Few cities in Roman Gaul experienced a transformation as dramatic as Arles. Known to the Romans as Arelate, the city stood along the Rhône not far from the Mediterranean, occupying a position that connected inland Gaul with the sea and linked the roads of southern Gaul with Italy and Spain. Long before the troubles that brought the Western Roman Empire toward collapse, Arles had already demonstrated the value of its river, harbor, workshops, and transportation network.
Julius Caesar provides one of the earliest important literary references to the city. During his campaign against Massilia in 49 BC, Caesar ordered twelve warships constructed at Arelate. According to his account in the Civil War, the ships were built and equipped within thirty days after the timber was first cut and then brought to the siege of Massilia. The passage reveals more than an isolated episode of military preparation. Arelate possessed the labor, access to timber, shipbuilding capacity, and river connection necessary to produce a small fleet on extraordinarily short notice.
A Roman colony was established at Arles during the Caesarian period, and the settlement grew into one of the important cities of Gallia Narbonensis. The amphitheater, theater, forum structures, roads, cemeteries, and other surviving remains testify to centuries of Roman urban development. Yet the period that made Arles particularly important to the history of Christianity and the later Roman Empire came much later. During the fourth and fifth centuries, the city entered what UNESCO describes as a second golden age, eventually rising to the status of a political and religious capital in Late Antiquity.
Christianity Comes to Arles
Christianity had established itself at Arles well before the conversion of Constantine. One of the strongest pieces of evidence comes from Cyprian of Carthage during the middle of the third century. Cyprian wrote concerning Marcianus, bishop of Arles, who had aligned himself with the rigorist movement associated with Novatian.
Cyprian appealed for action against Marcianus, arguing that the Christian community at Arles required a new bishop. Whatever the theological dispute itself, the letter is extremely important historically because it provides firm evidence that Arles possessed an organized Christian congregation and an established episcopal office by the middle of the third century.
Later traditions associated the beginnings of Christianity at Arles with Saint Trophimus, but the documentary evidence becomes far stronger with Marcianus and the fourth-century councils. By the age of Constantine, Christianity at Arles was no longer merely the religion of a local minority. The city was becoming a place where disputes affecting Christians across the Western Roman world could be brought before bishops gathered under imperial authority.
Constantine and the Council of Arles
The Council of Arles in 314 placed the city directly into the history of the Christian Roman Empire.
The controversy that produced the council began in Roman North Africa. Following the persecutions of Christians under Diocletian, bitter arguments arose over clergy accused of surrendering scriptures or cooperating with Roman officials. The election of Caecilian as bishop of Carthage became one of the focal points of the dispute, and his opponents eventually developed into the movement remembered as Donatism.
Constantine had already attempted to settle the controversy through a gathering at Rome, but the dispute continued. Another council was therefore summoned at Arles in 314. Constantine’s surviving correspondence includes an invitation sent to Chrestus, bishop of Syracuse, ordering him to travel to Arles for the proceedings. The emperor’s involvement demonstrated the changing relationship between Christianity and the Roman state only a short time after the end of imperial persecution.
Bishops came to Arles from different parts of the Western Empire. Surviving subscription lists preserve names from Gaul, Italy, North Africa, and Roman Britain, including bishops associated with York and London. Marinus represented the Church of Arles itself. The geographical range of the participants made the council one of the earliest great assemblies of the Western churches after Christianity emerged from persecution.
Although the Donatist controversy brought them together, the bishops addressed other questions of church government and Christian practice. The canons dealt with matters including the date of Easter, the movement of clergy between churches, discipline, baptism, ordination, and other problems facing Christian communities. In their synodal letter to Sylvester, bishop of Rome, the assembled bishops explained that they were reporting what had been decided in common council so that the regulations could be known more widely.
The council was important for the Christian Church, but it was equally important for Arles. Constantine had selected the city as a gathering place for bishops from across the West. Long before Arles became one of the chief administrative centers of fifth-century Gaul, its location and infrastructure were already making it useful to an emperor attempting to govern both the state and an increasingly influential Christian Church.
Imperial Arles in the Fourth Century
The fourth century brought renewed prosperity and imperial attention to Arles. Archaeological remains traditionally associated with the Constantinian era, including the baths commonly called the Baths of Constantine, belong to a period in which the city was increasingly connected with imperial government and aristocratic life. The great cemetery of the Alyscamps also became an important part of the Christian landscape of the city. UNESCO identifies the fourth century as the beginning of a second major period of prosperity for Arles.
The importance of Arles also meant that the religious controversies dividing the Roman Empire could reach the city directly.
After Constantius II became dominant in the West, pressure increased against supporters of Athanasius of Alexandria, one of the central figures in the theological conflict that followed the Council of Nicaea. A council assembled at Arles in 353. Athanasius later accused Constantius of using imperial power to pressure bishops into condemning him, describing events at Arles and Milan as part of a broader campaign against his supporters.
The bishop of Arles at the time, Saturninus, supported the anti-Athanasian position and became one of the leading opponents of the Nicene party in Gaul. Paulinus of Trier resisted the condemnation and suffered exile. The controversy eventually helped draw Hilary of Poitiers into the great theological struggles of the century. Later Christian writers remembered the Council of Arles of 353 alongside the Council of Milan of 355 as important episodes in the conflict over Athanasius and the theological direction of the imperial Church.
Arles was therefore becoming something unusual. Political power, imperial presence, and religious debate were concentrating in the same city. Decisions made there could affect Christians far beyond Provence.
The Little Rome of Gaul
By the later fourth century, the Roman poet Ausonius could describe Arles in language that captured its extraordinary status.
In his Order of Famous Cities, Ausonius called Arelate the “little Rome of Gaul.” His short description centered on the Rhône, the city’s ports, the bridge connecting the communities along the river, and the commerce moving through the city. Goods from the Roman world entered through Arles and were redistributed into Gaul and Aquitania.
The description is valuable because it shows why Arles could survive and even increase in importance while political conditions elsewhere deteriorated. Geography worked in its favor. The Rhône was one of the great transportation corridors of western Europe. The Mediterranean provided access to Italy, Africa, Spain, and the eastern Mediterranean. Roads extended through southern Gaul, while the river connected the coast to communities farther north.
Arles was not important because it possessed a single palace, church, or military installation. Its strength came from the combination of commerce, communications, imperial administration, aristocratic wealth, and an increasingly influential bishopric.
Those advantages became even more valuable during the political disasters of the fifth century.
Constantine III and the Crisis of the Western Empire
The opening years of the fifth century brought catastrophe to the Roman West. Groups including Vandals, Alans, and Sueves crossed into Gaul, Roman authority weakened in Britain, and competing military leaders claimed imperial power.
Among them was Constantine III, a soldier elevated as emperor by troops in Britain in 407. Constantine crossed into Gaul and attempted to build a western regime capable of controlling Britain, Gaul, and eventually Spain. Zosimus preserves one of the major surviving narratives of his rise, describing the political and military confusion that allowed Constantine to establish himself on the continent.
Arles became central to Constantine’s government. By around 408 he had established himself there, benefiting from the city’s defensible position and its access to the Mediterranean and Rhône corridor. For several years, Arles functioned as the center of a rival Roman imperial regime.
Constantine’s fortunes eventually collapsed. His general Gerontius rebelled, his position in Spain deteriorated, and forces loyal to Emperor Honorius advanced against him. In 411, Arles became the setting for the final destruction of Constantine’s imperial ambitions. He was defeated after a siege and surrendered before being sent toward Italy, where he was killed.
The episode illustrates the strange political world of the later Western Empire. Arles was valuable enough that controlling it could support a claim to imperial authority. Even a usurper arriving from Britain recognized that the road to controlling Roman Gaul increasingly passed through this city in Provence.
The Administrative Capital of Roman Gaul
The defeat of Constantine III did not diminish Arles. Instead, the restoration of Honorius’s authority strengthened the city’s position.
The exact chronology of the transfer of the Gallic praetorian prefecture from Trier to Arles has long been debated by historians. What is clear is that by the early fifth century Arles had become one of the principal centers of Roman administration in Gaul. Its location made sense in a shrinking Western Empire. The Rhine frontier had become increasingly difficult to defend, while Roman power was concentrating in southern Gaul, northern Italy, and the Mediterranean world.
The clearest statement of Arles’s new importance came in 418.
That year Emperors Honorius and Theodosius II issued a rescript addressed to Agricola, the praetorian prefect of Gaul. The emperors ordered representatives of the Seven Provinces to assemble annually at Arles. The document explicitly identified the city as the metropolitan center where the council should meet.
The imperial government justified its choice partly through geography and commerce. Arles was accessible to provincial representatives, merchants, officials, landowners, and travelers. Its economic connections made it a natural meeting place for the remaining Roman provinces of southern Gaul.
The annual gathering represented an effort to preserve Roman provincial government during an age when imperial control elsewhere was disappearing. Provincial governors, municipal representatives, landowners, and officials could meet under the authority of the praetorian prefect. Arles consequently became one of the places where the Western Empire attempted to reorganize itself around the territory it could still realistically govern.
The development was particularly striking because it occurred only a few years after Rome itself had been sacked by Alaric in 410. While the traditional imperial center was suffering humiliation, Arles was becoming more important.
Patroclus and the Struggle for Ecclesiastical Power
Political promotion was accompanied by ecclesiastical ambition.
Patroclus became bishop of Arles during the early fifth century and sought to increase the authority of his see. His opportunity came during the pontificate of Pope Zosimus.
Beginning in 417, Zosimus issued letters that granted important privileges to Patroclus. Clergy traveling from Gaul toward Rome were expected to carry letters of identification issued through the bishop of Arles, while Patroclus also received authority that affected episcopal ordinations and disputes in neighboring provinces.
The arrangement provoked resistance from other Gallic bishops, particularly those whose sees possessed their own traditions of metropolitan authority. Arles was now challenging places such as Vienne and Narbonne not simply for prestige but for jurisdiction.
The dispute reveals how closely religious geography could follow political geography. As Arles became the administrative center of Roman Gaul, its bishops could argue that their church should possess corresponding authority. Imperial roads brought officials to Arles. Provincial councils gathered there. Emperors and generals used the city. It was not difficult for the bishop of Arles to envision his church as the leading episcopal seat of southern Gaul.
The claims of Patroclus did not go uncontested, and later popes modified some of the privileges associated with his episcopate. Yet the argument itself demonstrated how far Arles had risen.
Hilary of Arles and the Power of a Bishop
The episcopate became even more influential under Hilary of Arles, who succeeded Honoratus in 430.
Hilary came from the religious environment associated with the monastery of Lérins, which became one of the most influential centers of monastic and episcopal formation in fifth-century Gaul. His career demonstrates the growing power of bishops at a time when imperial institutions were weakening. The bishop was no longer concerned only with worship and doctrine. He could function as an arbitrator, political representative, patron, organizer, and defender of his city.
Arles gave such a bishop an exceptional platform. The city contained the residence of the praetorian prefect, hosted the Council of the Seven Provinces, remained commercially important, and possessed one of the most prestigious churches in southern Gaul. Modern scholarship consequently describes Hilary’s see as one of the most important in the region.
Hilary nevertheless became involved in a major conflict with Pope Leo I over the limits of metropolitan authority. The dispute concerned how far the bishop of Arles could intervene in the affairs of other Gallic sees and how much authority ultimately belonged to Rome.
The conflict was part of a much larger transformation taking place across the Western Empire. Imperial administration was shrinking while bishops were acquiring responsibilities once associated with civic and provincial government. At the same time, the bishop of Rome was asserting increasingly significant authority over western churches. Arles stood directly at the intersection of these developments.
After Hilary’s death in 449, the clergy, leading citizens, and people of Arles participated in the selection of Ravennius as bishop. Pope Leo approved the election, praising the harmony surrounding the choice. The letter provides a glimpse of a Christian city in which episcopal leadership had become part of the civic order itself.
Arles and the Last Western Emperors
Despite the deterioration of Roman power, Arles continued to attract emperors and imperial claimants.
In 455, Eparchius Avitus, a Gallo-Roman aristocrat with close connections to the Visigoths, was proclaimed emperor in Gaul before traveling to Italy. Arles supported his accession, showing that the city still possessed enough political importance to participate in the making of emperors.
Avitus did not rule for long, but another emperor soon brought imperial government back to Arles. Majorian, who became Western emperor in 457, attempted one of the last serious restorations of Roman authority in the West.
Majorian campaigned in Gaul and spent significant time at Arles. Sidonius Apollinaris, the Gallo-Roman aristocrat, poet, official, and later bishop of Clermont, preserves vivid memories of the emperor’s court. Around 460 and 461, Arles once again contained an imperial circle of administrators, aristocrats, soldiers, and literary figures. Sidonius later recalled court life there, including a celebrated incident involving an anonymous satire that circulated among Majorian’s courtiers.
Majorian’s presence demonstrates how long Arles continued to function as a Roman political capital. By this point the Western Empire had lost enormous territories, yet an emperor trying to rebuild Roman power still considered Arles essential to controlling Gaul.
Its importance was no accident. Whoever governed Arles possessed access to Mediterranean shipping, the Rhône corridor, the wealthy lands of southern Gaul, and routes toward Spain and Italy.
Goths, Romans, and a Shrinking Empire
The greatest threat to Roman control of southern Gaul came from the expanding Visigothic kingdom.
The Visigoths had been settled in Aquitaine as federates during the reign of Honorius, but over the following decades their kings steadily increased their independence and territory. Arles repeatedly found itself near the frontier between imperial and Gothic power.
Yet the political division between “Roman” and “Gothic” was not as simple as a boundary between two separate civilizations. Gallo-Roman aristocrats negotiated with Gothic rulers. Bishops represented local populations. Imperial generals sometimes relied upon barbarian troops, while Gothic kings governed Roman communities that continued using Latin, Roman law, Christian institutions, and Roman systems of landholding.
Arles survived because many of its institutions could function even as the emperor’s power disappeared.
By the later fifth century, the Visigothic king Euric had become one of the strongest rulers in Gaul. Roman military efforts to halt Gothic expansion failed, and the remaining imperial position in southern Gaul became increasingly difficult to maintain. The deposition of Romulus Augustulus in Italy in 476 did not suddenly erase Roman culture from Provence, but it symbolized the disappearance of the western imperial structure that had supported cities such as Arles for centuries.
Political control changed. Roman society did not vanish with it.
The Christian City Outlives the Empire
The history of Arles after the disappearance of the Western imperial office demonstrates why the fall of Rome cannot be understood simply as the destruction of Roman civilization.
Roman officials disappeared or served new rulers, but bishops remained. Churches remained. Aristocratic families remained. Roads, walls, cemeteries, workshops, estates, legal traditions, and habits of civic life continued. Latin remained the language of government and religion.
The bishop of Arles consequently became even more important during the generations after imperial rule.
This development reached one of its clearest expressions under Caesarius of Arles in the late fifth and early sixth centuries. His sermons, letters, monastic rules, and biography preserve an extraordinary picture of a society that was simultaneously Roman, Christian, Gothic, and post-imperial. Although Caesarius belongs to the generation after the formal end of the Western Roman Empire, the world in which he lived had been created during the fourth and fifth-century transformation of Arles.
The rise of Christianity had not occurred separately from the political history of the city. The two developments had reinforced each other. Constantine brought bishops to Arles because the city was useful to imperial government. Later bishops gained authority partly because imperial officials and emperors had made Arles a political capital. When those officials disappeared, the ecclesiastical structure remained capable of providing continuity.
The Roman administrative capital gradually became an episcopal capital.
The Roman Landscape That Survived
Modern Arles still preserves physical evidence of this layered history.
The amphitheater and theater recall the monumental city of the earlier Roman Empire. The cryptoporticoes preserve the foundations of the Roman civic center. The Baths of Constantine represent the renewed imperial importance of the city during Late Antiquity, while the Alyscamps reflects the growing prominence of Christianity and the culture surrounding burial, saints, and sacred memory.
Archaeology has also complicated older ideas that western Roman cities simply collapsed during the fifth century. Excavations and studies of ceramics, amphorae, buildings, cemeteries, fortifications, and urban occupation reveal continuing economic activity and adaptation. Arles remained connected to Mediterranean commerce even as political authority changed.
Marc Heijmans’s extensive archaeological study of late antique Arles has helped reconstruct a city whose transformation involved both continuity and change. Literary evidence can tell us where emperors traveled and which bishops argued over jurisdiction, but archaeology reveals the streets, walls, houses, churches, burial grounds, and commercial networks within which ordinary inhabitants experienced those political and religious changes.
That combination of texts and physical evidence makes Arles one of the most valuable places for studying the transformation of the Roman West.
Why Arles Mattered to the Western Roman Empire
Arles mattered because it adapted to every stage of the changing Roman world.
Under Caesar, Arelate could construct warships and serve the military requirements of Roman expansion. During the early empire it became a prosperous provincial city. Under Constantine and his successors it became an imperial residence and a meeting place for Christian bishops. During the theological controversies of the fourth century, councils at Arles became part of struggles affecting Christianity across the empire.
When Roman authority in northern Gaul weakened, Arles became more important rather than less. Constantine III used it as the center of his attempted empire. Honorius’s government made it the gathering place of the Seven Provinces. Ausonius celebrated its trade and called it a little Rome of Gaul. Fifth-century bishops turned the prestige of the city into claims of ecclesiastical authority. Avitus and Majorian again placed Arles near the center of imperial politics even as the Western Empire approached its end.
Its greatest historical significance, however, may lie in what happened when that empire disappeared.
Arles did not cease to be Roman on the day a western emperor was deposed. Its people did not abandon their churches, language, law, streets, cemeteries, or memories. The institutional center of the city shifted. The imperial residence became less important, while the episcopal church became more important. Political authority passed to new rulers, but Roman and Christian institutions provided continuity between the ancient and medieval worlds.
For that reason, Arles offers something more valuable than another story about the fall of Rome. It shows how a Roman city could survive the Western Roman Empire itself.
Long after emperors stopped ruling from the West, the Roman city on the Rhône remained, transformed but recognizable, carrying its imperial and Christian inheritance into a new age.
Sources & Further Reading
Absolutely. Here is the source list rewritten in Chicago bibliography style with the full URL written out at the end of each entry rather than embedded in linked text.
Athanasius of Alexandria. History of the Arians. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd ser., vol. 4, edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Company, 1892. https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf204.xx.ii.iv.html
Ausonius, Decimus Magnus. Ordo Urbium Nobilium. In The Works of Ausonius. Section on Arelate. https://la.wikisource.org/wiki/Ordo_nobilium_urbium
Caesar, Julius. The Civil War. Translated by A. G. Peskett. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914. See especially 1.36. https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Caesar/Civil_Wars/1B%2A.html
Chastagnol, André. “Le repli sur Arles des services administratifs gaulois en l’an 407 de notre ère.” Revue historique 249 (1973): 23–40. https://www.jstor.org/
Constantine I. “Letter to Chrestus, Bishop of Syracuse.” In Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 10.5. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd ser., vol. 1, edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Company, 1890. https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf201.iv.iii.iii.iii.html
Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Vol. 12, Inscriptiones Galliae Narbonensis Latinae. Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1888. https://cil.bbaw.de/
Council of Arles. “Acts and Canons of the Council of Arles, A.D. 314.” Legal History Sources. https://legalhistorysources.com/Canon%20Law/ArlesCouncil314.htm
Cyprian of Carthage. “Epistle 68: To Stephen, Concerning Marcianus of Arles.” In Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 5, edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Company, 1886. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ante-Nicene_Fathers/Volume_V/Cyprian/The_Epistles_of_Cyprian/Part_66
Drinkwater, John F. “The Usurpers Constantine III (407–411) and Jovinus (411–413).” Britannia 29 (1998): 269–298. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/britannia
Drinkwater, John F., and Hugh Elton, eds. Fifth-Century Gaul: A Crisis of Identity? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/fifthcentury-gaul/
Esmonde Cleary, A. Simon. The Roman West, AD 200–500: An Archaeological Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/roman-west-ad-200500/8D356C17AFB3782C619342BB52A6F033
Harries, Jill. Sidonius Apollinaris and the Fall of Rome, AD 407–485. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. https://academic.oup.com/book/47220
Heijmans, Marc. Arles durant l’Antiquité tardive: De la duplex Arelas à l’Urbs Genesii. Rome: École française de Rome, 2004. https://www.persee.fr/doc/efr_0223-5099_2004_mon_324_1
Heijmans, Marc. “Césaire d’Arles, un évêque et sa ville.” Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France 87, no. 218 (2001): 5–25. https://www.persee.fr/doc/rhef_0048-7988_2001_num_87_218_5229
Heijmans, Marc. “L’évolution de la topographie de l’Arles antique: Un état de la question.” Gallia 51 (1994): 135–172. https://www.persee.fr/doc/galia_0016-4119_1994_num_51_1_2975
Hilary of Arles. The Life of Saint Honoratus. Translated by F. R. Hoare. In The Western Fathers. New York: Harper, 1954. https://presbytersproject.ihuw.pl/index.php?SourceID=1395&id=6
Hilary of Poitiers. On the Councils, or the Faith of the Easterns. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd ser., vol. 9, edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Company, 1899. https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf209.ii.iii.i.html
Klingshirn, William E. Caesarius of Arles: The Making of a Christian Community in Late Antique Gaul. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/caesarius-of-arles/67EE7DB0601D86C802606C85D456E9F6
Kulikowski, Michael. “Barbarians in Gaul, Usurpers in Britain.” Britannia 31 (2000): 325–345. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/britannia/article/barbarians-in-gaul-usurpers-in-britain/8080D88478659D1DD17BF98EACE6E592
Leo I. Letters. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd ser., vol. 12, edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Company, 1895. https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf212.html
Loseby, Simon T. “Arles in Late Antiquity: Gallula Roma Arelas and Urbs Genesii.” In Towns in Transition: Urban Evolution in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, edited by Neil Christie and Simon T. Loseby, 45–70. Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996. https://books.google.com/
Mathisen, Ralph W. Ecclesiastical Factionalism and Religious Controversy in Fifth-Century Gaul. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1989. https://books.google.com/books?id=cZjYAAAAMAAJ
Mathisen, Ralph W. Roman Aristocrats in Barbarian Gaul: Strategies for Survival in an Age of Transition. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7560/770515
Matthews, J. F. “Olympiodorus of Thebes and the History of the West (A.D. 407–425).” Journal of Roman Studies 60 (1970): 79–97. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-roman-studies/article/olympiodorus-of-thebes-and-the-history-of-the-west-ad-407425/4F814AEC1DF78D5A8A9E1DF65772E5D9
Munier, Charles, ed. Concilia Galliae, A. 314–A. 506. Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 148. Turnhout: Brepols, 1963. https://www.brepols.net/
Notitia Dignitatum. Edited by Otto Seeck. Berlin: Weidmann, 1876. https://droitromain.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/Negotia/notitia_index.htm
Olympiodorus of Thebes. Histories. Fragments. In The Fragmentary Classicising Historians of the Later Roman Empire, edited and translated by R. C. Blockley. Liverpool: Francis Cairns, 1983. https://presbytersproject.ihuw.pl/index.php?SourceID=907&id=6
Orosius, Paulus. Seven Books of History Against the Pagans. Book 7. Translated by Roy J. Deferrari. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1964. https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/orosius.html
Pliny the Elder. Natural History. Vol. 2, Books 3–7. Translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942. https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Pliny_the_Elder/3*.html
Prosper of Aquitaine. Chronicon. In Chronica Minora Saec. IV. V. VI. VII., vol. 1, edited by Theodor Mommsen. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 9. Berlin: Weidmann, 1892. https://www.dmgh.de/
Ptolemy, Claudius. Geography. 2.10.15. Arelate entry. https://www1.ku.de/ggf/ag/tabula_peutingeriana/einzelanzeige.php?id=3234
Rothé, Marie-Pierre, and Marc Heijmans. Arles, Crau, Camargue. Carte archéologique de la Gaule 13/5. Paris: Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 2008. https://www.editions-msh.fr/livre/carte-archeologique-de-la-gaule-102/
Sidonius Apollinaris. Letters. Translated by W. B. Anderson. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936. See especially Letter 1.11. https://romanletters.org/letters/sidonius_apollinaris/1011/
Sidonius Apollinaris. Poems and Letters. Translated by W. B. Anderson. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936–1965. https://www.loebclassics.com/
Sozomen. Ecclesiastical History. Book 9. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd ser., vol. 2, edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Company, 1890. https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf202.html
Strabo. Geography. Vol. 2, Book 4. Translated by Horace Leonard Jones. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1923. https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Strabo/4A*.html
Tabula Peutingeriana. Arelate entry. Tabula Peutingeriana Database. https://www1.ku.de/ggf/ag/tabula_peutingeriana/einzelanzeige.php?id=3234
Theodosius II. Codex Theodosianus. Edited by Theodor Mommsen and Paul M. Meyer. Berlin: Weidmann, 1905. https://droitromain.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/Codex_Theod.htm
Theodosius II and Honorius. “Rescript Concerning the Assembly of the Seven Provinces at Arles.” 418. The Roman Law Library. https://droitromain.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/Constitutiones/de%20conciliis_Giraud.htm
UNESCO World Heritage Centre. “Arles, Roman and Romanesque Monuments.” UNESCO World Heritage Centre. https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/164
Van Dam, Raymond. Leadership and Community in Late Antique Gaul. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.8501135
Zosimus. New History. Book 6. London: Green and Chaplin, 1814. https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/zosimus06_book6.htm