Lugdunum - Founding of The Roman City

Founding of The Roman City

In 44 BC, ten years after the conquest of Gaul, Julius Caesar was assassinated and civil war erupted. According to the historian Dio Cassius, in 43 BC, the Roman Senate ordered Munatius Plancus and Lepidus, governors of central and Transalpine Gaul respectively, to found a city for a group of Roman refugees who had been expelled from Vienne (a town about 30 km to the south) by the Allobroges and were encamped at the confluence of the Saône and Rhône rivers. Dio Cassius says this was to keep them from joining Mark Antony and bringing their armies into the developing conflict. Epigraphic evidence suggests Munatius Plancus was the principal founder of Lugdunum.

Lugdunum seems to have had a population of several thousand at the time of its founding. The citizens were administratively assigned to the Galerian tribe. The earliest Roman buildings were located on the Fourvière heights above the Saône river. The Aqueduct of the Gier, completed in the 1st century AD, was the first of four aqueducts supplying water to the city.

Within 50 years Lugdunum increased in size and importance, becoming the administrative centre of Roman Gaul and Germany. By the end of the reign of Augustus, Strabo described Lugdunum as the junction of four major roads: south to Narbonensis, Massilia and Italy, north to the Rhine river and Germany, northwest to the Ocean (the English Channel), and west to Aquitania.

The proximity to the frontier with Germany made Lugdunum strategically important for the next four centuries, as a staging ground for further Roman expansion into Germany, as well as the de facto capital city and administrative center of the Gallic provinces. Its large and cosmopolitan population made it the commercial and financial heart of the northwestern provinces as well. The imperial mint established a branch in 15 BC, during the reign of Augustus, and produced coinage for the next three centuries (see picture).