Listed 1 sub titles with search on: Information about the place for wider area of: "AURNE Prefecture NORMANDY,SOUTH" .
SEES (Town) NORMANDY,SOUTH
Sagii (Sees) Dept. Orne, France.
Sagii was the name of a people generally recognized as identical with the Esuvii
mentioned by Caesar (BGall. 3.7), who does not refer to any town in their connection.
Straddling the deep valley of the Orne, their territory reappears relatively late
after the Roman conquest, forming the civitas Sagiorum mentioned in the Notitia
Galliarum among the cities of the second Lugdunensis province. The name of the
Sagii was carried over to what very likely was their capital, whence the present
name Sees.
The settlement undoubtedly dates from before the Roman conquest. Originating
as a ford over the Orne, it seems to have played an essentially commercial role
and does not appear to have been fortified by the Romans. The absence of any important
remains from the last years of the Late Empire (coins found there range from the
1st c. to the beginning of the 3d c.) may possibly mean that a deep decline set
in after the invasions, following which an episcopal see was established after
the town was Christianized, perhaps at the very end of the 4th c.
The site is covered over by the modern town. Chance finds made in
the 19th c. have been indifferently exploited. The most significant of these is
a bath furnace found under the N arm of the cathedral transept. Although the majority
of the finds were made to the N and W of the cathedral, this does not prove conclusively
that there was a forum in this area, as has sometimes been suggested. On the other
hand, the present rue de la Republique can be said to follow the general lines
of the road that crossed the city N-S.
In 1966, a wall 1.5 m thick was revealed when a trench was dug in
the rue Conte, 65 m W of the cathedral. Built of a rubble of limestone rocks bedded
in pink mortar, it was bonded horizontally with brick and shows traces of a somewhat
coarse facing. The wall seems to have been part of an octagonal building, perhaps
a religious edifice of the fanum type. This hypothesis is strengthened by fragments
of sculpture that have been found in the nearby embankment, among them a youthful
figure that might be Bacchus, whom the Gallo-Romans sometimes identified with
the Gallic god Esus. From the style of the bas-reliefs, a provincial version of
the Hellenistic style, and the motifs used in the friezes--Greek interlaced borders,
stylized sycamore leaves--the pieces can be dated from the first half of the 2d
c. (Musee Departemental des Antiquites et Objets d'Art, Sees). The deepest stratum
found close by revealed pottery dating from the beginning of the 1st c., some
of it from Arezzo.
The remains of a dwelling were located through a chance discovery
in 1968 m the rue Amesland, N of the cathedral.
J.J. Bertaux, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Feb 2006 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
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