Centrones
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The Centrones were a pre-Roman Celtic tribe of ancient Gaul.
According to d’Anville, they occupied most of the Tarentaise Valley region in the modern department of Savoie, France. Pliny the Elder called them "borders," that is, people living on the western border of the Alps. Ptolemy places them in the Graian Alps occupying the regions west of the Aosta Valley inhabited by the Salassi.
The Centrones had a sizeable population readily willing to defend themselves, probably with well cultivated lands, according to written accounts by great armies that passed through. Polybius describes how the Centrones aggressively attacked Caesar’s army on its march through the Alps to Lake Bourget. The onslaught included by an assault by rolling rocks and stones in the mountainous passes, and inflicted great losses of life on the Roman forces. Polybius also describes a meeting by envoys of the Centrones with Hannibal.
The capital city of the Centrones was Darantasia, which gave the Tarentaise Valley and region its name. Medieval clergy made this city an important religious center before the end of the first millennium. They called it Monasterium, which became Moûtiers, by which it is now known.
The village of Centron in Montgirod, Savoie, likely the place known as Forum Claudii under the Romans, preserves the tribal name.
[edit] Important cities of the Centrones
- Darantasia (Moûtiers) – "capital"
- Ad Publicanos (Conflans, in Albertville)
- Axima / Axuma (Aime)
- Bergintrum (Bourg-Saint-Maurice)
- Clusora (Cluses)
- Forum Claudii (Centron, near Montgirod ?)
- Mantala (Bourg-Evescal, near Bourg-Saint-Maurice)
- Oblimum (La Bâtie, in Villaroux)
[edit] See also
[edit] Sources
- John Lemprière, Lorenzo DaPonte, & John David Ogilby (1839), Bibliotheca Classica: Or, A Dictionary of All the Principal Names and Terms, (Tenth American Edition), New York: W.E. Dean. Centrones, p. 69
- Henry Lewis Wickham, John Anthony Cramer (1820). A Dissertation on the Passage of Hannibal Over the Alps, (Second Edition, 1828), London: Oxford (Baxter), pp. 41-67
- William Hazlit (1851). The Classical Gazetteer: A Dictionary of Ancient Geography, Sacred and Profane, London: Whittaker and Co.
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