Canon of Flanders: the Romans in our regions

Tongeren was the first city in our regions.  It boasted a kilometre-long city wall, an aqueduct and stone buildings in a style that mixed local and Mediterranean influences. From a Roman army base, Tongeren soon grew into a city with a Gallo-Roman culture.

Around the year 10 BCE, Roman administrators decided to build a city on a plateau near the River Jeker, a tributary of the River Maas, on the site of a former Roman army camp. The surveyors designed a ground plan with a typical Mediterranean checkerboard pattern of streets. At first, houses made of wood and clay in traditional Gallic style appeared. From the middle of the 1st century CE, more and more stone houses inspired by Roman examples were constructed, often with underfloor heating and wall paintings.

When Roman legions moved to the Rhine and the North Sea coasts, they encountered a culture with Celtic and Germanic elements. After the first violent encounter, a period of Romanisation began: for four centuries, local societies profoundly changed their appearance through interaction with Roman culture.

It was the Roman general Julius Caesar, who conquered this area around 55 BCE, but it was only some 30 years later, under Emperor Augustus, that the military, cultural and economic impact of the Romans became visible. In the wake of the military came merchants. Besides goods, these southern newcomers also brought their ideas and customs. In some places, these foreign customs caught on and, for example, Roman writing and coinage were adopted. Local and Mediterranean culture merged. A good example of this cultural blending was religion: Roman gods were identified with their local counterparts, e.g. the Roman war god Mars with his Celtic counterpart Camulos. Cultural interaction was also noticeable in architecture. Stone houses, bathhouses and floor heating appeared for the first time. Yet the romanisation process was far from straightforward.

Depending on the location, landscape and cultural background of the local population, in many areas indigenous elements remained predominant, or Roman elements were placed in a different cultural context.

The Boulogne-Cologne road

The different parts of the Roman Empire were all interconnected. Traders, travellers and soldiers moved by ship via the sea and rivers and could also use an extensive road network. Local roads were narrow and unpaved, winding through the landscape, but the main roads had the typical look of rectilinear, wide and paved stretches.

The most iconic of these major transport axes was the road connecting the Roman port of Boulogne with the city of Cologne. Roughly speaking that road ran along the border between present-day Flanders and Wallonia. Emperor Augustus had it built around the beginning of our era. Its purpose was to facilitate troop and provision transports as well as mail from the North Sea to the Rhine area. This was necessary to support the military operations then underway east of the Rhine, in Germania.

Along that main road and its branches, settlements with a market square and other central functions developed, so-called vici or villages. At first, they were often military bases, which developed into residential centres. Apart from Tongeren, Wervik (Viroviacum), Velzeke, Asse and Tienen all owed their Roman origins to the road. In the Middle Ages, parts of these good roads retained their function and continued to determine the layout of the landscape.

Tongeren grew into the main town of the region and an important political, religious and military centre. The city wall of about 4.5 kilometres was the longest in the northern Roman Empire. From the late 3rd century, decline set in, although Tongeren remained important, also as a bishop's seat from where Christianity could spread.

Carausius, the Emperor in the North

In the 3rd century, unrest was growing in the north-west of the Roman Empire. Central authority was weakening, peasants were rebelling and local army commanders were themselves trying to seize power. One of these was Marcus Aurelius Mausaeus Carausius, a man of simple descent, who hailed from the Menapian area, which lay between the North Sea, the River Scheldt and the River Aa.

As an army commander, he initially put down peasant rebellions and, as commander of the Channel fleet, he chased away Saxon pirates, who were active there. Because he kept the spoils from these robbers for himself, the Roman Emperor Maximian condemned him to death.

To save his skin, Carausius seized power in 286, effectively seceding a territory from the Roman Empire. He successfully built an empire on both sides of the North Sea, from the British and Gallic coasts to the Rhine. He had coins minted depicting him as a Roman emperor and portrayed himself as the bringer of peace in the unstable Channel region. His empire was short-lived. In 293 Carausius was assassinated by his closest confidant and a few years later the area again came under Rome's control.