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AGEN (Town) LOT ET GARONNE
Aginnum (Agen) Lot-et-Garonne, France.
Agen was first the capital of the Nitiobrigi, a Celtic people established on the
borders of Aquitaine on both sides of the Garonne. Originally settled on the oppidum
of the Plateau de l'Ermitage and doubtless possessing an important market place
at the foot of the slope, the Nitiobrigi established themselves definitively in
the plain, in the Roman period, in the triangle formed by the Garonne and the
Masse. Augustus' establishment in A.D. 27 of the Civitas Aginnensis in Aquitaine
put an end to their kingdom. According to the Notitia provinciarum, by the 4th
c. the prosperous Aginnum, served by several major routes, had become the second
city of Aquitainia II.
For a long time the site of the imperial town was thought to be in
the S area of the present town and its suburbs, for in the 18th c. there were
still visible in this large open space the vestiges of large monuments (a Temple
to Diana, an amphitheater), luxurious habitations, and artisans' quarters. But
more recent discoveries of equally important monuments (a temple to Jupiter, another
to the Iunones Augustales, perhaps a forum) and evidence of occupation (altars,
inscriptions, statues, mosaics, and furniture now in the museum of Agen), have
proved that the city of that period extended as far N as the modern one. Contrary
to earlier conjecture that, from 276 on, it was merely a tongue of land on the
promontory lying farther N, it now appears that the whole site was permanently
occupied from the 1st c. until the invasions at the beginning of the 5th.
M. Klefstand-Sillonville, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Jan 2006 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
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