
The Aulerci Cenomani (or Aulerci Cenomanni) were a Gallic tribe dwelling in the modern
Sarthe
Sarthe () is a department of the French region of Pays de la Loire, and the province of Maine, situated in the '' Grand-Ouest'' of the country. It is named after the river Sarthe, which flows from east of Le Mans to just north of Angers. It ha ...
department during the Iron Age and the Roman period. The Cenomani were the most powerful of the
Aulerci tribes.
Name
Attestations
They are mentioned as ''Aulercos'' and ''Aulercis, Cenomanis totidem'' ''
ll the same' by
Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar (12 or 13 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC) was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in a civil war. He ...
(mid-1st c. BC), ''Aulerci .... Cenomani'' by
Pliny (1st c. AD), as ''Au̓lírkioioi̔ oi̔ Kenománnoi'' (Αὐλίρκιοιοἱ οἱ Κενομάννοι) by
Ptolemy
Claudius Ptolemy (; , ; ; – 160s/170s AD) was a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were important to later Byzantine science, Byzant ...
(2nd c. AD), and as ''Ceromannos'' in the ''
Notitia Dignitatum
The (Latin for 'List of all dignities and administrations both civil and military') is a document of the Late Roman Empire that details the administrative organization of the Western and the Eastern Roman Empire. It is unique as one of very ...
'' (5th c. AD).
[, s.v. ''Aulerci Cenomani''.]
An unrelated tribe living near
Massalia
Massalia (; ) was an ancient Greek colonisation, Greek colony (''apoikia'') on the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean coast, east of the Rhône. Settled by the Ionians from Phocaea in 600 BC, this ''apoikia'' grew up rapidly, and its population se ...
, in southern Gaul, was also named
Cenomani. A part of the Cenomani or another
homonym tribe settled in
Cisalpine Gaul
Cisalpine Gaul (, also called ''Gallia Citerior'' or ''Gallia Togata'') was the name given, especially during the 4th and 3rd centuries BC, to a region of land inhabited by Celts (Gauls), corresponding to what is now most of northern Italy.
Afte ...
after the Celtic invasion of the Italian Peninsula in the early 4th century BC.
Etymology
The meaning of the
Gaulish
Gaulish is an extinct Celtic languages, Celtic language spoken in parts of Continental Europe before and during the period of the Roman Empire. In the narrow sense, Gaulish was the language of the Celts of Gaul (now France, Luxembourg, Belgium, ...
ethnonym
An ethnonym () is a name applied to a given ethnic group. Ethnonyms can be divided into two categories: exonyms (whose name of the ethnic group has been created by another group of people) and autonyms, or endonyms (whose name is created and used ...
''Cenomani'' remains uncertain. The prefix probably stems from the root ''ceno-'', which could have meant 'far, long'. The second element may derive from ''manos'' ('good'), or else from the root ''*menH''- ('to go'), with ''Cenomani'' as 'the far-going one'.
Pierre-Yves Lambert
Pierre-Yves Lambert (born 30 May 1949) is a French linguist and scholar of Celtic studies. He is a researcher at the CNRS and a lecturer at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Celtic linguistics and philology. Lambert is the director of the j ...
has also proposed a connection to a verbal stem *''cene''/''o''- (cf.
OIr. ''cinid'' 'to spring from, to descend from',
Welsh ''cenedl'' 'family'). The general meaning would be 'the begotten ones'.
The city of
Le Mans
Le Mans (; ) is a Communes of France, city in Northwestern France on the Sarthe (river), Sarthe River where it meets the Huisne. Traditionally the capital of the Provinces of France, province of Maine (province), Maine, it is now the capital of ...
, attested c. 400 AD as ''Ceromannos'' (''Cenomannis'' in 1101, ''*Cemans'', then ''Le Mans'' from the 12th c.), and the
Maine
Maine ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the United States, and the northeasternmost state in the Contiguous United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Provinces and ...
region, attested in the 6th c. AD as ''in Cinomanico'' (''in'' ''pago Celmanico'' in 765, ''*Cemaine'', then ''Le Maine'' from the 12th c.), are named after the Gallic tribe.
Geography
The tribe lived west of the
Carnutes
The Carnutes or Carnuti (Gaulish: 'the horned ones'), were a Gallic tribe dwelling in an extensive territory between the Sequana (Seine) and the Liger (Loire) rivers during the Iron Age and the Roman period.
Name
They are mentioned as ''Carn ...
between the
Seine
The Seine ( , ) is a river in northern France. Its drainage basin is in the Paris Basin (a geological relative lowland) covering most of northern France. It rises at Source-Seine, northwest of Dijon in northeastern France in the Langres plat ...
and the
Loire
The Loire ( , , ; ; ; ; ) is the longest river in France and the 171st longest in the world. With a length of , it drains , more than a fifth of France's land, while its average discharge is only half that of the Rhône.
It rises in the so ...
.
Their chief town was ''Vindinum'' or ''Suindinum'' (corrupted into 'Subdinnum'), afterwards ''Civitas Cenomanorum'' (whence
Le Mans
Le Mans (; ) is a Communes of France, city in Northwestern France on the Sarthe (river), Sarthe River where it meets the Huisne. Traditionally the capital of the Provinces of France, province of Maine (province), Maine, it is now the capital of ...
, and much later the
Cenomanian
The Cenomanian is, in the International Commission on Stratigraphy's (ICS) geological timescale, the oldest or earliest age (geology), age of the Late Cretaceous epoch (geology), Epoch or the lowest stage (stratigraphy), stage of the Upper Cretace ...
geological age) and later ''Cenomani'' as in the
Notitia Dignitatum
The (Latin for 'List of all dignities and administrations both civil and military') is a document of the Late Roman Empire that details the administrative organization of the Western and the Eastern Roman Empire. It is unique as one of very ...
, the original name of the town, as usual in the case of Gallic cities, being replaced by that of the people.
History
According to
Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar (12 or 13 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC) was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in a civil war. He ...
(''Bell. Gall.'' vii.75.3), they assisted
Vercingetorix
Vercingetorix (; ; – 46 BC) was a Gauls, Gallic king and chieftain of the Arverni tribe who united the Gauls in a failed revolt against Roman Republic, Roman forces during the last phase of Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars. After surrendering to C ...
in the great rising (52 BC) with a force of 5000 men. Under
Augustus
Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus (born Gaius Octavius; 23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14), also known as Octavian (), was the founder of the Roman Empire, who reigned as the first Roman emperor from 27 BC until his death in A ...
they formed a ''civitas stipendiaria'' (Roman
tributary
A tributary, or an ''affluent'', is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream (''main stem'' or ''"parent"''), river, or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean. Tributaries, and the main stem river into which they ...
town) of
Gallia Lugdunensis
() was a province of the Roman Empire in what is now the modern country of France, part of the Celtic territory of Gaul formerly known as Celtica. It is named after its capital Lugdunum (today's Lyon), possibly Roman Europe's major city west of ...
, and in the 4th century part of ''Gallia Lugdunensis III''.
Cisalpine Cenomani
There was another people called
Cenomani that held extensive territory in
Cisalpine Gaul
Cisalpine Gaul (, also called ''Gallia Citerior'' or ''Gallia Togata'') was the name given, especially during the 4th and 3rd centuries BC, to a region of land inhabited by Celts (Gauls), corresponding to what is now most of northern Italy.
Afte ...
; however, there is disagreement whether they are one and the same people. The orthography and the quantity of the penultimate vowel of Cenomani have given rise to discussion. According to
Arbois de Jubainville, the Cenomni of Italy are not identical with the
Cehomni (or Cenomanni) of
Gaul
Gaul () was a region of Western Europe first clearly described by the Roman people, Romans, encompassing present-day France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and parts of Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, and Northern Italy. It covered an area of . Ac ...
. In the case of the latter, the survival of the syllable ''man'' in "Le Mans" is due to the stress laid on the vowel; had the vowel been short and unaccented, it would have disappeared. In Italy, Cenomani is the name of a people; in Gaul, merely a surname of the Aulerci.
William Smith adopts the difference, placing the peoples in two separate articles in his ''
Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography
The ''Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography'' is the last in a series of classical dictionaries edited by the English scholar William Smith (1813–1893), following '' A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities'' and the '' Dictionary of G ...
''. On the other hand, if the tradition recorded by
Cato (in
Pliny, ''Nat. Hist.'' iii. 19. s. 23) is true, that the Cenomani formed a settlement near Massilia (modern
Marseille
Marseille (; ; see #Name, below) is a city in southern France, the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Departments of France, department of Bouches-du-Rhône and of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Regions of France, region. Situated in the ...
), among the
Volcae
The Volcae () were a Gallic tribal confederation constituted before the raid of combined Gauls that invaded Macedonia c. 270 BC and fought the assembled Greeks at the Battle of Thermopylae in 279 BC. Tribes known by the name Volcae were found si ...
, this could indicate a route that the Cenomani took to Cisalpine Gaul in
Italy
Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...
. According to Livy, the Cenomani of Cisalpine Gaul arrived after the expedition of
Bellovesus
Bellovesus (Gaulish: 'Worthy of Power') is a legendary Gallic chief of the Bituriges, said to have lived ca. 600 BC. According to a legend recounted by Livy, the king Ambigatus sent his sister's sons Bellovesus and Segovesus in search of new la ...
, led by
Helitovius, and are credited with the foundation of Brixia, or
Brescia
Brescia (, ; ; or ; ) is a city and (municipality) in the region of Lombardy, in Italy. It is situated at the foot of the Alps, a few kilometers from the lakes Lake Garda, Garda and Lake Iseo, Iseo. With a population of 199,949, it is the se ...
, and
Verona
Verona ( ; ; or ) is a city on the Adige, River Adige in Veneto, Italy, with 255,131 inhabitants. It is one of the seven provincial capitals of the region, and is the largest city Comune, municipality in the region and in Northeast Italy, nor ...
.
References
Bibliography
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{{Authority control
Historical Celtic peoples
Gauls
Cenomani
Tribes involved in the Gallic Wars