Matisco
- a city of the Aeduans, in Gallia Lugdunensis, on the Arar, the modern Maçon, Caes. B. G. 7, 90, 7.
MATISCO a place in Gallia Celtica, in the territory of the Aedui in Caesar's time, and on the Saône. (B. G. 7.90.) After the capture of Alesia, B.C. 52, Caesar placed P. Sulpicius at Matisco with a legion during the winter, to look after the supply of corn for the army. (B. G. 8.4.) The position of Matisco is fixed by the name, its site on the river, and the Itins. The name, it is said, was written Mastico by a transposition of the letters; and from this form came the name Mascon, and by a common change, Mâcon. The form Mastisco occurs in the Table. (D'Anville, Notice, &c. )
[G.L]The modern Mâcon; a town of the Aedui in Gallia Lugdunensis, on the
Situated on the Saône 70 km N of Lyon, in the civitas of the Aedui. Caesar (BGall 7.90) mentions the oppidum of Matisco, which has become better known through recent excavations. In the Tène III Age the principal settlement was moved from the Ile Saint-Jean on the top of a limestone bar on the right bank of the river, to the middle of what is now the city. A rampart of the murus gallicus type has been found there, with a ditch outside it. Although, being on the Via Agrippa, the city in the High Empire was the starting point of a road to Autun, it seems to have had little importance, much less than Cabillonum (Chalon-sur-Sabne). The principal find is the necropolis. A castrum was built in the 4th c. A.D., for which period the finds are more plentiful.
BIBLIOGRAPHYJeanton, Le Mâconnais gallo-romain (3 vols. 1926, 1927, 1931); Bartéelemy, “L'oppidum de Matisco,” Rev. Arch. de l'Est 24 (1973) 307-18. See also Annales de l'Académie de Mâcon, passim.
C. ROLLEY