River
Fluvius Arar
Saône
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The Saône in eastern France is the river Arar, which joins the Rhône at Lyon, the Roman Lugdunum. Its Celtic name is thought to mean 'the slow one', fitting a river whose strikingly sluggish current ancient writers remarked upon. Julius Caesar names it as the border between two Gallic peoples, the Aedui and the Sequani, and inscriptions from Lyon honour the boatmen who worked its waters. Tacitus tells of a Roman plan to link it to the Moselle by a canal, which was never carried out. By the fourth century it was already called Sauconna, the name that became Saône.