Carnutes

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Carnutes

The Carnutes (Latin Carnuti), a powerful Celt

Celt

Celts , is a modern term used to describe any of the European peoples who spoke, or speak, a Celtic languages. The term is also used in a wider sense to describe the Modern Celts of those peoples, notably those who participate in a Celtic culture....
ic people in the heart of independent Gaul

Gaul

Gaul is the name used for the region of Western Europe comprising part of present day northern Italy, France, Belgium, western Switzerland and the parts of the Netherlands and Germany on the west bank of the River Rhine....
, dwelled in a particularly extensive territory between the Sequana (Seine

Seine

The Seine is a slow flowing major river and commercial waterway within Regions of France of ?le-de-France and Haute-Normandie in France and famous as a romantic backdrop in photographs of Paris, France....
) and the Liger (Loire

Loire

Loire is an departments of France in the east-central part of France occupying the River Loire's upper reaches....
) rivers. Their lands later corresponded to the dioceses of Chartres, Orleans and Blois, that is, the greater part of the modern departments of Eure-et-Loir, Loiret, Loir-et-Cher. The territory of the Carnutes had the reputation among Roman observers of being the political and religious center of the Gallic nations.

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The Carnutes (Latin Carnuti), a powerful Celt

Celt

Gaul

Seine

Loire

Orléans

Orl?ans is a city in north-central France, about 130 km southwest of Paris. It is the capital of the Loiret Departments of France and of the Centre R?gion in France....
, where a bridge crossed the Loire, and Autricum (or Carnutes, thus Chartres

Chartres

Chartres is a town and Communes of France and capital of the Eure-et-Loir Departments of France in north-central France It is located southwest of Paris in central France....
). The great annual Druidic assembly mentioned by Caesar took place in one or the other of these towns. Livy

Livy

Titus Livius , known as Livy in English language, was a Ancient Rome historian who wrote a monumental history of Rome, Ab Urbe Condita, from its founding through the reign of Augustus in Livy's own time....
's history records the legendary tradition that the Carnutes had been one of the tribes which accompanied Bellovesus

Bellovesus

Bellovesus was a legendary Gallic king. He lived around 600 BCE and is remembered for invading northern Italy with his people during the reign of Tarquinius Priscus, although archeology would associate Gallic expansion into Italy to around 500 BCE....
in his invasion of Italy during the reign of Tarquinius Priscus

Tarquinius Priscus

Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, also called Tarquin the Elder or Tarquin I, was the fifth Kings of Rome from 616 BC to 579 BC. His wife was Tanaquil....
.

In the 1st century BCE, the Carnutes minted coins, usually struck with dies, but sometimes cast in an alloy of high tin content called "potin." Their coinage turns up in hoards well outside their home territories, in some cases so widely distributed in the finds that the place of coinage is not secure. The iconography

Iconography

Iconography is the branch of art history which studies the identification, description, and the interpretation of the content of images. The word iconography literally means "image writing", and comes from the Ancient Greek e???? and ??afe?? ....
of their numismatics

Numismatics

Numismatics is the study or collection of currency, including coins, tokens, paper money, and related objects. While numismatists are often characterized as students or collectors of coins, the discipline also includes a much larger study of payment-media used to resolve debts and the exchange of Good s....
includes the motives of heads with traditional Celtic torc

Torc

A torc, also spelled torq or torque, is a rigid piece of personal adornment made from twisted metal. It can be worn as an arm ring, a circular neck ring, or a necklace that is open-ended at the front....
s; a wolf with a star; a galloping horse; the triskelion

Triskelion

A triskelion or triskele is a symbol consisting of 3 #In human culture interlocked spirals, or three bent human legs, or any similar symbol with three protrusions and a threefold rotational symmetry....
. Many coins show an eagle, with the lunar crescent, with a serpent

Serpent (symbolism)

Serpent is a word of Latin origin that is commonly used in a specifically mythology or religion context, signifying a snake that is to be regarded not as a mundane natural phenomenon nor as an object of scientific zoology, but as the bearer of some symbolic value....
or with a wheel with six or four spokes or a pentagram

Pentagram

A pentagram is the shape of a five-pointed star drawn with five straight strokes. The word pentagram comes from the Greek language word pe?t???a???? , a noun form of pe?t???a???? or pe?t???a???? , a word meaning roughly "five-lined" or "five lines"....
matic star, or beneath a hand holding a branch with berries, holly

Holly

Holly is a genus of approximately 600 species of flowering plants in the family Aquifoliaceae, and the only living genus in that family....
perhaps. The wheel with four spokes forms a cross within a circle, an almost universal image since Neolithic times. Sometimes the circle is a ring of granules. It would be easy to make too much of the symbol as it appears on coinage, but among the Celts, rather than a solar symbol it may represent the cycle of the year divided in its four seasons . See Cross

Cross

A cross is a geometrical figure consisting of two lines or bars perpendicular to each other, dividing one or two of the lines in half. The lines usually run vertically and horizontally; if they run diagonally, the design is technically termed a saltire....
.

In the time of Caesar the carnutes were dependents of the Remi

Remi

The Remi were a Belgae tribe of north-eastern Gaul in the 1st century BC. They occupied the northern Champagne plain, on the southern fringes of the Forest of Ardennes, between the rivers Mosa and Matrona , and along the river valleys of the Aisne River and its tributaries the Aire and the Vesle....
, who on one occasion interceded for them. In the winter of 58 - 57 BCE, Caesar imposed a protectorate over the Carnutes and set up his choice of king, Tasgetius, picked from the ruling clan. Within three years, the Carnutes had assassinated the puppet king. On February 13, 53 BCE the Carnutes of Cenabum massacred all the Roman merchants stationed in the town as well as one of Caesar's commissariat officers. The uprising was swiftly a general one throughout Gaul, under the leadership of Vercingetorix

Vercingetorix

Vercingetorix , born around 82 BC, died 46 BC, was tribal chief of the Arverni, originating from the Arvernian city of Gergovia and known as the man who led the Gauls in their ultimately unsuccessful war against Roman republic rule under Julius Caesar....
. Cenabum was burnt by Caesar, the men put to the sword and women and children sold as slaves, and the booty distributed among his soldiers, an effective way of financing the conquest of Gaul. During the war that followed, the Carnutes were able to send 12,000 fighting men to relieve Alesia

Alesia

Alesia may refer to:*the city of Alesia in Gaul*the Battle of Alesia*the Al?sia in the Paris M?tro*rue d'Al?sia, Paris*le Carrefour Al?sia, popular name for Place H?l?ne et Victor Basch, Paris...
, but shared in the defeat of the Gallic army. Having attacked the Bituriges Cubi

Bituriges

The Bituriges was a tribe with its capital at Bourges .Early in the first century BCE, they had been one of the main tribes, especially in terms of Druids and their political influence....
, who appealed to Caesar for assistance, they were forced to submit. Cenabum, however, remained a mass of ruins garrisoned by two Roman legions for years.

After they had been pacified, though not Romanized, under Augustus, the Carnutes, as one of the peoples of Gallia Lugdunensis

Gallia Lugdunensis

Gallia Lugdunensis was a Roman province of the Roman Empire in what is now the modern country of France, part of the Celtic territory of Gaul....
, were raised to the rank of civitas soda or foederati
Foederati

Foederatus is a Latin term whose definition and usage drifted in the time between the early Roman Republic and the end of the Western Roman Empire....
, retaining their own self-governing institutions, continuing to mint coins, and only bound to render military service to the emperor. Up to the 3rd century Autricum (later Carnutes, whence Chartres) was the capital, but in 275 Aurelian

Aurelian

Lucius Domitius Aurelianus , known in English as Aurelian, Roman Emperor , was the second of several highly successful "soldier-emperors" who helped the Roman Empire regain its power during the latter part of the third century and the beginning of the fourth....
refounded Cenabum ordaining it no longer a vicus but a civitas
Civitas

In the history of the Roman Empire, the Latin term civitas referred to the condition of Roman citizenship. It was also used to describe a type of settlement....
and named it Aurelianum or Aurelianensis urbs (thus eventually "Orleans").

See Livy

Livy

Julius Caesar

'Gaius Julius Caesar' , July 13, 100 BC ? March 15, 44 BC,) was a Roman Republic military and political leader. He played a critical role in the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
, Belli Gall. v. 25, 29, vii. 8, II, 75, viii. 5, 31 (see under "cenabuns); Strabo

Strabo

Strabo was a Ancient Greeks history, geography and philosophy....
Geographia iv.2 - 3; Ptolemy

Ptolemy

Claudius Ptolemaeus , known in English as Ptolemy , was a Roman Greek mathematics, Greek astronomy, geographer and astrologer. He lived in History of Roman Egypt, and was probably born there in a town in the Thebaid called Ptolemais Hermiou; he died in Alexandria around 168 AD....
Geographia, ii.8.

External links

: detailed illustrations of numismatics
: map of the Carnutes territory (in French)
R. Boutrays, Urbis gentisque Carnutum historia 1624
A. Desjardins, Géographie historique de la Gaule, ii, I876 1893