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Mausoleum modeled on Augustus’ tomb found near Lyon
An exceptional mausoleum modeled on the monumental tomb of Augustus in Rome has been unearthed in Saint-Romain-en-Gal, near Lyon. The structure is the only one of the 18 tumulus-style mausoleums found in France that is well-preserved enough to confirm that it was circular in design, like Augustus’ tomb.
Built around 50 AD, with an internal diameter of 15 m [50 feet], it had to be more than 6 m [20 feet] high to be visible to all those passing through or arriving in the Roman colony of Vienne, particularly from the Rhône River.
This shows the importance of the person whose burial place it was, “who, even in death, must still have been present in the world of the living. Most certainly a person belonging to the aristocratic elite, with an important political role and linked to imperial power,” explains Giulia Ciucci, archaeologist and scientific director of the [Gallo-Roman Museum’s] archaeological sites. The mausoleum of Saint-Romain-en-Gal was in fact built on the model of that of Augustus in Rome (27 BC-14 AD), the first Roman emperor.
The Roman city of Vienne (Colonia Julia Viennensis) was founded in 47 B.C. by Julius Caesar, converting the Gallic oppidum into a colony for the veterans who had conquered Gaul. It was one of the earliest cities to integrate Roman military retirees and Gallic elites, and became an early example of the Romanization of Gaul. It covered an area that today comprises three adjacent towns — Vienne, Sainte-Colombe and Saint-Romainen-Gal — but all of the remains of the Roman city’s major structures, including the temple of Augustus and Livia, the odeon, the circus, public baths and the theater, are in the modern city of Vienne. Saint-Romain-en-Gal had no remains of monumental public buildings, and it wasn’t until the the 19th century that great mosaic floors emerged.
The area where the tomb was found was being excavated because the exceptional Rustic Calendar Mosaic, now on permanently display at the Gallo-Roman Museum, was discovered there in 1891. The mosaic is one of the largest and most complete depictions of agricultural labor to have survived from ancient Rome. Only two other large-scale agricultural calendar mosaics comparable to this one are known, one in El-Jem, Tunisia, the other in Zliten, Libya, and the Saint-Romain-en-Gal mosaic has the greatest number of surviving panels.
Twenty-seven of the original 40 figural panels remain, arranged in a grid-like arrangement within outer borders of black and white tiles, plant arabesques and guilloche knots outlining each of the panels. They are centered around four panels representing the seasons, with the agricultural activities grouped around the panel of the season in which they take place. This complex masterpiece adorned the floor of a luxurious domus built on the banks of the Rhone in the first quarter of the 3rd century.
The goal of this summer’s excavation was to uncover more of the mosaic’s original context which had never been documented with modern archaeological methods and technology. A team of professional archaeologists and students dug test pits and investigated the area in public view. They found the foundations of a 19th century house built on top of the semi-circular cells that surrounded the central burial chamber.
This summer’s excavation ended before the burial chamber was excavated. Work will resume next summer, and archaeologists hope they will find references to the eminent personage who had the wealth and political power to emulate the emperor himself in his funerary grandeur.
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