In 52 BC, Paris was still called Lucotecia. After Caesar arrived, he renamed it Lutetia, close to the Latin lutum, meaning mud, or the Gallic luto, meaning swamp. The city had been born from a marshland.
Before the Romans came, there were no roads at all. Most Gauls built their homes in concealed forests or by rivers, and the rivers were their means of transport. Whether dangerous swamps or dense forests, the local people knew these places well. It was the Roman legions arriving from afar who could not lead large forces down the indistinguishable paths through the woods.
The ancient Roman legions were renowned for their tightly organized square formations. Sending legionaries into the forest prevented them from making use of their strengths. The Gauls, meanwhile, could harass and plunder the Roman soldiers, then rely on forests and hidden valleys to escape alive before moving elsewhere overnight to hide.
But the Gauls were not united. Caesar exploited the conflicts among them, while urban life attracted a number of defectors, and he launched campaigns to encircle and suppress the surrounding tribes.
The Romans brought roads, bathhouses, opera houses, and the Colosseum. Lutetia gradually became a city thoroughly Romanized, the Rome of Gaul. Unlike Rome, where bloody spectacles played out every day—whether the blood of gladiators in the Colosseum or politicians like Caesar—this place was unexpectedly peaceful, though the Roman residents found it difficult to adapt to the muddy, unstable marshland.
Rome's ground was solid, and the Mediterranean climate had always been warm. It did not even snow in winter.
Here, however, there were rough Gauls and harsh winters. The river froze as hard as marble slabs, and to avoid freezing to death in this cursed weather, the Romans lit many open braziers.
One Roman governor lit a brazier, then closed