Lugdunum

or Lugudunum (Lyon, Rhône, France)

Situated at the confluence of the rivers Rhodanus (Rhône) and Arar (Saône). In pre-Roman times there were two settlements, one of Fourvière hill above the right bank of the Arar—centered on a sanctuary of the Gallic god Lug—and the other in the plain at Condate, beside the point where in ancient times the two rivers met.

A Roman colony was founded on the Fourvière hill in 43 BC by Lucius Munatius Plancus, governor of Further Gaul (Gallia Comata), who issued a coinage inscribed with the colony's three titles, Copia (`plenty’) and Felix and Munatia. Under Augustus (31 BC–AD 14) the city became the capital of his province of Gallia Lugdunensis, the hub of the country's road system, the seat of the provincial council of sixty Gallic communities, and the federal center of the cult of Rome and Augustus, of which the joint altar, serving the two Gauls, is depicted on Augustan coinage; only two columns, of Egyptian granite, survive. Lugdunum became a preeminent imperial mint, protected by a city cohort (cohors urbana), until the reign of Gaius (Caligula, AD 37–41) or later.

Claudius was born at the city in 10 BC. Strabo credited it with the largest population of any town in Gaul after Narbo (Narbonne), and Seneca the Younger testified to its magnificence and importance, only briefly impeded by a fire in AD 65 and involvement in the Civil Wars of 68–69, which exacerbated long-standing rivalries with neighboring Vienna (Vienne). There is evidence of widely varied commercial and industrial activities at Lugdunum, which was not only a major clearing house of wheat, wine, and oil and lumber, but a large manufacturing center for export to the Rhineland and elsewhere.

The city's immigrants from the east rapidly introduced oriental pagan cults; and it took an early lead in the persecution of its Christian community (177). During the civil war (196–97) between Septimius Severus (whose son Caracalla was born at Lugdunum) and Clodius Albinus (who made it his provisional capital) its buildings suffered partial destruction. In the breakaway state established by Postumus in western Europe, Lugdunum probably served as a mint for the regional emperors (or usurpers) Laelian and Marius (268), and although plundered soon afterward (and again in the early fourth century) it retained this monetary role on many occasions after the central empire had resumed control, although in the later period—when power shifted to Augusta Trevirorum (Trier)—it was merely the capital of the small province of Lugdunensis Prima. In 470 the Burgundians took over the city.

The theater of Lugdunum, the oldest in Gaul, was built under Augustus in 16–14 BC and enlarged by Hadrian (AD 117–38), a major inspirer of local construction—as current excavations continue to reveal—to whose reign a smaller theater (Odeon) is also attributable, as well as the amplified version of the amphitheater dating back to Tiberius (AD 19), in which Christian martyrs later met their deaths. Hadrian also converted the Altar of Rome and Augustus into a Temple of Rome and the Augusti, and restored and enlarged the Augustan Old Forum (Forum Vetus, from which Fourvière takes its name), while a second forum was built by Antoninus Pius (138–61) on the nearby La Sarra plateau.

Beside the Old Forum stood two temples, the largest of which was perhaps the Capitolium (dedicated to the Capitoline Triad, comprising Jupiter, Juno and Minerva); while other shrines that have now been located were devoted to the worship of Mercury, Cybele (now confirmed), the Matres Augustae, a river-goddess, and Mars. The peristyled, frescoed Villa of Egnatius Paulus bears the alternative name of the Villa of the Mosaics because of its polychrome floor consisting of ninety-one panels with geometric designs (one of more than a hundred magnificent mosaics excavated in the Lugdunum region). At the Condate settlement an industrial quarter has disclosed bronze foundries, potteries and glassmaking factories. Supplementary urban centers have been discovered on the Canabae island (Ainay, Place Bellecour) and ports (Choulans and then Saint Georges). Aqueducts of Augustan (two), Claudian and Hadrianic date have also been traced, the last named connected with reservoirs by advanced hydraulic arrangements making use of siphoning techniques.

In addition to several pagan necropoleis, there are Christian cemeteries, the earliest of which (on Saint-Irénée hill) was the burial place of the leading theologian Irenaeus, bishop of Lugdunum c 178–202, who was interred there together with two martyrs. The Basilica of the Maccabees (c 390), described by Sidonius Apollinaris, has disappeared, but remains of a number of fourth and fifth century churches and monasteries survive, including one that lies beneath the Cathedral of Saint Jean and formed part, according to recent excavations, of a complex of episcopal buildings. (This Lugdunum [Lyon] is to be distinguished from Lugdunum Convenarum [Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges, Haute-Garonne]).