ABSTRACT
The prehistory of the French language begins with the colonisation of Gaul by the Romans. The Celts who inhabited Gaul when the Romans came were Indo-Europeans, related to the Greeks, Romans and Germanic peoples in both culture and language. They appear to have lived originally in central or eastern Europe, but began to move westwards around 500 B.C. and settled in Gaul some two hundred years later, displacing the other peoples whom they found there, notably the Iberians, who were driven towards the south-west, and the Ligurians, who were driven towards the south-east. By this time there were also important Greek settlements on the Mediterranean coast at such places as Marseilles, Nice and Antibes, which have preserved their Greek names. In the second century B.C. these Greek settlers, harassed by the Gauls, asked for Roman aid against them, and thus brought about the first Roman campaign in Gaul, a campaign which, spread over thirty years from 154 to 125 B.C., led to the conquest of what the Romans then called the Provincia or province, a name which survives today as Provence. At first the Roman colony extended from the Alps to the Rhône, then the frontier was pushed south-west across the Rhône to the eastern Pyrenees, taking in what is today Roussillon. In 57 B.C., Julius Caesar undertook the conquest of the rest of Gaul, a process which was virtually complete by 52 B.C., for the Gauls, essentially a loose confederation of tribes, lacked political unity.
