Noviomagus Lexoviorum
At the confluence of the Orbiquet and Touques, 28 km from the English Channel. The name Noviomagus, which is Gaulish, was mentioned by the ancient writers. Before the Roman occupation there was a fairly large settlement here, a hypothesis confirmed by the Castelier camp W of the city. The camp is on a plateau sloping SE and bordered, also to the SE, by the stream known as Le Cirieux. The defenses were oval, the axes measuring 1300 and 1500 m, and the camp covered an area of ca. 200 ha. The construction of the vallum shows that it was Celtic in origin: the walls, 7-8 m thick and 3 m high, are made of horizontal courses of stones and of intersecting oak beams which form grilles 0.6 m apart. The vertical and horizontal beams are fastened with iron pins 0.3 m long. The wood and stone courses alternate.
At the time of Caesar's conquest the city was organized and had a government; apparently the city of the Lexovii was considered to be free and friendly. It grew with the Roman occupation, attaining the second rank of Gallic cities. The civitas occupied most of the area of the modern town; Gallo-Roman traces have been found everywhere beneath Lisieux. The artisans' quarters were in the heart of the modern city, the residential sections on the hills to the W in the commune of Saint-Désir (amphitheater near the Le Merderet brook, villas in the field called Les Tourettes), and to the E (villa below the site of the modern hospital).
A commercial center, Noviomagus was an important meeting point for Roman roads, and the closeness of the sea enhanced the importance of the site. A port had been created at the junction of the Orbiquet and the Touques, in the axis of what is now the Place Thiers. During the first half of the 3d c. A.D. bands of Saxon pirates attacked the English and French coasts, and Noviomagus was probably sacked in one of these raids. After the first destruction the city recovered; repairs have been noted in the masonry of the amphitheater. The inhabitants set up a fortified camp in the most easily defended section of the city; it was protected by the port (Place Thiers), the valley of the Touques, and the Rathouyne forest E of the city (the Roques wood is a remnant of this forest). The rectangular complex, ca. 400 by 200 m, was bounded on its long side to the W by the Orbiquet and the port, and on the E by the forest. Part of the Boulevards Sainte-Anne, Jeanne d'Arc, and Emile Demagny are on the sites of the S and E trenches. Here and there towers projected above the rampart (foundations of one have been located in the Boulevard Jeanne d'Arc).
The castrum had several gates, the Porte d'Orbec to the S on the line of the modern Rue Victor-Hugo and to the E, the Porte de Paris, which led out of the city through the Rathouyne forest toward Lillebonne and Le Vieil Evreux. To the W, behind the port, there was probably a gate in the continuation of the old Rue Petite Couture (a section of a Roman road paved with flat stones has been uncovered on this line). Excavation in the Rue Pont-Mortain located the W side of the rampart: built on the ruins of the first structure (architectural debris, charred stones), the wall is built of rubble set in grayish-white mortar, with an outer facing. The inner facing is of small blocks, with horizontal bonding courses made of three rows of pink bricks. An aqueduct, a few meters from this wall, was built after the wall but before the city was destroyed. A well was also noted under the modern transport station, indicating arrangements necessary in case of siege.
The city was probably destroyed in the Saxon invasions ca. 268-270: its suburb was ruined, its monuments razed, and the castrum wall badly damaged. The civitas was not abandoned however; the survivors took refuge in the castrum and used the recovered stones to patch up the wall. At the end of the 4th c. the Notitia Provinciarum placed Noviomagus in the tenth rank of Lugdunensis Secunda. The city of the Lexovii survived inside the castrum—its walls badly repaired with mortar of poor quality—throughout the whole of the early Middle Ages.
BIBLIOGRAPHYDe Formeville, “Note sur un cimetiére gallo-romain découvert en 1848 à Saint-Jacques de Lisieux,” Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie 7 (1847) 285-94; A. Pannier, “Résumé des découvertes du XVIIIe s.,” Congrès Archéologique, 37e session, Lisieux (1870) 29-32; R. M. Sauvage, “La Basse-Normandie Gallo-romaine,” Congrès Archéologique, LXXIVe Session, Caen (1908) 502-15; C. A. Simon, “Lisieux à l'époque gallo-romaine,” Le Pays d'Auge (Nov. 1956) 7-9; F. Cottin, “Noviomagus Lexoviorum, des temps les plus lointains à la fin de l'occupation romaine,” Bulletin de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie 53 (1955-56) 108-96; F. Caillaud & E. Lagnel, “Un Four de potier gallo-romain à Lisieux,” Annales de Normandie 3 (1965) 233-51.
C. PILET