HAEDUT

AEDUI  or HEDUI (Gr . A'Sovot), a Gallic people of Gallia Lugdunensis, who inhabited the country between the Arar (Saone) and Liger (Loire) . The statement in Strabo (ii . 3 . 192) that they dwelt between the Arar and Dubis (Doubs) is incorrect . Their territory thus included the greater part of the modern departments of Saone-et-Loire, Cote d'Or and Nievre . According to Livy (v . 34), they took part in the expedition of Bellovesus into Italy in the 6th century B.C . Before Caesar's time they had attached themselves to the Romans, and were honoured with the title of brothers and kinsmen of the Roman people . When the Sequani, their neighbours on the other side of the Arar, with whom they were continually quarrelling, invaded their country and subjugated them with the assistance of a German chieftain named Ariovistus, the Aedui sent Divitiacus, the druid, to Rome to appeal to the senate for help, but his mission was unsuccessful . On his arrival in Gaul (58 s.c.), Caesar restored their independence . In spite of this, the Aedui joined the Gallic coalition against Caesar (B.G. vii .

42), but after the surrender of Vercingetorix at

Alesia were glad to return .to their allegiance . Augustus dismantled their native capital Bibracte on Mont Beuvray, and substituted a new town with a half-Roman, half-Gaulish name, Augustodunum (mod . Autun) . During the reign of Tiberius (A.D . 21), they revolted under Julius Sacrovir, and seized Augustodunum, but were soon put down by Gains Silius (Tacitus, Ann. iii . 43-46) . The Aedui were the first of the Gauls to receive from the emperor Claudius the distinction of the jus honorum . The oration of Eumenius (q.v.), in which he pleaded for the restoration of the schools of his native place Augustodunum, shows that the district was neglected . The chief magistrate of the Aedui in Caesar's time was called Vergobretus (according to Mommsen, " judgment-worker "), who was elected annually, possessed powers of life and death, but was forbidden to go beyond the frontier . Certain clientes, or small communities, were also dependent upon the Aedui . See A . E .

Desjardins, Geographie de la Gaule, ii . (1876-1893) ; T . R .

Holmes, Caesar's Conquest of Gaul (1899) .