Roman Marseilles

Gaul (France) was populated in large part by the highly artistic, civilized, industrious but non-urban Celts. They lived in small centres, and though they disliked the idea of Greek-Roman style dense urban life, they were agricultural and managed to support a very large population without the need for large cities. They were once very powerful, a major military force. The later Celts remembered when their ancestors had even pillaged and sacked much of Italy, including Rome itself, early in Roman history.

The celts practiced a culture once spread over most of Europe, from the forests of Eastern Europe to Spain and the British Isles. By the time of the Roman Empire, the Germanic peoples had displaced the Central European celts. The Slavic peoples later came to dominate the East. By the time of Roman dominance, the only areas left for the Celts were Gaul (France), Iberia (Spain and Portugal), the British Isles, scattered regions in Asia Minor (Turkey) and South-Eastern Europe.
The Irish and Scots, and to a lesser extent the Welsh and Bretons of Brittany, France, represent modern Celtic cultures.

The Greeks were a successful trading people. Their ships plied the waters of the Mediterranean from end to end over a thousand years. They went through several phases of aggressive colonization, sending whole populations to far-flung outposts with the goals of extending their home cities' influence, relieving social pressures at home and searching for new opportunities abroad.

Celtic Gaul was divided into dozens of territories, with constantly shifting populations and borders. The Greeks managed to get a toe-hold on the southern coast and built a port city, called Massilia (modern Marseilles). It was prosperous and wealthy, with a strong trading economy. Massilia became an influential local centre of Greek culture, very isolated in a non-Greek part of the Mediterranean.

The expansionistic Roman Republic took over the southern portion of Gaul when it absorbed the rag-tag remains of the classical Greek world and the rest of the Mediterranean region. The southern third of Gaul became the Roman Republic province of Gallia (Gaul) Narbonensis. It got this name from a Roman, Narbo Martius, who lent his name to a city further west along the coast from Massilia. The name is remembered down through French history as "Narbonne".

Before the conquest of Gaul and the last of the mainland Celts by Julius Caesar in 58-50 B.C., just before the fall of the Republic, Gaul was divided into three sections. The two northern parts were Celtic, inhabited by numberless independent tribes. The southern third was popularly called "Provincia", or "The Province". This was short for "the Roman Province (of Gaul)", as opposed to the Celtic provinces . Of course, the Roman province's population was largely Celtic in origin, even if they were highly assimilated. The area is still called "Provence" today.

The austere, stoic and machismo values of officialdom in the Roman Republic were opposed to the "effeminate" Greek characteristics they saw in the practice of philosopohy and many intellectual pursuits. Roman society practiced martial philosophies. The Roman elite believed in firmness of character, resolve, unwavering strength and power. They respected bravery and action, military might and warlike dispositions, which is why they had a fascination with foreign cultures that were warlike.

The result was that Roman society was highly militaristic. This attitude may have been one of the reasons that Tacitus so highly respected the freedom-loving and warlike Germanic peoples, who he saw as combining some of the best attributes that upper-class Romans claimed to admire, despite the fact that the Germanic peoples seemed obviously "barbarians" and "uncivilized" to the Romans. In fact, the Clets and Germanic peoples were highly accomplished in all spheres of life, and were active and effective rivals for the Romans.

It was seen as "unmanly" by many to be involved in Greek (or other foreign) arts, and philosophy and many types of scholarship were seen as un-Roman. Theatre was treated with the same disregard, and emperors who indulged the population with theatre were often considered degenerate. Massilia was remarkable in the Western Roman Empire for being a centre of learning, philosophy and the other Greek intellectual habits, which would have also included literature and history. Tacitus probably grew up in this atmosphere, giving him greater respect for the arts. This would have set him apart from many of his elite companions in the Roman world.