Living with gods

Around the Gallo-Roman sanctuary of the Gué-de-Sciaux

Gallo-Roman society and religion

Wars transformed societies and their religions, as it happened during the conquest of the Gaul led by Caesar between 58 and 50 BC.

Violent and fast, it marked the definitive integration of Celtic communities in a Roman Empire in expansion. After a pacific period, badly documented by sources, August ended the work of his adoptive father organizing “Gallic” populations in provinces and cities. This reform took a decisive turning point with the inventory of goods and people led by Drusus in 13 BC. It ended with the foundation of a cult of Rome and August in 12 BC in Lugdunum (Lyon), gathering each year the local high aristocracy from the sixty cities of the three Provinces in Gaul.

The Augustan period was decisive in the transformation of the Gaul territories and their rapprochement with Rome, the centre of power. The former local communities have been organized in cities, independent little states managed according to the Roman model by municipal assemblies and magistrates established in administrative centres as Poitiers/Lemonum in the Pictons’ city or Limoges/Augustoritum in the Lemovices’ one. Those political transformations led people to live differently in the new cultural surroundings, which modified the religious organization.

Henceforth, the local Senate managed the community’s religious calendar, selected the protective gods (Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, and Apollo), associated with the Emperor and with some ancestral gods, took charge of the destiny of the Gallic states replaced by new civic communities.

Former gods received the name from their Roman equivalent or new affectations. Some divinities have been brought in new towns; from now on, the economic development was assured by Mercury and the political learning by Jupiter... The cult of Rome and August took place in administrative centres’ forum with other divine powers which protected the Emperor and the Roman Empire.

In cities and villages established in the cities’ territory, mixed pantheons associated local gods and Roman gods.

It explains the formation of a sanctuary in the burg of the Gué-de-Sciaux, gathering Apollo, the god who could get rid of diseases, and Mercury, the god of profits; these are vital domains for the human community.