Aedui

The Aedui were the pre-eminent people of central Gaul, occupying the country between the Loire and the Saone with their stronghold at Bibracte, and they were Rome's oldest friends in the region - formally recognised as brothers and kinsmen of the Roman people by the Senate decades before Caesar arrived. That status was the hinge of the conquest. Their long rivalry with the Sequani and Arverni for control of the Saone trade route had gone badly: the Sequani hired the German war-leader Ariovistus, who beat the Aedui and then settled in Gaul himself, and it was an Aeduan appeal to Rome in 58 BC that gave Caesar his pretext to intervene. He answered it, destroyed Ariovistus, and stayed. For five years the Aedui supplied his cavalry, his grain and his intelligence, and their aristocracy divided between a pro-Roman party and one that saw what was happening. In 52 BC they joined the general revolt under Vercingetorix, late and with hesitation, and were given nominal leadership of it at the assembly at Bibracte - which Vercingetorix retained in practice. After Alesia they surrendered and were treated leniently precisely because Caesar needed the settlement to look like a restoration of friendship. Their aristocracy took Roman citizenship early, and under Claudius Aeduan nobles were among the first Gauls admitted to the Senate. Bibracte was abandoned for a new Roman town at Augustodunum, now Autun. Diviciacus, an Aeduan noble and a druid, is the only druid in antiquity whose name is known from a contemporary who met him - Cicero, who records that he claimed knowledge of natural philosophy and divination. His brother Dumnorix led the anti-Roman faction and was killed on Caesar's orders. Bibracte is now one of the most excavated oppida in Europe.

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