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ALISE-STE-REINE (Village) COTE D' OR
Alesia (Alise-Ste-Reine) Cote d'Or, France.
An oppidum of a Gallic tribe, the Mandubii, situated 260 km SE of Paris and 65
km NW of Dijon. Here Caesar besieged Vercingetorix in 52 B.C.; a large Gallic
army tried in vain to raise the siege and Vercingetorix was forced to surrender.
This is the most famous episode of the Gallic Wars, thanks to Caesar's account
of it (BGall. 7.68-90).
Thereafter as a small Gallo-Roman town Alesia prospered in the 1st
and 2d c. A.D., owing largely to its craftsmen working in bronze, silver, and
iron (Plin. HN 34.162). Completely destroyed towards the end of the 2d c., the
city was rebuilt, perhaps after being abandoned for a few years. It was Christian
from the 3d c. on, and disappeared gradually in the Late Empire.
The oppidum occupied the plateau (2 km x 800 m maximum), on top of
Mont Auxois (Mons Alisiensis). Its natural defenses were formidable: rising between
the valleys of the Oze and the Ozerain, the slopes were topped by a steep limestone
cliff; only the W and B ends (La Pointe and La Croix-St-Charles) required artificial
defenses (at La Pointe there are traces of a dry stone wall). There is a water-bearing
stratum on the plateau (Croix-St-Charles springs) and some tributary springs at
the foot of the cliff, outside the oppidum but beyond the range of the Roman projectiles.
Moreover, Mont Auxois is ringed with hills of the same height (Montagne de Flavigny,
Mont Pennevelle, Montagne de Bussy, Mont Rea), except to the W where the plain
of Les Lauines begins (3000 Roman feet long).
Caesar's siege-works are known from his account, from excavations
(1861-65 by order of Emperor Napoleon III), and from some recent digs. The arms
and coins found in 1861-65 are in the Musee des Antiquites Nationales at St-Germain-en-Laye;
on the site itself can be seen casts of weapons, the outline of some of the Roman
trenches.
The Gallo-Roman city was also on the summit of Mont Auxois. The forum
and the area around it are the chief elements that have been excavated. A large
architectural complex has been uncovered (mid 2d c. A.D.) including a basilica
with three apses and a portico surrounding an earlier temple, some houses with
shops opening under colonnades in front of them, a theater (end of 1st c. A.D.)
with a cavea of more than a semicircle, and a house that probably was the corporate
headquarters of the bronze- and silver-workers, who also worked extensively in
iron. The principal streets, oriented E-W by the lay of the land, were frequently
lined with galleries of shops. At Croix-St-Charles there was a large sanctuary
built around a healing spring, with baths dedicated to Apollo Moritasgus. The
houses, built around a central courtyard on no regular plan, often had one room
heated by hypocaust and always had a basement with one or more niches, which served
as a sanctuary for domestic cults rather than as a cellar. Objects found on the
site are in the two museums in the village of Alise: like the monuments, they
reflect a mixed civilization, at once Gallic and Roman, in which the Gallic tradition
was for a long time the dominant influence, especially as to religion.
The Gallic oppidum seems to have been simply a fortress-refuge; not
until the early stages of the Roman occupation did a sizable population live there
permanently, and the huts of dry stone and mud were replaced by masonry buildings
during the 1st c.
In Frankish times only a church and a cemetery stood on the site.
In a Gallo-Roman well at Alesia a eucharistic service was found, made of lead
and identified by a chrism bearing several graffiti with the name Regina. The
service dates from the 4th c. A.D. and is one of the earliest pieces of archaeological
evidence for the cult of a saint in Gaul.
J. Le Gall, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Feb 2006 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
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