AUGUSTA TREVERORUM
(Trier) Germany.
Situated at a widening of the Moselle valley, this site
was settled in the pre-Roman period by mixed Celtic-Germanic tribes of the Treveri. The town was the point
from which three ancient highways spread out to meet
the Rhine at Cologne, Coblenz, and Mainz. Owing to the
natural mountain barriers of Hunriick and Eifel, it lay
sheltered from surprise attack. During his sojourn in
Gaul in 15-13 B.C., Augustus showed particular favor to
the town, which subsequently took the name Augusta
Treverorum. Under Claudius, it maintained the aspect
of an Italian city with the title colonia, an honorific without legal significance; thus one encounters at that period
the designation Colonia Augusta Treverorum. At first it
remained a purely civilian settlement, divided into rectangular blocks of dwellings (insulae) and covering an
area of ca. 81 ha. It was the seat of the imperial fiscal
authority for three provinces, Procurator Provinciarum
Belgicae et Utriusque Germaniae (
CIL III, 5215), and
because of its advantageous position, it became a supply
center for the armies of the Rhine and outposts on the
limes.
Trade and industry were able to develop undisturbed;
among its manufactures, pottery took the lead. Remains
of richly decorated houses and palaces, the amphitheater,
the St. Barbara baths, temples, and the large number of
mosaic floors, wall paintings, and architectural fragments,
as well as innumerable minor archaeological finds, all
bear eloquent witness to the town's econumic prosperity.
Also, native sculptors produced works of outstanding
quality.
Only toward the end of the 2d c. A.D. was the city
surrounded by a solid fortification wall. The best-preserved and best-known city gate from that period is the
Porta Nigra in the N section of the enceinte. The city
suffered from the attack of the Franks and Alemanni in
275-76 and its prosperity declined sharply.
With the imperial reforms of Diocletian, the city assumed a new role. In 293, Constantius I made it his
imperial seat, a distinction well suited to its situation—protected, yet favorable to trade, and nearly equidistant
from the Rhenish border centers of Cologne and Mainz.
Constantius immediately expanded his residence, which
soon was simply called Treveri or Treveris. Under his
son and successor Constantine the Great the imperial
palace quarter came into being, to which belong the Late
Roman core of the cathedral, the Aula Palatina (the so-called basilica), and the imperial baths, all still visible.
To make room for this, some of the existing streets and
buildings (for instance, the peristyle villa under the
imperial baths and the older palace under the so-called
basilica) were obliterated. Near the Roman harbor on
the Moselle were extensive warehouses. After a period
of political setbacks, the city enjoyed renewed prosperity
under Valentinian I (364-75) and his son Gratian (375-83).
The city was the seat not only of an imperial court
but also of the Prefecture of Gaul, stretching over W
Europe from the Scottish border to the Rhine, S to the
S coast of Spain, and including Mauretania Tingitana on
the NW coast of Africa. At its head was the Praefectus
Praetorio Galliarum. In addition to many other institutions, the city possessed a university, a mint, workshops
for gold- and silversmiths, and state textile mills. The
imperial residence exercised a strong attraction: Lactantius, and later Ausonius, came there as imperial tutors
at the court.
The Christian community was important also. On the
N end of the imperial palace precinct Constantine the
Great had built two large churches, parallel to one another. Bishop Leontius of Trier was primate of the Gallic church. Among important churchmen in residence
during the 4th and 5th c. were Athanasius, the Church
Fathers Jerome and Ambrose, and Bishop Martin of
Tours. Toward the end of Roman rule the city had at
least eight churches. From the necropoleis over 800
Early Christian inscriptions have been collected so far.
A glassworks manufactured souvenirs for Christian pilgrims, and a sculpture workshop turned out sarcophagi
carved with stories from Scripture. Christian symbols and
inscriptions appear also on coins and on small utensils
of all sorts. For about a century, the imperial residence
experienced a period of glory as the spiritual and political center of W Europe, and enjoyed the fame of a major
capital, reaching its largest extent in the 4th c. A.D.
with a population of over 80,000 on ca. 285 ha. About
395 the court moved to Milan, and the prefecture to
Arles.
Roman bridges led over the Moselle to the part of the
city that lay on its E bank. In 1921 traces were discovered of a bridge on pilings, which may well be identical
with the one mentioned by Tacitus (
Hist. 4.77). It was
succeeded by a stone bridge, built a little way upstream
from it in the second half of the 2d c. A.D. and still in
use, though restored. This bridge opened upon the E-W
axis of the street grid, the decumanus maximus, which
originally led to the amphitheater but was later blocked
by the forum and the imperial baths. This brought into
prominence the next E-W street to the S, which led W
past the forum and imperial baths and terminated at the
St. Barbara baths near the Roman bridge. The latter bath
complex, once 240 m long from N to S and approximately 170 m broad, was built ca. mid 2d c. A.D, and
remained in use until the end of Roman rule. Of the
whole luxuriously equipped series of rooms, today only
the SE part is visible in ground plan: frigidarium (incomplete), tepidarium, and caldarium, with adjoining
anterooms to the E. From the richly decorated N facade
of the frigidarium survives, among other items, a Roman
copy of Phidias' Amazon. Subterranean service corridors
allowed the business of bathing to proceed smoothly
above. On the N side of that same E-W street lay the
imperial baths (ca. 260 x 145 m), begun at the start of
the 4th c. In sequence E to W was the triple-apsed caldarium—still standing to a height of 19 in—the tepidarium, frigidarium, and palaestra, which was bounded
on three sides by colonnades. On both sides of the main
axis were anterooms, symmetrically arranged. The W
facade was emphasized midway by a weighty portal with
three entrances. Subterranean service corridors and drainage channels, partly two-storied, connected the whole
complex which was, however, never completed or used.
Under Valentinian it was rebuilt and used for other purposes. The W part of the baths has now been excavated
and is preserved in such a way that nearly the whole
extent of the construction is visible. In the course of
these excavations, the remains of overbuilding from the
1st to the 3d c. were found, including a palatial private
house with wall paintings and mosaics.
The imperial baths form the S termination of the palace quarter, which stretches N over a natural terrace
ca. 700 m long. In the center of this complex is the Constantinian Aula Palatina (so-called basilica), the imperial
audience hall. It is a simple but impressive rectangular
chamber with a large apse embracing practically all of
one end. Its interior length is 67 m, width 27.5 m, height
30 m. In front of its S face there was originally an elongated, narthex-like transverse forehall, also 67 m long
and with an apse at the W; thus the Aula originally had
a T-shaped ground plan. The immense wall surfaces were
articulated on the exterior by high arcades, in which two
rows of nine windows each were set; the apse had two
rows of four windows each. Beneath each row ran exterior galleries, reached by spiral staircases in the walls.
The heated marble-paved floor and the marble-revetted
walls, as well as gold-glass mosaics in the seven wall
niches, exemplified the richness of the building's interior
decoration, while clever exploitation of perspective effects
made its imposing dimensions appear even greater. Beneath Constantine's Aula Palatina and built on the same
axis are the remains of an older, single-naved apsidal
hall, apparently part of the old palace complex of the
Procurator Provinciarum Belgicae et Utriusque Germanlae.
The N end of the imperial palace precinct was marked
by two Early Christian basilicas, placed parallel to each
other with a large baptistery between, the whole complex
begun in A.D. 326. The S church (today the Liebfrauenkirche) was soon completed and already in use in 330.
Construction of the significantly larger N church, the
Early Christian Bishop's church (today the Cathedral),
took longer. Both churches have flat E ends with side
chambers; that of the N church was extended in the 4th
c. and several times remodeled. Over the E part of the
foundation of the rectangular Constantinian building,
which was destroyed by fire, Gratian had a new rectangular building erected; its walls are preserved today up to
30 m high in some places. In the S church fragments
of ceiling painting have come to light. The chancel of the
E choir was altered several times and in the plaster of
two of the three chancel walls, Christian graffiti were
discovered. From the baptistery also remains of a ceiling
painting were recovered, geometric in design as in the S
church.
Under the Constantinian N building has been found
the coffered ceiling of a residential palace, finely painted.
The portraits, over life-size and of high artistic quality,
depict the mother of Constantine the Great, Flavia
Helena, and the empress Fausta. This palace was demolished during Constantine's lifetime, and the double
church complex built on its site.
Somewhat W of the parallel churches, the tree-lined
cardo maximus led N to the Porta Nigra. This gate consists of the gatehouse and two flanking towers, which
project in semicircles to the outside but on the city side
are reflected merely in lightly emphasized corner projections. The great blocks of gray sandstone, laid without
mortar, were originally bound by iron clamps fastened
into the stones with lead. The front sides of the blocks
show over 200 quarry marks. The gatehouse encloses a
courtyard, which could be shut off on the outer side by
two portcullises and on the city side by two gates. The
towers had four stories in all, one story projecting above
the gatehouse. Their ground floors were lighted only by
narrow slots but, as in the gatehouse, the open galleries
above have round-arched windows all around. The total
length of the Porta Nigra (excluding choir apse) is
35 m, the width of the towers ca. 21.5 m and their
height, now complete only in the W tower, ca. 29.5 m.
In the Middle Ages the Porta Nigra was used as a church,
the top story of the E tower having been removed and
an apse added.
On the W fringes of the city, near the ancient harbor,
lay horrea, built in the 4th c. A.D. Two parallel halls,
originally two-storied, were separated by a loading alley
12 m wide, forming in toto a rectangle ca. 53 by 70 m.
On the continuation of the decumanus maximus at the
E edge of the city lies the amphitheater, built ca. A.D.
100. The E part of its cavea was hollowed from the slope
of the hill. The arena (75 x 50 m) has in its center a
cross-shaped cellar, cut out of the living rock. In this
was the machinery for a platform that could be lowered.
Later the city wall was joined to the cavea, so that the
N amphitheater entrance is now inside the wall, the S
outside it. Consequently, the amphitheater also served
as a city gate.
The sacred precinct in the Altbach valley near the
imperial baths, like the Temple of Lenus Mars and the
tribal Sanctuary of the Treveri on the opposite (E) bank
of the Moselle, indicate that the town was a religious
and political center for the Treveri. An outstanding
archaeological collection is to be found at the Rheinisches
Landesmuseum.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
D. Krencker & E. Kruger,
Die Trierer
Kaiserthermen (1929)
PI; W. Reusch, “Die Aula Palatina
in Trier,”
Germania 33 (1955) 180-210
PI; id., “Die kaiserliche Palastaula,”
Basilika-Festschrift (1956) 11-39
PI; id., “Die Ausgrabungen im Westteil der Trierer
Kaiserthermen (Grabungen 1960-61),”
Germania 42
(1964) 92-126
PI; id. “(Grabungen 1962-66)” 51.-52.
RGKomm (1970-71) 233-82
PI; K. Kempf, “Trierer Domgrabungen 1943-54,”
Neue Ausgrabungen in Deutschland
(1958) 368-79
PI; id., “Untersuchungen und Beobachtungen am Trierer Dom 1961-63,”
Germania 42 (1964)
PI; id.,
“Grundrissentwicklung und Baugeschichte des Trierer
Domes,”
Das Münster 21 (1968) 1-32
PI; id. & W.
Reusch,
Frühchristliche Zeugnisse (1965)
PI; J. Steinhausen, “Das Trierer Land unter der römischen Herrschaft,”
Geschichte des Trierer Landes (1964) 98-221
MPI; H. Cüppers,
Die Trierer Römerbrücken
(1969)
MPI; B. Gose,
Die Porta Nigra in Trier (1969)
PI; id.,
Der gallo-romische Tempelbezirk im Altbachtal zu
Trier (1972)
MPI; E. Wightman,
Roman Trier and the
Treveri (1970)
PI; R. Schindler,
Landesmuseum Trier
(2d ed. 1971)
PI.
W. REUSCH
