following year, a council meets at Arles against the Donatists, and Busquet counts five Provençal bishops there: those of Arles, Orange, Vaison, Marseille and Apt.

This list calls for a clarification. Narbonne, absent from Busquet's count, simply lies outside the boundaries of the province, and its absence signals no gap. Nice, on the other hand, could not have appeared there for a reason of chronology rather than geography: its episcopal see appears, in Busquet's account, only around 365, half a century after the council. Before this council, only one Provençal bishop is known with certainty, that of Arles, Marcien, attested around 254 by a letter from the bishop of Lyon reproaching him for having embraced the doctrine of Novatian.

The end of ancient Provence: a disagreement between historians

The chronology of this page carries the narrative down to 536, the year in which the Franks complete the integration of Provence into their kingdom. Busquet, for his part, closes his first part much earlier, in 476. This is not a mere detail of his table of contents, but a different reading of what counts as a rupture.

The year 476 is, for the Roman West, that of its definitive collapse. In 475, the master of the soldiers Orestes drives out the emperor Julius Nepos and raises his own son, Romulus Augustulus, only fourteen years old, to power. A year later, the Herulian chief Odoacer overthrows him: the Western Empire ceases to exist. For Busquet, so long as this imperial authority survived, however weakened, it gave Arles something worth defending. Once this ghost of an Empire is overthrown, the city represents nothing anymore: the Visigothic king Euric immediately takes advantage of it, defeats its defenders, seizes Arles then Marseille, and becomes master of lower Provence. Busquet closes his account with a sentence that admits no appeal: "Ancient Provence had ceased to exist."

For Busquet, everything that follows, the Burgundians masters of the whole of Provence from 484, the Franks of Clovis victorious at Vouillé in 507, the Ostrogoths of Theoderic masters in their turn in 523, down to the final division of 536, already belongs to another history, the one he himself opens under the title of second part. The boundary of this page, fixed at 536 to mark the integration into the Frankish kingdom, does not move: it remains a solid landmark, the political outcome of a long dispute between barbarian kingdoms for possession of the country. The disagreement nonetheless deserves to be known for what it is, a disagreement between historians over the very nature of an ending. One looks at the disappearance of an authority, the other at the outcome of a process. Both views are defensible.

The scramble of the barbarian kingdoms

Between 476 and 536, Provence changes masters several times. On the death of Euric in 484, the Burgundians immediately cross the Durance and become, according to Busquet, masters of the whole of Provence. The Franks of Clovis, who had entered the scene as early as 481, then attack the Burgundians, prevail at first but fail before Avignon in 500, before Alaric II intervenes as mediator. In 507, at Vouillé, Clovis, converted to orthodox Christianity, defeats and kills the Visigothic king.

The Ostrogoths of Theoderic intervene in their turn: they lift the siege of Arles, enter Marseille, take Avignon, then obtain in 523, in exchange for Burgundian neutrality, the Provençal territories that this people still controlled. The Ostrogoths then dominate the whole country. Their end comes from elsewhere: Justinian, intent on recovering Italy for the Eastern empire, launches in 536 an expedition that seizes Sicily, southern Italy and Rome. Pressed by this danger, the Ostrogothic kings cede Provence to the Franks, two years after the sons of Clovis had subdued Burgundy and Theudebert had laid siege to Arles, repulsed by the patrician Liberius. The Frankish possession of the country, confirmed by a grant from the emperor Justinian himself, closes this long dispute.

Timeline

1. around -950,000
   The most ancient human occupation attested in Provence, at the Vallonnet cave, at Roquebrune: a pebble-tool industry and hunting remains
2. around -600,000
   First fires kept alight, perhaps lit by human hand, at the Escale cave at Saint-Estève-Janson, at the start of the Mindel glaciation
3. around -400,000
   Remarkably preserved hearths of Terra Amata, at Nice, the third major Lower Palaeolithic site in Provence
4. around -20,000
   Cave paintings of the Cosquer cave, at Cassis, discovered in 1991: the earliest known art in Provence
5. Upper Palaeolithic
   Provence sets itself apart from the rest of France: the Solutrean is unknown east of the Rhône and the Magdalenian does not cross the Durance, both replaced by local industries
6. Neolithic
   Earliest known evidence of sheep domestication, at Châteauneuf-lès-Martigues. In the late Neolithic, megalithic burials appear, including the hypogea of Arles, along with the first perched and enclosed settlements
7. 594 BC
   Ionian sailors from Phocaea land in a cove of the Ligurian coast and found Massalia
8. 4th century BC
   Celtic populations move south, at the time of the taking of Rome by the Gauls
9. 387 BC
   After the taking of Rome by the Gauls, the people of Marseille help the Romans pay the tribute demanded by the victors
10. 217 BC
    Marseille takes part in the naval victory of the Ebro, during the Second Punic War
11. 181 and 154 BC
    First Roman interventions against the Oxybii and the Deceates
12. 125 BC
    The Salluvii attack the Massaliotes on their territory, with the support of the Vocontii; Marseille appeals to Rome for help and the Senate sends the consul M. Fulvius Flaccus
13. 125-121 BC
    War of the Romans against the coalition of the Ligurians, Salluvii, Vocontii, Allobroges and Arverni
14. 124 and 123 BC
    The consul Caius Sextius Calvinus joins his predecessor's army rather than relieving it, a sign of Rome's intent to settle, and resumes operations against the Salluvii
15. 122 BC
    Sextius Calvinus founds Aquae Sextiae Salluviorum (Aix), at the foot of Entremont
16. 118 BC
    Founding of the Roman colony of Narbo Martius (Narbonne)
17. 109 BC then 105 BC
    The Cimbri reach the Sequani (109), then destroy two Roman armies near Orange on 6 October 105
18. 102 BC
    Victory of Marius over the Teutons, near Aix
19. 90 BC
    Revolt of the Salluvii, punished by the army of C. Cecilius
20. 83 BC
    New revolt, spreading to the Celtic tribes of the Transalpine region and to the north of Spain, put down by Valerius Flaccus
21. Spring 49 BC
    Caesar lays siege to Marseille, which capitulates after two naval battles
22. Years 40 BC
    Caesar founds colonies of veterans on provincial land, settled by Tiberius Nero: Narbonne for the Tenth Legion, Arles for the Sixth, along with Béziers, Orange and Vienne
23. Years 40 BC
    The territory of the Salluvii is divided, the western part going to Arles, the eastern part to Fréjus, the central part with Entremont remaining to the Salluvii around Aix
24. Years 40 BC
    Arles receives the name Colonia Julia Paterna Arelate Sextanorum and the greater part of the possessions taken from Marseille, Caesar making it the chief instrument of romanization in Transalpine Gaul
25. 15 March 44 BC
    Assassination of Caesar in the Senate, followed by thirteen years of wars down to Actium
26. 31 BC
    In the aftermath of Actium, Octavian stations part of his fleet at Fréjus
27. 22 BC
    Augustus definitively organizes the Gaulish provinces: creation of the Provincia Narbonensis
28. 6 BC
    End of the pacification of the Alpine borderlands, marked by Augustus's trophy at La Turbie
29. From the year 12
    Construction of the via Julia Augusta, the major route of the network, from Vada Sabatia near Savona to Fréjus by way of Vintimille, La Turbie and Cimiez
30. Under Augustus and the first emperors
    Creation of 37 colonies with Latin rights, including Aix, which later received Roman rights; Avignon, Cavaillon, Apt, Carpentras, Digne and Riez receive Latin rights
31. After 6 BC
    The pacified Alps form three provinces, that of the Alpes-Maritimes having its chief town at Cimiez, Nice having remained Massaliote
32. 177
    Martyrs of Lyon and Vienne: first Gaulish Christian communities attested with certainty
33. 212 or 213
    Edict of Caracalla, citizenship granted to all free men of the Empire; Marseille abandons its regime of timouchoi for the Latin municipal regime
34. Mid-3rd century (254 according to Wikipedia and Busquet)
    Attested presence of a bishop, or of an organised Church, at Arles
35. 3rd century
    Invasions ravage Gaul but entirely spare Narbonensis
36. 309-310
    Constantine lays siege to Marseille, where Maximian had taken refuge
37. 313
    Transfer of the Ostia mint to Arles
38. 1 August 314
    Council of Arles: five Provençal bishops sit there, those of Arles, Orange, Vaison, Marseille and Apt
39. Late 3rd century and 4th century
    Administrative reforms of Diocletian then of Constantine, division of the south of Gaul into five provinces
40. 353
    Second general council convened at Arles, at the height of the Arian quarrel
41. Around 375
    Birth of Narbonensis Secunda, by division of Viennensis, with its chief town at Aix
42. Late 4th century or early 5th century
    The praetorian prefecture of the Gauls is installed at Arles
43. 408-411
    Arles falls for a time into the hands of a usurper, another Constantine
44. 410
    Founding of the Lérins islands by Honoratus; sack of Rome by the Visigoths of Alaric
45. 413
    The Visigoths of Alaric cross south-eastern Gaul on their way to Spain
46. 416
    John Cassian founds religious communities of men and women at Marseille
47. 17 April 418
    Emperor Honorius convenes at Arles the council (the assembly) of the seven provinces
48. 426, 452, 458
    Unsuccessful Visigothic incursions on the eastern bank of the Rhône
49. Since 443
    The Burgundians, transferred to Savoy, progressively reach Valence, Die and Embrun
50. 451
    Battle of the Catalaunian Plains
51. 470
    The Burgundians reach the Durance
52. 475
    Orestes, master of the soldiers and former secretary to Attila, drives out Julius Nepos and makes his own son Romulus Augustulus, fourteen years old, emperor
53. 476
    Euric takes Arles then Marseille and becomes master of lower Provence; Busquet places the end of ancient Provence here
54. 481
    The Franks enter the scene and begin their advance, before conquering Gaul as far as between the Somme and the Loire
55. 484
    Death of Euric at Arles; the Burgundians immediately cross the Durance and become masters of the whole of Provence
56. 500
    Clovis attacks the Burgundians, prevails at first then fails before Avignon; Alaric II intervenes as mediator
57. 507
    Battle of Vouillé, death of Alaric II, Visigothic king, at the hands of Clovis, converted to orthodox Christianity
58. 508
    The Ostrogothic king Theoderic lifts the siege of Arles, enters Marseille and takes Avignon
59. 510
    Theoderic restores the praetorian prefecture of the Gauls at Arles; the Ostrogoths also retake Nîmes, Narbonne, Orange and Valence
60. 523
    Ostrogothic advance as far as the Isère; Theoderic buys Burgundian neutrality with what they still held in Provence, all of Provence passes to the Ostrogoths
61. 529
    Council of Vaison: creation of parish schools for rural clergy
62. 534
    The sons of Clovis subdue Burgundy and divide it between them; Theudebert lays siege to Arles, repulsed by the patrician Liberius
63. 535
    Execution of Amalasuntha, providing the pretext for the Gothic war
64. 536 (536-537 according to Wikipedia)
    The Franks seize the country, integration of Provence into the Frankish kingdom

Sources for this page

• Maurice Agulhon and Noël Coulet, Histoire de la Provence, Que sais-je?
• Philippe Blanchet, Le provençal, essai de description sociolinguistique et différentielle, Peeters, 1992.
• Raoul Busquet, Histoire de Provence.
• Wikipedia, article "Histoire de la Provence" and related articles.