City
Caesaromago
Beauvais
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Caesaromagus was the chief town of the Bellovaci, a Gallic people, and is today Beauvais in France. The name is read as 'Caesar's field', yet nothing proves the old guess that Caesar or Augustus founded it. The town grew up on a loop of the river Thérain from the early first century AD. After destruction in the third century, its inhabited area shrank to a tenth and was enclosed by walls early in the fourth. As a bishop's seat it outlived Roman rule, and the law courts still stand on Roman foundations. The geographer Ptolemy lists it too.