Eumenius of Autun

Abstract

Autun stands on the left bank of the Arroux, in the north-western corner of the département of Saône-et-Loire. Mont Beuvray, about fifteen miles away, roughly to the west, preserves the name of Bibracte, the capital of the Aedui. About forty years after the meeting at Bibracte of the assembly which, to the annoyance of the Aedui, conferred the command of the Gallic forces upon Vercingetorix (Caesar, B.G. vii. 63), the ancient capital was abolished. Its inhabitants were transferred to the newly established Augustodunum, a specimen of bureaucratic town-planning on an ambitious scale, perpetuating the name of the ruler under whom it was conceived. The Aedui had long been on specially friendly terms with Rome. Caesar (B.G. i. 33. 2) and Tacitus (Ann. xi. 25. 2.) refer to the ‘bond of brotherhood’ between the two states, and Tacitus (ibid.) mentions an ‘ancient treaty’, which must have been in existence as early as 121 B.C. (Livy, Epit. 61, ‘Aeduorum … sociorum populi Romani’). This ‘fraternity’ was still remembered in the fourth century A.D. (see Panegyrici Latini, viii (W. Baehrens, v), 2, ‘plurimis senatusconsultis fratres populi Romani appellati sunt’). That an anti-Roman party, however, existed is shown by the activities of Dumnorix (Caesar, B.G. i. 9. 16–20 and v. 6–7), and an Aeduan, Iulius Sacrouir, was one of the leaders in the Gallic revolt against Tiberius in A.D. 21 (Tacitus, Ann. iii. 40–46). Nothing in Tacitus' account of this event is more interesting than his evidence for the fact that in A.D. 21 Augustodunum was already what we should call a University town—‘Augustodunum caput gentis armatis cohortibus Sacrouir occupauerat ut nobilissimam Galliarum subolem, liberalibus studiis ibi operatam, et eo pignore parentes propinquosque eorum adiungeret; simul arma occulte fabricata iuuentuti dispertit’ (ibid. 43).