Ancient history

The Aedui, the Celtic people who considered themselves the original brother of the Romans

It is known as the Gallic War to the military conflict waged between the Roman proconsul Julius Caesar and the Gallic tribes between 58 and 51 BC. These were not a handful of barbarians, quite the contrary, they were civilized tribes with great influence from Rome, most of which had abandoned the monarchical system for systems similar to the Roman Republic. However, they were very divided and in continuous conflict with each other.

Thus, when in the year 52 B.C. the avern chief Vercingetorix united all the Gallic tribes against Caesar, only one initially resisted joining the rebellion, although he later did so briefly.

The reason for such reluctance is that this tribe had long been proclaimed sister of the Roman Republic and as such it was a firm and faithful ally of Rome. It was the Aedui.

Not only that, Julius Caesar considered them blood brothers of the Romans and, later, the emperor Claudius would grant them Roman citizenship in 48 AD.

Who were the Aedui and why did they have such a privileged relationship with Rome?

It was a confederation of towns settled in the Saône river valley and with its capital in the city of Bibracte, on Mount Beuvray. They rivaled the neighboring confederation of the Arverni, a fact that Rome took advantage of to control Gaul by establishing an alliance with the Aedui, whom she supported in their war against them in 121 BC.

The Aedui had a political system based on a senate that brought together aristocratic families, like the Roman Republic, with the limitation that only one member per family could belong to it.

By Hermolaus, a grammarian who wrote in Constantinople in the sixth century, at the time of Justinian, an epitome of the Ethnica of Stephen of Byzantium (who in turn collected works by older Greek authors) we know that before 138 B.C. the alliance between Rome and the Aedui had already been finalized.

This alliance was surprisingly based on the common origin of both peoples, descendants of the Trojans through Aeneas (in the Roman case) and of other Trojan refugees in the case of the Aedui. Because of this unfounded common ascendancy, the Roman Senate declared the Aedui blood brothers .

The Arverni, who also claimed such status, were ignored by Rome, and the true reasons for such an alliance have long been the subject of speculation by historians. One hypothesis is that Rome was interested in the alliance with the Aedui because the rivers that flowed through its territory were one of the main routes used by Roman merchants in Gaul. According to historian Camille Jullian:

At the same time, the Aedui were interested in having the power and prestige of Rome on their side, to compete with their neighboring peoples.

As we said before, the first time that the alliance became effective was in the year 121 BC. when Rome helped the Aedui defeat the Arverni and their allies:

The Aedui played a strange dual role in the Gallic tribal uprising of 52 AD. On the one hand, they recognized Vercingetorix as king of the Gauls, but on the other, they remained faithful to Julius Caesar, in a kind of double game that possibly sought to maintain their special status. Thus, after Vercingetorix's defeat at Alesia, they returned to Caesar's side.

Tacitus states that the first senators of Gaul Comata were Aedui:

And Plutarch also echoes that traditional brotherhood:

Augustus dismantled his original capital, Bibracte, relocating them to a new city to which he gave a half-Roman, half-Gallic name:Augustodunum (present-day Autun). It would not be until the end of the 19th century that Bibracte would be rediscovered, thanks in part to the personal interest of Emperor Napoleon III.

Claudius gave the Aedui the right to be senators in Rome. And according to Andrew C.Johnston in his work The Sons of Remus , even in Late Antiquity, the memory of their essential connection to Rome through a shared Trojan origin played an important role in shaping the common identity of the Aedui.