Vienna (ancient city in Southern Gaul)

(Vienne)

A city in southern Gaul (Isère, France) on a bend of the river Rhodanus (Rhône), near its juncture with the Gère and the Gier on its left and right banks respectively, at a meeting point of east-west and north-south highways. The acropolis on the heights of Sainte-Blandine was the capital of the tribe of the Allobroges, whose annexation by Rome in 121 was accompanied by the creation of the province of Gallia Narbonensis; a tribal revolt in 62–61 was severely repressed. Julius Caesar (or as some believe Antony) settled veterans at Vienna, and probably conferred on it the rank of Latin colony (in which the elected officials became Roman citizens), but the city lost its privileges during the disturbances of subsequent years.

Augustus revived its fortunes, and full Roman citizenship, under the title of Colonia Julia Augusta Florentina, was conferred either by him or by Gaius (AD 37–41) or Claudius (41–54), who praised the colony's distinction in a speech to the senate in 47/8. When Vindex rose against Nero in 68, Vienna was the headquarters of the rebellion—in marked contrast to its always unfriendly neighbors, the people of Lugdunum (Lyon), who remained loyal to the emperor—and in the following year the town barely escaped destruction from Vitellius' general Valens during his advance through Gaul into Italy.

During the second century it reached the height of its prosperity, providing Rome with a number of consuls and other high officials. A persecution of the Christian community took place under Marcus Aurelius in 177. Vienna suffered in the German invasions of 275. But in the later empire it became the capital both of the province of Viennensis and of the administrative diocese of the Seven Provinces, to which that province belonged, and was the second city of the entire Gallo-German region after Treviri (Trier, formerly Augusta Trevirorum), until superseded by Arelate (Arles) at the end of the fourth century. The Rhône fleet was at Vienna c 440. It was there, in 411, that Constans II, joint usurper with his father Constantine III, was captured by their own former general Gerontius, and put to death. The place was occupied by the Burgundians c 460/68 and, according to Ammianus Marcellinus, became one of their principal centers until they succumbed to the Franks (534).

The first of Vienna's walls was built by Augustus c 16/15 BC; one of its gates is depicted on a contemporary local coin, behind the prow of a ship. After the German devastations of AD 275 a second wall was erected, enclosing a much smaller perimeter. A well-preserved temple of Augustus and Livia was dedicated in the emperor's lifetime, then rededicated by Claudius, and subsequently modified. Augustus' theater at Vienna (now restored), was the second largest in Gaul, after Augustodunum (Autun), accommodating between eleven and thirteen thousand spectators. Vienna also possessed a smaller, covered theater (Odeon), and a third theater, unique in Gaul, for the performance of Mystery plays in connection with the cult of the Magna Mater (Cybele), associated with a complex of other buildings relating to her worship.

A circus on the banks of the Rhône, south of the walls, was built of masonry soon after AD 100—probably replacing an earlier wooden structure—and is notable for a square-based pyramid constructed after 275 to adorn the center of the axial rib (spina). Vienna received water by way of at least ten aqueducts, five parallel to one another on the left (south) bank of the Gère; many traces of these structures still survive. A five-arched bridge linked the official section of the city on the left (east) bank of the Rhône with further zones on the opposite bank, comprising a large residential quarter, a commercial and industrial area, and harbor installations at Saint-Romain-en-Gal, shown by recent excavations to date back to the early first century AD.