page_title: Bavay
section_title: Gallo-Roman history
hierarchical_section_title: Bavay / History / Gallo-Roman history
caption_attribution_description: English: Roman Statuette from Bavay, France in the British Museum, probably depicting Hercutles. Bronze. 2nd Century AD. British Museum catalogue entry.
context_page_description: Bavay is a commune in the Nord department in the Hauts-de-France region of northern France. The town was the seat of the former canton of Bavay.
  The inhabitants of the commune are known as Bavaisiens or Bavaisiennes
context_section_description: The birth of Bavay after the conquest was the result of the reorganization of the territory by Augustus (probably between 16BC and 13BC). The parts of Gaul conquered by Caesar were then divided into three provinces. The region between the Seine and the Rhine was Gallia Belgica and its capital was at Reims. It was divided into "cities" (civitates)—administrative districts which were headed by a chief town. Living in this district were some of the fiercest people of Northern Gaul and they occupied a vast area between the Scheldt, the Sambre, and the Meuse: the Nervii.
  The town became the capital for the Nervii under the name of Bagacum or Bavacum and, under the Roman Empire, it was an important junction of seven roads, the meeting-place of which was marked by a milestone, destroyed in the 17th century and replaced in the 19th century by a column.
  As the centre of the road junction, Bavay was an obligatory passage between Germania and the naval port of Boulogne-sur-Mer, a bridgehead to Britain. Other routes, seven in total, connected the capital city of the Nervii to the capital cities of neighbouring peoples (Amiens via Arras, Tongeren, Cassel, Trier in the east and Reims in the south). Its position was evidently strategic, but soon these military routes (the future emperor Tiberius transited at Bavay with his armies around 4 AD) were used for commercial purposes.
  From the Claudian period and especially under the Flavians in the late 1st century the city grew. Large monuments were built: a forum, thermal baths fed by an aqueduct bringing water from a fountain near Floursies located twenty kilometres away, and other buildings with a seemingly official nature adorned the city.
caption: Roman bronze statuette of Hermes found in Bavay, now in the British Museum[6]
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