Lugdunensis

Lugdunensis, a province of the Roman Empire, one of the “Three Gauls” called the Gallia Comata. It extended from the capital of Lugdunum (modern Lyon) northwest to all the land between the Seine and the Loire rivers to Brittany and the Atlantic Ocean. It included what came to be Paris.

The area was conquered by Julius Caesar during the Gallic Wars (58–50 bc) and became a Roman province under the emperor Augustus. It included most of the region that the Greeks, from their colonies on the Mediterranean coast, had called Celtica (Celtica south of the Loire was detached and combined with other districts to form the province of Aquitania, or Aquitaine). The area was too large and strong to lose its individuality; it was also too rural and too far from the Mediterranean to be Romanized as fully and quickly as neighbouring Narbonensis. Even the Celtic language lingered on in forest districts into the 4th century ad and persisted in Brittany into modern times. Town life, however, grew. The villages of the tribes became practically, though not officially, municipalities, and many of these towns reached considerable size and contained magnificent public buildings. But they attest their tribal relations by their appellations, which are commonly drawn from the name of the tribe and not of the town itself; to this day Amiens, Paris, and others perpetuate the memory of tribes like the Ambiani and the Parisii.