Roman Gaul
By the mid-2nd century BC, Rome was trading heavily with the Greek colony of Massilia (modern Marseille) and entered into an alliance with them, by which Rome agreed to protect the town from local Gauls, including the nearby Aquitani and from sea-borne Carthaginians and other rivals, in exchange for land that the Romans wanted in order to build a road to Hispania to improve troop movements to its provinces there.
In 390 BC, the Gauls had sacked Rome, which left an existential dread of barbarian conquest the Romans never forgot.
Into this picture came the rising general Julius Caesar, who had ensured himself the position of Governor of both Transalpine and Cisalpine Gaul.
He sought to pay off debts and find glory for himself, and so began a series of aggressive campaigns to conquer the Gallic tribes.
[5] The wars began with a conflict over the migration of the Helvetii in 58 BC, which drew in neighboring tribes and the Germanic Suebi.
In 55 BC, he sought to boost his public image, and undertook first of their kind expeditions across the Rhine river and the English Channel.
[5] At the end of the Gallic Wars, the Gauls had not been entirely subjugated and were not yet a formal part of the Empire, but that task was not Caesar's and he left that to his successors.
In 40 BC, during the Second Triumvirate, Lepidus was given responsibility for Gallia Narbonensis (along with Hispania and Africa), while Mark Antony was given the balance of Gaul.
Many other writers were from the region of Cisalpine Gaul, which was part of Italy, including Virgil, Caecilius Statius, Catullus and Pliny the Elder.
In the Crisis of the Third Century around 260, Postumus established a short-lived Gallic Empire, which included the Iberian Peninsula and Britannia, in addition to Gaul itself.
In 286–7 Carausius, commander of the Classis Britannica, the fleet of the English Channel, declared himself Emperor of Britain and northern Gaul.
[9] In 293 emperor Constantius Chlorus isolated Carausius by besieging the port of Gesoriacum (Boulogne-sur-Mer) and invaded Batavia in the Rhine delta, held by his Frankish allies, and reclaimed Gaul.
A migration of Celts from Britain appeared in the 4th century in Armorica led by the legendary king Conan Meriadoc.
[citation needed] The Goths, who had sacked Rome in 410, established a capital in Toulouse and in 418 succeeded in being accepted by Honorius as foederati and rulers of the Aquitanian province in exchange for their support against the Vandals.
However, certain aspects of the ancient Celtic culture continued after the fall of Roman administration and the Domain of Soissons, a remnant of the Empire, survived from 457 to 486.
[12] These administrative groupings would be taken over by the Romans in their system of local control, and these civitates would also be the basis of France's eventual division into ecclesiastical bishoprics and dioceses, which would remain in place—with slight changes—until the French Revolution.
It remains to this day poorly understood: current knowledge of the Celtic religion is based on archaeology and via literary sources from several isolated areas such as Ireland and Wales.
The Romans easily imposed their administrative, economic, artistic (especially in terms of monumental art and architecture) and literary culture.
[citation needed] Gaulish was held to be attested by a quote from Gregory of Tours written in the second half of the 6th century,[15] which describes how a shrine "called 'Vasso Galatae' in the Gallic tongue" was destroyed and burnt to the ground.
