Remi

The Remi (Gaulish: Rēmi, 'the first, the princes') were a Belgic tribe dwelling in the Aisne, Vesle and Suippe river valleys during the Iron Age and the Roman period.

[13] The rural areas of the Aisne valley were densely occupied and structured around trade relations with Mediterranean merchants, with large farms held by local aristocrats and bordered by numerous hamlets.

For instance, the oppidum of Saint-Thomas (Bibrax) was abandoned in the middle of the 1st century BC, whereas Le Moulin à Vent, which bordered the trade route between Reims and Trier, developed into the town of Voncq, attested as Vongo vicus in the 3rd c.

However, those cultural changes emerged later among the Remi: whereas new funerary customs (from burial to cremation) are noticeable from 250 to 200 BC onward on the territories of the Ambi or Bellovaci, incineration did not occur before 200–150 in the Aisne valley.

[19] By the mid-1st century BC, the Remi already possessed a structured economic system with monetary issuance, since they had prospered from their local agricultural production and from trade between northern Gaul and the Mediterranean area.

A local landed nobility founded on agricultural and mining possessions subsequently emerged in the Aisne valley, and the Remi elite came to be influenced by the Latin culture through contacts with Roman merchants.

[14] During the Gallic Wars (58–50 BC), under the leadership of Iccius and Andecombogius, the Remi allied themselves with Julius Caesar: The Remi, the Belgic tribe nearest to Gaul, sent as deputies to him Iccius and Andecumborius, the first men of the community, to tell him that they surrendered themselves and all their stuff to the protection and power of Rome; that they had neither taken part with the rest of the Belgae, nor conspired against Rome; and that they were ready to give hostages, to do his commands, to receive him in their towns, and to assist him with corn and everything else.

[citation needed] When the Belgae besieged the oppidum of Bibrax (Saint-Thomas), defended by the Remi and their leader Iccius at the Battle of the Axona (57 BC), Caesar sent Numidian, Cretan and Balearic soldiers to avoid the seizure of the stronghold.

[22] A founding myth preserved or invented by Flodoard of Reims (d. 966) makes Remus, brother of Romulus, the eponymous founder of the Remi, having escaped their fraternal rivalry instead of dying in Latium.

[12][22] In the second part of the 2nd century BC, as the result of early trade contacts with the Mediterranean world, and encouraged by a political will to build economic relations with Rome, the Remi were the first people to issue coins in Gallia Belgica.