Narbonne and its Territory in Late Antiquity

From the Visigoths to the Arabs

Frank Riess

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780367882303
• eBook ISBN: 9781317090694
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

This work centres on the post-Roman period of Narbonne and its territory, up to its capture by the Arabs in 720, encompassing not only recent archaeological findings but also perspectives of French, Spanish and Catalan historiography that have fashioned distinct national narratives. Seeking to remove Narbonne from any subsequent birth of France, Catalonia and Spain, the book presents a geopolitical region that took shape from the late fifth century, evolving towards the end of the eighth century into an autonomous province of the nascent Carolingian Empire. Capturing this change throughout a 300-year period somewhat lacking in written sources, the book takes us beyond an exclusive depiction of the classical city to an examination of settlement in various forms. Discourses of literary criticism also lie behind aspects of this study, mapped around textual commentaries which highlight a more imaginative biography of a city. Narbonne's role as a point of departure and travel across the Mediterranean is examined through a reading of the correspondence of Paulinus of Nola and the writings of Sulpicius Severus, enabling the reader to gain a fuller picture of the city and its port. The topography of Narbonne in the fifth century is surveyed together with Bishop Rusticus's church-building programme. Later chapters emphasise the difficulties in presenting a detached image of Narbonne, as sources become mainly Visigothic, defining the city and its region as part of a centralised kingdom. Particular attention is given to the election of Liuva I as king in Narbonne in 568, and to the later division into upper and lower sub-kingdoms shared by Liuva and his brother Leovigild, a duality that persisted throughout the sixth and seventh centuries. The study therefore casts new light on Narbonne and its place within the Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo, suggesting that it was the capital of a territory with roots in the post-Roman settlement of barbarian successor states.

Chapter 1
Narbonne and the Roman World of the Fourth Century

The Geographical Context

The area that became the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis is today made up of Provence, Languedoc and Roussillon, with Foix to the west and the Dauphinée and Savoie to the north. This space came to form one province in the early Roman Empire because it is a well-defined geographical area (even if it was later divided up by the Diocletian reforms). Its natural boundaries are the Mediterranean to the south, the Alps to the east, the Cévennes and the Massif Central in the north and the Pyrenees to the south-west. The territory, included in pre-Roman times as part of Gaul and today forming part of France, was quite different from the country to the north, and has remained so to this day. This geographical difference has created cultural, political and religious barriers that constitute some of the issues treated in this book.1

We proceed to describe below the geographical setting of the space that became the city and the lagoon of Narbonne. This incorporates a discussion of the coastal changes that must have taken many centuries of evolution, creating adjustments to the site of the port’s evolving relationship between sea and land, and setting out the context for the later story of Roman Narbonne from the fourth century.

Narbonne and its surrounding area are made up of two contrasting mini-environments that followed different evolutionary rhythms up to antiquity. The first environment is the low calcareous mass of deposits of the Clape and Fontfroide formed in the Neogene, the last period leading up to present times probably dating back two million years (even though the Neogene is a period covering twenty-three million years). This mass, rising to a modest height of less than 300 m, has changed little in the latest phase of the Neogene period, known as the Holocene: approximately the last 10,000 years. Only the vegetation has been modified substantially by anthropogenic activity during the Neolithic, the period of the agricultural revolution, which began c. 8,000 years ago. The Holocene coincides roughly with the Neolithic and takes us into what is misleadingly termed the ‘historical’ period. This periodisation of history and civilisation contrasts with long-term evolutionary trends of geo-archaeology, which do not assume that all evolution is a preparation leading to man, civilisation and society. In the mid Pliocene these hills were thickly wooded, but erosion and agricultural activity transformed them into ubiquitous scrub, the garrigue. To the north of the Clape are the low-rising appendages of the Montagne Noire, the southern limit of the Massif Central, running along the northern side of the Narbonne-Castelnaudary corridor and guarding the entrance to the coastal plain from Aquitaine. To the south-east the higher ground of Fontfroide presages the hills of the Corbières rolling southwards to the Pyrenees. The rivers that drain from these higher mountain areas in the north and south lead to the corridor between these hills and flow out to the coastal plain.2

The second local environment corresponds to this riverine coastal plain linking the alluvial plains of the Aude and the Berre, the two major rivers, to the network of coastal lagoons and sandbars that run north to south from Cap Vendres to Cap Romarin just below Port-La-Nouvelle. This second environment of 250 km,2 barely exceeding 13 m in height at the highest points, has been created by the changing course of the rivers and sea level, assisted by heavy incidence of alluviation through silt deposited on the coast by the rivers, which shaped the outline of estuary, coastline and wetlands: a shifting space between land and sea.3 Travel and commercial exchange between this coastal environment and the lands upstream beyond the plain was carried out through the corridor that also contained the river Aude. The basin of the Atlantic river Garonne, centred on Toulouse, had been linked through trade to the Narbonne area since well before Roman times. The passage overland between the two rivers, from the Aude to the Garonne, rises gradually from the lowland at Narbonne to a height of 200 m, passing through the site of Carcassonne and Montferrand, both gateways for Narbonne: an entry to the Mediterranean and an exit to the Atlantic and Bordeaux. The arrival of the Romans modified regional trade networks, but the Aude-Garonne corridor remained the major route connecting the two seas. Montlaurès was an early centre for commerce linked to tin from Brittany in 4 BC, redistributed through the early port of Narbo. In the years of the Visigothic presence at Narbonne and even before the 460s when they gained control of the city, this gateway was important for military reasons as well as being an abiding trade route.4

The settlement of Narbonne, therefore, grew up at the intersection of these two local environments: the fluvial coastal system and the hilly ranges of the Clape and Corbières leading to the hinterland of the Massif Central and the Pyrenees. Together, these two natural formations were a region leading out to the Aquitanian plane and the Atlantic and a necessary barrier to entry into the Mediterranean. Having passed through the centre of the city the Via Domitia ran southwards, via Elne and over the Pyrenees, whilst leading eastwards to Nîmes, Arles and Italy. The western escape corridor contained the Via Aquitania, passing Carcassonne and then Toulouse, but remains difficult to trace properly.5 Narbonne’s location from a military and economic perspective represented a crucial meeting point, a crossroads providing entry into Gallia and Hispania but also guarding these. The city was called ‘a watch-tower and bulwark of the Roman people’ by Cicero in one of his addresses.6 In the early fifth century, Narbonne became a central objective of the Visigoths, who failed to obtain the city in the settlement of 418, as we shall see. These land routes were paralleled, possibly exceeded, in importance by sea routes along the Ligurian coast to Italy, south to Spain and Baetica for the oil trade, and across the open sea to Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. The port and the trade routes lent an early prominence to Narbonne, only equalled in importance in Roman Gaul by the junction of Lyon for the networks of Rome.7

With regard to changes in the coastline, any assessment needs to take into account the precise position of the Aude, its altering course over time, the extension and depth of the lagoons, and the corresponding movement of the coastline. The reconstruction of such hydrological and topographical changes has been mainly based on geotechnical soundings and fossils found on the surface of the coastal plain. The interpretation of this data is still not conclusive, but has allowed the post-glacial period to be mapped out in five broad chronological periods up to the present. At the period of its maximum extension around 10,000 years ago, the commencement of the Holocene, the promontory of the site of Narbonne was virtually an island and the Clape Mountain was also an island cut off from the mainland to the north. The waters extended up to Capestang and Sallèles d’Aude some 18 km from the present shore. Round the northern part of the Clape was a channel of 3 km separating the island from the mainland where it encompassed the area from Port Vendres, the whole expanse leading to a vast lagoon, far larger than today. With the beginning of the Holocene a steady process ensued, broken up by changes and interruptions, where the shoreline advanced seawards owing to inshore deposition of river sediment accumulating at a faster run-rate than sediment removal: the process of progradation. This was counterbalanced by the end of the rise in sea levels.

The dating of this phase has been aided by recent deep soundings taken at Castelou, Capestang and other lagoons.8 However, the eventual closing up of the lagoons with a strip of sandbars cannot be accurately dated, although it can be inferred from an examination of shipwrecks and investigation of the ports. The lagoon of Narbonne shrunk in size and fragmented into several enclosed water areas. Through analysis of sediments, the progressive infill of the underwater beds can be measured, making the lagoon of Bages-Sigean, for example, half its original size at the mid Holocene. The rate of deposit today runs at 2 m tpa. Some idea of the rate of infill of the land level can be deduced from the channel of the Aude between the Clape and Narbonne, which has received levels of sedimentation 15 m high over the last 10,000 years.9 Soundings and liftings in the lagoon of Bages in 1995–96 give a record of the depth of the north side in antiquity. These soundings around the lagoon enable various levels to be plotted: for example a depth level of 3.3 m around 2 BC rising to 2.5 m at the middle of the first century AD. This makes it possible to draw a tentative graph of the speed of infill of the bed. These results suggest some pronounced peaks of faster sedimentation at the port of La Nautique (30 BC–AD 70).10

Such changes have therefore been a combination of rising sea levels, deposition of sediment causing infill, climate change and erosion both natural and anthropogenic (agriculture, deforestation). When intensive agriculture or cutting of trees is carried out, the removal of cover from the hills leads to run-off of soil into the rivers.11 The variations in sea levels and their causes are not conclusive: one scenario proposes 700–300 BC as a period of warming and heavy rains that drove sea levels up 1.5–2 m. After this date the sea level fell because of a drop in temperatures, though rainfall remained high. This would have caused the river to meander less in the flat coastal plain. The idea of eustatic variations of sea level (general change of sea level) has remained problematic. This concerns the rise and fall of sea levels themselves, not actions from the land. What effect would this have had on the coast at Narbonne? Sea level alterations must have combined with the changing rate of silting to produce the movement from an open bay described by Avienus in Ora Maritima and the coastal context of Pomponius Mela examined below.12 Such transformations can be seen differently if measured for short periods or viewed over long expanses of time. Recent excavations and soundings suggest waters surrounding Narbonne had mostly receded by the Roman period (around 1 BC), but that large wet areas remained, and that the Clape may have still been an island before antiquity. If the promontory of Narbonne was still partly surrounded by water, this reinforces the notion that vessels could anchor right by the city, where there may have been docks if the water draught was 1–2 m. The question of whether a city port existed in the Roman period would depend on these waters still reaching the city, or a river that was able to take deep-water vessels. This raises more questions than answers. First there is the problem of the digging of a canal, the Robine: did this allow the establishment of a river port? Second, could the probable body of water of the antique lagoon, presumed at the south side of the Roman city, have rendered N...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Maps and Illustrations
• Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Narbonne and the Roman World of the Fourth Century
• 2 Christian and Classical Histories of Narbonne
• 3 Sidonius and the Passing of Roman Narbonne
• 4 The Visigothic Kingdom: From Liuva I to Reccared
• 5 The North-East and the Territory of Narbonne
• 6 Rebellion on the Border: The Regnum Orientalis
• 7 The Arabs and the Fall of Narbonne
• 8 Narbonne: The First and Last City
• Bibliography
• Index