Lexovii

The Lexovii (polytonic|Ληξόβιοι, Strabo; polytonic|Ληξούβιοι, Ptol. ii. 8. § 2), were a Celtic people, on the coast of Gallia, immediately west of the mouth of the Seine. When the Veneti and their neighbors were preparing for Julius Caesar's attack (56 BCE), they applied for aid to the Osismii, Lexovii, Namnetes, and others. ("B. G." iii. 9, 11.) Caesar sent Quintus Titurius Sabinus against the Unelli, Curiosolites, and Lexovii, to prevent their joining the Veneti. A few days after Sabinus reached the country of the Unelli, the Aulerci Eburovices and the Lexovii murdered their council or senate, as Caesar calls it, because they were against the war; and they joined Viridovix, the chief of the Unelli. The Gallic confederates were defeated by Sabinus, and compelled to surrender. ("B. G." iii. 17-19.) The Lexovii took part in the great rising of the Galli against Caesar (52 BCE); but their force was only 3000 men. ("B. G." vii. 75.) Walckenaer supposes that the territory of the Lexovii of Caesar and Ptolemy comprised both the territories of Lisieux and Bayeux, though there was a people in Bayeux named Baiocasses; and he further supposes that these Baiocasses and the Viducasses were dependent on the Lexovii, and within their territorial limits. The capital of the Lexovii, or Civitas Lexoviorum, as it is called in the Notitia Dignitatum, is Lisieux, in the French department of Calvados, where the present-day inhabitants are still called "Lexoviens" and "Lexoviennes". Under the Romans, the "oppidum" of the Lexovii was called "Noviomagus Lexoviorum", "Newfield of the Lexovii". The country of the Lexovii was one of the parts of Gallia from which the passage to Britain was made.

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