28th July 2010

Tongeren

Continuing with our day trips to the different cities of Belgium, today we visited the oldest city of Belgium, Tongeren. Upon our arrival in the city, I could see the city had a very different feel to it. Firstly, the architecture was a lot more homogenous compared to Brussels, as it had followed the European pattern of primarily red stone facades. Additionally, from observing people walking on the streets it seemed as though the average age of the population was older relative to other cities. Specially, it was a stark contrast to Eupen which had 23% of its population under 18 (use reference). Moving on, our tour started with a visit to the Gallo-Roman Museum wherein we first got a look at a piece of stone that was said to be more than 500,000 years old. I found this very exciting as I have always seen historical artifacts as such on television; but the experience of seeing it at arm’s length is a memory is a completely different feeling altogether. Then, we quickly moved up time to see sculptures, artifacts, videos, etc belonging to the Ice Age, Stone Age, Bronze Age, and so on. While this would intrigue a lot of people who have very little knowledge about the development of life on earth; it made very little sense to me. It was a section we could have skipped considering that it was information already known to us. In fact, we could have spent more time learning for example, facts about the Roman development of the city, their civic systems, culture, etc. Nonetheless, we still learnt a lot about the history and roman development of Tongeren, and the city’s cherished hero, Ambiorix.

Ambiorix was a very interesting character to me for a few reasons. The first thing I liked about him was his prudence. When the Romans first attacked, he was able to fend off the first wave with an army of civilians. These civilians weren’t trained warriors like the Romans, nor were they as equipped in weaponry, clothing and shields. They were citizens engaged in day to day life. Still, Ambiorix was able to raise an army that dealt an embarrassing defeat to the Romans. He paid eburones one gold coin to fight for a year. This was during a time when the concept of wealth was not as refined and important as today. However, he was still able to convince his people to fight for him. This concept of paying citizens to fight as soldiers inspired many other leaders in the regions nearby to enact the same. However, this was short lived as Caesar then came with two legions and completely finished the entire community. Again, Ambiorix displayed his wit as in the Roman historical accounts there was no mention of the capture of Ambiorix. The primary reason why I find this interesting, even though there are more illustrious characters in history than Ambiorix is that he was able to display good sense in such a difficult time that too with a primitive background. In contrast, there are so many of us who probably would not have been able to do so even after the amount of education that we have. Another attention-grabbing fact about Ambiorix that I learnt from the tour was that his origin was unknown. He could have been a nomad who settled in Tongeren for some time, but still the city chose to make him their local hero. I found this fact very funny, and at the same time smart marketing. Making somebody a local hero adds more meaning to the city giving the people something to look up to. Also, it adds to the touristic value of city, which in turn translates to more money. Obviously, I am making a few assumptions here. Nonetheless, they sound like probable reasons for glorification of Ambiorix as a ‘Tongeren hero’.

In conclusion, the tour around Tongeren revealed a few elements about the city. The city mainly consisted of a very elderly population. Also, this is probably the reason why I found the city to be more religious relative to others. The visit to the Basilica of Our Lady proved this. Compared to any other church that we had visited, this one had more people attending the church. Additionally, the large number of “Begihof’s” and the fact that it was still being practiced further buttressed this assumption. Moving on, the story of Ambiorix was something interesting to learn about, and his status of ‘local hero’ sparked a thought in me. It was that just like religion, even Ambiorix was somewhat of a man-made creation. The society could have chosen countless others for fulfilling that role. However, the chose someone that they knew could not be contested due to lack of sufficient information about him. In the crudest sense this is very similar to the concept of God. Nobody knows for sure about the existence of God, except for religious texts: similar to Ambiorix whose character was pulled out of Roman texts. What is true and what is false? It’s more of a question of what somebody wants to believe.