Gallia Narbonensis

The part of Gaul that was Roman long before Caesar, and so Roman that the Romans stopped calling it a province and just called it the Province. Rome annexed the Mediterranean strip of southern Gaul in the 120s BC, partly to secure the land route to Spain and partly at the request of Massilia, the Greek city at modern Marseille, which wanted protection from its neighbours. The colony at Narbo Martius was founded in 118 BC and gave the province its later name. Its earlier name, Gallia Transalpina, was replaced under Augustus. The territory covered Provence, Languedoc and the Rhone valley up to Vienne. Caesar used it as the base and supply route for the conquest of the rest of Gaul, and its existence is why that conquest was logistically possible at all. It was a senatorial province, needing no garrison, and Pliny wrote that it was more like Italy than a province. Its cities are why southern France has the densest concentration of Roman monuments outside Italy: the arena and Maison Carree at Nimes, the theatre at Orange, the aqueduct at the Pont du Gard, the arch at Glanum. Wine growing was established here early and became a serious rival to Italian production. The province produced the historian Trogus and the emperor Antoninus Pius' family. The colloquial name survives directly in the modern French region Provence. Narbo was the first Roman colony founded outside Italy. The province sent senators to Rome earlier than any other Gallic territory. Its ports linked the Rhone corridor to the whole western Mediterranean. Arles later became an imperial capital.

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