The Lingones (Gaulish: "the jumpers") were a Gallic tribe that lived during the Iron Age and Roman periods. They lived in the area around the modern city of Langres, between the provinces of Gallia Lugdunensis and Gallia Belgica.

Name

The tribe is named Língōnes (Λίγγωνες) by Polybius, who lived in the 2nd century BC. Caesar, who wrote about them in the middle of the 1st century BC, called them Lingones. Pliny, who lived in the 1st century AD, and Tacitus, who wrote in the early 2nd century AD, also used the name Lingones. Strabo, who wrote in the early 1st century AD, called them Díngones (Δίγγονες). Ptolemy, who lived in the 2nd century AD, wrote about them as Lóngōnes (Λόγγωνες).

The name Lingones in Gaulish means "the jumpers." It comes from the word "ling-" which means "to jump," and is connected to the Proto-Celtic word *leng- ("to jump," as seen in Old Irish "lingid" meaning "he jumps"). The name may describe people who were skilled at jumping, possibly on horseback, or people who danced.

The city of Langres was first recorded around 400 AD as "civitas Lingonum." Its name comes from the Gallic tribe called the Lingones.

Geography

The territory of the Lingones was located on the border between Gallia Lugdunensis and Gallia Belgica, between the Senones and the Sequani.

Their capital, Andematunnum (now called Langres in the Haute-Marne region), was recorded on boundary markers from 43 AD (abbreviated as AND). It was built on a limestone hill overlooking the Marne valley to the east and north, and the Bonnelle valley to the west. The southern part of the area, which faced the Langres plateau, lacked natural defenses. Archaeological evidence shows a connection between the La Tène and Roman periods at the site of Langres. The city of Andematunnum appears to have been built around the start of the 1st century BC on a previous Gallic settlement. The Roman-era civitas of the Lingones was located at the intersection of the modern departments of Aube, Haute-Marne, Côte d’Or, and Yonne.

The Cathedral of St-Mammes was built in the Burgundian Romanesque style for the ancient diocese called Lingonae ("of the Lingones"). It competed with Dijon. Three of its early bishops were martyred during the Vandal invasion around 407 AD.

History

Some of the Lingones moved over the Alps and settled near the mouth of the Po River in northern Italy, in an area called Cisalpine Gaul, around 400 BC. These Lingones were part of a group of Celtic tribes that included the Boii and Senones (Polybius, Histories ii.17). The Lingones may have helped attack Rome in 390 BC.

The Gaulish Lingones did not take part in the battles of the Gauls against Julius Caesar. They received Roman citizenship by the end of the first century AD. They were involved in the Batavian rebellion in 69 AD, as described by Tacitus.

Sextus Julius Frontinus, a Roman military strategist and author of the Strategemata, the earliest surviving Roman military textbook, wrote about the Lingones in his work:

During the war led by Emperor Caesar Domitianus Augustus Germanicus and started by Julius Civilis in Gaul, the wealthy city of the Lingones, which had joined Civilis’s rebellion, feared that Roman forces would destroy their city. However, when the Roman army arrived and did not attack or take their property, the Lingones returned to loyalty and gave Frontinus seventy thousand armed men.

In Roman Britain, three named groups of Lingones are recorded in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. These groups likely came from the Lingones who remained in the regions around Langres and Dijon. Evidence includes dedicatory inscriptions and stamped tiles. The 1st cohort of Lingones (part-mounted) is noted at Bremenium, a Roman fort in north Northumberland. The 2nd cohort of Lingones is recorded at Ilkley Roman Fort through the name of their Prefect. The 4th cohort of Lingones helped build part of Hadrian’s Wall near Carlisle.