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CELTIC, Northern Gaul (Comata). Remi.
Potin Cast Unit 18mm (2.7 grams) Cast circa 100-50 B.C.
Reference: Depeyrot 29. DT 155
Figure running right, holding torque and spear.
Beast standing right right; uncertain ornaments above and below.
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The Remi (Gaulish: Rēmi, ‘the first, the princes’) were a Belgic tribe dwelling in the Aisne, Vesle and Suippe river valleys during the Iron Age and the Roman period. Their territory roughly corresponded the modern Marne and Ardennes and parts of the Aisne and Meuse departments.
They are mentioned as Remi by Caesar (mid-1st c. BC) and Pliny (1st c. AD), Rhē̃moi (Ῥη̃μοι; var. Ῥημοὶ) by Strabo (early 1st c. AD) and Ptolemy (2nd c. AD), Remos by Tacitus (early 2nd c. AD), Rhēmō̃n (Ῥημω̃ν) and Rhēmoĩs (Ῥημοι̃ς) by Cassius Dio (3rd c. AD), and as Nemorum in the Notitia Dignitatum (5th c. AD).
The Gaulish ethnonym Rēmi (sing. Rēmos) literally means ‘the first ones’, that is to say ‘the princes’. It stems from a Proto-Celtic form reconstructed as *reimos (‘first, prince, chief’; cf. Old Irish rem– ‘in front of’, Welsh rwyf ‘prince, chief’, Mid. Cornish ruif ‘king’), itself from Proto-Indo-European *prei-mos (‘first, leader’; cf. Latin prīmus ‘furthest in front, foremost’).
The city of Reims, attested ca. 400 AD as civitate Remorum (Rems in 1284), is named after the Belgic tribe.
 The Remi dwelled in the Aisne, Vesle and Suippe valleys, with a heavy concentration in the middle Aisne valley. Their territory was located south of the Suessiones. As they were encircled by forests, however, the lands under their control nowhere bordered on neighbouring tribes.
La Tène period
Before the Roman conquest (57 BC), the villages of the Remi were located along natural pathways and terrestrial cross-ways such as at Nizy-le-Comte, Thugny-Trugny, or Acy-Romance, which occupied from the early 2nd century BC up until the 1st century AD. The rural areas of the Aisne valley were densely occupied and structured around trade relations with Mediterranean merchants, with large farms held by local aristocrats and bordered by numerous hamlets.
In the late 2nd–early 1st century BC, a few oppida were erected at Bibrax (Vieux Laon, Saint-Thomas), Nandin (Château-Porcien), Moulin à Vent (Voncq), La Cheppe, and Vieux Reims (Condé-sur-Suippe/Variscourt).
Roman period
At the beginning of the Roman period, the Remi left the villages and oppida that were in unfavourable positions within the emerging economic system of the Empire. For instance, the oppidum of Saint-Thomas (Bibrax) was abandoned in the middle of the 1st century BC, whereas Le Moulin à Vent, which bordered the trade route between Reims and Trier, developed into the town of Voncq, attested as Vongo vicus in the 3rd c. AD.
Durocortorum (modern Reims), a former oppidum probably built in the late 2nd–early 1st century BC and mentioned by Caesar in the mid-1st century BC, was promoted as the capital of their civitas at the end of the 1st century BC. The name of the settlement stems from the Gaulish word duron (‘gates’ > ‘enclosed town, market town’).
Secondary agglomerations of the Roman period are also known at Vervins, Chaourse, Nizy-le-Comte, Laon or Coucy-les-Eppes. Nizy-le-Comte, occupied at least until the end of the 4th century AD, probably reached around 80 hectares at its height.
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