AUGUSTONEMETUM
(Arvemnis, Clermont-Ferrand）
Puy-de-Dôme, France.
While Gaul was still
independent, an agricultural population lived in the
basin where the Tiretaine valley slopes down out of the
mountains and opens onto the plain of Limagne. After
the Roman conquest the population was urban and
settled around a small hill located in the middle of the
basin. The town grew until it covered an area of nearly
150 ha and at that time was unwalled.
The crisis of the 3d c. began a period of decline for
the town. Depopulated, it was enclosed within narrow,
fortified walls, and occupied only the N third of the
hilltop (ca. 2.5-3 ha). It opened to the outside by five
gates. No remains are left.
Architectural fragments found at the summit of the
hill (Place de la Victoire) suggest that there were
buildings at that spot, but they have been completely
destroyed. Ruins of a monument of large size to the
W of the town are described by Gregory of Tours
(
Hist. Franc., I, 32) as a temple, to which he gave the
name of “Vasso,” of Jaude (Vasso Galate). He was
probably correct in calling it a temple. The only visible
remains of the monument is a wall of ashlar masonry
with brick bonding courses and semicircular buttresses
(the “Mur des Sarrasins” on the Rue Rameau). This
was the N side of a rectangular building erected on a
thick beton platform. A mineral water spring 600 m to
the SW at Les Roches was frequented by a popular
cult. Several thousand wooden votive offerings, carved
and uncarved, have been found there. Some 1700 m
SW of the central hill on the E slope of Montaudou
hill, a wall of ashlar masonry, now 60 in long, may
have been the facade wall of a theater. It too is called
Mur des Sarrasins.
The town obtained its water ca. 4 km away in the
valley of Villars, where sections of an underground
aqueduct have been noticed on several occasions. On
its exit from this narrow valley, the aqueduct rises to
the surface (it is mentioned in the Life of Saint Stremonius, in the 9th or 10th c.). It carried water to the
summit of the hillock, from which it was distributed
by underground channels. Sections of these channels
are preserved under the Place de la Victoire.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A. Tardieu,
Hist. de la ville de Clermont-Ferrand, 2 vols. in-fol. (1870-72); A. Audollent, “Clermont gallo-romain,”
Faculté des lettres de Clermont-Ferrand, Mélanges littéraires publiés à l'occasion du centenaire de sa création (1910) 103-55; E.
Desforges et al.,
Nouvelles recherches sur les origines
de Clermont-Ferrand (1970).
P. FOURNIER
