Vidin stands on the site of the Roman town of Bononia in Moesia Superior, not to be confounded with the Pannonian Bononia, which stood higher up the Danube to the north of Sirmium.
Augustus made it a military station; Tiberius chose it as his headquarters against the Pannonian rebels; and from Septimius Severus, who made it the centre of a military government, it gained the name of Septimia Sissia.
Augustus visited it during the Pannonian wars in 12-10 B.C. and it was the birthplace of Tiberius's son by Julia, in the latter year.
In the east a Gaulish people named Cotini are mentioned, apparently in the upper basin of the Oder, and Tacitus speaks of a tribe in the same neighborhood, the Osi, who he says spoke the Pannonian language.
In many respects no two men could be more unlike than Severus, the scholar and orator, well versed in the ways of the world, and Martin, the rough Pannonian bishop,.