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COURTRAI (Town) BELGIUM
Cortoriacum (Courtrai) Belgium.
A large vicus of the civitas Menapiorum, on the Cassel-Tongres road at the place
where it crosses the Lys. Lesser roads linked Courtrai to Tournai, to Ghent, and
finally to Lille and Arras. The Arras road has been sectioned and studied in the
middle of the modern town. It consisted of a bed of sand mixed with broken tiles,
covered by a bed of gravel. The Tournai road has been traced S of the town. Since
the 17th c. many finds of Roman antiquities have been noted at Courtrai and the
neighboring communes of Kuurne and Harelbeke. The main finds are: coins of the
first four centuries of our era; five hoards of coins (three at Courtrai, two
at Harelbeke: two found in 1499 and 1610 and lost forever, two buried in the time
of Marcus Aurelius, one buried ca. A.D. 267); a superb Hellenistic statuette of
the 2d c. depicting Venus Anadyomene, now kept at the Mariemont museum; various
substructures; wells; pottery; tombs. More systematic excavations were not undertaken
until just after WW II. The present state of our knowledge indicates that there
were at least three distinct areas of settlement; these almost certainly formed
a single administrative unit.
1) The most ancient remains are several straight V-sectioned ditches found in
the S part of the modern town, at the locality called Walle. They seem to date
to the first half of the 1st c. These may represent the remains of two temporary
military camps, where Caligula or Claudius would have assembled some of the troops
about to take part in the conquest of England, but this is uncertain. Near these
ditches remains have been found of dwellings dating to the second half of the
1st c. and to the 2d and 3d c.
2) The vicus proper was farther N, in the NW district of the modern town. It started
at the main square and extended along both banks of the Lys into Kuurne. Some
isolated tombs mark the limit of the vicus to the NE and NW. The necropolis of
the Molenstraat has been excavated to the S. It included ca. 100 cremation tombs
ranging in date from the time of Claudius to the middle of the 2d c., but they
are mainly from the Flavian period. This necropolis separated the vicus from the
habitation zone of Walle. In the vicus the main finds are the scanty remains mentioned
above. These seem to indicate that the beginning of the settlement goes back to
the Claudian period. Finds of the 3d c. are rare. A well lined with a hollowed-out
oak trunk was filled with many sherds and coins of the 1st and 2d c.
3) At Harelbeke, less than 2 km from the vicus of Courtrai, the remains of another
settlement have been found: several wells, traces of wooden dwellings, masonry
foundations, and trenches with refuse. In these trenches were abundant remains
of local ironworking. This suggests a district of ironworking crafts, somewhat
apart from the vicus proper. Nearby at the hamlet of Stasegem, another well made
out of a hollowed-out trunk has been excavated. In 1968 the favissa of a sanctuary
was found. It contained ca. 120 white ceramic statuettes, which came from the
workshops of the Allier and depict various divinities. There was also a bronze
statue of a wild boar.
There was probably a castellum at Cortoriacum during the Late Empire.
In fact, the Notitia Dignitatum (occ. 5.96; 245; 7.88) mentions milites Cortoriacenses.
This force may not have originated at Courtrai, but may simply have been garrisoned
there. The hoards of coins seem to indicate that Courtrai was threatened under
Marcus Aurelius (the invasion of the Chauci in 172-74) and under Postumus. Apart
from this, we still know nothing of the history of the vicus during the last centuries
of the Roman occupation.
S.J. De Laet, 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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