Talk:Vocontii

to-do

verify and add details mentioned in http://portail.atilf.fr/cgi-bin/getobject_?a.131:106./var/artfla/encyclopedie/textdata/IMAGE/ esp the Pliny reference and the Greek spellings from Strabo (but in Greek, not ascii) --Nantonos 23:31, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Inaccurate and erroneous statements

This article contains a number of inaccurate and/or erroneous statements. Therefore I shall shortly delete them and replace them with correct information. They are:

1) “The location and borders are described in two passages by Strabo.” In the second passage Strabo described the area of the Vocontian territory in terms of who their neighbours were. This gives only rough indications and does not identify the actual location of the borders. Strabo also wrote that that they “occupy the northerly parts of the mountains.” However, he does not give the names of these mountains. Thus, were do not have an indication of any precise locations.

The first passage from Strabo does not describe the borders of the Vocontii. It describes the route of the road which passed through the countries of the Vocontii and of Cottius and gave the distance of two towns from the borders of the Vocontii. That is hardly a description of the actual location of the frontiers of the Vocontii, and even if was, it would be only one of the southern and eastern borders.

The misinterpretation of Strabo’s text had led to an erroneous statement: “they occupied an extensive territory stretching from Vercors in the north, the buttresses of Mont Ventoux in the south-west, Manosque in the south-east and Embrun in the east.” The Eastern border did not reach Ebrodunum (Embrun). If one reads Strabo properly, one can notice that he wrote that Ebrodunum was “ninety-nine miles to the other frontiers of the Vocontii”; that is, beyond Vocontian territory. He also clarified that Ebrodunum was “at the country of Cottius”; that is, in another territory. Cottius was the king of a tribe in the Cottian Alps which later became the Alpes Cottiae province of the empire. This part of Strabo’s text does not define the eastern border of the Vocontii. This border was a section of the part of the tract of the River Durance which flowed north-south. This is demonstrated by the fact neither Ebrodunum nor Vipincunum (Gap) and Digna (Digne-les-Bains) were Vocontian. The latter two towns were to the east of the Durance.

I guess that what is meant by Vercors is the Vercors Massiff. That is right, provided that it is specified that it is the southern end of the massif. More precisely, the northern border was the valley of the River Drôme.

2) “Their territory was therefore distributed over five current départements of France (Drôme, Isère, Hautes-Alpes, Alpes de Haute-Provence, Vaucluse).” This is wrong. The Vocontian territory did not cover five French departments. It did not include Isère, which was Allobroge territory, and Hautes-Alpes was the “country of Cottius.” As for the remaining three departments, in has to be noted that the Vocontian territory covered parts of them not the whole of them,

3) “The Vocontii became Romanized between 125 and 118 BCE, at the time of the conquest of the province of Gallia Narbonensis”.

a) Romanisation was a process which spanned across many decades or even a few centuries, not just over seven years as stated here.

b) During the period of the late Republic, the region was called Gallia Transalpina. Gallia Narbonensis was a name which was used later, during the imperial period.

4) “During the 1st century BCE, the Vocontii signed a treaty of friendship (foedus) with Rome; this enabled them to keep a certain autonomy and their traditional institutions (Peck).”

a) A foedus was an alliance treaty, not a friendship treaty

b) There is no evidence for this dating in the referenced Harper’s Dictionary (given as Peck in the text), which only mentions that the Vocontii were allies without giving any dates. We have no indication in the article of where the given information was obtained by the person who wrote this or where he/she got this idea from.

c) Pliny the Elder, who wrote in the 70s AD, referred to the Vocontii as allies. This does not mean that this happened in the 1st century BCE. Pliny does not give any dates either. His sentence is only evidence for the Vocontii being allies and leaves the question of when this occurred wide open.

d) There is a speculation by a modern historian (Goudineau) that the treaty might have been agreed in 61 BCE during the governorship of Pomptinus. However, this is a speculation (which is not entirely devoid of problems), not an established historical fact. If he were to be mentioned, this should be clearly stated.

5) “Between the 2nd and 3rd centuries, the towns of Gap, Sisteron and Vaison-la-Romaine became independent of the Vocontii, whose territory was now centred on the valley of the Drôme, with Dea (modern Die) their new capital.”

a) Vipincunum (Gap) was not a Vocontian town. It was a town of the Avantici, not the Vocontii. It belonged to the Inalpini tribes which were probably transferred to the province of Gallia Narbonensis by Galba in 69. We do not know whether they had previously been under Alpes Cottiae or Alpes Maritimae. As noted above, Vipincunum was to the east of the Vocontii.

b) Nobody gained independence from anyone. By the time in question the Vocontii were no longer autonomous because in 212 Caracalla gave Roman citizenship to everyone in the Roman Empire. Thus, all Vocontii were Romans.

c) What actually happened was a change in the provinces of the Roman Empire. Diocletian abolished the old provinces, replacing them with new, smaller ones. Gallia Narnonensis was divided into three provinces. Vasio (Vaison-la-Romaine), Noviomagus (Nyons), Dia Augusta (Die) and Lucius Augustii (Luc-en-Diois) came under Provincia Viennensis and Segusturo (Sisteron) came under Provincia Narbonensis II.

d) The territory of the Vocontii (which by then referred to the area where the Vocontii lived, rather than a territory from which independence could be gained) did not become centred on the Drôme. It just fell under two new provinces.

e) Dea (modern Die) did not become a capital of anything. The capital of the Provincia Viennennsis was Vienna (Vienne), not Dea.

f) in the light of all this, this statement appears to be fanciful.--Testatorsilens (talk) 19:27, 9 March 2018 (UTC)