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The original of tliis bool< is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924082190434 
 
OLD PROVENCE 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 Fourth Edition, Revised. In Two Volumes. Crown 8vo. Net $4.00 
 with a new preface and fresh illustrations 
 
 OLD TOURAINE 
 
 The Life and History of the Chateaux of the Loire 
 
 " It was a happy inspiration which induced Mr. T. A. Cook to devote a 
 monograph to this subject. . . The conception is at once felicitous 
 
 and novel, no similar work having been produced either in England or in 
 France, and the execution is worthy of the conception." — London Times. 
 
 "These are valuable and fascinating and handy volumes, with well- 
 chosen, faithful, and pleasant pictures ; and no one who can read English 
 should ever again go without them to that valley of the Loire which is so 
 full of history and romance. And every one who has been there should 
 have this work — for it is an able work, too — in his library." — Speaker. 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
THE PONT DU CARD 
 
OLD PROVENCE 
 
 BY 
 
 THEODORE ANDREA COOK, M.A., F.S.A. 
 
 SOMETIME SCHOLAR OF WADHAM COLLEGE, OXFORD 
 
 AUTHOR OF "OLD TOURAINE, THE LIFE AND HISTORY OF 
 
 THE ChAtEAUX of THE LOIRE " 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES 
 VOLUMK I 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1905 
 
-'61/ 
 
 luy 
 
 Copyright, 1905, by \ 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 Published, September, 1905 
 
 TROW OIRECTOHY 
 
 PRINTINQ AND GOOKBINOINQ COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
TO 
 
 ALICE LEITH-HAY CLARK 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 JULY 9, 1898 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Veson li vifei mounumen de I'istori de Prouvfenfo 
 Veson li viei mounumen 
 Eme soun ensignamen. . . . — L'Amiradov. 
 
 Tarascoun, e Beu-Caire, e Toulouso, e Bezi^s, 
 Fasfent bkrri de car, Prouvenjo, li vesies. . . . 
 
 I Troubaire Catalan.' 
 
 Those who have done me the honour of reading Old 
 Touraine will need little by way of preface to these 
 pages. The history of Old Provence has necessitated a 
 somewhat different treatment only because I have had 
 towns to deal with instead of castles, and because I have 
 had far more space to cover, both in territory and in 
 time, than was involved in describing the chateaux in 
 the districts of Tours and of Blois. The Seine seems 
 full of commerce and of government; the Loire still 
 mirrors the pleasure-palaces of the Valois court upon its 
 golden stream; but the Valley of the Rhone has been 
 
 ' "They see the ancient monuments of old Provence, with all they 
 have to teach . . . Tarascon, Beaucaire, Toulouse, and Bfeiers. 
 Provence! thou hast seen all of them at bay behind the ramparts of 
 their flesh and blood. . . ." — yhsTSiKL, Lis Isclo d'Or. 
 
OLD PROVENCE 
 
 the highway of the nations, the path of conquerors, 
 the battlefield of the invader; and its boatmen still call 
 one bank "Empire" and the other "Kingdom," 
 though the names have long ago lost all significance in 
 relation either to the east or to the western shore. 
 But Provence, united, as she has been, to the crown of 
 France for more than four hundred years, has preserved 
 a more distinct individuahty than almost any other 
 region within French frontiers. It was indeed, at one 
 time of her history, quite as Hkely that Provence should 
 absorb the territories of Capets and of Valois as that 
 the reverse process should eventually occur; and the 
 extraordinary influence exerted in European poUtics 
 of the thirteenth century, by the four daughters of 
 Raymond- Berenger of Provence and Beatrix of Savoy, 
 was only equalled by the profound significance of the 
 presence of the Popes at Avignon in the fourteenth, a 
 fact which concentrated the thoughts of Christendom 
 upon the Valley of the Rhone for more than a hundred 
 years. 
 
 These salient characteristics in the history of Provence 
 have guided me in my treatment of so large a theme. 
 The whole of my first volume has been devoted to the 
 Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans, who have here left 
 traces upon the soil of France that are as remarkable as 
 any to be found in Italy, and that have often been pre- 
 served among far less discordant surroundings. In 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 Aries, in Ntmes, near St. Remy, at Frejus, at the Pont 
 du Gard, has stayed the completed vision of a classic 
 past which is not dead, but sleepeth; which embraces 
 you as you step into it, without a trace of crude survival 
 or barbarous anachronism. This first volume, then, 
 may be used alone, if necessary, as a description of the 
 Roman Empire on the Rhone, illustrated by Greek and 
 Roman monuments. 
 
 I have made full and frequent use of the inscriptions 
 and epitaphs in all parts of Provence, in order to give 
 as many details as possible of the life of the Romans 
 on the Rhone among the buildings they have left; and 
 I must here express my deep gratitude to Professor 
 Pelham, President of Trinity College, Oxford, for his 
 kindness in saving me from many a mistake, in evidence 
 which must inevitably be submitted to an expert con- 
 stantly conversant with such matters. It is, however, 
 in the correction of errors only that Professor Pelham's 
 invaluable aid is here acknowledged. The use made 
 of this material, and the deductions based on it, are 
 mine alone. Those who are familiar with classical 
 versions of the campaigns of Hannibal or Marius may 
 perhaps detect a certain curtly decisive pose about 
 some of my statements which they will not consider 
 justified by the authority conveyed upon my title-page. 
 But I have no space either for redundant explanation or 
 for insincere apologies. My conclusions are the result 
 
OLD PROVENCE 
 
 of working on the spot ; and when they differ from those 
 of previous writers who, in their studies, know far more 
 of the classics, I would ask the critic to suspend judg- 
 ment until he has reahsed the differences involved in the 
 two methods employed. The systems of such men 
 as M. Gilles, M. Lenthdric, or M. Bdrard, who have 
 gone to sunny Mother Earth, to the fair flowing of 
 her streams, and to the barriers of her mountain-ranges, 
 may at first seem productive of results which no student 
 nurtured in the cold, clear lamp-light of textual criticism 
 could accept. If I have sometimes taken a middle 
 course, it is not from considerations of safety that I 
 have made my choice. But it has become quite clear to 
 me that to understand the history or the life of Old 
 Provence you must see the country. The tale of the 
 Rhone valley is incredible until you know the Rhone. 
 The classical authorities present a merely unintelligible 
 maze till you have walked over the battlefields they 
 describe. 
 
 Many who know Provence already wiU wonder at my 
 omissions. But I have preferred to say nothing of 
 places which tell their own tale, Martigues, for instance, 
 and many more, which will be constant discoveries of 
 fresh deUght to every traveller. I have determined to 
 write a book, and not a library; and in the selection that 
 became inevitable I have been guided as much by con- 
 
PREFACE xiii 
 
 siderations of what was typical, within the most gener- 
 ous of geographical boundaries, as by the determination 
 to be able to refer the reader to the actually existing 
 framework of my story. Little of Marseilles that was 
 built before the fifteenth century remains, except its 
 churches; the Roman buildings of Narbonne were 
 broken up by that enlightened friend of the Arts, 
 Franfois i., to make fortifications; so I have said more 
 of St. Remy, or of Frejus, than of either. 
 
 My second volume begins in the vague mists of a 
 "transition-period," which scientific research will no 
 doubt wholly clear away as soon as it has settled such 
 comparatively simple problems as the explanation of 
 Etruscan nationality and language. But with the pass- 
 ing of the year looo, and the building of St. Trophime 
 and St. Gilles, we emerge into modern times. With 
 Les Baux and Aigues-Mortes we pass on to the period 
 of wars. Crusades, and fortresses, when the races were 
 in the melting pot and the sword solved every problem. 
 At Avignon we meet the Popes; and hard by are the 
 shades of Laura and of Petrarch. The good King 
 Rend, a bunch of grapes in one hand and a scroll of 
 verses in the other, smiles at us from Aix and Tarascon. 
 Across the river lies Beaucaire, where Aucassin loved 
 Nicolete. When Charles of Anjou left Provence to 
 Louis XI. of France, in 1484, my labours end. 
 
OLD PROVENCE 
 
 "La Prouvfenfo cantavo, e lou tfems courregufe; 
 
 E coume au Rose la Durfenfo 
 
 Perd k la fin soun escourrS;njo, 
 
 Lou gai reiaume de Prouvfengo 
 Dins lou sen de la Franco a la fin s'amagufe.'" 
 
 I have not wearied the reader with large lists of 
 authorities for various interesting points which occur 
 before 1484. He must, for instance, take it for granted 
 that Dante passed through Provence on his way to 
 Paris, and certainly knew more of the country than the 
 author of Aucassin and Nicolete did of Beaucaire. 
 The best short account of early painters in Provence, 
 especially of the famous "Buisson Ardent" at Aix, is 
 in M. Paul Vitry's annotated catalogue of the "Ex- 
 position des Primitifs Franfais," held in the Louvre in 
 1904. It will also be noticed that I reject the Provenjal 
 version of "Laura," as it is given in De Sade's Vie de 
 Petrarque, which seems to me as erroneous as it is bulky. 
 Though the volume pubhshed in 1904 by Mr. E. J. 
 Mills will not wholly recommend itself to the critical 
 historian, it is valuable as drawing attention to the 
 evidence in Petrarch's own writings; and all who care 
 to investigate the subject for themselves should read 
 the edition of the Letters published by Fracassetti in 
 1859, 2.nd numerous tractates by Pierre de Nolhac (of 
 
 ' "Time slipped by as Provence sang her songs; until, as the Durance 
 at last loses her stream within the Rhone, so the gay kingdom of 
 Provence laid herself to rest upon the bosom of France." 
 
PREFACE XV 
 
 Versailles), whose great contribution to literature was 
 the discovery of Petrarch's own finally revised manu- 
 script of the Rime. Until the pubhcation of the works of 
 M. Segr^ at Rome, and M. Cochin in Paris, the Essay 
 by M^ziferes held the field, but it has lost its value since 
 the most recent discoveries. 
 
 As a last word, let me advise the traveller to visit 
 Provence in spring. He should go from Paris to 
 Toulouse, working along south and east by way of 
 Carcassonne to Beziers or Narbonne (with possible 
 excursions to Foix or Perpignan) and so through 
 Montpellier to Nimes. Visitors who have begun their 
 tour in autumn would do well to spend the winter on the 
 C6te d'Azur. But in any case it is a pleasant journey, 
 after the Camargue and the Crau are passed, to travel 
 round the coastline from Marseilles to Monte Carlo. 
 Of the Riviera I have little here to say. All character 
 has been stamped out of it by the levelling cosmopohtan- 
 ism of alien luxury. The pleasure-ground of Europe, 
 lovely as it may be for the foreign visitor, has had to 
 pay the price; and on your return to the Rhone valley 
 from Monte Carlo you will do well to go inland by 
 Vence, and Grasse, Draguignan, and St. Maximin, 
 and so to Aix en Provence, a pleasant town of fountains 
 and front-doors and shady boulevards, with memories 
 of the good King Ren6 and an excellent library. St. 
 Gilles and Les Saintes Maries, on the west side of the 
 
OLD PROVENCE 
 
 Rhone, you will have visited from Nlmes. On the east 
 are Vaucluse and St. Remy. The stream itself is 
 bridged, as you move up it, by Aries and Trinquetaille, 
 by Beaucaire and Tarascon, by Avignon and Ville- 
 neuve; from these last, by way of Orange, lies your road 
 home. 
 
 The lovely voyage down the Rhone from Lyons is 
 better done in summer than either in spring or autumn, 
 the two best seasons for Provence. But when summer 
 traveUing is necessary, go down the river as far as 
 Beaucaire, and make straight from Tarascon to St. 
 Remy. ' 
 
 If one result of these pages be to send more English- 
 men to what was once a fief of Richard Coeur de Lion, 
 I shall be well content; they will at least help to repay 
 a little of that obligation under which we were first laid 
 by St. Augustine at Aries. 
 
 T. A. C. 
 
 Chelsea, 1905. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 Introductory 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 The Dawn of History 
 
 Prehistoric Remains — The Changes of the Soil of Provence, 
 and of the Coastline — The Phoenicians — The Danger of 
 the Dikes — The River Rhone — Phocaean Colonists — 
 Greek Civilisation — Women of Aries — Marseilles and 
 Rome — Hannibal and Scipio — The "Pyramid" of 
 Vienne — The Monument of CavaiUon. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 Martos in Provence 56 
 
 The " Fosses Mariennes" — St. Remy, the Camp of Marius 
 — His Station at Les Baux — Battle of the Lar (or Arc) — 
 Battle of Pourriferes beneath Mont Ste. Victoire — The 
 Garagai — The "Three Marys" at Les Baux — Portrait 
 of Marius — Legend of Les Saintes Maries — Martha, 
 Mary Magdalen, and Lazarus — Its Origin in Les Baux 
 and its Consecration by King Rene. 
 
 xvii 
 
OLD PROVENCE 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 Rome at St. Remy and Orange 87 
 
 The Politics of Rome — Marius and Sulla — Caesar and 
 Pompey — The Problem of the Allobroges — Importance 
 of Vienne — Triumphal Monument to Marius at St. 
 Remy — A Spurious Inscription — The PoUcy of Julius 
 Caesar — His Triumphal Arch at St. Remy — Arch of 
 Augustus at Carpentras — Glanum, Freta, and St. Remy 
 — Roumanille — Nostradamus — Frederic Mistral — Arch 
 of Tiberius at Orange — Its Inscription — "Arc Admi- 
 rable" at Aries — Theatre of Orange — The Princess of 
 Orange — WilUam of Orange and of England. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 The Pacification of Provence 145 
 
 Siege of Marseilles — Foundations and Endurance of the 
 Roman Rule — Mark Antony at Frejus — Monument to 
 Augustus at La Turbie — The "Tour Magne" at Nimes. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 Greece and Rome at Arles 160 
 
 Geographical Conditions of Aries — The Greek Theatre — 
 Greek Actors and Theatrical Companies — Strange 
 Fortunes of the Stage — The Venus of Aries — Inexcus- 
 able "Restorations" — The Bust with the Broken Nose 
 — Head of Augustus — Altar to Venus and Augustus. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 Of Ancient Religions in Provence and Greek Art at 
 
 Nimes 184 
 
 The Druids — Tribal Divisions — The Real Meaning of 
 "Assimilation" — Absorption of Roman Life and Ideals 
 — Mixture of Religions — Mithra — "Bona Dea" — Her 
 Altar at Aries — Apollo of Ladignan at Nimes — The 
 Mercury of Nimes — The Venus of Nimes — Shopmade 
 Copies of Famous Originals — Temple called the 
 "Maison Carree " — Caesar-worship — Principles of 
 Beauty and Intentional Variations — History of the 
 " Maison Carree " — Greek Language long in use — "Two 
 Fatherlands " — Famous " Provincials." 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Life under the Roman Emperors — 
 
 Part I: Above Ground 225 
 
 A Roman's Public Pleasures — Baths and Amphitheatres — 
 Roman Aries — The Obelisk of Aries — Trinquetaille — 
 Amphitheatre of Aries — The Gladiators — ^Amphitheatre 
 of Nimes — Roman Ruins of Fr^jus — The Aqueduct — 
 The Harbour — The Pont du Gard — Roman Baths and 
 Temple of Nemausus in the Jardin de la Fontaine at 
 Nimes — Architecture of the "Temple de Diane." 
 
 Part II: Beneath the Surface 280 
 
 Roman Baths — Details of their Organisation — Women's 
 Festivals — Tomb of Licinia and her Husband — 
 Gardeners — Vineyards — Taverns — Sheepshearers — 
 Musicians — Chairmakers — Garlands — The Saturnalia 
 — The Future Life — The Capua of the Rhone — Nimes 
 Mosaics — Roman Ruins in England — Priestess of Ceres 
 at Nimes — Augustus and Marcellus at Aries — Julia 
 Domna, Caracalla, and Julia Mamaea at Ntmes — Aries 
 under Constantine — Early Christian Tombs at Aries — ■ 
 The last of the Romans in Provence. 
 
 Appendix 329 
 
 List of Latin and Greek Inscriptions — The "Arc Admi- 
 rable" at Aries — List of "Monuments Historiques" 
 before the Tenth Century a.d. 
 
 Index to Volume I 339 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Pont du Gard . . . ' . . . . Frontispiece 
 
 A woman of Aries (from a drawing by Jane E. Cook) . Title-page 
 
 Carving from a Roman Tomb at Aries 56 
 
 From an early Christian Tomb at Aries 87 
 
 Roman Triumphal Monument, 
 
 wrongly called "The Mausoleum," at St. Remy . . . 95 
 
 Triumphal Arch at St. Remy 106 
 
 Triumphal Arch at Carpentras 109 
 
 Triumphal Arch at Orange 127 
 
 The Tomb of the Hunter, Aries [a] 145 
 
 Portion of Frieze carved with the Roman Eagles, Nimes . . 158 
 
 Early Christian Tomb at Aries [b] 160 
 
 The Greek Theatre at Aries, taken from the north-west corner 
 
 of the stage 165 
 
 The Venus of Aries in the Louvre (Restored). 
 
 The smaller figure shows the marble as originally found . 175 
 
 Greek Bust at Aries 179 
 
 The Imperial Wreath of Augustus at Aries . . . . 180 
 
 Altar to Venus and Augustus at Aries 181 
 
 Early Christian Tomb at Aries [c] 184 
 
 Bust called the Mercury of Nimes (photographed by R. Royer) 198 
 
 The Venus of Nimes (photographed by R. Royer) . . 199 
 
 Roman Temple called the " Maison Carrie " at Nimes . . 210 
 
 Early Christian Tomb at Aries [d] 225 
 
 The Amphitheatre of Aries as originally built 
 
 (reconstructed by Jacques Peytret) 231 
 
 Ruins of the Roman Amphitheatre (exterior) at Aries (1903) . 235 
 
 Ruins of the Porta Romana at Aries 237 
 
 The Roman Amphitheatre at Aries as it appeared in 1666 . 241 
 
 Ruins of the Roman Amphitheatre (interior) at Aries (1903) . 246 
 
 Exterior of the Roman Amphitheatre at Nimes (1903) . . 250 
 
 XX 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Interior of the Roman Amphitheatre at Nimes (1903) . . 255 
 The Temple of Nemausus near the Roman Baths, 
 
 in the Jardin de la Fontaine at Nimes . . . . 272 
 
 Early Christian Tomb at Aries [e] 280 
 
 The Roman Baths at Nimes, in the Jardin de la Fontaine . 283 
 
 Tomb of Adgennius and his wife Licinia at Nimes . . 289 
 Priestess of Ceres from Bouillargues, now in Maison Carree 
 
 at Nimes (photographed by R. Royer) .... 303 
 
 Bust of Augustus at Aries 305 
 
 Marcellus (from a drawing by Jane E. Cook of the bust at 
 
 Aries) 307 
 
 Bust of Juha Domna from the Pont du Card, now in Maison 
 
 Carree at Nimes (photographed by R. Royer) . . 311 
 Bust of the young Caracalla in Maison Carree at Nimes 
 
 (photographed by R. Royer) 313 
 
 Bust of Julia Mamaea in youth from Ste. Colombe, now in 
 
 Maison Carree at Nimes (photographed by R. Royer) . 316 
 
 Tomb of Cornelia Lacaena at Aries 321 
 
 The "Arc Admirable" at Aries 332, 334 
 
 Plan of the Porta Romana (after Auguste Veran) . . . 335 
 The Porta Romana at Aries as built by Augustus 
 
 (after Auguste Veran) 335 
 
 Map of Aries under Constantine .... at page 336 
 
 Plan of Roman Fr^jus (Forum Julii) ... at page 337 
 
TO THE VENUS OF ARLES 
 
 NOW IN THE LOUVRE 
 
 UoiKtXoBpov dddvar A^poStra. 
 
 Queen of the Rhone, fair Goddess of Provence, 
 
 Immortal Aphrodite! Thou whose spell 
 
 Still lingers in the loveliness of Aries. . . . 
 
 Beneath that golden bloom upon thy limbs 
 The hot blood courses, ready for the blush 
 Of conscious Ufe. . . . 
 
 Down from Olympus' height 
 Star-throned and incorruptible, afar 
 Thou camest, charioted upon the wings, 
 White-glancing, multitudinous, of doves; 
 And as the touch of rosy-fingered Dawn 
 Above the city of the violet crown 
 Spread westward to that Hellas on the Rhone 
 Which raised thy shrine where older fanes had fallen, 
 High above Aries, upon a golden cloud 
 Thou didst delay, to watch thy worshippers 
 Till they beheld thy beauty as it flashed 
 Unveiled and splendid on the sunlit air. 
 
For thee on pleasant lawns of old Provence 
 The Fauns were piping, and the shy Nymphs played, 
 While Dryads danced, till all the woodland rang 
 With laughter; till the thousand-ripphng Sea — 
 Thine ancient Mother — shone with welcoming smiles. 
 When the slow moon and all the Pleiades 
 Had softly set in silvern majesty, 
 Beneath the shadow of the whispering trees 
 The Gods walked visible when thou wert by. 
 And in the freedom of thy friendship moved. 
 
 Less than four hundred years beside the Rhone 
 Did Aphrodite rule; new rites, new tongues 
 Crowded her Cyprian mysteries aside 
 And trampled down her temples. . . . 
 
 Slowly paled 
 The flush of hfe that filled her rounded breast; 
 Slowly the semblance of her beauty froze 
 To marble, motionless; her spirit fled 
 Abroad, in the fair fields and plains of Aries, 
 Gifting her girls with beauty, and her boys 
 With strength; but in their midst no more 
 Stood Aphrodite's self. Unrecognised, 
 Unknown, unloved, she has for ever passed 
 To unattainable Olympus. . . . 
 
 Even this stone 
 Stayed not in Aries. It stands beside the Seine, 
 A monument of all Provence once loved 
 And all she lost. Perchance 'tis better so 
 To cloister Pagan beauty in the walls 
 Of Christian opulence, lest modern hearts 
 Be turned from warring creeds and lust for gold 
 To ancient loveliness, and ancient peace, 
 And all the grace of simple womanhood 
 Disrobed and unabashed in Arcady. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 "Pesto, lioun, sablas, famino, dardai fou, 
 A vie tout afrounta! Li loup, li tartarasso 
 Seguissien trefouli sa cavalo negrasso 
 Car sabien que i'aurie de mort un terro-sou." . . .' 
 
 The quotation from Aubanel which I have set at 
 the head of this chapter resumes, in the best phrases 
 I have ever read, one of the great characteristics of 
 Provenjal history — the blood that has been poured out 
 so often and so terribly upon her soil. They will 
 remind the reader that the country through which 
 Hannibal's Numidians marched towards the sack of 
 Italy was also the scene of the slaughter of the Bar- 
 barians by Caius Marius; that the citizens who once 
 filled the amphitheatres of a Roman Empire were 
 afterwards the victims of many a Christian Crusade; 
 and that beside the Palace of the Popes at Avignon the 
 Rhone has run red from the battlefields of Romans, 
 
 ' "Pestilence, lions, and the burning sands, 
 Sunstroke and famine, he had faced them all. 
 Gladly the wolf and vulture followed him 
 .\nd his black mare, because they knew his track 
 Was marked by heaps of dead. ..." 
 
OLD PROVENCE 
 
 Saracens, Spaniards, Englishmen, Italians, and French. 
 After her years of fighting and of love, tired out too soon 
 by passions that had left her wellnigh strengthless, 
 Provence fell upon a long sleep in the encircUng arms 
 of France. With Aubanel, Yfith. Mistral, and the 
 F^libres, she is awakening to the new dawn of a dis- 
 tinctive personality that has never been completely 
 overshadowed by the insistent claim of more extended 
 patriotisms. In France, yet not of it, Provence has 
 forged her dialect into a language as different from the 
 French as are her olives and her Arlesiennes from the 
 apple-orchards and the milk-maids of the North. How 
 magnificently concentrated in expression, how resonant 
 in harmony, how characteristic in its phrasing that 
 language can be, the lines which I shall quote here and 
 there among these pages wiU be more than sufficient 
 proof. 
 
 Many different nationahties have passed through 
 Provence, and danced upon the bridge of Avignon, or 
 bought at the market of Beaucaire; Greek, Spaniard, 
 and Italian have joined the farandole of Aries ; the very 
 soil seems eagerly to thrust forth its thirsty sands towards 
 the sea, with something of that impulse towards mari- 
 time adventure which inspired the Crusades and the 
 campaigns of Sicily. The torrent of the Rhone is 
 symbolic of the country: dazzling in the sunshine, strong 
 and barbarous in the shade, with no respect of persons 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 or of places, yet with a beauty that is irresistible. Its 
 oratory was typified in Mirabeau. Its poetry lives in 
 Frederic Mistral. 
 
 That strange centrifugal force which has so often 
 animated Provence seems soon to have driven all her 
 great towns to her frontiers. In her heart were the 
 dying colonies of a different race. When all her 
 towns were gathered under one standard, it was to the 
 fatal conquest of Naples that they were led; and 
 Provence herself was never reunited. It was the same 
 with her religious life, which had scarcely recovered 
 from the horrors of the Albigensian Crusade, when the 
 deathblow was dealt by the Papal court at Avignon. 
 Like the Rhone, which moves more and more slowly 
 as it nears the sea, until its waters lose themselves in 
 plains and marshes, so Provence has never reached the 
 zenith of her destiny. The sands of time have choked 
 her fortunes, and she lives but in the mighty ruins of 
 her past. 
 
 To the student of history there can be no more 
 beautiful, no more pathetic region in Europe than the 
 valley of the Rhone. 
 
 What we call civihsation, as Anatole France has 
 said, is merely a conveniently summary description of 
 contemporary life. Everything that is past we label 
 barbarous. In time we, too, shall become the bar- 
 barians of a more civilised and enlightened future; 
 
OLD PROVENCE 
 
 just as Rome, with all the Roman Empire meant, is 
 merged in that dark night of uncouth disorder before 
 we had ourselves arisen. If we consider the ideals of 
 various ages in the perspective thus suggested, we shall 
 find that they present a curious kaleidoscope of differing 
 results. 
 
 Here by the Rhone, for instance, we see the reason- 
 able Roman gods, their utilitarian goddesses, full of 
 good sense and kindliness, taking a due share in the 
 divinely organised society. Here, too, we can realise a 
 little of that difficulty which beset the cultured Roman 
 when he was asked to believe in a Divinity which was as 
 much offended by the existence of other creeds as by the 
 worship of the deity in other forms. To the tolerant 
 Roman all religions were but as shafts, loosed, it is true, 
 from different quarters, which were no concern of his, 
 but aimed at the same centre he recognised himself, a 
 central sphere of perfect light, which could be caught in 
 various prisms, and might be reflected in as many vary- 
 ing hues, but which remained essentially the same. 
 For him religion duly recognised the proper bases of 
 mundane society; and if the better-born enjoyed the 
 favour of the greater gods that was but a natural con- 
 sequence of a divinely sympathetic aristocracy. Yet, as 
 the Roman Empire grew, and as by far the greater 
 number of its inhabitants were either slaves or freedmen, 
 a religion that directly appealed to them was supported 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 by an infinitely vaster audience than that which ap- 
 preciated the ritual of their masters. So Christianity, 
 as soon as the truth which underlay its tenets had been 
 realised, went on, by sheer weight of numbers, until it 
 conquered Rome herself. But mark the first results. 
 By the Popes were introduced these Christian persecu- 
 tions which devastated Provence far more than any 
 pagan rites had ever done, or ever wished to do. 
 Religion at first seemed to mean the increase of persecu- 
 tions, and to imply, not Rome, not Protestantism, not 
 even Christianity, but a balance of differing phraseolo- 
 gies chiefly depending upon abstruse and legal con- 
 siderations. 
 
 By the Rhone, too, we can realise that it was a mere 
 matter of exact knowledge which led to Rome's greatest 
 political mistake. She imagined that the conquered 
 Parthians and Germans were on the true limits of the 
 world; so the Universal Peace, of which Augustus 
 sincerely believed himself the forerunner, was shattered 
 by the inroad of those outer Barbarians, unrecognised 
 by Rome, who for fourteen centuries after their arrival 
 in the South fought over the making of modern Europe. 
 Ever since their coming the growth of civilisation 
 has meant the growth of war, and that, too, in exact 
 proportion to the increase of knowledge and the ex- 
 tension of colonial possessions : for the discovery of the 
 New World only convulsed the Old with even greater 
 
OLD PROVENCE 
 
 pangs of rivalry and contest. It remained for the 
 twentieth century, and for another imperial advocate 
 of Universal Peace, to conduct the bloodiest campaign 
 seen since the Roman Empire, and to lose as many 
 men as Varusor as Crassus on battlefields even further 
 from his base. So peace now seems to rest, not on the 
 philosophy of an Augustus, not even on the balance of 
 power as between the nations which have inherited his 
 Empire, but on the available cash-balances of various 
 Chancellors of the Exchequer. 
 
 Though the eternity of the Roman Empire soon be- 
 came as obviously untrue as its pretensions to universal 
 dominion had always been, it is curious that Roman 
 laws and civilisation have been inherited and enjoyed 
 by every great nation of the modern world save one, the 
 Chinese Empire. China has maintained an attitude of 
 unruffled reserve for more than two thousand years. 
 On one side of the world she ruled vaster masses of 
 population than Rome on the other ever knew. Like 
 Rome she claimed the possession of the whole habitable 
 globe. The attitude of the two Emperors, during the 
 age of the Antonines for instance, recalls the old French 
 story of the atheist who bowed before a crucifix : ' lis 
 se saluaient, mais ils ne se connaissaient pas.' The 
 Chinese Emperor must have vaguely heard of the ex- 
 istence of the Roman Emperor, and no doubt smiled, 
 with some indulgence, at the news of his extraordinary 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 claims. Their representatives saluted distantly, but the 
 principals were careful not to meet. In fact China 
 maintained a more or less respectable and a fairly un- 
 molested seclusion until five Great Powers had guaran- 
 teed her integrity, and two had come to bitter blows 
 about it. 
 
 The builders of the Pont du Gard, the men who 
 raised the theatre of Orange, or the aqueduct of Frdjus, 
 seem even to-day to have been the agents of some 
 greater power than the world had seen before, or has 
 seen since. But the Empire for which they built has 
 been outlasted by th^ir arches ; the Provence they knew 
 has vanished; it is their Chinese contemporaries who 
 have survived. It is thought signiiicant, sometimes, 
 that China appears as little in the military calculations of 
 Western Europe now as did the Goths and Huns in 
 those of the later Roman Empire they destroyed. 
 
 Beneath the broken shadows of St. Remy's triumphal 
 monuments, or among the mighty tiers of seats within 
 the ruined amphitheatre of Aries, we begin to under- 
 stand, in a new way, the ancient truth that continuity 
 of fame and strength depend neither on material forces 
 nor on enlarged dominion. Provence will live, not be- 
 cause of her Roman ruins, her mediaeval fortresses, her 
 modern industries, but because some unknown singer 
 saw the daisy-flowers that seemed black beneath the 
 feet of Nicolete, so white was the maiden, as she went 
 
OLD PROVENCE 
 
 tip-toe through the moonlit garden of Beaucaire; or 
 because such poetry as Petrarch's was inspired by her 
 women and fostered by her skies. 
 
 "Bluio Sorgo, dins sa barco, 
 Amourous coume n'i'a plus, 
 L'as pourta dins soun trelus 
 
 Toun Petrarco, 
 
 E la Sorgo dis: 
 
 Ero un paradisi 
 Parlo-nous toujour de Lauro 
 
 O doufo auro! 
 Tu que, sfempre i soun cousta, 
 Caressaves sa beuta. 
 Jo vino e puro coume I'aubo, 
 Quand veni^ dins lou valoun, 
 Boulegaves soun peu blound 
 
 E sa raubo. 
 
 E I'aureto dis: 
 
 Ero un paradisi"^ 
 
 It leaves me comparatively unmoved to hear the 
 decorous observations of John E\'elyn on the valley of 
 the Rhone, or to follow the conscientiously agricultural 
 footsteps of the worthy Arthur Young in Montpellier 
 or Narbonne. But I must confess to a joyful thrill of 
 expectation as I draw near the Ringing Isle with 
 Pantagruel, and learn that, by the primal institution 
 
 ' "O azure stream of Sorgue! Thou didst bear the boat of thy 
 Petrarch, in all the splendour of his fame, that never-equalled lover. 
 And the Sorgue replied, ' Ahl that was Paradise indeed/' O gentle 
 breeze ! Speak to us always of Laura, thou who didst ever play around 
 her and caressed her beauty, and when she came, in all her youth and 
 purity, into the Valley, didst stir the tresses of her fair hair and the 
 folds of her dress. And the soft breeze answered, 'Ah/ that was 
 Paradise indeed/'" 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 and fatal destiny of the stars, there was but one single 
 Papegaut alive at one time among its venerable winged 
 inhabitants; or as I join in Epistemon's warnings, and 
 urge his amorous giant to leave the pretty girls of 
 Avignon and Aries alone. Their immemorial charms 
 are fresh with each returning spring, because in their 
 beauty, born on historic soil, is concentrated the best 
 of all their hot-blooded, warring, loving ancestors. 
 
 "Mar que reboumbello, 
 Bos plen de rumour, 
 Digas ^ la bello 
 
 Moun langui d' amour!" ' 
 
 The life that will last in Old Provence is the Mfe of 
 the imagination ; and that is why the significance of the 
 F^libres is so much deeper than has sometimes been 
 acknowledged. " Born to a gardener and a gardener's 
 wife among the gardens of St. Remy," Roumanille was 
 the first modern poet to write in Provenj al, and he gave 
 an unanswerable reason: "Since our mothers do not 
 know French enough to understand the songs inspired 
 by the tenderness of their children, let us sing in the 
 language of our mothers. . . ." He was elected 
 head of the F^libres at Fontsegugne, near Avignon, 
 in 1854; and with him were Matthieu, Aubanel, Tavan, 
 
 ' "Waves of the sounding ocean, 
 Trees that whisper above. 
 Tell my heart's emotion 
 To the lady of my love!" 
 
OLD PROVENCE 
 
 Giera, Brunet, and Mistral. The movement was 
 neither separatist nor, in the larger sense, antipatriotic; 
 for as Felix Gras wrote, so might they all: — "J'aime 
 mon village plus que ton village; j'aime ma Provence 
 plus que ta province; j'aime la France plus que tout." 
 They have but preserved those differences that were 
 worth preserving: those differences in dress, in speech, 
 in beauty, that are the savour of life and the condition 
 of improved survival. So here I give you the toast to 
 which these pages have served as the preUminary 
 speech. I give it in the words of Aubanel, and I couple 
 with it the name of Fr^d^ric Mistral : 
 
 "Dins la coupo d' argent 
 
 A plen de bouco 
 Beven lou vin tant gent 
 
 De n6sti suco. 
 Catalan, Prouvenfau 
 Tout bon felibre saup 
 
 La Ifei d'escr^ure 
 
 E la de beure!" ' 
 
 Drink it before you begin my second chapter, and 
 remember it as you read the story of Provence. 
 
 ' " Full-mouthed from the silver cup, 
 Let us quaff a measure; 
 With the good wine fill it up 
 
 That was grown for pleasure. 
 Catalan and Provencal, 
 We know, good F^libres all. 
 Both the duty of high thinking 
 And the beauty of deep drinking!" 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE DAWN OF HISTORY 
 
 "Vesti de pfeu, rufe, barbare 
 
 Nostis aujou, Ligour, Cavare, 
 
 Se disputant lou sou avare, 
 Di mount trevant li cauno o de la mar li bord. 
 
 Ensen, li Fado bouscassiero 
 
 D'aquelo ra^o bauraassiero 
 Meravihant la vide, ispirant li counsfeu; 
 
 Piei li galero de la Grfefo 
 
 Sus I'aigo lindo que le bresso." — Calendal.' 
 
 What may be imagined to be the vestiges of prehistoric 
 man are too often but the materials for antiquarian dis- 
 pute. Limiting myself not only to visible relics, but 
 to those concerning which a definite opinion is at any 
 rate possible, whether it be right or wrong, I need only 
 say that the earliest trace of humanity in Provence has 
 been found in the stone instruments at the foot of Mont 
 
 ' " First, dressed in skins, rude, barbarian, the Ligures and Cavares 
 our ancestors fought for the niggard soil, dwelling in caves of the 
 mountain or the seashore; and with them were the fairy folk of the 
 forest, the troglodytes of eld, who cast their spells on life and swayed 
 its counsels. Then came the galleys of the Greeks upon the cradling 
 waters of the sparkUng sea." 
 
 11 
 
OLD PROVENCE 
 
 Ventoux in the Vaucluse country, wrought out of the 
 flint from its south-western slopes, and lying among the 
 bones of the hyena, the rhinoceros, the giant stag, and 
 the auroch. 
 
 The Ligurians and the Iberians are the earliest in- 
 habitants of Provence to whom history has given a name. 
 The first came from Italy; the last from Spain. "To 
 them enter" the Gauls or Celts from the north. The 
 earliest recognisable Provencal population was some- 
 thing of a mixture of them all. Ligurian strongholds 
 have been traced upon the hill of Barri in the north of 
 Vaucluse; upon the precipitous fastness of the Mourre 
 de Seve; upon the slopes above Beaumes-de-Venise ; 
 upon the bastions of the Alpilles, east of St. Remy, near 
 the Chateau de Romany, and elsewhere. But in the 
 dolmens, cromlechs, and menhirs, those vast, legendary 
 stones that in England, in Brittany, and in Provence as 
 well, have troubled the imaginations of so many cen- 
 turies, we can find more satisfactory evidence of pre- 
 historic hfe. In the list of "Monuments Historiques," 
 which are under the especial guardianship of the state, 
 occur the dolmens of Aigufeze, Barjac, and Campestre 
 in the Department of the Gard; of Fontville in the 
 Bouches-du-Rhone; of JMinerve and Soumont in the 
 Hdrault ; of Villeneuve-Minervois in the Aude ; of Ca- 
 basse and Draguignan in the Var; and of St. Cesaire 
 in the Alpes Maritimes. 
 
THE DAWN OF HISTORY 13 
 
 There are many others; but they are not the finest 
 of their kind, and they are more valuable to the student 
 of folklore or to the poet in search of a romantic back- 
 ground for the shadowy past in which he frames his 
 fantasies than to the traveller who desires to reconstruct 
 a little of the history of the land he visits. So we must 
 leave them as the mere suggestion of those far-off, primi- 
 tive religions which have been common to many other 
 countries, and we must search a httle more closely for 
 the particular characteristics of Provence. As in so 
 many other cases those characteristics may be sought 
 now, as they were formed long ago, first of all in the 
 conformation of the soil and the movement of the waters 
 over it. The brilliant researches of M. Victor Berard 
 along the coastline of the Mediterranean have just done 
 for the geography of Homeric society what Lentheric 
 and others did for the Rhone valley and its shifting sea- 
 board. 
 
 How small is the value of unaided archaeology, how 
 narrow the horizon of the specialist who confines him- 
 self to philological or even anthropological speculations, 
 such studies as these reveal but too clearly. In earth 
 and sea and sky, in river and hill and pasture we may 
 still examine the conditions under which our predeces- 
 sors lived in towns and harbours that we know to-day; 
 we may discover the laws of climate, of tide, of water- 
 shed, of geological formation which bound them, as 
 
14 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 we too are bound ; from the results which are now visible 
 in certain well-known natural surroundings we can argue 
 not merely the habits, the trade, the social civilisation 
 of modern populations, but we can also infer the life 
 of far more ancient peoples on the same spot long ago; 
 we can even go further, and demonstrate the changed 
 social conditions that have been produced by such 
 changing natural features as the coastline, the deltas, 
 and the riverbeds of the valley of the Rhone. 
 
 Take, for instance, a list of the great seaport-towns 
 on the Atlantic coast: all are on the estuary of a river 
 — Lisbon, Bordeaux, Nantes, Antwerp, London, Ham- 
 burg. Now take a similar list on the shores of the 
 Mediterranean — Barcelona, Leghorn, Salonica, Miletus, 
 Alexandria, Marseilles : all are near the mouth of a river, 
 but none of them are on the estuary itself, for there are 
 no tides to sweep their harbours clean, to break the bars 
 of silting sand, to check the constant alterations, in 
 depth and contour, of the mud-banks that impede free 
 navigation. The geographical description that suits 
 a place to-day will not only predict its future, it will ex- 
 plain its past. We can thus understand, on examining 
 any given historical site, why it was selected as a habi- 
 tation, how long it remained advantageous, when and 
 why it became deserted, what conditions of contempo- 
 rary life and politics it suited, and to what other condi- 
 tions its situation and possibilities were unfavourable. 
 
THE DAWN OF HISTORY 15 
 
 A consideration of the towns of Brittany will furnish 
 a good example of this. The ancient and famous cities 
 of the duchy were — Dinan, Treguier, Lannion, Mor- 
 laix, Landerneau, Quimper, Hennebont, Auray, Vannes, 
 and Nantes. Their ancient livelihood came from the 
 sea; but they had to be in some measure protected 
 from EngUsh or Spanish ships and from other corsairs 
 of the deep, so they were built at the highest point the 
 tide touched up the streams to which they serve not 
 only as harbours but as bridges. With the policing of 
 the seas their ancient wealth and power have been 
 transferred to towns like Brest, Saint- Malo, Lorient, 
 Quiberon, or Saint-Nazaire, which have absorbed all 
 their old commerce and are Hving the new life that has 
 ebbed away for ever from the older havens. If we 
 knew nothing of Cherbourg whatever, we might infer 
 that its modern importance was solely military or 
 strategic; for there is no other explanation of the ex- 
 istence of a town in an isolated bay that is not con- 
 nected by a river with the inland. 
 
 Throughout all of its history which we can trace, 
 the towns of the Mediterranean have been dominated 
 by the existence of a succession of sea-powers, whose 
 sea-laws and sea-police are responsible for the life of 
 the inhabitants for the time being; but powers, and 
 police, and laws alike were all subject to the working 
 of the same natural forces which we still watch at work, 
 
1 6 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 which we can still see moulding and modifying the 
 character and the commerce of the modern Provenfal. 
 The archaeologist may tell you, judging from the only 
 things he admits as evidence, that France owed little 
 to the Greek colonies in the Mediterranean beyond 
 some coinage and some letters of the alphabet; and with 
 that he will dismiss the subject. But, even if this were 
 all the debt, an interchange of coinage impUes com- 
 mercial trafhc, and the interchange of alphabet implies 
 commercial correspondence; and when the inevitable 
 laws of the Mediterranean world are considered, it is 
 seen that both the traffic and the correspondence are 
 the most natural results possible. ^ Broad, vital prin- 
 ciples still regulate the course of empire and the choice 
 of harbours. The modern battleship cannot stay 
 
 ' It is far from being my desire to depreciate unduly such results as 
 those of Schhemann or Arthur Evans. My point is that, unaided by 
 other studies, the most brilliant archaeological researches are at best 
 indefinite. To take only the two instances I have quoted: instead of 
 believing Mycene to be the birthplace of primitive Greek civilisation^ 
 we find from Cretan excavations that it was more probably the deca- 
 dence of a far older state of Ufe, for Mr. Evans has revealed undoubted 
 vestiges of human progress, which not only provide a middle term 
 between the Egyptian and the Greek, but which show three periods 
 of what he calls Minoan civilisation stretching as far back as 3500 B.C. 
 and reaching forward to iioo B.C. The myths of legendary Hellas 
 are being restored to their right place in history; and the Phoenicians, 
 from whom the Greeks inherited their maritime knowledge, are shown 
 to have inherited it in turn from the Minoan mariners of an infinitely 
 older sea-supremacy. The earth alone, on which these various Powers 
 arose and passed away, can give a constant key to the multifarious 
 problems of their presence on her surface. 
 
THE PREHISTORIC MEDITERRANEAN 17 
 
 where the old flat-bottomed trading-sloop was moored 
 beside the shelving shores of some small estuary. The 
 Power that insists on coaling-stations does not choose 
 her ports as nations choose them which have stores of 
 drapery, or bales of spice, or crates of pottery to sell. 
 As the supremacy of the seas has passed from the 
 Power which affects one form of commerce to that 
 which chooses another, so the disposal of harbours, 
 the making of roads, the rise and fall of urban centres 
 have changed with them; and sometimes it is only in a 
 half-forgotten name that the passing of some foreign 
 domination is remembered upon a shore far distant 
 from the motherland of a speech already dead. Even 
 if the witness of contemporary writers, or of contem- 
 porary monuments were non-existent, this series of 
 changes could be traced upon the soil and upon the 
 water of the sites that still reveal their history. From 
 the Mediterranean of to-day we can evoke the phan- 
 tom of that Homeric sea of thirty centuries ago, and 
 of that mild coast of old Provence "whither came the 
 Phoenicians, mariners renowned, greedy merchantmen, 
 with countless gauds in a black ship," the sailors who 
 beguiled the daughter of Arybas of Tyre so that she 
 stole the nursehng of her foreign master and bore the 
 boy away with the pirates of her own blood who fared 
 along the coast. It is the custom now to choose an 
 Enghsh governess or aft Alsatian nurse, just as it was 
 
iS OLD PROVENCE 
 
 fashionable to take a Phoenician woman for a foster- 
 mother long ago; just as Paris of Troy sent to Sidon for 
 women to embroider the tissues of his palace, just as 
 Roger Guiscard took the silk-weavers of Byzantine 
 Greece to decorate his Italian pleasure-chambers. 
 
 These first Phoenician sailors — dark-haired and dark- 
 eyed pirates, shifty bargainers, resolute mariners, cun- 
 ning fighters — are the first of the ruling powers of the 
 Mediterranean with whom we need concern ourselves. 
 Their ships sailed to and fro with cargoes of manu- 
 factured produce ; they searched first for provisions and 
 wine ; and secondly, for forests and good wood for build- 
 ing. When the Athenians first saw the virgin forests 
 of Sicily they realised the material of naval empire. 
 The fatal Sicilian campaign itself is a proof of the brief 
 lives of the classical fleets. The earher trading boats 
 lasted even a shorter period. Constantly being 
 dragged up the stony beach for safety, the corsair's 
 barque needed constant repair. Egypt and Alex- 
 andria were a perpetual market for ship-building wood, 
 and wherever the Phoenicians sailed for wood or for 
 provisions they established little trading-ports in hun- 
 dreds, and they stayed in them for years at ^ time. 
 A commerce in slaves, especially in women, went on 
 merrily and continually. Voyages implied neither a 
 hurried transit nor a short stay in port. Every night 
 on the way the boat was hauled up on shore, and 
 
THE PHOENICIANS 19 
 
 the men slept beneath a tent. At every bay and river 
 mouth and cape they stopped and made investigations. 
 When it was possible to save a sea- voyage by dragging 
 the ship on dry land across an isthmus, they always 
 went by dry land. They knew only the dangers of the 
 sea; they trusted it httle and loved it less. 
 
 When Hiram was King of Tyre, the Phoenicians were 
 exploiting the Pyrenees for gold and silver. Their 
 way lay along the coasthne, and without doubt they 
 washed the sands of the Rhone valley for the gold which 
 is still found in the powdered rocks that are crushed in 
 the waters of its streams. Personified as the spirit 
 of Phoenician adventure, Herakles is warned by Prome- 
 theus of the dangers of his journey from Caucasus to 
 the Hesperides. Foremost among them are named (in 
 the verses of Aeschylus which have been preserved by 
 Strabo) " the brave army of the Ligyes." There, "upon 
 a soft and swampy soil, thy arrows will fail, and not a 
 stone will be there. But Zeus will pity thee and will 
 rain down pebbles and round stones upon the earth, 
 and with them thou shalt disperse the Ligyans." Such 
 is the legend of the Phoenicians in the Plain of the Crau, 
 between Aries and the sea, and the "round stones" 
 are there unto this day. 
 
 It was chiefly pottery, and arms of bronze, dyed stuffs, 
 and glasswork, that the first Phoenician traders brought 
 to the coast of Provence on their way to the mines of 
 
OLD PROVENCE 
 
 Spain. They took gladly in exchange the wood and 
 hides, the coral, the carbuncles, the fish, of the Provenf al 
 villagers. When tin grew difficult to find in Spain they 
 went as far afield as Cornwall and the Isle of Wight for 
 it, and they came back along the valley of the Seine and 
 down the Rhone, one of the most ancient commercial 
 routes of France, of which one of the oldest southern 
 stations was Heraklea, or Saint-Gilles. That Herakles, 
 in all these suggestions, is the Phoenician Melkarth 
 seems quite clear. The legend of the hapless Pyrene 
 points in the same direction. The town founded in 
 honour of the son of Herakles, Nemausus (Nimes), is 
 another indication of the same traditions. In "Portus 
 Herculis," the ancient name of Villefranche, we can 
 still trace the Phoenician name for the harbour they 
 built near Monaco. It will be observed that Marseilles 
 has not yet been mentioned. That famous city was 
 created by the Greeks. In the name of "Phoenicae 
 Insulae," "les isles Phoenices," we can trace the passage 
 of the Phoenicians along the coast; but they stopped on 
 the island of Chateau d'lf on Pomegues, or on Raton- 
 neau, not on the mainland. 
 
 Already the origins of civilisations in this land of 
 Ligurians, Iberians, and Celts have been clearly re- 
 vealed; the interchange of ideas, of language, of com- 
 merce involved in the Phoenician period of Mediterra- 
 nean sea-power has become more visible ; the road that 
 
THE OLD LAGOONS 
 
 led from Italy and the east all round the coast to Spain, 
 the Via Herculea of the Phoenicians, has been almost 
 trodden into the visible track which Hannibal followed, 
 and which Marius guarded, later on; which was to 
 become the Via Domitia from Beaucaire to Spain, and 
 the Via Aurelia from Tarascon to Rome.^ 
 
 Throughout most of the historic transformations 
 which these names involve, it must be remembered that 
 the country round Aries and south of it was very differ- 
 ent from what it is now. A vast triangular lake, com- 
 municating with the Rhone and with the sea, was 
 bounded on the north by Beaucaire, on the east by 
 Fos, and on the west by Cette; its waves overpassed 
 what now is the mouth of the Rhone, and dashed against 
 the cliffs of Lunel or of Nlmes, or foamed upon the 
 precipitous rocks of the Alpilles, north and east of 
 Tarascon; above its waters the site of Aries showed 
 slightly, the island of Montmajour rose higher, the 
 hamlet of Castelet was visible. The Rhone itself was 
 lost in these long lagoons not far south of Avignon. 
 The Durance passed close to where Saint-Remy still 
 preserves the memory of the Roman legions. The 
 work of filling up these lagoons was going on then, and 
 has been going on almost ever since, in the constant 
 
 ' Hirschf eld considers that the name Via A urelia properly belongs 
 only to the first section of the road, from Rome to the northern con- 
 fines of Etruria. In these pages, however, I have followed the 
 Provenjal convention, which continues the name as far as Tarascon. 
 
OLD PROVENCE 
 
 deposition of solid matter by these two rivers. The 
 Camargue and the plains of Aries are but one result 
 of these alluvial deposits. 
 
 Like Holland, Aries and her plain owe their present 
 position to the dikes alone: sixty-eight kilometres of 
 them on the right bank of the "Rhone d'Arles," seventy- 
 two on the right bank of the "Rhone de Saint-Gilles," 
 and a hundred and ten kilometres on both sides of the 
 Camargue. No one seems to have asked whether, like 
 Egypt, Provence might not owe far greater prosperity 
 to well-regulated floods than to the unproductive aridity 
 of her protected plains. The current now carries seven- 
 teen million cubic metres of alluvial soil out to sea every 
 year, where it forms bars, quicksands, and shoals, which 
 destroy the possibility of navigation, and which might 
 have covered one hundred and twenty acres of the 
 Camargue with a couch of soil twenty-five centimetres 
 thick. These deposits have been more or less prevented 
 from benefiting the country since the fourteenth century, 
 and even earher. One result is "the dead towns of the 
 Gulf of Lyons." The sea has left them, and there are 
 no cornfields to take their places. If the Nile were 
 similarly treated, Egypt would perish in less than two 
 hundred years. Aries was once known not only as 
 "Gallula Roma," but as " Theline " i or 
 
 ' " Theline vocata sub priore saeculo 
 Graio incolente." 
 
THE DANGER OF THE DIKES 23 
 
 "Mamillaria Arelas"; and the riches from which it 
 nourished Gaul were the products of its fertile soil. 
 Now, out of 160,000 acres of its plains only 18,000 are 
 cultivated profitably, and these 18,000 are all alluvial 
 soil deposited by the Rhone wherever the flood-water 
 of the river has free course ; the rest is arid desolation. 
 
 Of all the cornfields and pastures which led the im- 
 aginative Greek to see the bounteous bosom of nature 
 herself in the city which possessed them, perhaps the 
 most typical rehcs are to be found in the long islands, 
 regularly submerged from time to time, which the 
 Provenfal still calls "segonnaux," 1 with the echo of a 
 tongue yet older in his ancient land than was the 
 Greeks.' Their value and their productiveness may 
 give some faint notion of the loss entailed to the 
 Camargue by the diversion of these fertilising streams, 
 which might have been allowed gently to pour over the 
 soil by degrees each rainy season. The dikes have not 
 only stopped this process; they have created a sepa- 
 rate danger, the danger of the sudden and tempestuous 
 floods which have desolated Provence from time to time 
 ever since the dikes were built, and of which the more 
 modern examples of 1840, 1841, and 1856 were each 
 terrible enough, it might be thought, to have provided 
 final lessons to the bhndest of bureaucracies. When, 
 
 ' " Veson dins li Segounau la meissoun que s'amaduro" . . . 
 
 Lis Isclo d'Or. 
 
24 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 in the last of these, the Chauss^e de la Montagnette 
 was burst by the pressure of the water it held back, the 
 houses in Tarascon were flooded up to the first floor, 
 almost without any warning. If the prefect of the 
 district had not promptly cut the railway embankment 
 and allowed the flood to disperse itself over the plain, 
 the town and its inhabitants must have perished. The 
 element that was meant to provide harvests on a thirsty 
 soil, and to give easy passage to the village populations 
 and their produce in light boats and barges, had now 
 become a devastating terror which cut off one com- 
 munity after another from its markets, its business 
 centres, even its food. 
 
 Yet the dikes remain, and no doubt will continue. 
 But it is essential to remember the difference between 
 our own enhghtened times and those more barbarous 
 ages when Aries was not only beautiful, but prosperous 
 as well. 
 
 Every great river obeys much the same laws. In 
 the early part of its course from the parent spring it 
 usually flows swiftly, on a fairly rapid incHne of descent, 
 and always eats away large quantities of rocks, earth, 
 and soil, which are gradually ground up by the violence 
 of the stream, and are borne downwards by its turbid 
 waves until the river flows more gently. In the second 
 stage, the river's bed would be perpetually growing 
 deeper and wider but for the compensating process 
 
THE WORK OF THE RHONE 25 
 
 carried on by the deposit of solid matter contained in 
 the water. In the third stage, the angle of descent has 
 become so nearly flat that the water of the stream tends 
 to spread out sideways, and the solid matter, now re- 
 duced to mud and sand, tends to form banks and 
 shelves and bars. The Rhone is the most important 
 river, after the Nile, which flows into the Mediterranean, 
 and its current is the fastest in Europe over an extent 
 of about 840 kilometres from its source in the Furca 
 glacier of the St. Gothard range. The enormous 
 quantity of detritus it brings down from the Valais is 
 considerably purified on passing through the Lake of 
 Geneva, into which it has fallen from a point 1388 
 metres higher up, on a slope of over seven in every 
 thousand. By the time the stream reaches Bellegarde 
 its triturated rocks have become gravel, and the slope 
 is just over one in every thousand metres. From 
 Lyons to the sea it becomes navigable, with a slope of 
 a half metre (or less) in every thousand metres. The 
 rapidity of its current varies from one and a half metres 
 a second at ordinary times to more than four metres 
 in flood. Between Beaucaire and Aries the solid con- 
 tents of the water have become sand and mud, and the 
 slope is reduced to less than one-tenth of a metre in 
 every thousand metres. At Aries the river divides into 
 the Great Rhone on the left, and the Little Rhone on 
 the right, while the Camargue, between them, is fur- 
 
26 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 rowed here and there with traces of various other 
 courses by which the Rhone's waters have at different 
 ages made their way towards the sea. The fifty kilo- 
 metres from Aries to the bar are on so slight a slope as 
 to be almost level, and the deposits are therefoie seen 
 at the maximum of their activity. 
 
 I have gone into all this detail because the history of 
 Provence is unintelligible unless you realise the in- 
 fluence of natural forces on the country and on its in- 
 habitants; and because the tideless Mediterranean, and 
 those rivers of which the Rhone is far the greatest, pro- 
 vide the sole explanation of what you can see to-day 
 and of what you will soon learn of yesterday. The 
 laws I have explained are of universal application. 
 Alexandria and Marseilles are placed in their actual re- 
 lation to the Nile and to the Rhone for precisely the same 
 reasons as Venice or Trieste and Odessa are situated 
 in their existing relations to the Po, and to the Danube. 
 All four rivers exhibit the similar phenomena of the 
 delta. Provence is the delta of the Rhone; and every 
 river of the district I shall deal with that flows into the 
 sea exhibits the same characteristics. The depth of 
 water on its coastline corresponds exactly to the char- 
 acter of the soil upon the seaboard. Where the Esterels 
 and the maritime Alps rise above the sunlit waters of 
 the C6te d'Azur, the sea is deep. Where the Gulf of 
 Gascony bathes the plains of Arcachon, where the North 
 Sea rages round the dikes of Holland, and where the 
 
THE WITHDRAWAL OF THE SEA 27 
 
 Mediterranean receives the waters of the Rhone, the 
 sea is shallow, so shallow that at Aigues-Mortes, on 
 the coast of the Camargue, or at Cette, a man may walk 
 out several hundred yards upon the sand. These shoals, 
 when combined with the prevalent south and south- 
 east winds, make navigation in this part of the Mediter- 
 ranean very difficult; but another result, which is more 
 visible to the traveller on dry land, is that the sea has 
 slowly but surely withdrawn from its ancient shores; 
 the mass of debris brought down by the rivers has slowly 
 but surely encroached upon it; and towns that once 
 were flourishing seaports are now but the dried-up 
 mummies of a Hfe which has left them with the waves 
 that once broke upon the quays so long deserted.^ 
 
 The delta of the Nile was once far larger than it is 
 now, as was that of the Rhone; but in the Egyptian 
 
 ' Exactly the reverse process in physical geography may be noted 
 on the coasts of England, which, as Mr. Beckles Willson showed, are 
 deprived by the sea every year of a tract of land the size of Gibraltar, 
 and on the east coast alone as much territory is engulfed by the waves 
 as would more than equal the island of Hehgoland. The worst havoc 
 wrought by this constant marine erosion is in Norfolk. Off Selsey, 
 in Sussex, the line of anchorage is still called "The Park," and in 
 Henry vill.'s time it was a forest full of stags. Orf the coast, in the 
 Wirral district of Cheshire, a forest now submerged can plainly be 
 seen at low tide. The legendary land of Lyonesse represents a whole 
 lost tract of England between Land's End and the Scilly Isles. When 
 the Phoenicians first came here, and landed on these islands, there is 
 no doubt that the he of the land was as different from that of modern 
 Cornwall as is to-day's Provence from the Rhone-country of its oldest 
 history. But of the two processes which have changed these countries, 
 it must be confessed that erosion seems in the end less fatal to pros- 
 perity than undue extension. 
 
28 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 river it was always Heliopolis which marked the bifur- 
 cation of the stream, as it was always Aries as long as 
 we can trace the Rhone. The name of Fourques 
 ("Furca") preserves the ancient memory of this bifur- 
 cation of the Rhone at the extreme north of the Cam- 
 argue, near Trinquetaille, the suburb of Aries. In each 
 delta there are well-marked depressions between the 
 branches of the stream, depressions which continue in 
 a chain of lagoons until the "cordon httoral" is reached. 
 The swamps of Mareotis, the lakes of El Madieh, Ed- 
 ■ Kou, of Bourlos, or of Menzaleh, are similar formations 
 to the lagoons of Venice, or to the Lake of Valcares, 
 the swamps of Aries, or of Aigues-Mortes. Some of 
 the Provenfal lagoons are filled up already, others will 
 soon disappear; and throughout the process, the actual 
 seaboard retires further and further from the Provencal 
 towns. Narbonne, for instance, which once stood above 
 a navigable lagoon, is now several miles from any open 
 communication with the sea; and I can think of no 
 better example of this process than the town which was 
 once a Celtic seaport, then gave its name to the whole 
 Roman, Province, and is now — Narbonne. 
 
 There existed a fishing village, and perhaps more 
 than that, on the spot where Saint Louis built the Tour 
 de Constance and dredged the lagoons of Aigues-Mortes 
 for the embarcation of his crusading fleet and army. 
 Indeed, a deed of Charlemagne, signed in 701, speaks 
 
AIGUES-MORTES 29 
 
 of a "Tour Matafere" in this place, and of the famous 
 monastery of Psalmodi, a httle to the north. The very 
 names used in the district at those remote periods — 
 "Pinedes," "Sylve-Godesque," " Sylve-Real "—suggest 
 the fertihty of pine-forests among the mouths of the 
 Rhone, which have long since disappeared. At a very 
 early date, the industry of collecting salt from the shal- 
 low beds of the lagoons took the place of every other 
 industry, and seems to have been known here far earlier 
 than in any other part of France. The possession of 
 rights in the collection of this salt was the subject of a 
 legal arrangement between the Seigneur of Uzfes and 
 of the Abbot of Psalmodi in 1284; and these rights 
 eventually passed to the Crown itself, whose restric- 
 tions and taxes in favour of the royal monopoly lasted 
 in their full unpopularity up to the days of the Revo- 
 lution. 
 
 Even in 1881 the state drew a revenue of some ten 
 million francs from that source; and one of the most 
 interesting signs of the geographical changes which I 
 have here tried to emphasise is the canal from Aigues- 
 Mortes to the Rhone at Beaucaire, which was one of 
 the first necessities of that difficult navigation of the 
 Rhone delta already described, and which has resulted 
 in Aigues-Mortes, dead as it may look, having more 
 life left in it, and more promise of future commerce, 
 than Narbonne. The smoke from the railway trains 
 
30 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 is already blackening the ramparts of the Crusaders, 
 in whose days some fifteen thousand souls dwelt in a 
 town built to hold forty thousand, and, until quite re- 
 cently, peopled only by the spectres of the past. But 
 as the Harbour of the King, as the great royal custom- 
 house of Languedoc, Aigues-Mortes exists no longer. 
 Its only prospects, apart from the salt industry, are to 
 be found in the gradual reclamation for agriculture of 
 its surrounding plains; for the various schemes sug- 
 gested for its resuscitation as a seaport are more phil- 
 anthropic than practical. 
 
 In almost exactly the same way, it is the loss of the 
 navigation of the lower Rhone that has brought down 
 the imperial city of Aries from its old splendour to the 
 pathetic ruin of her ancient greatness, which we know 
 and love to-day. Yet another instance of vanished 
 commerce is the once famous, and now almost un- 
 known, Fair of Beaucaire, where the merchants of the 
 East, the traders of Venice, and the sailors of the Med- 
 iterranean met the Provencal farmers at a great ex- 
 change which spread broadcast the traffic of the west 
 of Europe. Beaucaire, in her turn, has been ruined, 
 not only by the railway which has destroyed the river 
 trade, but also by the increasing dangers of the Rhone 
 itself, and of the bars that close its mouth. 
 
 It is possible, even now, to imagine the watery plains 
 which I have described between Aries and the sea 
 
THE "UTRICULAIRES" 31 
 
 covered with those earhest vessels of remote antiquity, 
 the rafts that rested on inflated skins. Feverish an- 
 tiquarians have struggled novi^ and again to revive these 
 ancient processes. A professor of Avignon University 
 was watched by large crowds guiding his raft on skins 
 from one side of the Rhone to another, and even for 
 some distance down the stream. The Chevalier de 
 Folard, fired by the study of Caesar, and by stories of 
 Hannibal, desired at the same time to reintroduce their 
 ancient method of crossing rivers as the estabhshed dis- 
 cipline of French armies. But neither of them suc- 
 ceeded. The days of the " Utriculaires " passed away 
 when the great lake from Aries to the sea disappeared, 
 and these prehistoric vessels will never be seen again in 
 Provence. Venice has preserved her gondolas, for her 
 canals are with her still. Where the light rafts of early 
 populations carried commerce and civilisation in all 
 directions across the Camargue and the long lagoons 
 of the Rhone delta, there is now only silence, abandon- 
 ment, and fever^the price of some two thousand years 
 of progress. 
 
 Where Celts, Ligurians, and Iberians had lived so 
 many years ago, the Phoenicians, as I have said, were 
 the first visitors who brought a real breath of foreign, 
 exotic, fascinating travel. But their establishments 
 were generally temporary markets, with foreign in- 
 terests, rather than abiding resting places of a people 
 
32 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 who meant to make the new land their home. The 
 Greeks were the first foreigners to hve in Gaul, and 
 radically to change the essential elements of GaUic life ; 
 and of the Greeks the Phocaeans were the earhest 
 colonising race. 
 
 The last to settle on the Ionic coasts of Asia Minor, 
 these Phocaeans found themselves upon a sterile and 
 narrow peninsula, and were naturally driven to mak€ 
 explorations westward, and to go further in search of 
 a new home than any mariners of their race had gone 
 before. The tales of monsters and of pirates with 
 which the wily Phoenician pilot terrified the childhood 
 of antiquity, and kept his own routes clear of enter- 
 prising strangers, had no effect on the audacious 
 Phocaeans. They built their long, swift penteconters, 
 the greyhounds of the ancient sea, on purpose to face 
 the unknown perils of a longer voyage and a more 
 dangerous adventure than any Greek had yet faced; 
 for their explorations began where former voyages 
 had left off. 
 
 From Corfu, the legendary home of Nausicaa and 
 the Phaeacians, they crossed to Italy and sailed along 
 the coasts even to Spain, even beyond the Pillars of 
 Hercules and Calypso's fairy isle, to that Tartessus 
 which Coleos the Samian had only reached before 
 them because he had been driven out of his true course 
 by a tempest along the coast of Africa. It was after 
 their first long voyage of exploration that the Phocaean 
 
THE PHOCAEANS 33 
 
 mariners, on their return home, decided to found a 
 colony with the regular rites, and to found it at Mar- 
 seilles. The oracles of Delphi or of Dodona were con- 
 sulted. The names of the colonists were inscribed in 
 the temple registers at home, together with the agree- 
 ment entered into between the travellers and their 
 mother state. The gods of the old shrine, the fire 
 from its Prytaneum, were carried overseas to the new 
 site. Aristarche, a lady of Ephesus, warned of her 
 duty in a dream, went with them. Simos and Protis 
 were the leaders of the expedition of young men who 
 trusted to find their wives in their new home, and thus 
 ally themselves at once with the inhabitants by the 
 strongest and most enduring ties. This is the process 
 that is suggested in the charming tale of the old chron- 
 iclers, a tale that contains far more truth than legend. 
 Simos and Protis, anxious to secure the friendship 
 of the Segobrigians before the whole Phocaean expedi- 
 tion landed, went up to the stronghold of their king, 
 Nannos. They had discovered that from the Rhone 
 westwards towards Spain was the country of the Ibe- 
 rians. They evidently preferred the territory eastward 
 of the Rhone, towards Italy, in which dwelt the Ligu- 
 rians or Ligyans, of whose tribes the Salyes, the Comani, 
 and the Segobrigii were the most important. These last 
 must have lived somewhere along what is now the chain 
 of the Esterels, and the foreign travellers arrived just as 
 King Nannos was about to celebrate the betrothal of 
 
34 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 his daughter Glyptis, who was to choose her husband, 
 as the custom was, by offering a full cup of wine at the 
 banquet to the man who pleased her most. It was to 
 Protis — for the other name, Euxenos, only signifies the 
 same, honoured guest — that she gave it. The Mas- 
 Salia, which was her dowry, was the small Salyan village 
 above what is now the Old Harbour of Marseilles; and 
 in the last paragraph of this chapter I have mentioned 
 some rude carvings that recall the Salyan tribes who 
 once Uved at Entremont near Aix. The Greek explorers 
 landed under the happiest auspices, and began to look 
 about them. 
 
 The choice of their leader was soon justified. Here 
 was a bay ringed round with hills, from which there 
 jutted a peninsula on which to found their city, with her 
 harbours upon either side. Here was their "Lamp- 
 tera"; here their " Naustathmos " ; here, too, even the 
 three islands that protected these Phocaean originals; 
 for Chiteau d'lf, Pomegues, and Ratonneau were the 
 Bancheion, the Elaiousa, the Alopeke, of their Ionic 
 shores. It was Phocaea once more beneath another 
 sky. The images of their Phocaean divinities were 
 placed round that of the Artemis they had brought from 
 Asia Minor, in the first temple built to her worship on 
 the coasts of Gaul; and some of these carved gods and 
 goddesses remain unto this day. Following the ex- 
 ample of Protis, his young men took to themselves 
 
GREEK COLONISTS 35 
 
 wives of the daughters of the country, and the new 
 colony grew and flourished, gradually imposing its 
 arts, its religion, its civilisation, upon the receptive 
 populations all around. 
 
 But the Phocaeans of Marseilles did more than this. 
 Restless and bold mariners, they were not content with 
 the one harbour that had held one expedition. This 
 was but the nucleus, the fruitful centre of more explor- 
 ing voyages both from itself and from the mother- 
 country. To the east, in the country of the Ligyans 
 (descendants of those ItaHan tribes of SicuH, whom the 
 Greek mariners had passed on their adventurous west- 
 ward voyages), the MassaHots founded outposts, ports 
 with a sheltering island wherever possible, like the 
 Stoechades at Hyeres. Here, too, they founded Olbia, 
 Antipolis (Antibes), and Nicaea (Nice); and hence 
 they did a rich trade in tirriber, cattle, honey, skins, 
 and fish. Along the westward coast they advanced 
 steadily towards the Pyrenees, by way of Agathe 
 (Agde), and Emporiae; taking possession, as they went 
 on, of the Rhodian settlement (Rodez) between Em- 
 poriae and the mountains. 
 
 Still further they sailed, along the coast of Spain 
 itself, where they found salt, metals, and dye stuffs; 
 and opposite the Balearic isles they built Hemerosco- 
 peum, a kind of fortified ironworks and fisheries com- 
 bined, with a sanctuary of Artemis. Beyond the 
 
36 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 Straits of Gibraltar they sailed on, even to the mouth 
 of the Baetis (the Guadalquiver), and so at last to the 
 legendary riches of Tartessus, the Tarsis of the dawn 
 of history, "where was good copper." Nearly all 
 these foundations still exist; but Rhodanusia and 
 Heraclea, at the Rhone's mouth, have vanished from 
 our ken. Inland towns like St. Remy, Tarascon, 
 Vaison, and Avignon (as they are called now) were con- 
 nected with Marseilles by links of commerce and com- 
 munications that grew stronger every year. 
 
 Realising that agriculture is one of the deepest 
 foundations, after intermarriage, for the prosperity of 
 aliens who propose to stay, the Phocaeans brought with 
 them their own olive-trees; and in the greatest beauty 
 of to-day's Provence, as in her best harvest, we can 
 still trace the wisdom of her first Greek colonists. It 
 is practically certain, too, that they brought over more 
 highly developed varieties of the fig, the cherry-tree, 
 and the chestnut; and there is little doubt that they 
 began the culture of the vine on systematic methods. 
 Their coins were probably the first that ever circulated 
 from hand to hand in these early days of commerce. 
 For if Pheidon, King of Argos, was the first Greek to 
 circulate gold coins in Aegina, stamped with the tor- 
 toise of Aphrodite, he was only enabled to do so be- 
 cause the Mediterranean coasts already knew and ac- 
 cepted the money and weights instituted by Lydians 
 
IONIC COINAGE 37 
 
 and Phoenicians on the coasts of Asia Minor, the 
 rounded pieces of pale yellow Ionic gold, formed out 
 of electrum from the Pactolus, and coined as staters 
 in 720 B.C. Massalia was founded a hundred and 
 twenty years later than this, and no doubt its founders 
 brought with them the coins to which they were ac- ' 
 customed, and the usages of local minting which they 
 had known in Asia Minor. Coins have been found in 
 the districts in and near Marseilles which were struck 
 in nearly every Greek town in Asia Minor; and among 
 the types upon them are the lion of Cyzicus, combined 
 with the "griffon" of Phocaea, which is the trace of a 
 commercial union so valuable that the greater number 
 of Massalian coins retained this stamp of the lion's 
 head, almost as frequently as that of the Artemis who 
 was the special goddess of their sacred rites. To her 
 presentment they added, later, the figure of a crab, on 
 the reverse, with the letter M beneath it. But the 
 emblem of the lion lasted longest as the symbol of 
 Massaliot marine supremacy, even as it was to be that 
 of Venice and of England later. Some antiquarians 
 have even seen in this coin the derivation of that much- 
 contested name, the Gulf of Lions. But I do not pro- 
 pose to discuss so difficult a problem. The older 
 names of Gulf of Narbonne and Gulf of Marseilles 
 are far more appropriate, and need never have been 
 altered. 
 
38 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 It will be remembered that a lion typified too the 
 sea trade and the sea power of ancient Aries. "Ab 
 ira leonis" is the town's motto even now; and it may 
 well indicate an early tie with the Greek colony which 
 had a lion upon its coinage alike by right of heritage 
 and of its own supremacy. The Phocaeans of Mar- 
 seilles cannot have forgotten that when they were 
 originally sent out from Athens, it was their swift ap- 
 preciation of the women of Cyme which gave the most 
 Hellenic colony in Asia Minor its deepest hold upon 
 the country by the most pacific methods possible. The 
 equally harmonious traditions of the marriage between 
 Protis and Glyptis reveal that this successful policy 
 had not been forgotten when the Phocaeans founded 
 colonies in their turn and came to Gaul. If the prin- 
 ciple had needed further confirmation, it would have 
 derived it from the incident which saved the young 
 city from the treachery of "Comanus," the king of the 
 Segobrigians, who followed Glyptis's father. It was 
 the love of another Segobrigian damsel which revealed 
 the plot to a young Greek, and enabled him to warn 
 the authorities in time. The treacherous Segobrigians 
 were massacred to a man, and once more the colony 
 profited by the women of the country. At Aries no 
 doubt the same process went on. Aries was already 
 founded when Massalia was born. But this only 
 meant that the young and daring lonians were received 
 
THE WOMEN OF ARLES 39 
 
 with a more certain welcome when they came; and 
 there is no town in the world where the mingling of 
 Greek blood with that of Eastern races, and with ancient 
 Gallic stock, can be more clearly traced than in the 
 streets of modern Aries. 
 
 The beauty of the Arlesienne is the one traveller's 
 tale that never disappoints either the most sceptical 
 of modern visitors, or, hardest test of all, their even 
 more unbelieving wives and daughters. I saw her first 
 ten years ago, as she is drawn in one of my mother's 
 illustrations for this book (in vol. 11.). Only last 
 spring I had the happiness of verifying my first impres- 
 sions. At the gate of the old Roman Theatre, which 
 is guarded by a concierge with military memories and 
 a better conscience than his predecessor, sat a beautiful 
 woman with dark hair that shaded a warm olive cheek, 
 beneath which the blood flushed visibly. Her quiet 
 eyes, her beautifully proportioned face, her gentle 
 dignity were all that I remembered of her race. They 
 were the gifts that race alone can give (see vol. i., title- 
 page.) Not until she opened her lovely mouth could 
 you realise she was a daughter of the people. 
 
 A few days before. Mistral, the poet of Provence, 
 had called a gathering of the girls of Aries in that same 
 Roman Theatre which is so fitting a framework to their 
 classic charms. Like the columns which were set there 
 by Greek workmen so many centuries ago, these women 
 
40 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 seem the immortal relics of a golden age that has, else- 
 where, vanished from the earth. Greek, Roman, 
 Saracen, and Frank have had their say in the moulding 
 of those perfect features. But it is the Greek that has 
 prevailed. Upon the coins of Evaenetus of Syracuse, 
 in the head of the Persephone he modelled for the 
 Greeks of the fourth century before Christ, you may 
 trace the type that has survived. In no other country 
 but the land that has preseiVed the Aphrodite of Aries, 
 the Maison Carree, the Triumphal Monument of 
 Marius, could such a type have lasted for so long. 
 The soil itself of modern Hellas has not proved so 
 favourable to the preservation of these noble racial 
 distinctions; and even in Aries those exquisite refine- 
 ments of line which give character and beauty are 
 denied to the male. The woman only has preserved 
 the delicate chiselling of the antique gems and cameos 
 in which her far-off ancestors delighted to portray the 
 faces of their gods and goddesses. The town of hand- 
 some men is Tarascon; but their type is again entirely 
 different. It would seem that, by some process which 
 wiser heads than mine may possibly explain, the moth- 
 ers that were to mould the future generations of Pro- 
 vence had received, at the very beginning of Provenjal 
 civihsation, that eternal stamp of Greek beauty, oi 
 Hellenic dignity and proportion, which was to remain 
 pure and unsullied however often a fresh issue of hu- 
 man currency was called for. The pattern of the mint 
 
AN ANCIENT TYPE 41 
 
 was fixed, once and for ever, by the Attic blood that 
 the Phocaeans brought to the Rhone valley. Neither 
 in Narbonne nor in Nlmes; not at Avignon, not at 
 Carpentras, not at Orange, has the same type sur- 
 vived; not even at Marseilles, the first cradle of that 
 fertilising race. Wherever, in other towns than Aries, 
 a distinctive type stands out, it may be either the 
 bronzed face, the slightly angular features, the blaz- 
 ing, feverishly active black eyes of the Saracen; or the 
 massive form and riper beauty of the Roman matron; 
 but it is never the perfection of the Greek. The very 
 rarity of the type, the precise restriction of its area, 
 give it a greater value, suggesting one of those strange, 
 inexplicable results of Nature ; working at her will, in 
 her own way, and in no other. At Marseilles the 
 Phocaeans may have planted their arsenals, founded 
 their markets, trained their sailors. But at Aries they 
 loved, and bred. " Theline Vocata Graio incolente." 
 Here was the bosom upon which the weary seafarer 
 reposed, and here he paid back to posterity the debt he 
 owed the woman of his choice. 
 
 By such almost intangible, yet infinitely precious 
 and permanent results in human framework and in 
 certain architectural types which I shall mention later, 
 must we be content to trace the presence of the Greeks 
 in old Provence.^ By the time the Romans had come 
 
 ' Prosper Castanier in Histoire de la Provence dans I'A nliquite 
 (Paris, 1896. E. Flammarion) gives a drawing in vol. ii. plate i. of 
 
42 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 over we shall find more visible evidences of life ; and in 
 many of the monuments and statues that the Roman 
 domination left behind it in the valley of the Rhone 
 we shall see very distinct proof that the Greek art and 
 the Greek love of beauty had been carefully preserved. 
 "Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit." It is not only 
 in the mighty amphitheatres, the rugged aqueducts, 
 the vast remains of structures which seem built to defy 
 the elements, and Time itself, that Rome has left her 
 indelible mark upon Provence. It is in the Greek 
 workmanship and design which Rome preserved as 
 well; and of this I have given several examples in my 
 illustrations. It is, indeed, astonishing that more is 
 not known of a district which preserves monuments 
 
 the statue of Artemis which the Phocaeans brought to Marseilles. The 
 original may be seen in the Musee Calvet in Avignon, and is a careful 
 Roman copy of the Ionic carving. In Ihe Museum of the Chateau 
 Borely in Marseilles may be examined the remains of the forty-one 
 shattered statuettes which were placed in the Pronaos of her temple, 
 where Aristarche was high-priestess. In the Museum in Lyons is the 
 Aphrodite of Marseilles, an archaic statue of no great merit, but of the 
 highest interest, showing the lo'ng braided hair of the goddess and the 
 dove upon her wrist. It is no doubt Phocaean work, as was the 
 Artemis, and of about the si.xth century B.C. M. Castanier also gives 
 excellent reproductions of many types of early Greek coins found in 
 Provence. But for more beautiful specimens of workmanship in- 
 spired by Greek art we must wait until the Romans reached the Rhone. 
 The Phocaean statues just mentioned were buried (and thus preserved 
 to us) when the Massaliots, on learning of the flight of their former 
 countrymen to Rhegium after a naval battle in which Massalia had ot 
 course assisted, abandoned their city for a time in fear of the Cartha- 
 ginian vengeance, about 536 B.C. The monuments they put up after 
 their return, in about 480 B.C., have totally disappeared. The period 
 between this date and the siege of the Greek town by Julius CiEsar 
 has left no traces. 
 
PERIL OF MARSEILLES 43 
 
 of Roman life as interesting as can be found in Rome 
 herself, and which probably gave the lead — in at least 
 one important instance — in an architectural develop- 
 ment which spread from Provence over the whole 
 Roman Empire, I mean the Triumphal Arch at St. 
 Remy. 
 
 After suffering a temporary eclipse from the jealousy 
 of Carthage the Massaliots returned from this enforced 
 exile in Italy, and their city rose, from 470 B.C. onwards, 
 to her true position, as the Greek capital of Gaul, 
 taking, one by one, under her dominion, the various 
 other colonies that either Phoenician or Greek enter- 
 prise had founded on or near the coast. Among these 
 were Monaco and Saint Gilles. Even in the Balearic 
 islands they estabHshed their sway more firmly by the 
 foundation of Artemisia. The Iberians in the west 
 seem to have accepted this change of power more con- 
 tentedly than did the Ligurians to the east, with whom 
 the Massaliots had many a sanguinary struggle. It 
 was against these persistent enemies that MassaHa 
 was finally obhged to call in the help of Rome. C. 
 Sextius Calvinus was sent, and at Aquae Sextiae (Aix) 
 he left the military station which recalled his victory 
 over the Salyans. When the vanquished barbarians' 
 king, Teutomalius, took refuge with the Allobroges, 
 C. Domitius Enobarbus was sent out, with the usual 
 Roman thoroughness, to conquer them in their turn, 
 which he did with complete success in the battle be- 
 
44 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 tween the Ouveze and the Sorgue. He was succeeded 
 by Quintus Fabius Maximus, who finally crushed the 
 AUobroges near the Isere. Victorious Roman legions 
 had set foot upon Provence. Their mark has never 
 left it; and it is in commemoration of the victories just 
 mentioned that the first Roman monuments in Pro- 
 vence were built. ^ 
 
 ' The immediate answer of Rome to the appeal of the Greek colony 
 of Marseilles is only intelligible when the ancient history of the 
 Phocaean mariners is remembered. In the distant centuries when 
 Tarquin was king a Phocaean expedition had landed at the mouth 
 of the Tiber and made alliance with the Romans before sailing fur- 
 ther west. South of the Tiber, too, was that "Magna Graecia" which 
 every Hellene loved. An even stronger tie was the common hatred 
 felt by both Romans and Greeks for the Etruscans, those descendants 
 of the Pelasgi whom the Hellenes had chased out of Greece, whose 
 fleets, allied with Carthage, had at one time crushed the Phocaeans 
 and Massalia, and whose yoke the Romans only finally threw off 
 about 400 B.C. This independence was probably not achieved without 
 the sympathy and even the assistance of the same old friends in 
 Massalia, whose swift penteconters had so impressed the Romans two 
 hundred years before. When Phocaea, the mother-city of Massalia, 
 was sacked by the Persians, and after both colonists and original 
 citizens had had to fly from their own cities, in fear of further outrage, 
 it was at Rhegium that they first sought safety, and at Velia in Luca- 
 nia that they founded a new home. Here was yet another bond be- 
 tween the Italians and these Greeks. 
 
 Such traditions are not easily forgotten. As the centuries passed 
 by, and it came to be Massalia's turn to struggle for her independence, 
 her call for help was not made in vain to the growing repubhc on the 
 Tiber which had suffered from Hannibal's army the same Cartha- 
 ginian insolence that had well-nigh destroyed Massalia. Rome must 
 have watched for long the rise of the Greek cities on the Mediterranean 
 coast, and must have sympathised instinctively with those colonising 
 and civilising influences of which she was herself to be the great 
 exemplar of all time. 
 
THE COMING OF HANNIBAL 45 
 
 Of the Celtic tribes that had moved out of Germany 
 about 300 B.C., a certain proportion passed down the 
 Rhone Valley. The disturbance created among the 
 Iberians and Ligurians of Provence may easily be 
 imagined; and it is significant that when the legions 
 of Sextius, Domitius, and Fabius were called to help 
 Massalia in the turmoil of contending nations there 
 were not only Ligurians to conquer but also Volcae, 
 AUobroges, Vocontii, Helvii, and Cavares. Their de- 
 feat was not finally effected until the reign of Augustus ; 
 and the trouble given by their presence first becomes 
 notorious in history when Hannibal was on his march 
 to Rome, and crossed the Rhone between Beaucaire 
 and Tarascon to gain the highway to the Alps. 
 
 Discussions have raged long and hotly over the 
 route of Hannibal. I do not pretend to greater au- 
 thority than that of any previous writer on this diffi- 
 cult problem. But I have examined the locahty and 
 I have made up my mind, after considerable labour, 
 that a certain route is right, and without further com- 
 phcation or argument I shall give the one which was 
 first suggested by Gilles in 1872, and which no sub- 
 sequent theories have ever shown to be impossible. 
 Certain facts in the problem are undisputed; such as 
 the point of disembarkation of Scipio's attacking forces, 
 and the direction of existing roads. The great high- 
 way from Spain to Italy, for instance, crossed the 
 
46 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 Rhone at Tarascon, and there split into two, one part 
 going by way of St. Remy towards what became later 
 the Via JuHa Augusta southwards, the other going 
 further up the Rhone by Avignon, and towards the 
 Alpine Passes eastward. The only existing road Han- 
 nibal had to use was the one that led him to Beau- 
 caire, and when once he had crossed to Tarascon, the 
 third undisputed fact is that he then crossed the Du- 
 rance near its mouth. This river joins the Rhone 
 close to Avignon, and Hannibal crossed it from south 
 to north, proceeding up to Orange, and further north 
 still, before he turned eastwards on the road to Gap, 
 to Embrun, to Brianfon, and so to Mont Genevre. 
 
 The destruction of Saguntum was the determining 
 cause of a war for which Hannibal had made long and 
 careful preparations. The friendly spies from Mar- 
 seilles had scarcely informed Rome that he had passed 
 the Ebro when he was across the Pyrenees, and march- 
 ing by way of Perpignan, Narbonne, Beziers, Mont- 
 pellier, and Nlmes, upon Beaucaire. He reached the 
 Rhone in fact before Scipio's army had had time to 
 interfere with him at all, and he therefore had full 
 leisure to choose between the two routes that offered 
 themselves, either to north or south. Scipio mean- 
 while had disembarked at Fos, near the south-eastern 
 corner of the Camargue, and just north of the eastern 
 mouth of the Rhone, at the foot of the Salyan hills, 
 
HANNIBAL ON THE RHONE 47 
 
 four days' march from Beaucaire. At that time, as 
 we have seen, the plain from Aries to the sea, that is 
 between Aries and Fos, was so covered with immense 
 though shallow lakes that the only route from Fos to 
 Tarascon, on dry land, lay through Istres, Le Merle, 
 Aureille, Mouries, St. Remy, and Maillane. It was by 
 this route that Scipio's three hundred cavalry scouts 
 marched to their first skirmish with Hannibal's Nu- 
 midians, doing about fourteen miles a day. The bar- 
 barian inhabitants who opposed the Carthaginian's 
 passage of the river were the Cavares, and if Scipio 
 had been a little quicker there is no doubt that the 
 Roman legions, backed by these clouds of irregular 
 militia who knew the country, might have stopped 
 Hannibal for ever. Even alone these hordes of ene- 
 mies were difficult enough to deal with. So Hanno 
 was sent from Beaucaire northwards to where the isle 
 of Barthelasse gives a ford over the river between 
 Avignon and Villeneuve. His Spanish mercenaries 
 swam over on their shields, and came back to Taras- 
 con in much less time than they had taken to go north, 
 owing to the conformation of the river's course. Their 
 beacon fires were sufficient to terrify the Cavares into 
 a hurried retreat, and Hannibal passed over safely to 
 Tarascon, after gaining time for the transportation of 
 his elephants by occupying the Roman cavalry with 
 his Numidians. The arrival of an embassy from the 
 
48 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 Boii then decided him to take the northward route by 
 Gap and Embrun. 
 
 Between Tarascon and Maillane took place that 
 fierce httle conflict between Scipio's advance-guard 
 and the Africans, which was so sharply contested that 
 one hundred and forty of the Romans perished before 
 the Numidians were put to flight with the loss of two 
 hundred of their numbers in rather less than an hour's 
 hand-to-hand combat. The reconnoitring party, hav- 
 ing made out the main body of Hannibal's army, re- 
 turned at once through St. Remy to their general's 
 headquarters at Fos. Scipio then advanced in order 
 of battle, leaving his baggage on his fleet at anchor, 
 but marching without undue haste, believing at every 
 moment that he would meet the Carthaginian army 
 advancing along the southern road after its passage of 
 the Rhone. But Hannibal had had a fatal advantage 
 in his start, and with his infantry ahead, and his cav- 
 alry and elephants behind, was already marching to 
 the north and east by way of Frigolet and Avignon 
 where he crossed the Durance, the only hindrance in 
 his march from the Rhone to the Alps,i for the Allo- 
 broges had been won over to a friendly neutrality. 
 Once more Scipio had his chance, for the crossing of 
 
 ' I read here (with I. Gilles) "Inde per extremam oram Vocontiorura 
 agri tetendit in Tricorios. Haud usquam impedita via priusquara ad 
 Druentiam flumen pervenit; is at ipse Alpinus amnis," etc. A slight 
 change in the accepted punctuation of Livy gives sense instead of 
 nonsense. 
 
DELAYS OF SCIPIO 49 
 
 the Durance in its autumn flood, at Barbentane by 
 Avignon, was a dangerous operation which cost the 
 Carthaginians a heavy loss in men and animals by 
 drowning. But Scipio was again too late. If he had 
 pitched his headquarters at St. Remy, as Marius did 
 long afterwards, he might have had time to strike, 
 first at the Rhone passage and then at the Durance, if 
 another blow had been necessary. But with a base 
 so far away as Fos he could do nothing. With totally 
 wrong conceptions as to Hannibal's daring plan of 
 campaign after Tarascon and Avignon, Scipio was 
 equally powerless after he had started from Fos; for 
 he was continually making slow preparations to fight 
 an enemy who was continually marching as fast as 
 possible away from him. The slaughter of Lake 
 Trasimene and the disaster of Cannae were the price 
 Rome paid for the indecisions and delays of Scipio in 
 Provence. 1 
 
 ' I claim no credit whatever for an explanation of the text of Livy 
 and other classical authors, which is entirely due to the geographical 
 labours on the spot of a Provenfal historian, who has once more 
 shown the supreme value of geographically scientific researches in the 
 field of history. It may be added that Scipio only sailed from Italy 
 on the 25th of September 218 B.C., when Hannibal had already reached 
 the banks of the Rhone. The time taken by Scipio's voyage was 
 employed by Hannibal in making those careful preparations for his 
 passage of the Rhone which Livy has described in detail. When 
 Scipio had reached Fos on the 28th, Hanno had been sent northwards 
 on his forced march round by Avignon to take the barbarians in flank, 
 which was effected on the agth. The way being then clear, Hannibal's 
 infantry passed the Rhone on the 30th. On October ist he sent his 
 
so OLD PROVENCE 
 
 The sad silence in which the mistakes of Scipio have 
 been wrapped by Roman chroniclers is reflected in the 
 utter absence of all legends, and of. almost every trace 
 of his campaign in Provence itself. The difference 
 observable when we reach the days of Marius is ex- 
 traordinary but not unreasonable. Hannibal passed 
 like a thundercloud. His goal was Rome, and he 
 paused not on his way. The invading hordes whom 
 Marius annihilated were a menace to every population 
 on their route. The massacre of their whole strength 
 upon the plains near Aix was a catastrophe which no 
 nation could observe unmoved. The Provencal has 
 
 five hundred Numidians against the Roman scouts, and during the 
 progress of the cavalry skirmish that ensued near Maillane he com- 
 municated to his army the result of his negotiations with the Boii and 
 definitely decided on the northern route. On the fourth day after 
 Scipio's fleet had reached Fos, Hannibal's advance-guard was crossing 
 the Durance and his elephants were passing over the Rhone. On the 
 next day (the 3rd of October) Scipio at length started, only to reach 
 Tarascon on the 6th of October and to find that he had made an error 
 which was to cause Rome untold horrors in the years to come. His 
 countrymen have said little about Scipio's mistake. But that they 
 had read the lesson right is shown by the fact that when Marius, one 
 hundred and eighteen years later, had to cut off the advancing army of 
 the Teutones and the Ambrons, it was at St. Remy he waited for them, 
 and chose his own battleground for their defeat. Scipio's camp, after 
 his fleet had landed the army, was on the plateau of Saint-Blaise, or 
 Castel Veire, an old Celtic stronghold where the remains of Scipio's 
 cautious fortifications can still be traced, in a straight line from east 
 to west. The only other trace of the campaign ever found was the 
 skeleton of an African elephant, dug up near Maillane in 1788, the 
 memory of which is only preserved in Achard's Geographical Diction- 
 ary; and now even the authenticity of this blameless relic has been 
 severely questioned. 
 
EARLY ROMAN BUILDINGS 
 
 never forgotten it, and from his memories of that blood- 
 stained cataclysm have arisen some of the most endur- 
 ing and the most beautiful of his behefs. But the 
 campaign of Marius came after those of Domitius and 
 Fabius already mentioned, and it is with the triumphal 
 monuments of these two last-named generals, at Vienne 
 and at Cavaillon, that I must first briefly deal. 
 
 Both of these monuments, the earhest of their kind 
 in Provence, are the primeval types of a building 
 pecuhar to the Roman genius. They assumed the 
 form of a tall pyramid or obelisk, a form which was 
 successively modified until it reached perfection at 
 St. Remy, where in the same enclosure is the first 
 triumphal arch built outside Italy, which was the type 
 that eventually replaced the pyramidal form. 
 
 After C. Sextius Calvinus had established his mili- 
 tary headquarters at Aix, his work was handed on to 
 the proconsul Domitius, who fought the combined 
 forces of the Allobroges and the Arverni in 121 B.C. 
 at Vindalium, the meeting-place of the Sorgue and 
 the Ouveze, in the country of the Cavares. The same 
 enemies rose again the next year against Fabius, the 
 next proconsul. He beat them even worse than his 
 predecessor had' done, and took their king, Bituitus, 
 prisoner on the field of battle at the confluence of the 
 Rhone and the Isere; and it was to celebrate the second 
 battle that the first triumphal monument in Provence 
 
52 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 was erected by Fabius at Vienna.^ This is the " needle" 
 or "pyramid" which stands on the level ground near 
 the river, a little to the south of the town. It has been 
 called the "Tomb of Pilate"; it has been described as 
 the tomb of Alexander Severus, or of one Venerreus, 
 who is the mythical founder of Vienne; even as the 
 mausoleum of Augustus himself, and many other 
 guesses have been made about it. In the archives of 
 the town it is spoken of as the Tower of Mauconseil, 
 and its evil reputation is reflected in the legend reported 
 by Gervase of Tilbury that the devil himself had set it 
 up. A less daring archaeological interpretation held that 
 it was the "spina" of some vast and vanished Roman 
 circus, round which the racing chariots made their 
 turn. It is, as a matter of fact, the "monument in 
 white stone" of which Strabo speaks, the monument 
 set up by Fabius in the capital of the AUobroges after 
 he had beaten them in the plains between that town 
 and the Isfere. The ruins of the two temples which 
 
 ' Soon after 1540, ruins were dug up near the temple of Faustina 
 at the eastern hmit of the Forum in Rome, and one of the fragments 
 bore the inscription: "Q. Fabius Q. F. Maxsumus Aed. Cur. Rest." 
 Some twenty-five other fragments were found in 1882 {Ann. Inst., 
 1859, p. 307, and Not. degli Scavi, 1882, p. 225) on the same site, 
 which were supposed to belong to an arch erected by Q. Fabius Max- 
 imus, consul in 121 B.C., called Allobrogicus after his victory over the 
 AUobroges. But whether these fragments really belonged to the arch 
 of Augustus, erected near this point in 29 B.C., or whether they were 
 fragments of an arch at all, I am inclined to think that the develop- 
 ment of the arch as a triumphal monument cannot be dated before 
 Julius Caesar. 
 
VIENNE S3 
 
 he set up at the same time are among the many Roman 
 remains at Vienne, of which the temple of Augustus 
 and Li via is by far the most important. ^ 
 
 The pyramid at Vienne is built of huge, hewn stones, 
 beautifully jointed without cement, though originally 
 cramped with iron. It rests upon the square roof of 
 a portico which is pierced with an arch on each of its 
 four sides, and ornamented at each angle with engaged 
 columns. Though the pyramid itself is hollow, the 
 enormous weight resting on the portico is the most 
 astonishing feature of a construction which is other- 
 wise quite plain, and even unfinished in the carving of 
 its details. 
 
 As became the reputation of Domitius Enobarbus, 
 the monument he set up (later than the one at Vienne), 
 for the victory won before Fabius arrived, was far more 
 finished in style and much more elaborately decorated. 
 In plan the same as that at Vienne, the monument of 
 
 ' Vienne is too far north even for my generous interpretation of the 
 geographical limits of Provence. But it may be added that the in- 
 scription on this temple was finally deciphered, after a skilful use of 
 the holes left by the old bronze letters, by Edouard Bondurand of 
 Nimes, Archiviste of the Gard. It runs as follows — Divo . aitgusto . 
 
 IMP . CAESARI . OPTIMO . MAXIMO . ET . DIVAE . AUGUSTAS. To this 
 
 interpretation it has been suggested that the use of both Divus and 
 IMPERATOR of the same man is unprecedented in inscriptions hitherto 
 examined. Precedent, however, has Uttle to do with proved facts. 
 This building is now carefully restored, and as a complete specimen of 
 its type is only second to the Maison Carree at Nimes. The fine 
 group of two children struggling for a bird is the best bit of old sculp- 
 ture in the town. 
 
54 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 Cavaillon originally showed a similar portico with four 
 arches and carved Corinthian dolumns with a cornice 
 above it, and other decorations in detailed work, 
 among which are winged Victories at each angle. 
 Above was placed by its founder a pyramid which has 
 now disappeared. This loss of its chief feature, and 
 the concealment of the plan by subsequent debris, at 
 first led many observers to consider the ruin as the 
 remains of a triumphal arch. But this is not the case. 
 Such arches did not appear in this connection till much 
 later, and this monument was of the original type from 
 which other buildings of the kind were, as we shall see, 
 descended. The victory of Domitius over the com- 
 bined tribes took place at Vindalium in the territory of 
 the Cavares, which is now Bedarrides, the strategic 
 position commanding the plain from the Rhone to the 
 Alps, which was the natural battlefield of the tribes 
 against the advancing legions. His monument was 
 placed at Cavaillon ("Cabellio Cavarum") because 
 that was the chief town of these conquered populations 
 before Orange attained importance as an Augustan 
 colony. The position of the monument has no doubt 
 been changed since its first building, for the present 
 arches have no real foundations such as would have 
 been necessary for a structure originally at least seventy- 
 five feet in height to the top of the pyramid which sur- 
 mounted it. The wrongly placed pilasters of the west- 
 
CAVAILLON ss 
 
 ern arch are also evidence of an ignorant reconstruc- 
 tion, in which, no doubt, the whole building suffered 
 sufficiently to begin the state of ruin in which it now 
 exists. 
 
 Besides these monuments of Roman victory, it will 
 be interesting here to point out that in the Museum of 
 Aix are preserved some ancient bas-reHefs which recall 
 Gallic battles and were carved by the Gaulish warriors, 
 themselves inspired, no doubt, in these their first rude 
 efforts by the artistic work they must have seen in or 
 near the Greek colony of Marseilles. The three stone 
 blocks at Aix are certainly pre-Roman; and they are 
 equally certainly neither Greek nor Phoenician. To- 
 gether they form a four-sided pillar, one side of which 
 is left plain. On the front are spirited sketches of men 
 and horses, and on the two sides are carved human 
 heads, almost life-size, and apparently the remains of 
 decapitated foes, who were clean-shaved. The cavalry 
 on the front are naturally very much reduced in size, 
 and sadly out of proportion, but the carvings clearly 
 represent the fighting of barbarian horsemen. These 
 most valuable relics of the aboriginal Gauls of Provence 
 were found in 1817, in the old Salyan stronghold of 
 Entremont on the plateau which dominates Aix to the 
 north, and were presented, in 1862, by M. Sallebant, 
 owner of the land, to the Aix Museum, where they are 
 now numbered 305, 306, and 307. 
 
CAHVING FROM A ROMAN TOMB AT ARLES 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 MARIUS IN PROVENCE 
 
 "... Piei racountavo quouro e coumo 
 Eron vengu li fibu de Roumo 
 Bastisseire de vilo e ditaire de IM 
 Caius Cauvin — e Caius Man 
 Lou grand vincfeire poupulkri 
 Qu'engruno a-z-Ais sorto soun cam 
 Lou front d'un mounde ffer e i'e staco si rei." 
 
 Calendal.* 
 
 Far more terrible than the dangers surmounted by 
 Fabius and Domitius was the peril that threatened both 
 Provence and Italy when the Cimbrians and the Teu- 
 tons advanced by slow and devious but unrelenting 
 marches from the Baltic Sea, through Germany, tow- 
 ards the promised land of southern Europe. Joined 
 by the Ambrons of the Bernese Oberland, this torrent 
 of warhke humanity numbered no less than twelve 
 hundred thousand souls, of whom three hundred and 
 
 ' " Then he told how the sons of Rome came down, the builders of 
 cities and the makers of law: Caius Calvinus and Caius Marius, that 
 great conqueror from the ranks of the people, who crushed the bar- 
 barian horde beneath his chariot wheels at Aix and bound their kings 
 in chains." 
 56 
 
MARIUS IN PROVENCE 57 
 
 sixty thousand were fighting men. Fresh from his 
 triumphs in Africa, Marius was called upon by Rome 
 to stem the invasion, and the unexpected march of the 
 Teutons into Spain gave him time to make prepara- 
 tions to meet them after they had recrossed the Pyrenees 
 and as they passed along the Rhone valley on their 
 way towards the Alps. The Cimbrians he was to 
 deal with later. We have now to reconstruct the salient 
 details of a campaign which has never been forgotten 
 in Provence, and in doing so I shall be obhged to make 
 as many references to the modern map, and to those 
 earher geographical conditions already mentioned, as 
 were necessary in explaining the advance of Hannibal. 
 The naval base of Marius's army, which kept up a 
 considerable amount of his supplies, was near that same 
 Fos where Scipio had landed long before him. But 
 the famous "Fosses Mariennes" were not here, nor did 
 they join the Rhone at any point, for Marius did not 
 camp close to either bank of the Rhone. The Bar- 
 barian army, advancing from the Pyrenees as Hannibal 
 had done, would be obhged to leave the line of the coast 
 soon after Beziers because of the immense lagoons which 
 stretched from Aigues-Mortes, from St. Gilles, and from 
 Beaucaire, towards the sea. They had to reach Beau- 
 caire by way of Nlmes, and they, too, crossed the river 
 to Tarascon. From there they marched eastward 
 across the Tarascon plain, turning a httle southerly 
 
58 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 past Maillane, and working up the foot of the Alpilles 
 at St. Remy. It was on the foothills near St. Remy 
 that Marius pitched his fighting camp to wait for them ; 
 and that camp was chiefly provisioned by the port of 
 the "Fosses Mariennes" at St. Gabriel, or Ernaginum.i 
 Marius only began the "trench or canal," which 
 Plutarch describes, after he had learnt that his enemy 
 was approaching, and as part of the final preparations 
 he had so carefully elaborated for a campaign which, 
 I have often thought, shows many points of resemblance 
 
 ' In the choir of the church at St. Gabriel is preserved a Roman 
 inscription, which runs as follows, with the abbreviations expanded: 
 "Marco Frontoni Eupori, Seviro Augustali Coloniae Juliae Augustae 
 Aquis Sextis, naviculario marino Arelatensi curatori ejusdem corporis 
 patrono nautarum Druenticorum et utriculariorum corporatorum 
 Ernaginensium, Julia Nice uxor. . . ." This means that one Mar- 
 cus Fronto was patron of the boatmen of St. Gabriel (Ernaginum), 
 to which the "navy of Aries" brought sea-borne craft from Marseilles, 
 while the "boatmen of the Durance" navigated boats from St. Gabriel 
 to Fos across the swamps and lakes caused by numberless springs on 
 a plain which easily held water (for there is only a slope of 13- 1 7 metres 
 in the 80 kilometres from Eyragues to the sea), and by the overflows 
 both from the Durance and the Rhone. On these expanses, too, the 
 rafts on skins and bladders were plied of the "utricularii," whose 
 names are found in many Roman inscriptions. Near the amphitheatre 
 at Nimes was found the epitaph of the head of the Nimes corporation, 
 in the following terms: "Lucius Valerius Secundus, magister bis 
 CoUegii utriculariorum Nemausensium, vivus sibi posuit." This man, 
 however, might have merely been concerned in the making of skins, 
 which were used in many different ways at that time, for wine or oil, 
 as well as to float rafts. But when the name of a river is added, the 
 connection with the raftsmen is clear. An inscription found inside the 
 Nimes Arena clearly indicates this. It runs as follows: "Nautis Atricae 
 et Ovidis loca numero xxv data decreto decurionum Nemausensium," 
 which means that twenty-five places had been reserved in the Arena 
 
THE "FOSSES MARIENNES' 
 
 59 
 
 with that which ended in Kitchener's victory at Omdur- 
 man. Plutarch's phrase is that through this canal 
 Marius "drew off water from the river towards a con- 
 venient spot where the water flowed towards the sea, 
 smoothly and tranquilly, without being harassed by the 
 wind or waves of the sea. This canal still bears his 
 name." His complete system of "waterworks" there- 
 fore consisted in (i) the natural lagoons between Erna- 
 ginum and the sea; (2) the "Fossa Mariana," which 
 he dug out from the Durance towards Ernaginum. The 
 natural lagoons, decreased in size by the Abbe of Mont- 
 majour in the thirteenth century, and again by Van 
 
 by the decurions of Nimes for the boatmen of the Ardfeche and the 
 Ouveze. The boatmen of the Rhone and Saone were naturally more 
 liberally treated, as may be judged from another passage in the same 
 inscription, which runs: "Nautis Rhodanicis et Araricis (loca numero) 
 XL, D. D.D.N." In the national collections in Paris, too, there is a tes- 
 sera, showing a large swollen skin, such as was used for supporting 
 the rafts, with an inscription recording the Utricularii of Cavaillon 
 and Lucius Valerius, their chief officer. Suetonius speaks of Julius 
 Caesar (cap. Ivii.) using the same methods: "Were rivers in his way to 
 hinder his passage? Crosse over them he would; either swimming, 
 or els bearing himself upon blowed lether bottles" (Holland). Elius 
 Aper and Cnaeus Cornelius are named as patrons of the Aries boat- 
 men; Lucius JuUus Secundus as one who left them money for annual 
 sacrifices. Marcus Junius Messianus is recorded as four times their 
 president. At Lyons is the tombstone of C. Liberius Decimanus, of 
 Vienne, who established himself as " tJtricularius " at Lyons; and 
 of Arrius Attilius, procurator of the boatmen of Ernaginum; and of 
 C. Catinus Driburon, a Lyons sailor — all apparently men of the highest 
 domestic character. The epitaph of the head of the " Utriculaires " 
 of Aries is still preserved there: 'M. lunio Messiano Utricl. Corp. 
 Arelat. Ejusd. corp. mag. nil. F. . . ." 
 
6o OLD PROVENCE 
 
 Ens in 1642, were almost completely dried up by the 
 opening of the Canal de Bouc in 1835; and the water 
 which formerly found its way to the sea between Fos 
 and the mouth of the Rhone is now entirely diverted. 
 It remains only to fix the exact situation of the "Fossa 
 Mariana," which was artificially constructed. This 
 was what is now called the Canal des Lonnes (or some- 
 times Duransole), which leaves the Durance opposite 
 Ch^teau-Renard in a south-western direction towards 
 Laurade. Of this canal, and of the lagoons which it 
 made practicable, one of the chief officers responsible 
 was that Flavius Mamorius whose title of "Comes 
 Ripae" is mentioned on the tomb preserved at Aries, 
 and whose duties extended from Ch^teau-Renard to 
 the south of that Lake Galegeon by which the waters 
 eventually reached the Mediterranean. The distance 
 from Ch^teau-Renard to Laurade is about fifteen kilo- 
 metres, with a slope of rather more than a half in every 
 hundred metres ; and it was far from necessary to canal- 
 ise the whole distance in order to ensure the waters of 
 the Durance flooding the whole plain towards the south 
 and west. This therefore is the reason why, during 
 the three years Marius waited in Provence, he put off 
 the final construction of his water-system until the last 
 year, when tidings had reached him of the slow advance 
 of the Barbarian hordes across the Pyrenees. 
 As was only natural, there are certain traces still 
 
THE ALPILLES 6i 
 
 visible of this long sojourn of Marius and his army 
 along the slopes of the Alpilles, and the stone-carving 
 at Les Baux, now known as the "Three Maries," is 
 in reality the monument of Marius, Julia his wife, and 
 of Martha his prophetess. A drive from St. Remy to 
 Les Baux, one of the most interesting and beautiful 
 excursions in Provence, will at once show the importance 
 of both places in the campaign, for they mark the east- 
 ern extension of the position held by Marius on the north 
 and the south slopes of this magnificently picturesque 
 chain of hills. It is a district filled with legend and with 
 fairy lore, and in the chapter on the ruined citadel of 
 Les Baux we shall hear more of it. 
 
 The slopes of the Alpilles, on each side, have yielded 
 a rich harvest of Roman remains of every kind. Dur- 
 ing his long wait, Marius no doubt had several camps 
 in the immediate vicinity of Les Baux, with important 
 outposts to the north. But when at last news reached 
 him of the Barbarians' advance, when he had completed 
 his system of waterworks, and when it became neces- 
 sary, not only to watch the ford of the Rhone between 
 Beaucaire and Tarascon, but also to keep in touch with 
 St. Gabriel, the vital point of his supplies, he chose a 
 camp on level ground at St. Remy, rather to the south 
 of the present town, with his right flank protecting and 
 resting on the defiles that led to his old stronghold of 
 Les Baux, and so to safe retreat southward; and with 
 
62 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 liis left flank guarded by the waters he had just led 
 southwards from the Durance towards Maillane. The 
 old Celtic citadel which became the Roman Glanum 
 protected his rear, and in front a simple palisade upon 
 an earthwork was enough additional fortification to 
 the torrent of Jonquerolles. 
 
 Two objections to this choice occur at once. Why 
 did he not attack the Barbarians while they crossed the 
 Rhone, and why did he leave the route towards Orgon, 
 Aix, and Italy wide open? He had two reasons; and 
 his success proved that they were right. He desired, 
 first, to accustom his soldiers to the sight of the Bar- 
 barian army, whose exploits and ferocity had been un- 
 warrantably exaggerated ; and he desired to do that at a 
 spot where the narrowness of the route would compel 
 the Barbarians to pass by slowly in a narrowed forma- 
 tion, while his own men would easily be able to repel 
 any attacks that might be made during that passage. 
 His second wish was to destroy the invaders utterly and 
 irremediably upon a battlefield that he had chosen 
 previously, and which they must necessarily accept. 
 All turned out as he had planned it. 
 
 Conditioned as it was by the waters on the plain, the 
 march of the enemy from Tarascon led them to the 
 attack of Glanum (St. Remy), rather from the east than 
 from the west, and they passed close enough to Marius's 
 camp to shout insults to the Roman soldiers on their 
 way. Finding that hard words broke no bones, and 
 
THE BATTLE OF THE LAR 63 
 
 that Marius remained immovable, they attacked his 
 camp, but were repulsed so decisively that they pro- 
 ceeded on their march along the northern slope of the 
 Alpilles by the Via Aureha, vi^hich led from St. Gabriel 
 to Orgon. From here they proceeded by way of Lam- 
 besc and St. Cannat, through Eguilles, to the plain 
 of Les Milles, by which flows the river Lar, a short 
 distance west of Aix. Here they camped south of the 
 Lar (or Arc), and the army of Marius, which had fol- 
 lowed hard upon their rear-guard, step by step, en- 
 camped upon the northern bank, where his water- 
 supply was very limited. This was again part of a pre- 
 arranged plan. By the time he had arrived here the 
 advance-guard of the Barbarians, comprising the whole 
 forces of the Teutons, had already reached those fateful 
 plains on which their death was to bestow so terrible a 
 name.^ He therefore had only the Ambrons to deal 
 with, and when his thirsty soldiers, tired of pursuing 
 an enemy whom they now longed to conquer, shouted 
 for water, he pointed to the river that flowed along the 
 Ambrons' camp, and bade his men go down and take 
 it. A number of the Roman camp-followers and ser- 
 vants did, in fact, "go down" to get water, and the 
 enemy at once advanced upon them, though many of 
 the Barbarian chiefs were still engaged on their midday 
 repast. 
 
 At first both sides shouted the same war cry; for 
 
 ' Pourrieres, Campi Putridi. 
 
64 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 against the invading Ambrons rushed a fierce remnant 
 of the same populations which had been left in Liguria, 
 and now fought for Rome. Behind these hot-blooded 
 skirmishers tramped the hving wall of steadfast Roman 
 legions, and the Barbarians who had crossed the Lar 
 to the attack soon found themselves repulsed again 
 among the boulders of its stream. And now the irre- 
 sistible advance swept over it, and on ; driving back the 
 routed Ambrons with terrible slaughter up to the very 
 hues of the wagons that guarded their central camp. 
 Then the Roman trumpets sounded a retreat, and the 
 Roman soldiers moved back steadfastly to camp, where, 
 through the whole of that portentous night, they heard 
 the lamentations of the Barbarian host and their hoarse 
 cries for vengeance. By degrees these sounds grew 
 fainter. Panic, in that unknown darkness, terror of 
 that conquering foe across the stream, had done their 
 work at last. In tumult and in shouting the night 
 wore slowly on, and the Barbarians fled, fled beyond 
 Aix, until in that great plain which already held the 
 Teutons, the Ambrons joined them and prepared to 
 fight again. The whole army of the invaders was 
 now gathered on the battlefield which Marius had 
 chosen. 
 
 In the dawn after the combat of the Lar the Roman 
 troops pressed forward relentlessly upon the tracks of 
 their predestined prey. Both forces thus passed along 
 
THE BATTLE OF POURRIERES 65 
 
 the Via Aurelia by way of Le Tholonet, Beaurecueil, 
 and Chateauneuf, going through the hills north of Trets 
 by La Grande Pegiere, which is on the actual modern 
 road from Paris to Antibes. The Barbarians fixed 
 their camp at Tegulata (so called from its tile factory) 
 which is known as La Petite Pegifere. Round this centre 
 were grouped their chariots and wagons, and their 
 mighty army stretched across the Lar (or Arc) south- 
 wards (to the north-east of Trets), and as far as Pour- 
 rieres to the north. When the Romans were within 
 touch of their outposts, they halted, about a mile and 
 a half west of La Grande Pegiere, and occupied the 
 hills which stretch from Trets to Puyloubier, from the 
 stream of the Lar to the eastern foothills of Mont Ste. 
 Victoire. Knowing the country well, Marius then sent 
 three thousand infantry under Claudius Marcellus 
 from Puyloubier towards the north and east, as far as 
 Puit-de-Rians. This was the highest point of the 
 turning movement, and Marcellus 's infantry then 
 marched south, past Pain de Munition, towards the 
 wooded valleys near Pourrieres, where they were well 
 under cover. On the hill at Pain de Munition (An- 
 nonae Munitio) was an old Celtic fortification, which 
 was rapidly strengthened; and it formed even a better 
 retreat in case of disaster than the other camp, also 
 fixed upon before, upon the hills just north of Trets. 
 Its importance as a centre for baggage and for rein- 
 
66 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 forcements^ would have alone justified the turning 
 movement of Marcellus, even if that movement had 
 not been planned with a very different, and a very 
 forcible, immediate object. 
 
 It was now the second day after the preliminary 
 skirmish some miles back. The Roman army had 
 rested. Its reserves and provisionment had been se- 
 cured. Marius at length advanced straight on the Bar- 
 barian camp, throwing forward a cloud of light cavalry 
 as he came. Without waiting for the attack to de- 
 
 ' Plutarch being almost the only classical authority for details here, 
 I have chiefly followed him, but he does not seem to have enjoyed 
 the advantage of studying the actual ground, and where his explana- 
 tions do not accord with visible geography, I have usually chosen 
 (from many authors) the solution of M. Gilles. The old fort on 
 Pain de Munition is alone well worthy of a visit, for it is on higher 
 ground than any other near the battlefield, and gives a splendid view 
 of the amphitheatre where the tragedy was played out. It needs some 
 courage to chmb up to it, but if you persist for some two hours you 
 will reach the vestiges of a kind of spiral path leading to the summit, a 
 fortified platform six hundred metres above the plain. In the centre is 
 a ruined tower, and round it no less than four lines of entrenchments 
 are traceable. The inner circle, round the central ruin, is an irregular 
 ellipse, whose largest diameter is about forty metres. At the foot of the 
 third circle is a regular rampart of masonry with a fosse about two 
 metres thick by three wide. The fourth circle, on the opposite side to 
 the fosse, is incomplete, as the rocks at each end are in themselves 
 sufficient defence. The blocks of hewn stone are laid together without 
 cement, and in the course of time have almost fused in a solid mass. 
 There is no doubt that Marius had foreseen the necessity for fortifying 
 this ancient stronghold long beforehand, as a base for supplies which 
 could be hidden there by the inhabitants, and as a strong refuge in 
 case of utter need. In the end he made the brilliant, and probably 
 sudden, choice of using it as the point from which Marcellus could 
 safely make the turning movement that routed the Barbarians. 
 
ROUT OF THE BARBARIANS 67 
 
 velop, Teutons and Ambrons both rushed into the fray 
 and engaged the main body of the Roman army while 
 yet it was among the foothills of the descent. Once 
 they were rolled back, and once they rallied; but then 
 Marcellus, marching by a route which completely 
 screened his troops, reached the rear (or eastern side) 
 of the Barbarian camp, and fell upon the centre of their 
 headquarters. The cries of their women gave the first 
 news that this great turning movement had proved 
 successful in its aim. The Teutons drew back at once 
 to grapple with Marcellus, and like a thunderbolt the 
 Roman legions fell upon them as they turned. A 
 hundred thousand fighting men were slain in that awful 
 carnage on the right bank of the Lar. Three hundred 
 thousand of the camp-followers and women were ex- 
 terminated or sold in every slave-market along the coast. 
 The stream of the Arc was choked with blood. The 
 plains were thick with corpses. So complete was their 
 defeat that the principal fact which history records of 
 these Barbarian wanderers is their entire extermination. 
 Upon an enormous pyre in the very centre of the 
 blood-stained encampment of his enemies at Tegulata, 
 Marius celebrated his victory by a holocaust of all the 
 booty which was not divided among his soldiers or 
 reserved for his own formal triumph. Traces of a 
 deep layer of ashes, of melted lead and other metals, 
 of burnt earth and calcined pottery, have been lately 
 
68 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 found where this great pyre once flamed to heaven so 
 long ago, and proclaimed the victory of Marius to all 
 the countryside. Plutarch adds the picturesque touch 
 that the messengers from Rome bringing news of his 
 fifth consulate arrived just when Marius was lighting the 
 pyre. The episode is only important as suggesting the 
 date of the battle in the spring, and the 24th of April 
 is the date tradition gives it. Within fifty metres of the 
 same spot, which is east of the bridge that bears the 
 modern road, are some few vestiges of a stone triumphal 
 monument, which was erected by the soldiers of Marius 
 just south of the river. A fifteenth-century tapestry 
 existed in 1804, and was then described by M. Fauris 
 de Saint Vincent as showing a high pyramid supporting 
 a strong square base which bore, he says, a sculptured 
 bas-relief of three Roman soldiers carrying a general 
 upon the shield lifted upon their shoulders. But the 
 historian Bouche, describing "Le Triomphe de Pour- 
 rieres, which is near the bridge of La Petite Pegiere 
 on the river Lar," suggests that the three soldiers each 
 carried a buckler; and evidently from some confusion 
 with the old name of Tegulata, it was at one time 
 thought that these men were each carrying a tile. The 
 arms of Pourrifercs, taken in 1697, preserved the same 
 monument,^ which those readers who have followed my 
 
 ' Heraldically as follows: — "D'azur, k une pyramide d'argent, 
 masonnerie de sable, sur la base de laquelle sont ecrits ces deux mots 
 Caius Marius, I'un sur 1' autre en caractfere de sable; la pyramide 
 accostee en chef d'un P k dextre d'or, et d'un S k senestre du meme." 
 
MONT STE. VICTOIRE 69 
 
 descriptions of the monuments to Fabius at Vienne and 
 to Domitius at Cavaillon, will have no difficulty in 
 recognising as another erection of the same type, a 
 pyramid upon a quadrangular base, which here pre- 
 served upon the spot the memory of Marius's greatest 
 victory in 102 B.C. His triumphal monuments in Rome 
 itself were destroyed by Sulla long before this one near 
 the Arc had crumbled into oblivion. But the great 
 Roman general was not to be without his own com- 
 memoration on the soil of Provence; for, as we shall 
 find at St. Remy, Julius Caesar, who cared for his 
 relative's memory in Rome, erected also, upon the site 
 of the camp where Marius first saw the Barbarian host, 
 one of the most beautiful examples of triumphal archi- 
 tecture which remains in the world. 
 
 There is still, above that mighty battlefield, a memory 
 of Marius which will remain while the everlasting hills 
 endure, for Mont Ste. Victoire is called after his victory 
 upon the plains of Pourrieres, and on its summit is a 
 church dedicated to the victorious saint, which replaced 
 the Cassianite convent built on the ruins of a far more 
 ancient shrine. To this old convent, it will be re- 
 membered, that Scott describes the visit of the Earl of 
 Oxford's son to Queen Margaret, in Anne of Geier stein; 
 and on the narrow platform near the modern church, 
 above the giddy precipice that falls sheer down into the 
 plain, the villagers used to go every year upon the 24th 
 of April, until the Revolution of 1793 swept away this 
 
70 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 picturesque custom with so many others. A former 
 cure of Pertuis, the town from which Marius drew his 
 chief corn-supphes, has fortunately preserved the mem- 
 ory of a vanished rite, together with the music to which 
 the procession marched from Vauvenargues towards 
 the mountainside. As soon as all had arrived upon 
 the summit a vast bonfire was lit, and round it, with 
 garlands on their heads, the peasants danced the faran- 
 dole with shouts of "Victoire! Victoire!" As the 
 start was only made in the late afternoon, it was long 
 after midnight before the men and women returned 
 to Pertuis, all carrying boughs and branches, and 
 shouting as before. At dawn the curd of Vauvenargues, 
 the village near Mont Ste. Victoire, on the route taken 
 by Marcellus and his three thousand, celebrated Mass. 
 Immediately afterwards all moved on towards the Gar- 
 agai (the abyss of Caius Marius), to see the rocky 
 cleft down which he hurled a hundred prisoners the day 
 after the battle, by the advice of Martha, his proph- 
 etess.^ 
 
 ' The scene upon the balcony of the convent of Our Lady of Victory 
 in Anne oj Geier stein shows how long the traditions of this place were 
 known and venerated, and perhaps indicates the reason why the good 
 people of Vauvenargues only visited the Garagai after they had been 
 spiritually comforted and strengthened by the celebration of the early 
 Mass. "Know," says Queen Margaret, in the pages of Sir Walter 
 Scott, "that beneath these rocks, and under the foundations of this 
 convent, there runs a cavern, entering by a secret and defended 
 passage a little to the westward of the summit, and running through 
 the mountain, having an opening to the south, from which, as from 
 
THE GARAGAI 71 
 
 The journey from Aix to Vauvenargues is still an 
 easy one for any visitor who cares to see these haunted 
 precipices for himself, and takes less than two hours to 
 drive, on the left-hand side of the valley called "In- 
 fernet," beyond which rises the height of Mont Ste. 
 Victoire. There are the remains of a huge chateau, 
 part of which is still inhabited and finely furnished. 
 In a ravine to the south-west is a farm called "Le 
 Delubre," but there are no vestiges of the .ancient 
 temple from which its name may have been originally 
 derived. From here guides and mules can be pro- 
 cured for the famous ascent of the mountain, which is 
 
 this bartizan, you can view the landscape so lately seen from this 
 balcony, or the strife of winds and confusion of clouds which we now 
 behold. In the middle of this cavernous thoroughfare is a natural pit, 
 or perforation, of great but unknown depth. A stone dropped into it 
 is heard to dash from side to side, until the noise of its descent, thun- 
 dering from cUff to cliff, dies away in distant and faint tinkling, less 
 loud than that of a sheep's bell at a mile's distance. The common 
 people, in their jargon, call this fearful gulf Lou Garagoule; and the 
 traditions of the monastery annex wild and fearful recollections to a 
 place in itself sufficiently terrible. Oracles, it is said, spoke from thence 
 in pagan days by subterranean voices arising from the abyss ; and from 
 these the Roman general is said to have heard, in strange and un- 
 couth rhymes, promises of the victory which gives name to this 
 mountain. These oracles, it is averred, may be yet consulted after 
 performance of strange rites in which heathen ceremonies are mixed 
 with Christian acts of devotion. The abbots of Mont Ste. Victoire 
 have denounced the consultation of Lou Garagoule, and the spirits who 
 reside there, to be criminal. But as the sin may be expiated by 
 presents to the church, by masses, and penances, the door is some- 
 times opened by the complaisant fathers to those whose daring curi- 
 osity leads them, at all risks, and by whatever means, to search into 
 futurity." 
 
72 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 easy enough, and may also be made from Cabassols, 
 which is slightly nearer Aix. In two hours you reach 
 what is now called the Hermitage and Chapel of Notre 
 Dame de la Victoire, with the ruins of a cistern and 
 an older convent near it. Though the view is fine 
 here, it is still grander from the western point of the 
 mountain, on which has been erected the great iron 
 "Cross of Provence." From this spot the whole bat- 
 tlefield, of Marius is stretched out below you, and within 
 about two hundred and fifty yards is the famous 
 " Garagai," the dangerous and legendary chasm whose 
 mystery no man has yet solved. On the- southern 
 slopes it is a stiff chmb down, but there are the ruins of 
 a Roman aqueduct, and the traces of a Celtic hill-fort 
 to be seen, which may reward the more adventurous 
 traveller. The whole place is filled with memories of 
 a dead civihsation, and must be crowded with the 
 ghosts of that great army which was slaughtered in the 
 plains beneath. But the peasants will not seem to 
 know much more of the details of what happened there 
 so long ago than Thiebault could tell Arthur Phihp- 
 son, when he explained to the English visitor that the 
 great victory had been "gained by a Roman General 
 named Caio Mario, against two large armies of Sara- 
 cens, in gratitude to Heaven for which victory Caio 
 Mario vowed to build a monastery on the mountain 
 for the service of the Virgin Mary, in honour of whom 
 
THE CHRISTIAN LEGEND 73 
 
 he had been baptized." But if many of the historical 
 details have been forgotten by the people whom they 
 chiefly affected, the folklore and the religion of Provence 
 have preserved many traces of the campaign of Marius 
 which even the French Revolution could not utterly 
 destroy, and Ste. Victoire herself, now added to the 
 calendar of the Church, is but the Christian personi- 
 fication of the greatest Roman victory on Provenjal 
 soil, a touching instance of that infant piety which, as 
 Gregory of Tours observed, made use of local tradi- 
 tions as the basis of early Christian faiths, and gave to 
 ancient superstitions a new meaning for the worship- 
 pers of Christ. 
 
 A very extraordinary example of this metamorphosis 
 is closely attached to the story of Marius; and the 
 process of development will appear perfectly natural 
 to those who remember that when the first preachers 
 of Christianity reached Provence, the remembrance of 
 the salvation of that country, and of Italy herself, from 
 the Barbarian hordes was still distinct, and still as great 
 a fact in the contemporary life of both Provence and 
 Rome as the Napoleonic wars are to ourselves. For 
 if it was near Aix that the Ambrons and Teutons had 
 been annihilated by Marius, it was at VerceUae that 
 the other half of the invading army, the Cimbrian 
 tribes, were crushed in the valley of the Po by Marius 
 and Catulus. This is why the statues of the two gen- 
 
74 ' OLD PROVENCE 
 
 erals are seen together on the triumphal monument 
 erected to them by Caesar at St. Remy, and this is the 
 reason that a Christian legend attached to the local 
 memories of their campaigns would be acceptable both 
 to Provenfal hearers and to Roman colonists. The 
 origin of that legend is to be found, strangely enough, 
 in the prophetess Martha who commanded the human 
 sacrifice in the Garagai, and whose effigy was carved 
 beforehand with that of Marius and of his wife Julia 
 on the "stele" at Les Baux. 
 
 At the present time I know no place in the world 
 which gives so deep and melancholy an impression of 
 remote antiquity as does Les Baux, which should be 
 first seen from the St. Remy side, not from the road 
 that reaches it from Aries. It is here that Ezekiel 
 might have seen the valley of dry bones; here may the 
 belated traveller at night behold them shaking, bone 
 coming together to his bone, "until the breath came 
 into them and they lived and stood upon their feet, an 
 exceeding great army." Here in the "Valoun d' In- 
 ffer," which hides the "Trau di Fado," might Dante 
 have conceived his amphitheatre of hell: — 
 
 "In su restremitS, d'un alta ripa 
 Che facevan gran pietre rotte in cerchio." 
 
 And as we found traces of the Syrian prophetess 
 in the cleft of the rocks above the battlefield of Pour- 
 
LES BAUX 75 
 
 riferes, so near Les Baux, at the end of a small valley, 
 called the Gorge of Hell, is a sombre cavern of the 
 spirits, where Mireio and her Valebregan went to con- 
 sult the sorceress Taven, as Saul long before them went 
 to consult the witch of Endor, who "saw gods ascend- 
 ing out of the earth," or as Odysseus went down to 
 Hades through the caverns of Avemus. 
 
 The sterile rocks around Les Baux gleam white 
 like skeletons. The air of death is all the deeper 
 for those dusty ruins of royal habitations whose 
 princes have been dust for centuries, and for those 
 few hovels, still inhabited, that cluster among the 
 empty palaces hke the evil excrescences of a foul 
 decay. Among them, on the slope of the hillside, 
 some forty yards below the little plateau of the modern 
 village, are two carvings upon the white stone 
 from which Les Baux itself was quarried. About 
 three hundred yards apart, one of them is called 
 Gaie with two figures upon it; the other is called 
 TremaK with three figures.' This latter was no 
 doubt called Tremai^ because it was first supposed 
 to be "tres Marii imagines" (three figures of Marius) 
 which afterwards became "les trois Maries." The 
 change to "les Saintes Maries," assisted by the pious 
 
 • It will be remembered that the hill near the camp of Caius Marius 
 at Fos is known both as Gaie and Maie, from the two names of the 
 general. Much the same is the case at Les Baux. 
 
76 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 exegesis of the local cur^, was not long in coming; 
 and the chapel that is built beneath the great tri- 
 angular carved block soon consecrated the new name.^ 
 The sculpture faces south, and looks out above the 
 valley of Entreconque, over the lakes, the river 
 Rhone, the Crau, and on to the distant horizon 
 of the sea itself. Originally the bas-relief, which 
 is five and a half feet high, by four and a half broad, 
 stood twelve feet above the rocky soil immediately 
 beneath it. The central figure preserves the mantle 
 closed by buckles on the left shoulder, the lance 
 decorated with wreaths and flowers, which Plutarch 
 describes in his sketch of Martha the prophetess; 
 it preserves also the Eastern head-dress, or tiara of 
 camel's hair, wiiich Raban Maurus describes in 
 his Lije of St. Martha, written in the middle of the 
 ninth century, "Alba tyara de pilis cameH velata 
 caput." ^ This is the Syrian " woman that had a famil- 
 iar spirit," like the witch of Endor, whom Marius 
 
 ' In 1902 the Abb^ L. Paulet published Les Baux et CasHUon, in 
 which he bravely adheres to the saintly legend, "whatever may be the 
 opinions which the antiquarian M. Gilles has published." The Abbe 
 is of course right to be on the side of the angels. 
 
 ^ The best way to reach these monuments is to take the path out of 
 the Porte dcs Archers which goes to the north of the village out of the 
 main road, keeping the "Croix de Machine" on your left. The first 
 is "Li Gaid" to the west, the second is "Tremaie" to the east. These 
 are also called "Li Santo." There was an excellent guide at Les Baux 
 in the spring of 1904, but he does not take you to these carvings unless 
 you ask for them. 
 
PORTRAIT OF MARIUS 77 
 
 brought "in a litter with great reverence; by whose 
 commands he made sacrifices at the time and in the 
 manner which she ordered." The importance attached 
 to her by Plutarch is evident from the space he gives 
 to the story of her first meeting with Juha, the wife 
 of Marius. 
 
 On her right is the only contemporary portrait- 
 statue that still exists of Marius himself. Plutarch 
 has described a carving of the great general which 
 he saw at Ravenna, and which has now disappeared. 
 It represented, says the historian, "a man of vigorous 
 and austere nature, brought up to the mihtary dis- 
 cipline of war, hardened by early poverty to priva- 
 tions and fatigues." He is represented at Les Baux 
 as a small man, with a muscular neck, in the 
 simple toga of a consul, with uncovered head, and 
 quite short hair and beard. On the other side of 
 the prophetess is Julia, his wife, a matron of ampler 
 proportions, wearing a tunic beneath the usual stola 
 of the Roman lady, one end of which covers her head 
 and folds back beneath her left arm. 
 
 A most interesting fragment of inscription, copied 
 by M. le Marquis de Lagoy when more remained 
 of it, may still be traced. It is at any rate contem- 
 porary and authentic, and the only word that can 
 be deciphered without any doubt gives us the name 
 of the man who erected the stele. This was Caldus, 
 
78 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 perhaps that plebeian partisan of Marius, who forged 
 his own way to the front, was made tribune in 
 107 B.C., and won his honours by hard work like 
 his master. He it was who later on accused the 
 patrician Pompilius of treasonable cowardice in 
 the Cimbrian campaign; and he was lieutenant at 
 Les Baux with Marius before he went to Spain; and 
 in memory of his Spanish campaigns he struck the 
 gold medals which record his rise to the Consulate 
 in 97 B.C. The inscription on the carved stone known 
 as "Li Gaie," containing two figures, is neither con- 
 temporary nor properly connected with the sculp- 
 ture. The fragments of writing that have been 
 deciphered show the sixth century cursive char- 
 acters of a Christian epitaph, and the digging of a 
 grave beneath it has no doubt been responsible for 
 the slope of the whole stone. A far more flagrant 
 instance of the use of an ancient Roman monu- 
 ment by later inhabitants as a tomb will be found 
 when we consider the wonderful buildings of St. 
 Remy. The stone called "Li Gaie" was probably 
 a votive altar; and if the sacrifices at Lou Garagai 
 on Mont Ste. Victoire are authentic, it is easy to 
 believe that human blood was shed at the same in- 
 stigation upon this altar at Les Baux. The figures 
 carved upon the stone are again those of Marius, 
 
THE THREE MARYS 79 
 
 whose head has been entirely mutilated by time 
 and accident, though his consular toga remains; and 
 of Martha the prophetess, on the spectator's right, 
 in her camel's hair tiara, her buckled mantle, and 
 the thyrsus in her right hand as on the other stone. 
 But the top of the tiara shows traces of richer decora- 
 tion, and its bands on each side fall over the ears 
 as far as the middle of the breast. The neck, how- 
 ever, in the "Gaie," seems unfinished and only roughly 
 blocked out. The niche containing these carvings, 
 which are only busts, instead of the full-length figures 
 of the Tremaie, measures seventy-one centimetres 
 across by sixty-eight high, and as it faces south-west, 
 it is best seen in the morning, while the setting sun gives 
 the best view of the Tremaie. 
 
 The traditions of the countryside have for long re- 
 garded the Tremaie as the representation of the holy 
 women whose shrine is in the fortress- church of Les 
 Saintes Maries by the sea, and M. I'Abbe Paulet sees 
 in their Roman carvings a pious Christian representa- 
 tion of Martha, of her sister Mary Magdalene, and of 
 her brother Lazarus. At Les Baux, in very early 
 centuries, it was beheved that the three Marys after 
 the death of Christ were sent out to sea in an open 
 boat and miraculously reached Les Baux, where their 
 effigies were placed upon a rock tO commemorate the 
 
8o OLD PROVENCE 
 
 event, at first roughly done upon a stone which only 
 held two, and later on, full length upon a stone large 
 enough for all three. As we have seen, the five figures 
 on the two monuments really represented only three 
 persons originally, but there is httle else true in this 
 harmlessly devotional legend. This story from Les 
 Baux was no doubt the origin of all subsequent tradi- 
 tions about the miraculous voyage of the Saints. But 
 we find it far more developed at Tarascon, at Aries, 
 and elsewhere. There is good reason for this. It was 
 at Ernaginum (St. Gabriel) that the inhabitants of 
 Tarascon, bringing food to the port of the "Fosses 
 Mariennes" for Marius's army, heard first of the 
 victory prophesied by Martha, his Syrian prophetess. 
 When news of the massacre of Pourrieres arrived, it 
 was Martha's prophecy which was remembered by 
 the populations delivered from that terrible host which 
 had devoured their country hke a flame, and covered 
 it with invaders of bestial countenance and animal 
 ferocity. In the early days of Christianity, the change 
 from Martha the prophetess to Martha the hostess of 
 Christ, the sister of Lazarus, was but a slight one; and 
 the legend that St. Martha on her arrival had freed the 
 country from the devouring Tarasque was again a 
 simple reflection of the annihilation of the Barbarian 
 hosts. 
 
LES SAINTES MARIES 
 
 But as the literature of the Church increased, and 
 the audience to which her preachers appealed grew 
 vaster, a new place of disembarkation for the saints 
 had to be found on the Provenjal coast, and this place 
 was discovered where the village of Les Saintes Maries 
 de la Mer now stands around its battlemented church, 
 built at the end of the twelfth century. The entrance 
 door at the side shows two lions carved in marble, which 
 may well have been taken from some older Roman 
 shrine; but the ship with two persons is contemporary, 
 and is the "Navis in Pelago" of the miraculous voyage. 
 A church was known here in the sixth century, when 
 St. Cesaire in his will mentions "Ecclesia Sanctae 
 Mariae de Ratis"; and in the will of William, Count 
 of Provence, in 992, it is called "Notre Dame de la 
 Barque." Till 1061 there is then no question of any- 
 thing but of a shrine to Our Lady Mary of the Sea; 
 and by that title it is described in the wills of Calixtus 
 n. (11 23) and Innocent in. (1200), and a deed of Ray- 
 mond Berenger, Count of Provence, in 1241. The 
 first appearance of the name "Les Saintes Maries" is 
 in the proces-verbal of the search for the relics of the 
 holy women, instituted by the good King Rene when 
 he was at Aix in 1448. This consecrated the legend 
 anew, and by 1744 the Aries tradition had absorbed 
 the story of Les Baux, and an ecclesiastical writer 
 
82 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 speaks of the shrine of "Trimariarum," the Tremaie 
 of the monument we have just been examining.^ 
 
 It is worth while emphasising just a little more close- 
 ly the points of resemblance between the Christian 
 legend and the monuments of Marius, though the 
 "Tarasque" found at Les Baux need not necessarily 
 be taken as the first link between the Syrian and the 
 saint. On the right of the entry to the crypt of St. 
 Martha at Tarascon is a panel-painting of King Rene 
 kneehng to the saint, which shows an Eastern dress, 
 and bands falHng from it upon the breast, as shown on 
 the altar at Les Baux. The famous carving of her 
 with her Tarasque on the tomb of Aix I have men- 
 tioned in other pages, and of course we shall hear more 
 of both at Tarascon, where the fete of the Tarasque 
 
 ■• ' The passengers in the miraculous ship of course increased as well, 
 as time went on; and the beginning of their voyage is thus described 
 in an old song of the Jews, quoted by Mistral: — 
 
 "Entrez, Sara, dans la nacelle, 
 Lazare, Marthc, et Maximin, 
 Cleon, Trophime, Saturnin, 
 Les trois Maries et Marcelle, 
 Eutrope et Martial, Sidoine avec Joseph 
 Vous perirez dans cette nef. 
 
 "AUez sans voile et sans cordage, 
 Sans mat, sans ancre, sans timon. 
 Sans aUments, sans aviron, 
 Allez faire un triste naufrage! 
 Retirez-vous d'ici, laissez nous en repos, 
 Allez crever parmi les flots." 
 
SAINTE-BAUME 83 
 
 on the 14th of April was celebrated every year since 
 King Rene began it in 1474, until in 1904 I found to 
 my great disappointment that M. Combes had com- 
 manded it to be given up at the same time as he tore 
 down the crucifixes from the courts of justice. But St. 
 Martha remains, and her Tarasque is without doubt 
 the type of the invading terror crushed by Marius, 
 and it is remarkable that this particular legend is not 
 especially favoured in places so near at hand as Beau- 
 caire or Nimes, but is found at the place where the 
 armies of Marius and his prophetess had the greatest 
 influence. The church at Tarascon was finished in 
 1 197 on the ruins of a much older shrine, and the crypt 
 may well be of the fourth century, but the magnifi- 
 cent tomb of St. Martha was carved in white marble 
 at Genoa in 1653. The fifth or sixth century bas-relief 
 it contains shows how ancient was the worship of St. 
 Martha on this spot, and indeed it may well have been 
 at the very first introduction of Christianity, between 
 250 and 300, that the Syrian prophetess became the 
 Saint from Palestine. 
 
 Julia, the wife of Marius, in the course of the trans- 
 formation into Mary Magdalene, suffered strange 
 chances. While St. Martha stayed at Tarascon, it 
 would appear that Mary Magdalene went to bewail her 
 frailties in the deserts of Sainte-Baume, but the recum- 
 bent statue now given her name behind the altar of 
 
84 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 the Grotto was unfortunately modelled by Houdon to 
 represent Clairon, the actress, in 1803. Her tomb in 
 the crypt of St. Maximin is of alabaster, with five scenes 
 from the Bible carved on the front, and was probably a 
 Christian tomb of the fourth or fifth century, like many 
 of those preserved at Aries. No traces of Mary Mag- 
 dalene exist in St. Sauveur at Aix. Nor is it easy to 
 find at Marseilles any evidence of Lazarus, whom, as 
 we have seen, the ancient carving of Marius was im- 
 agined by later hagiologists to represent. Still, it is 
 perhaps significant that the saint is almost invariably 
 carved with the short hair and beard of the Roman 
 general, instead of the flowing hair and beard usual with 
 the Jews. The oldest church in Marseilles, St. Victor, 
 was not dedicated to him by the famous abbot of the 
 Cassianite Abbey who founded it, and it was only in 
 1040 that Benedict ix. connects the name of Lazarus 
 wi*'i Marseilles. 
 
 '' took each of the other legendary occupants of 
 the miraculous boat in turn, the result would be just 
 the same. St. Trophime is one of them. The church 
 now called after him at Aries was begun by St. Virgile 
 in 625 in honour of St. Stephen, and only took the 
 name of St. Trophime in the twelfth century when the 
 cloister was carved and the saint's relics were trans- 
 ported from the Alyscamps, as those of the first Bishop 
 of Aries. No greater proofs are obtainable of the 
 
MODERN PILGRIMS 85 
 
 arrival of St. Maximin, whose magnificent church in 
 the town of the same name is one of the finest Gothic 
 buildings begun at the end of the twelfth century in 
 Provence. The tomb supposed to be his in the crypt 
 is (like that attributed to Mary Magdalene) one of the 
 same early Christian carvings of the fourth and fifth 
 centuries which are preserved at Aries. There is no 
 need to go further into the catalogue. All the supposed 
 events of the legend are found to have taken place in 
 the district covered by the campaign of Marius, from 
 which in fact they took their birth. All the historical 
 traces of the legend disappear when we search earlier 
 than 1152, the translation of the relics of St. Trophime; 
 and it is only completely accepted after 1448, the date 
 of King Rene's search at Saintes Maries de la Mer. 
 The result is then that the legend of the miraculous 
 voyage of the saints to Provence arose in the twelfth 
 century, attached itself to existing fables at Les Baux, 
 and was incorporated in the theology of the faith by 
 King Rene. If these holy persons had in fact reu,cned 
 Provence so soon after the death of Christ, it would be 
 difficult to explain the slow conversion of Provence, 
 where, even under Constantine, the Christians were in 
 the minority; where St. Martin (baptized in 354) was 
 the first to preach against idolatry; where St. Hilary 
 took the classic marbles of pagan temples and theatres 
 to decorate the churches of 439; and where St. Cesaire, 
 
86 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 in 542, found it necessary to destroy nearly every 
 vestige of Roman art in his constant efforts to uproot 
 the persistent paganism of the population. 
 
 The legend of the Saintes Maries, one of the most 
 beautiful and most popular in all Provence, will lose 
 nothing in the eyes of those who beHeve it, or the ears 
 of visitors who hear it, because the historian can find 
 no evidence of its material truth. It would scarcely 
 perhaps be possible for any one to visit the strange old 
 church of Saintes Maries de la Mer on the 25th of May 
 without beheving what that multitude of earnest pil- 
 grims so ardently beheve, as the shrine of the sacred 
 relics is lowered into their midst, and all their sick are 
 healed. Yet it is easy for one who has stood by the 
 monuments carved upon the sterile hillside of Les 
 Baux to understand how the legends of the country- 
 side, and the stories of its childhood's faith, have gradu- 
 ally descended from the mighty memories of the plain 
 of Pourrieres and the victorious campaign of Caius 
 Marius in Provence. 
 
FROM AN EARLY CHRISTIAN TOMB AT ARLES 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 ROME AT ST. REMY AND ORANGE 
 
 "Ansin, esfatant sa bassesso 
 Aurenjo, futuro princesso, 
 Carpentras, Cavaioun, Saint-Roumie, Saint-Chamas, 
 S'arrengueirferon en carriero 
 D'arc-de-triounfle; li serriero 
 Vous durbiguferon si peiriero." — Calendal.' 
 
 For the clear understanding of the next Roman monu- 
 ments, all commemorating battles, which I shall de- 
 scribe in Provence, it will be necessary to give the brief- 
 est possible sketch of so much of the history of Rome 
 as falls within my geographical Kmits, from the time 
 when Marius returned to the capital up to the years 
 when Augustus began the real pacification and con- 
 solidation of the district, and when nearly every monu- 
 ment that remains will be found to be of a civil or re- 
 ligious order, with the few exceptions that I shall note 
 in their right place. 
 
 ' "Thus rose from the darkness of their prime, Orange, the princess 
 of the coming age, Carpentras, Cavaillon, St. Remy, St. Chamas ; and 
 thus their mighty thoroughfare was dressed with the Triumphal 
 Arches, when the quarries of the granite hills were opened." 
 
 87 
 
88 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 The natural consequence of Marius's victories over 
 the Barbarian was the annexation of farms and estates 
 for his veterans. Whether the native inhabitants ex- 
 pected to be freed from the Cimbri and Teutons with- 
 out paying the price I know not; in any case it is cer- 
 tain that they objected to the payment. Their grati- 
 tude to Marius himself has continued to this day. 
 But a very few years of Marius's soldiers was enough 
 for them. There is no doubt that this discontent was 
 increased by Roman misgovernment and Roman care- 
 lessness. The cauldron of Italy was still seething with 
 those elements of discord that were to produce a dif- 
 ferent life and form of government. Just as, long 
 afterwards, the last decades of the eighteenth century 
 in France showed every symptom of the purging cata- 
 clysms that foreshadowed change and regeneration; 
 just as a mighty master of men appeared to dominate 
 the new Republic and to found an Empire; so out of 
 the horrors of the Servile War, out of the barbarities of 
 the Marian and Sullan proscriptions, arose the dom- 
 inating figure of Julius Caesar, and the foundation of 
 the Roman Empire. Provence was neglected while 
 greater stakes were being lost and won beyond her 
 boundaries. The Salyes, the Celtiberians, and other 
 tribes seized the opportunity to revolt. Naturally a 
 stronghold of the Marian faction, Provence must have 
 looked on with mingled feehngs while the extremely 
 
FONTEIUS IN PROVENCE 
 
 dangerous rebellion of the Marian Sertorius gradually 
 grew more and more menacing in Spain. Provence 
 became a mere road for the armies of Rome's various 
 faction-leaders, a mere source of supphes for one pass- 
 ing legion after another. The Senate had to send 
 Pompey, their greatest general, against Sertorius, who 
 held out until he was foully murdered by his own of- 
 ficers in B.C. 73. Fonteius was Pompey's lieutenant 
 in Provence during those years; and Cicero's defence 
 of him still forms the most damning indictment of his 
 rule, still provides the most pathetic picture of the woes 
 of this unhappy territory. 
 
 Fonteius was prosecuted in Rome for extortion and 
 embezzlement by the inhabitants of Provence in B.C. 
 69. From the invectives which Cicero, then engaged 
 on the other side, poured out against Verres only the 
 year before, we may get some glimpses of the truth 
 about Fonteius, whose chief claim to Roman sympathy 
 was that he was represented as having saved the Ro- 
 man capital of Narbo Martins from the rebels. That 
 he extracted huge sums of money, vast supplies of 
 forage, and numerous cavalry recruits, from the Pro- 
 vincials, is of course also set down to his credit by the 
 patriotic advocate. But the people who had under- 
 gone these processes of extraction took another view. 
 They were far from being, even at this time, the utter 
 Barbarians depicted in Cicero's bitter phrases. Greek 
 
go OLD PROVENCE 
 
 civilisation had done its work, and Roman coloiJsa- 
 tion had at any rate begun to spread its influences. 
 The chief practical objectors to Fonteius had been 
 those tribes of the Volcae and Helvii whose territory 
 Pompey had handed over to the Republic of Mar- 
 seilles, and who very naturally resented that process 
 against the nearest Roman, being persons who knew 
 nothing of Roman politics, and who were accustomed 
 to direct dealing. It is significant that they had not at 
 first been joined in open revolt by tribes which had 
 given even more emphatic verbal expression to their 
 sense of injury. The AUobroges, however, had not 
 had their lands given to Marseilles ; and their character 
 and general proceedings are so different from those of 
 all their more Barbarian neighbours that something 
 must especially be said of them; for, as will be seen, 
 their action had the very greatest influence on most 
 important events on both sides of the Alps. Let me, 
 then, take their visit to Italy, to begin with, reminding 
 you that their territory is at the extreme north of our 
 boundaries, lying, roughly, between the Rhone and the 
 Isere, from Lyons southwards through Vienne, and 
 from Valence northwards towards Lake Geneva. 
 
 In the year of Cicero's consulship, a year of which 
 he never ceased to boast, the AUobroges sent an em- 
 bassy to Rome to complain of the unfair exactions 
 which they, in common with the Provenfal tribes, per- 
 
THE ALLOBROGES 91 
 
 petually suffered. It happened that they arrived at 
 the moment when the sinister and terrible shadow of 
 Catiline was beginning to be cast over society in Rome. 
 The leaders of the conspiracy, working for their own 
 ends, urged them to revolt. Showing remarkable in- 
 telligence and loyalty, the Allobroges flattered Catihne's 
 emissaries just sufficiently to secure damning proofs of 
 guilt, and then explained the whole plot to the Consul. 
 Cicero, in turn, used them for his private ends, and, 
 having assured his own reputation, promptly turned 
 them out of Rome without a shred of real redress for 
 any of their grievances. So having had enough of 
 Roman politics, they went home and revolted in good 
 earnest, almost annihilating the legions of ManHus 
 Lentinus. Pomptinus, who effectually crushed them 
 not long afterwards, in 61 B.C., had to wait six years 
 outside the walls of Rome before he was allowed to 
 celebrate a well-earned triumph. But what are we to say 
 when, in spite of this last insult, in spite of their defeat in 
 battle, in spite of the contemptuous ingratitude of 
 Cicero, we find the Allobroges the firmest friends 
 of Rome in her next and greatest campaign in Gaul? 
 The only key to the enigma hes in the personality 
 of Caesar. Here at last was a man they could trust. 
 It is one of the many proofs of Caesar's greatness that 
 he realised the Allobroges were indispensable. As a 
 matter of fact, if they had not stayed staunchly faithful 
 
92 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 to him at the critical moment of the rebellion of Ver- 
 cingetorix he would most probably have been over- 
 whelmed, and the whole course of history would have 
 been even more deeply altered than if the Catiline con- 
 spiracy had succeeded, as, but for the Allobroges, it 
 might very conceivably have done. 
 
 To the Roman monuments in Vienne, I have already 
 alluded as briefly as I may. They owed their begin- 
 ning to the favour shown by Julius Caesar to the cap- 
 ital of the Allobroges. He saw that as the Roman 
 dominions were spreading further north, they could not 
 be held either by Aix on the east or by Narbonne to 
 the south. The key to the larger position between the 
 Isere, the Rhone, and the Alps, the vital hnk between 
 his invading legions and his Italian base, must be 
 Vienne. What Caesar recognised, his great opponent, 
 Vercingetorix, perceived with no less keenness; and in 
 B.C. 52 it was against Vienne and the Allobroges that 
 Vercingetorix began the attempt, that proved eventually 
 successful, to cut the line of Caesar's communications 
 with his base. Had the Allobroges yielded either to 
 the policy or to the arms of the Gallic leader, Caesar 
 would have been fatally isolated. But they held firm 
 to him; whether owing to his prescience in settling 
 picked veterans at Vienne beforehand, or whether in 
 deference to some personal charm in his own character, 
 it would now be futile to conjecture. But the latter 
 
VIENNE 93 
 
 seems the more plausible hypothesis, for as soon as 
 tidings of his assassination in Rome had reached them 
 they rose in a body and expelled every Itahan in their 
 capital. The Roman military centre had in conse- 
 quence to be shifted further north, to Lyons. 
 
 But throughout Caesar's masterly campaigns, Vienne 
 was of the utmost strategic and military importance; 
 and it was no doubt partly in memory of this that, even 
 when higher honour was being paid in later years to 
 her more northern rival, the fine temple to Augustus 
 and to Livia was set up in Vienne. It was probably 
 his confidence in the loyalty and the strength of this 
 town that largely enabled Caesar to secure those un- 
 expected reinforcements of German cavalry and light 
 infantry from beyond the Rhine which finally enabled 
 him to crush Vercingetorix at Alesia. After that, the 
 victory of his Heutenant, Caninius, at Uxellodunum, 
 completed the pacification of the north. With this and 
 with a summary visit to Narbonne, the two years in 
 Caesar's life between the defeat of Vercingetorix and 
 the withdrawal to Arras are usually supposed to have 
 been filled up. But the great commander left visible 
 traces of his victory upon the soil of Provence before he 
 quitted it, and it was in these two years that they were 
 built. The first was the earliest Triumphal Arch^ in 
 
 ' Good authorities assert that the earliest triumphal arches in Rome 
 were those erected by L. Stertinius (196 B.C.) in the Forum Boarium 
 and in the Circus Maximus, out of spoils gained in Spain (Liv. xiii. 27, 
 
94 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 existence outside Italy — the arch set up by Juhus 
 Caesar at St. Remy to commemorate the surrender of 
 Vercingetorix; and the second is the exquisite tri- 
 umphal monument he set up to the memory of Marius, 
 which was placed at the focal point of Marius 's cam- 
 paign, and suggested the site that was to commemorate 
 the honours and the conquests both of the uncle and 
 the nephew. I will take them in the chronological 
 order of the events to which they refer. 
 
 Owing to an utterly spurious inscription, the beau- 
 tifully proportioned pyramidal monument on the "Pla- 
 teau des Antiquites" at St. Remy has often been called 
 a mausoleum. On the architrave of the north side are 
 engraved the words: — 
 
 SEX. L. M. JULIEI. C. F. PARENTIBUS SUEIS.' 
 
 and xxxvii. 3). All others, with the possible exception of the fragments 
 ascribed to the arch of Q. Fabius Maximus Allobrogicus, are later 
 than the arch of St. Remy. 
 
 ' M. Gilles is not so accurate as usual in his treatment of this in- 
 scription. The only possible reading, which is quite in accordance 
 with good usage in the Augustan age, is that given in the " Corpus," 
 which is: — Sextus Lucius Marcus Juliei, Cai Filii, parentibus 
 SUEIS, meaning that "Sextus, Lucius, and Marcus, Julii, and sons of 
 Caius, dedicated this monument to their parents." Both Juliei and 
 SuEis are forms found in the first century A.D. at latest, and the same 
 date is indicated by the absence of cognomina. Granting that such 
 spelhng lasted a little longer in the provinces than at Rome, I cannot 
 put the inscription much before 100 a.d., whereas the whole style of 
 the monument itself is at least a century earlier, if not more. It is also • 
 my opinion that the word "parentibus" can only refer to both 
 father and mother; but unfortunately the statues beneath the cupola 
 are both men, and the truth that their original heads were replaced 
 
KOMAN IKIUMPHAJ. MONUMENT, WRONCLV CALLED THE MAUSOLEUM, 
 
ST. REMY 97 
 
 The three Juhi here mentioned may have been 
 grandsons of a Gauhsh chieftain, to whom, as was 
 often the case, Augustus had given Roman citizen- 
 ship, and who assumed, in consequence, the nomen 
 Julius. Such persons were usually of wealth and dis- 
 tinction; but it is strange that there were apparently 
 no ofhcial titles to add to the names given, and that 
 the inscription is in a position which is so high up on 
 the monument that I believe the letters were incised 
 long after it had been completed; nor can I admit the 
 possibility that three men of Gaulish descent, or three 
 men who held no office, living in so small a town as 
 St. Remy, would have had sufficient taste to erect so 
 beautiful a work of art. They did something much 
 simpler, something which is far from uncommon either 
 in Provence or any other country full of classical re- 
 mains. They calmly appropriated a fine "antiquity," 
 wrote their own names on it, and buried the respected 
 corpses of their parents within a building originally 
 intended for entirely different uses. So old and so 
 
 some time ago by restorations does not affect the fact that each body 
 wears the simple toga of the consul on active service. It is only fair 
 to add that other translations have been offered for the letters of this 
 inscription, but they only increase the diflficulty of imagining that the 
 inscription is contemporaneous with the origin of the monument. 
 Nine of these versions are before me, and it will be suificient to select 
 the two least appalling examples. They are (i) "Sexto Laelio Monu- 
 mentu-n Juliei intra Circulum Fecit Parentibus Suis," and (2) " Sextus 
 Lucius Maximus Julii consulis filius Parentibus Suis." 
 
98 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 interesting an inscription need not be erased, in spite 
 of the fraudulent attributions it has aroused in' cen- 
 turies of antiquarians; but it should be obliterated from 
 the mind of any one who visits nowadays the monu- 
 ument that commemorates the victory of Caius Marius 
 over the Teutons and Ambrons, and of Catulus, his col- 
 league in the consulship, when their combined forces 
 crushed the Cimbrians upon Raudine Plain. 
 
 Almost the first peculiarity "that strikes an attentive 
 observer of both these monuments is that they are not 
 square with each other. The arch is set to the four 
 cardinal points, but the higher monument is not, for 
 it is squared so that the statues on its summit look out 
 towards the north-east, towards the old belfry of St. 
 Paul des Mausoles (now an asylum), in the direction 
 from which the attack was first made on the Roman 
 headqUa'f ters ; and the form of Marius, carved beneath 
 the cupola,' still seems to watch over his encampment, 
 and direct its stubborn defence against the Barbarian 
 army. (See p. 6i.) This is the reason why the whole 
 building is set at a different angle to the arch, although 
 so close to it, and although built at the same time, and 
 of the same hewn stones. This, too, is the explanation 
 of the horn6d helmet worn by an Ambron horseman 
 in the cavalry combat depicted on the large carving of 
 the north-eastern side, beneath the spurious inscription, 
 and of the same characteristic head-dresses found on 
 
ST. REMY 99 
 
 the other relief representing an infantry skirmish. To 
 the south-west is shown the triumph of the consuls. 
 In front is a river (the Rhone, the Durance, or the Lar), 
 by whose banks the Barbarians were beaten, holding 
 an urn and a reed. On the left the bald-headed man 
 is Q. Lutatius Catulus, and beside him is the short- 
 haired Marius. Near them is a child carrying meal 
 and salt for the sacrifice. After him stands the priest, 
 his head bare, his hands crossed over the breast, and 
 a winged Victory holds in her right hand the spoils of 
 the conqueror, while behind her is a Barbarian wearing 
 his horned helmet. Other figures of infantry and 
 cavalry in combat fill out the design, and in one corner 
 is a youth bearing the sacred shields of Numa for the 
 general's triumph. 
 
 I quite admit that now and then it will require the 
 eye of faith to pick out all these details. But I cannot 
 agree either with M. Leon Palustre in his opinion of 
 "la banalite des sujets representes et la pauvrete de 
 leur execution"; or with M. Merimee, who explained 
 them as (i) a hunting-party, (2) a combat of Amazons, 
 (3) the death of Patroclus, (4) a cavalry skirmish. If 
 the inscription were genuine, I ask why these subjects 
 should have been chosen for the tomb of two citizens 
 of St. Remy. If the inscription is admitted to be false, 
 I ask whether the monument decorated with such carv- 
 ings could ever have been originally built as a tomb; 
 
OLD PROVENCE 
 
 however largely we interpret the well-known Roman 
 feeling about the representations appropriate to the 
 dead. Clearly, even if only a portion of the explana- 
 tion here suggested for these carvings be correct, they 
 recall a feat of arms; they commemorate a Roman 
 triumph. The only great Roman victory over Bar- 
 barian warriors in this district was that which was 
 planned within the camp of Marius upon this very 
 spot. A pyramid, erected by his own soldiers, almost 
 immediately after the massacre of the plains of Pour- 
 riferes, commemorated the place of the final stand of the 
 Barbarians. Fifty years afterwards an infinitely finer 
 development of pyramidal architecture, in the style 
 of such great Hellenic models as the Choragic monu- 
 ment of Lysicrates, was erected by the cultivated taste 
 of his nephew, Julius Caesar, upon the spot where the 
 Barbarians had first confronted the legions of Marius, 
 and where Marius himself had dictated the whole 
 strategy of his victorious campaign. 
 
 Those readers who have followed the architectural 
 development of those pyramidal buildings which are 
 a Provenfal type of Roman triumphal monuments, 
 will recognise here once more the same square base- 
 ment we have seen before, the same four-arched open- 
 ing above it, and a particularly graceful variation of 
 the pyramidal structure that crowns all, a variation 
 obviously due to Greek ideals, and never repeated in 
 
THE MONUMENT OF MARIUS 
 
 any of the other monuments of this same type, which I 
 shall have to mention later on, at Nimes, for instance, 
 and La Turbie. The square basement of the St. Remy 
 monument, enriched by the reliefs just described, sup- 
 ports a story pierced with an archway in each face, 
 with a three-quarter pillar of the Corinthian order at 
 every angle, and a very beautifully carved frieze above 
 them, of marine mythological monsters, referring to 
 the "Fosses Mariennes." The highest part is a cir- 
 cular colonnade with a conical roof, which may now 
 be incomplete. The openings in the archways and in 
 the columns above them, give an effect of lightness, 
 even of aspiring beauty, very different from that usually 
 associated with either Greek or Roman architecture, 
 and far finer, as I think, than the very singular and 
 completely solid monument, of a somewhat similar 
 form, at Igel, near Treves, built in the last age of the 
 Empire. The base of the St. Remy monument meas- 
 ures about twenty-two feet each way; the total height 
 is over sixty feet; and it needs no great effort of the 
 imagination to see in this exquisite piece of proportion 
 the model of many early mediaeval church steeples in 
 this part of Provence. 
 
 Few other leaders could have dared posterity to make 
 comparison between their own campaigns and that 
 which annihilated the invading Northerners beneath 
 the crags of Mont Ste. Victoire. But Julius Caesar 
 
OLD PROVENCE 
 
 was able, without fear of comment, to erect the arch of 
 his triumph over Vercingetorix beside the monument 
 of :thj6' general which he set up at St. Remy, as he had 
 restored the monuments of the great popular leader in 
 the streets of Rome. 
 
 There is a poUtical as well as a miHtary significance 
 in these buildings. Long before the Republic really 
 fell, Roman society was already in structure, temper, 
 and mirid, thoroughly unrepublican. Marius had re- 
 turned to Rome after his Provenjal victories as the 
 leader of the popular party. His military reforms had 
 at once democratised the army, and attached it more 
 closely to its leader for the time being, for he increased 
 the efficiency of the legion, by admitting all ranks under 
 voluntary enhstment, at the cost of a complete severance 
 with all the ties which had formerly bound the army 
 to the civil community and to civil authorities. In the 
 ten years of civil strife during which constitutional 
 government had been in abeyance, and the opposing 
 political parties used legions who followed their generals 
 even against their fellow-citizens, the turmoil had spread 
 from the Roman forum to Italy, from Italy to the prov- 
 inces. The SuUan system was overthrown by Pompey, 
 a. I typical example of that growing indifference to Re- 
 publican traditions against which Cicero struggled 
 until he lost his hfe; for Cicero was a man who repre- 
 sented more than Arpinum, the birthplace of Marius, 
 more than his profession, more than merely senatorial 
 
ROMAN POLITICS 103 
 
 ascendency; he was the champion of the Itahan middle 
 class, and by them he was made consul, especially to 
 combat socialistic schemes on one side, and aristocratic 
 exclusiveness and luxury on the other. Unfortunately 
 he arrived too late. The future was with the nobly- 
 born, the aristocratic Caesar, and Caesar saw at once 
 that it was by posing as the people's champion, as the 
 nephew of Marius and the son-in-law of Cinna, that 
 he would finally succeed. The outbreak of Catiline 
 for the moment gave Cicero the upper hand, and dis- 
 credited the popular party; but Caesar had effectually 
 cleared the memory of Marius, Cinna, and Saturninus, 
 and publicly reminded the people of their services by 
 setting up again upon the Capitol the trophies of the 
 Cimbric War.i After he had conquered Gaul, he 
 
 ' This, no doubt, is one reason why Caesar placed the statue of 
 Catulus, together with that of his uncle, within the St. Remy colon- 
 nade, a thing which we can scarcely imagine Marius doing, even if 
 Catulus had actually assisted in the Provenf al campaign. Fifty years 
 afterwards, however, the unity of the St. Remy camp with the battle 
 of the Raudine plain was seen in its true perspective by the heir of 
 Marius's successes. 
 
 As Plutarch says, in North's translation, the proof of the love and 
 goodwill which the people bore to Caesar was given "at the death of 
 his aunt Julia, the wife of Marius the elder; for being her nephew he 
 made a solemn oration in the market-place in commendation of her, 
 and at her burial did boldly venture to show forth the images of 
 Marius . . . the people rejoiced at it for that he had brought as it 
 were out of hell the remembrance of Marius's honour again into Rome 
 . . . and when Caesar was ^dilis he secretly caused images of 
 Marius to be made . . . showing by the inscriptions that they were 
 the victories which Marius had won upon the Cimbrians . . . the 
 tears ran down many of their cheeks for very joy when they saw the 
 images of Marius . . ." 
 
I04 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 must have realised, in Ms own mind, what was the in- 
 evitable consequence. He must have at least coveted 
 the position Pompey had already won. When the 
 crisis came he was ready to cross the Rubicon at the 
 head of his conquering legions; and he was ready be- 
 cause, as there can be little doubt, his campaigns had 
 riveted the convictions of his political experience, that 
 the increase of Roman territory meant the downfall of 
 Republican institutions. Only as a portion of a Roman 
 Empire could Provence be rightly held and fruitfully 
 governed. There is something of these dreams of his 
 in the two buildings at St. Remy : one to the great paci- 
 ficator of Provence, the first conqueror of the invading 
 Barbarians, who was also the leader of the political 
 party with which Caesar had identified himself; the 
 other to the conqueror of Gaul, the founder of the 
 Roman Empire. You may see this in the very style 
 of each. The exquisite Greek proportions of the monu- 
 ment of Marius not only do honour to the general, but 
 commemorate the aristocrat who could achieve so per- 
 fect a conception. The Triumphal Arch, the first of 
 iuo xvind outside Italy, the type of all the chief triumphal 
 monuments of the Empire that was coming, was the 
 appropriate form to commemorate the conquests of 
 that Empire's founder. 
 
 The St. Remy arch is about forty feet long by eigh- 
 teen and a half wide, twenty-five feet to the under side 
 
CARPENTRAS 107 
 
 of the vault, and is placed foursquare to the cardinal 
 points. No earlier example of this form of building 
 exists anywhere, though, as I have already noted, some 
 authorities consider that earher triumphal arches, now 
 ruined entirely, were set up in Italy. This one is single, 
 Hke that at Carpentras, set up by Julius Caesar's 
 colonists; and, like it also, has engaged columns, with 
 a considerable lateral thickness to receive bas-reliefs, 
 which have vanished from St. Remy, but remain at 
 Carpentras, though both have lost the capitals of the 
 columns; and the attic, which was probably originally 
 built on the later arch, was never designed for that of 
 St. Remy.i 
 
 ' The Carpentras arch, of which I give an illustration for purposes of 
 comparison, is in the centre of the town, in the courtyard of the Palais 
 de Justice. The town is twenty-seven kilometres by train from Avignon, 
 along the line through Sorgues, Entraigues, and Monteux; and as I 
 shall have no further opportunity of mentioning it, I may add here, 
 that this ancient capital of the Meminian tribe of Gauls is well worth 
 visiting, for the cathedral of St. Siffrein, its museum, and the Palais 
 de Justice which guards its ancient arch. The greater size of this 
 monument permits the possibihty of the attic story that would crush 
 the St. Remy building. It is placed foursquare to the cardinal points, 
 and the bas-reliefs on each side show two captives bound and attached 
 to a trophy. The two shown in my picture are different types of the 
 mountain-tribes whose subjection was completed by Augustus after 
 Caesar had conquered the peoples of the plain. The knife (perhaps a 
 "scramasax"), carved below the rustic warrior, who is clothed in a 
 sheepskin, seems very like the Ghoorka kukhiie, but I am unable to 
 suggest any reason for the resemblance between weapons from places 
 so far distant from each other. His comrade, much better dressed, 
 and armed with the Ught double-headed battle-axe, may well represent 
 Sacrovir himself. Many of these details are to be found in the larger 
 monument, set up in the next reign at Orange. This arch was built 
 
io8 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 If the monument of Marius exhibited the happiest 
 combination possible of Roman dignity with Greek 
 proportion and elegance, the arch of Caesar is perhaps 
 the most interesting, as it is one of the earhest develop- 
 ments of a building which Rome is said to have copied 
 from Etruscan architecture. There is a reference in 
 Pliny which suggests that the Greeks had developed 
 this style, but I prefer to see in the St. Remy arch only 
 the influence of Greek workmen, and the use of the 
 Greek principle that monuments in the Corinthian 
 style should never be too large. This is the smallest 
 arch of its kind we know; and it was originally what 
 is known as an equilateral arch, for I believe too much 
 soil has now been dug away, and too great a height of 
 its foundations thereby exposed. The carving on the 
 northern side represents Julius Caesar, a small man, 
 with his hand on his tall captive, Vercingetorix, whose 
 head is still preserved, while that of his conqueror has 
 disappeared. On the north-west the personification 
 of triumphant Rome is seated on a pile of arms, beside 
 which is a bound prisoner. On the south-east Vercin- 
 
 in commemoration of the victories of Augustus, and an inscription to 
 that effect was no doubt placed upon the attic story which has now 
 disappeared, as a similar inscription to Tiberius can be traced upon 
 the arch at Orange. The St. Remy arch needed no such inscription, 
 even if its simple and beautiful proportions had admitted the addition 
 of an attic, for its carvings reveal the leader in whose honour it was 
 built as clearly as do those on the monument of Marius, which origi- 
 nally had no inscription either. 
 
TRIUMPHAL AXCH AT CARPENTRAS 
 
THE ARCH OF ST. REMY 
 
 getorix is represented chained to a trophy formed of a 
 tree-trunk, and beside him is the weeping figure of 
 Gallia conquered, and a prisoner. The fourth carv- 
 ing, to the south-west shows another male prisoner and 
 a captured woman. Round the archivolt is an exqui- 
 sitely carved garland of flowers and fruit, and on the 
 narrow entablature just below the springing of the arch 
 is a band of light relief carved with the "lituus," the 
 sacrificial knife of the Pontifex Maximus, with flutes 
 and other instruments of music. The vault itself is 
 decorated with finely carved hexagonal caissons, deeply 
 recessed, containing rosettes. 
 
 The whole construction, in large and finely fitted 
 blocks, is as appropriate as the position and locality 
 of the monument to the time when Julius Caesar built 
 it. Glanum itself, the Roman town built near the 
 modern St. Remy, had no special importance that such 
 buildings should have been erected in it. It was only 
 a "vicus" in the territory of Roman Aries; it was never 
 the capital of a tribe; it therefore never developed into 
 the see of a modern bishopric, with that continuity of 
 history of which French towns give so many notable 
 examples. But the site chosen for these monuments is 
 one of the grandest in Provence when considered in the 
 light of imperial history, when looked at as Julius Caesar, 
 the maker of that history, would have looked at it. 
 
 To the south of St. Remy these marvellous buildings 
 
OLD PROVENCE 
 
 Stand on the north side of the scarred and sun-scorched 
 crags of the Alpilles, true Provenfal hills: barren yet 
 beautiful; grey, lilac, gold against the setting sun, but 
 never green. Never had "antiquities" (as the country 
 people call them) so finely picturesque a frame. From 
 the lower part of the great camp where Marius awaited 
 the Barbarians they look out over the plain that ex- 
 tends as far as Avignon, that is bounded by the horizon 
 of Mont Ventoux, and of the hills that guard Vaucluse. 
 Behind them, to the south, begin the crags crowned by 
 the dusty solitudes of the fortress of Les Baux, by the 
 misery and squalor of those mediaeval ruins that are 
 in such terrible contrast to the sane and beautiful relics 
 of classical antiquity. 
 
 When Madame James Darmesteter visited them, 
 the peasants gave her their views of the matter. ^ 
 "Some of them aver the figures [on the taller monu- 
 ment] to be the portraits of those twin emperors' Juhus 
 and Caesar; but most of them, with some show of reason, 
 consider that they commemorate the victories of Caius 
 Marius, the hero of all this countryside. The figures 
 are twain, so the peasants have doubled the general; 
 Caius and Marius look out towards the Fosses Marien- 
 nes . . . one shepherd, however, offered me the best 
 explanations. 'Those two figures,' said he, 'repre- 
 sent the great Caius Marius and the prophetess Martha, 
 
 ' Recorded in the Contemporary Review for November 1892. 
 
57^. REMY 113 
 
 the sister of Lazarus, and the patroness of our Provence. 
 They were, as you may say, a pair of friends.' ' Dear 
 me ! ' said I, ' I thought there was a hundred years or so 
 between them.' 'Maybe,' said the good man, 'that 
 may well be, madame ; but none the less, they remained 
 an excellent pair of friends.' " 
 
 This charming example of the legendary lore already 
 explained in my description of the "Three Maries" 
 was too good to be omitted, and it will show, better than 
 anything, the hold upon the people's heart which these 
 storied stones have held, and hallowed, for so long. In 
 the north, traditions go back as far as, perhaps, the 
 Great Revolution. Beyond that blood-stained trench 
 the memory of the Kving past has almost vanished. 
 But in Provence the horizon is far wider, far more mel- 
 low. Her citizens have peacefully inherited what the 
 old kingdom of Aries handed on to them from Rome 
 and Greece. In the contemplation of these vast and 
 beautiful monuments of ancient Latin life, they have 
 realised the inheritance of that ancient civilisation. 
 They have acquired an unconscious dignity that, from 
 the height of these departed glories looks down with 
 courteous superiority upon the new Barbarian hordes 
 which modern travel brings within their gates. The 
 sympathetic and intelligent visitor who travels in 
 Provence will not so much feel that its Roman ruins 
 have survived unto this day; he will be conscious of a 
 
114 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 strange translation from these modern moments of con- 
 temporary bustle to the elder centuries of a mild and 
 bland antiquity. 
 
 "My countrymen," said Mistral, when I saw him 
 in Maillane, "are not slaves like the men of Nice and 
 Cannes who sell their soil to foreigners, or to syndicates 
 from Paris, and lose all individuahty and freedom. 
 We, on the contrary, have each our own land and home, 
 our hberty and independence from our own toil, and 
 therefore we have kept the local character of our old 
 Provence. Fools prefer similitudes. They under- 
 stand them better. When they see differences they try 
 to smooth them down to the monotonous level of their 
 own low instinct. The wiser man loves difference; 
 difference in dress, in speech, in life, in looks ; difference 
 that has given Provence the loveliest women of all 
 France in some of her towns, the handsomest men in 
 others." 
 
 No one who looks at those two carved figures within 
 their lofty colonnade can mistake the feeling of dignity 
 they impress on the beholder. They look from be- 
 neath the cupola that stands out against the limestone 
 hills, and their gaze seems to pass beyond the Triumphal 
 Arch of their military victories to the peaceful conquest 
 of their laws and civiUsation that lies in the far expanse 
 beyond. 
 
 I know few villages more beautiful for a week's 
 
ST. REMY IIS 
 
 sojourn in the month of April than is St. Remy. From 
 the H6tel de Provence you may be sure of happy ad- 
 venture every morning, and of hospitable welcome every 
 night. The village girls, in the beautiful costume of 
 Aries, are like the maidens of Tanagra come back to 
 earth again, maidens whom less favoured Londoners 
 must look on as the terra-cotta statuettes upon museum 
 shelves. The streets are avenues of plane-trees, gar- 
 landed, when I saw them last in April sunlight, with 
 delicate little hanging balls of flower. The scent of 
 roses and syringa is in all the air. Protected by the 
 buttresses of the Alpilles, the gardens which are the 
 chief business of that flowery town are full of blooms in 
 odorous battahons of rich colour, divided by hay mead- 
 ows and by orchards. Seeds are grown here for all the 
 horticulturists of France; for many in distant England, 
 top. There is a charming little irresponsible railway 
 that jogs along from Tarascon across the fields to St. 
 Remy. You pass one quiet farm after another, each 
 screened against the Mistral by that Hne of tall, dark 
 cypresses, which is one of the most beautiful character- 
 istics of the country, until, amidst its orchards, and its 
 oliveyards, its fig-trees, and its fields of flowers, you 
 reach "La Ville Verte," the green and smiling town of 
 St. Remy. 
 
 The earliest centre of habitation in this district was 
 no doubt the Celtic station now known as Castellar, 
 
ii6 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 which is also called "Romany," which means "Roque 
 Magne," and has in turn been spelt Romanif, Rou- 
 manille, Romanin, or Rogmanye. It means "the 
 Great Rock." It is six miles east of St. Remy, on a 
 northern buttress of the Alpilles to the west of Eygaheres. 
 Its earliest inhabitants were of the Desuviate family 
 of the great Salyan tribe, and from their ancient walls 
 they had heard of the elephants of Hannibal, the legions 
 of delaying Scipio, and finally the Ambron army against 
 which Marius came out from Rome. When the great 
 Roman headquarter-camp was established in these 
 regions they came down nearer, for purposes of barter, 
 to the upper part of the Valley of St. Etienne, where 
 there are still found remnants of their temples, of their 
 mounded dwelling-places, around which countless frag- 
 ments of Celtic pottery are discovered. By degrees 
 they spread out towards the valley called "du Tresor," 
 along the road towards Eygaheres, a valley named from 
 the little grotto in the southern slopes of rock which is 
 popularly supposed to conceal the hidden hoard of 
 some dead chieftain. 
 
 After the army of Marius had passed on, some 
 Romans and some Greeks were left, and among them 
 were absorbed the ancient Celtic populations in the 
 new town of Glanum. Their old stronghold is now 
 hidden under the ruins of a vast chiteau, which was 
 destroyed in 1793. Glanum (which may have been 
 
GLANUM 
 
 117 
 
 first called Clan) changed its name to Freta, when its 
 site was altered; and that name in turn became St. 
 Remy in the eleventh century. The site of Glanum 
 has produced pottery of every kind : the black and fragile 
 paste of Celtic ware ; the delicate golden-coloured pottery 
 of the Greeks, which is light enough to float on water; 
 the thick, red, sturdy ware of solid Rome, and even the 
 yellow, friable pottery of the Arabs, varnished to hold 
 liquids safely, and ornamented^ with lines and geometri- 
 cal patterns. By the second century, at latest, the 
 Roman character, long predominant, was well assured 
 by Roman government and institutions. Judging 
 from the area covered by the ruined remnants that have 
 been found, Glanum cannot have held more than two 
 thousand inhabitants at most, who dwelt on each bank 
 of the little mountain-stream that flowed through the 
 town. There may have been villas outside. But the 
 little town that began as a market-place for Marius's 
 camp was never destined for a long or an extensive 
 existence, and was never even walled in. An interest- 
 ing relic of the very years of which I have just been 
 speaking, the years between the campaign of Marius 
 and the siege of Marseilles, has been found in the little 
 silver medal, with a head of Persephone, and a bull, 
 bearing the word VXaviKwv. This was discovered in 
 1824 by M. le Marquis Roger de Lagoy, and shows the 
 influence of the Greek colony of Massalia over the 
 
ii8 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 regions from which Marius had driven the Barbarians, 
 an influence which lasted till the independence of Mar- 
 seilles was ended by the siege. 
 
 The Roman roads can still be traced which led 
 through this district. The oldest line taken by the 
 Via Aurelia left Tarascon at the Milestone of Hadrian 
 opposite the temple, which is now the shrine of St. 
 Martha, and went by way of Breuil and so across the 
 Durance. At Maillane it passed in front of the Church 
 of St. Peter. At St. Andre there was the Milestone of 
 Tiberius. The chapels of Notre Dame des Pucelles 
 at Eyragues, of St. Roch, St. Pierre, and Notre Dame, 
 mark its stages towards the "Plateau des Antiquites" 
 at Glanum, near St. Remy, and there it met the road 
 from Nlmes to Cavaillon, and passed on to the south 
 of St. Pierre by the old GaUic highway to the Farm 
 of the Hugues. This road is only traceable by the 
 temples, milestones, and buildings on its course. But 
 the later Via Aurelia, still called the "Camin AureHen," 
 went from Tarascon to Laurade, and across to the tem- 
 ple which is now St. Etienne du Grfes, arriving at 
 Glanum along the northern foot-hills of the Alpilles. 
 Several inscriptions mark its course, and a statue of 
 Priapus, carved for it, is preserved in the Farm of 
 Cloud as the centrepiece of a well-shaft. From the 
 "Plateau des Antiquites," this second Via Aureha 
 joined the more primitive highway. 
 
FRET A 119 
 
 Glanum was destroyed by the invasions of 480, 
 which did so much to ruin the monuments of Roman 
 civihsation, and it is doubly fortunate that her two 
 finest and most historic buildings survived the catas- 
 trophe which overwhelmed the rest. The popula- 
 tion almost entirely deserted the site near them, and 
 moved to Fretum, or Freta, which is almost exactly 
 the site of St. Remy, and here were built their first 
 ramparts. The name "Ager Fretensis" appears in 
 charters of 982, and in that same year the Bishop of 
 Avignon mentions in his will the name of various 
 churches there. In the year 1000 it belonged to the 
 princes of Les Baux, and at the beginning of the four- 
 teenth century when the Counts of Provence were 
 Kings of Sicily, a lady of the house of Les Baux is called 
 "Princess of Fresta." The oldest part of the existing 
 town is in the centre near the chapel of St. Peter; and 
 there are remains of a temple, built of masonry like the 
 Palace of Constantine at Aries, the north side of which, 
 with a window, may be seen at the bottom of the Rue 
 du Petit Puits, dating from the first half of the sixth 
 century. The well which gave the street its name was 
 the original fountain of the temple. 
 
 Freta herself was sacked by the Lombards in 571, 
 and by the Moors in 737, after they had taken Avignon, 
 and again after her name had been changed in about 
 the tenth century. For some time longer, as we have 
 
OLD PROVENCE 
 
 seen, the ancient name survived as well; but that of 
 St. Remy finally survived, and first appears in some 
 letters patent of Alphonse ii.. Count of Provence, dated 
 in 1 198. The cathedral, which originally had a Roman- 
 esque belfry, was given a Gothic spire instead, in 1336, 
 by the direct commands of Pope John xxii., and this 
 is all that is left of the original building, most of which 
 fell down in 1818, and was restored in a very different 
 style from that of the little fourteenth-century work 
 that remains. 
 
 The ruined tower, which rises near the ancient tem- 
 ple, already mentioned in the Rue du Petit Puits, is 
 the remnant of the mint set up here by the Counts of 
 Provence of the House of Anjou; and it is recorded in 
 1 33 1 that the bankers of Marseilles made oath to the 
 effect that they were ignorant of the value of the money 
 coined at St. Remy. But it had a large local circula- 
 tion, for Philippe-le-Bel had to give orders that all St. 
 Remy coinage found in Nimes and Beaucaire was to 
 be destroyed, and none now exists; but a funeral in- 
 scription of 1305 gives the name of "Quintinus Anas- 
 tasius de Luchio de Morantia" as that of the Master 
 of the Mint. 
 
 Roumanille, the charming poet of Avignon, was born 
 at St. Remy; but curiously enough its most famous 
 child was Michael Nostradamus, who first saw the light 
 here in 1503. His marvellous "powder" proved so 
 
NOSTRADAMUS 
 
 successful against the plague in 1546 that he was given 
 an annuity by the town of Aix; but professional jealousy 
 seems to have driven him to literature, and in 1555 ap- 
 peared the first edition of the rude quatrains that were 
 to be his famous Prophecies, dedicated to his son 
 Cesar. Finding no honour in his own country, he went 
 to Paris, where Catherine de Medicis was delighted to 
 patronise him, with the result that his three hundred 
 prophecies expanded in 1558 to a thousand, which were 
 dedicated to King Henri 11. His reputation was as- 
 sured by the apparent prediction of that monarch's 
 miserable death by a wound in the eye at a tournament, 
 and Charles ix. could do no less than grant him two 
 hundred crowns with the post of physician-in-ordinary. 
 He died in 1566, and by 1618 his prophecies were being 
 used as reading primers for the school-children. The 
 supposed prediction of the execution of Charles i. by 
 the Parhament gave his book great vogue again; and 
 in the reign of Charles 11. we find Pepys recording (on 
 Feb. 3, 1666) that "amongst other discourse we talked 
 much of Nostradamus, his prophecy of these times, 
 and Sir George Carteret did tell a story how at his death 
 he did make the town [of Salon] swear that he should 
 never be dug up or his tomb opened after he was buried ; 
 but that they did after sixty years do it, and upon his 
 breast they found a plate of brasse saying what a 
 wicked, unfaithful people the people of that place were, 
 
OLD PROVENCE 
 
 who after so many vows should disturb and open him 
 such a day and year and hour, which, if true, is very 
 strange." It is certainly true that he predicted 1792 
 as the beginning of a new era, and it was the Year One 
 of the Republic. Perhaps it was this coincidence that 
 led Napoleon to see predictions of his last campaign 
 in 181 4 in the lines that seem to foreshadow the famous 
 landing at Frejus from Elba. But when the son, 
 Cesar, tried to live up to his prophetic father's reputa- 
 tion, he was obhged to set fire to Le Pouzin in order to 
 verify his own forecast, and was promptly trampled to 
 death by the horse of the enraged General Montluc, 
 who caught him in the act. The great Michael per- 
 petrated a History of Provence, which, as far as I have 
 ever traced its statements, is about as useful as the 
 Prophecies, and the one thoroughly deserves the epi- 
 gram which Etienne Jodelle wrote about the other : — 
 
 "Nostra damus quum falsa damus, nam fallere nostrum est 
 Et quum falsa damus nil nisi nostra damus . ." 
 
 with which we may fairly leave a figure which is strange- 
 ly out of place in quiet, beautiful St. Remy. 
 
 Far better symbol, far more appropriately repre- 
 sentative, of the poetry and charm of all this district 
 are the associations that cluster round the name of 
 Mistral, the true "genius loci "; not the poet only, but 
 the living shrine of every true Provencal from Avignon 
 to Les Saintes Maries. Along the quiet roads that are 
 
FREDERIC MISTRAL 123 
 
 flooded with spring sunshine, and verdant with the 
 strange, green, palpitating shadows thrown by those 
 lofty pinnacles of cypress that rise, dark, sheer, yet 
 delicate, like cathedral walls, you may pass towards 
 his simple country house in the little village of Maillane. 
 Its chief possession seems to be the bust of that Lamar- 
 tine who spoke of Mistral nearly fifty years ago as "un 
 poete ne, comme les hommes de Deucalion, d'un caillou 
 de la Crau; un poete primitif dans notre 4ge de deca- 
 dence; un poete grec a Avignon; un poete qui cree une 
 langue d'un idiome, comme Petrarque a cree I'ltalien." 
 No wonder the young writer, then only twenty-five, 
 answered with the dedication of Mireille — 
 
 "Te counsacre Mireio: es moun cor e moun amo, 
 Es la flour de mis an . . ." 
 
 And near the bust of Lamartine is that of Gounod, 
 who set those exquisite verses to melodies no less de- 
 lightful. Close by is one of those fascinating carved 
 coffers, which you may still find at Aries, in which the 
 old Provenfal kept his loaves of bread. "Tout mon 
 pays!" cried Daudet, "des barreaux larges a passer 
 le bras et une serrure de coffrefort!" The Mas du 
 Juge, the background to so much of Mireio, and the 
 birthplace of the poet, is the big farm half-way from 
 St. Remy, and before its doors is still the long stone 
 table round which the farm hands sat at harvest home. 
 In his lies d'Or, even more than in any other of his 
 
124 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 writings, Mistral has reflected and preserved that spirit 
 of old Provence which is about us in St. Remy, which is 
 not so touched with infinite sorrow as at Aries; not 
 changed as at Nimes; not imitated, as at Avignon; but 
 sane, strong, deep-rooted, and deep-hearted. 
 
 "Envirouna de I'araplitudo 
 E dou silenci di gara, 
 Tout en fasent vosto batudo, 
 Au terrado sempre amarra, 
 Vesfe, alin, coume un temperi 
 Passa lou trounfle dis emperi 
 E I'uiau di revoulucion: 
 Atetouni sus la patrio 
 Veires passa la barbaric 
 Emai li civilisacioun. . . ." 
 
 They have indeed beheld, these Provenf als, " the pomp 
 of empire passing far, lilie flying time — the hghtning 
 bolt of revolution, the decay of barbarian and of civilised 
 communities." The monument of Marius and the 
 arch of Julius Caesar are in their true setting still. It 
 is but to hint at this truth that I have passed for a mo- 
 ment into those modern times that now surround them; 
 and now I must return to them and to imperial Rome. 
 
 More marvellous remnants of antiquity than any 
 monument of Provence may perhaps be found upon 
 the soil of Italy and Greece, beneath the shadow of 
 the Coliseum or in the sunhght of the Acropolis; the 
 traces of an elder age may be discovered among the 
 ruins of Baalbec or Ephesus, beside the pylons of Luxor, 
 
ORANGE 125 
 
 or beneath the cupolas of Samarcand; but for the com- 
 pleted vision of a classic past, for the full dream of an 
 ancient life that is not dead but sleepeth, you must stand 
 upon the "Plateau des Antiquites" at St. Remy, in the 
 great amphitheatre of Nimes or Aries, before the ex- 
 quisitely proportioned colonnades of the Maison Carree ; 
 or you must wonder at that cliff of masonry which is 
 the Theatre of Orange, and the mighty arch which 
 commemorates the triumphs of Tiberius. 
 
 Both the St. Remy buildings are types of other con- 
 structions found elsewhere. I shall have to speak of 
 the towers at Nimes and La Turbie in following out 
 that form which began with the pyramid of Fabius and 
 ends with the column of Trajan. I must now turn to 
 the great arch which is suggested by its smaller and 
 more perfect exemplar at St. Remy, the arch of Orange. 
 Of Carpentras I have already spoken ; here the arch is 
 still single, but the taste of the architect is far from being 
 at so high a level. At Orange the whole building, fine 
 as is its general effect, shows an even greater decadence, 
 which is by no means compensated by its far greater 
 size. St. Remy, Carpentras, Orange : Caesar, Augustus, 
 Tiberius — the list is short, but the tale of diminished 
 skill and artistic feeling is clear enough. 
 
 The Triumphal Arch of Orange stands at the north- 
 ern entrance to the town, and is about seventy feet long 
 by seventy in height, and nearly thirty-two wide, set 
 
126 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 to the four cardinal points of the compass. Like most 
 of these southern French arches, the lateral elevation 
 is much broader than is usual in proportion to their 
 length, and is also far more richly decorated than is 
 the case in Italy, except perhaps in the Arch of Con- 
 stantine. Another peculiarity is their engaged columns. 
 And in their decoration the "motif" of chained captives 
 is evidently a favourite one; "tristis summo captivus 
 in arcu." The structure at Orange is pierced with a 
 principal central arch and two smaller side-arches, 
 and is adorned with four attached Corinthian columns 
 between the arches, supporting an entablature with a 
 central pediment. Four similar columns, far closer 
 together, are on the east side. Sculptures enrich the 
 archivolts and frieze, and trophies of arms are placed 
 over the side arches. The upper panel of the huge 
 attic story, over the central arch, is filled with a large 
 bas-rehef of crowded, fighting figures. The rostra of 
 the ships and other maritime emblems are remarkably 
 well treated; and Ruskin observed particularly that 
 the carvings of this arch afforded an excellent example 
 of "sketching in sculpture," being surrounded with a 
 deeply cut Hne, which emphasises their outhne, just 
 as an artist might do with his pencil upon paper. There 
 are certain mathematical irregularities in the construc- 
 tive measurements, to which I attach no importance as 
 signs of decadence; in fact, they probably contribute 
 
THE TRIUMPHAL ARCH AT ORANGE. 
 
THE ARCH OF ORANGE 129 
 
 very largely to the general effect of the mass, which is 
 undeniably imposing; and neither beauty nor "propor- 
 tion" depends on mathematics. But the design as a 
 whole shows fatal signs of a loss of that delicate appre- 
 ciation of appropriate balance and harmony which 
 was the Greeks' best legacy to Rome. It seems to me 
 to be the rough copy, made by uninstructed workmen, 
 of the original at St. Remy; and its architect has only 
 brought his ignorance into greater prominence by in- 
 creasing the whole bulk of the great mass of stone he 
 reared. 
 
 I shall try and say no single further word of deprecia- 
 tion. It is only my wish to emphasise the restrained 
 beauty at St. Remy which has led me to criticise the 
 magnificence of Orange; and it would be difficult, what- 
 ever phrase were written here, to lessen the dehght of 
 any one who sees that mighty monument of a great and 
 warlike people, set at the head of the vast highway by 
 which their legions marched towards the conquest of 
 the north, and softened to the mellow tint of an exquisite 
 gold against the brilliant blue of the Provenjal sky. 
 The town itself is full of a strange history, particularly 
 significant to any Enghshman; and in that history the 
 arch has so great a part that no book which deals with 
 the middle waters of the Rhone could possibly omit 
 some mention of it. 
 
 As an example of the kind of work necessary to trace 
 
I30 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 the varying opinions of these monuments, and to pro- 
 duce some final and logical conception of them, I am 
 tempted tp indicate a few "authorities" concerning 
 the Arch of Orange. In February 1597 one Thomas 
 Platter, of Basle, records his view that Marius built 
 it, and that it was called the "Tour des Arcs," because 
 its rectangular formation suggested the outline of a 
 fortified tower. A few years later we find Peiresc using 
 the most unimaginable adverb about its three arcades 
 . . . "fiUetdes le plus mignonnement qu'il se puisse 
 faire en I'ordonnance corinthienne." A century later 
 Millin can see no traces of any inscription, and gives 
 a wide choice from Augustus to Hadrian for its date. 
 It is strange that he did not notice the holes made by 
 the rivets of the vanished letters on the northern archi- 
 trave, just below the frieze, for it was by exactly similar 
 traces that Seguier had just deciphered the lost in- 
 scription on the Maison Carree. By 1815 M. Gasparin 
 had observed these holes, and chronicled the discovery 
 of an "l" in bronze among the soil and ddbris beneath 
 them. This was a fragment of the word "iuli." 
 Caristie recorded that in 1807 the arch was still en- 
 cumbered to the height of some fifteen feet, with the 
 ruins of the fortifications added by Raymond des Baux 
 in the thirteenth century. As a matter of fact it was 
 only by 181 1 that the arch was cleared and the site put 
 into something of its present state. On Caristie's re- 
 
A DISPUTED INSCRIPTION 131 
 
 port, and from the designs of Rdgnaux, the depart- 
 mental architect, sufficient work was done to preserve 
 what was left of the original Roman construction. 
 Caristie reproduced the holes left by the bronze letters, 
 but inaccurately, and showed that the northern frieze, 
 never meant to contain an inscription, was originally 
 designed for sculpture. Prosper Merimee was artisti- 
 cally vague in 1834. Only in 1866 did a certain M. de 
 Saulcy see the name "Tiberius" (and much more) in 
 the shattered inscription; and the occurrence of the 
 word "Sacrovir" on a Gaulish shield, carved on the 
 northern front, showed he was on the right track; for 
 it was the revolt of Sacrovir and Florus that the gen- 
 erals of Tiberius crushed in 21 a.d. M. de Saulcy's 
 reading of the Emperor's name was further confirmed 
 by Bertrand, who took a cast of the architrave, but 
 could not successfully decipher all the words it once 
 had borne. It remained for M. Edouard Bondurand, 
 Archiviste du Gard at Nimes, to suggest the best solu- 
 tion of the problem in 1897. 
 
 This is no place for scholastic discussions; but I 
 shall proceed to give the results of M. Bondurand's dis- 
 covery, because Provence is a land of false attributions 
 and spurious inscriptions, and one typical instance will 
 be enough to show the process by which other state- 
 ments in this book, more briefly given as they occur 
 elsewhere, have slowly been arrived at. Between the 
 
132 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 27th June of the year 24 a.d. and the 26th June of the 
 year 25 this arch was dedicated to Tiberius; and at 
 some period that was later than this, but not very far 
 removed, the decurions of the colony restored it ex- 
 actly to its primitive condition; but the record of this 
 restoration, involving twenty-five fresh letters, neces- 
 sitated a change in the inscription from its original two 
 lines of equal length to a new upper Hne which ex- 
 ceeded the new lower line by thirteen letters at the 
 beginning and by twelve at the end. It then read as 
 follows : — 
 
 (TI ■ CAESARI • DIVI ■ AUGUSTI • F • DIVI • lULI • 
 NEPOTI ■ AUGUSTO • PONTIFICI ■ MAXIMO • 
 TRIBUNICIA 
 
 JPOTESTATE • XXVI • IMP • VIII • COS " IIII ■ 
 [DDCCN ■ ARCUM • TRIUM ■ RESTITUERE • ' 
 
 which is, being interpreted, "In honour of Tiberius 
 Caesar Augustus, son of the Divine Augustus, grand- 
 son of the Divine Julius, Pontifex Maximus, invested 
 with the Tribunician power for the twenty-sixth time, 
 
 ' The last line is peculiar, "dc" is usual for Decurio. But the 
 form " DDCCN " is unique for the plural number. The form D ■ N • 
 for Dominus Noster, and dd . nn for the plural, may be compared. 
 " ARCUM triumphalem" is unknown to classical Latin, and would 
 only be possible to decurions who set up this inscription at the restor- 
 ation of the arch in about the fourth century. The abbreviation 
 " TRIUM " for "triumphalem" has usually been explained as due 
 to fracture of the stone in other cases. On the whole M. Bondurand 
 has failed to convince the best authorities that his reading of the last 
 line is right. 
 
ROMAN ARCHES 133 
 
 Imperator for the eighth time, and Consul for the 
 fourth time, the Decurions restored this Triumphal 
 Arch." 
 
 It is worth while remembering in this connection 
 that the Arch of Titus in Rome, containing only a 
 single opening, shows the winged Victories in its span- 
 drils which appear at St. Remy; but though small in 
 size, and beautifully finished, it has no sculpture at the 
 sides, which is a very obvious defect in a type of build- 
 ing that has no real reason for existence except as a 
 magnificent frame for bas-reliefs and carvings. The 
 three openings of the structure at Orange may be com- 
 pared with the arches of Septimius Severus and of Con- 
 stantine, in Italy ; and with them it very fairly holds its 
 own. That at Rheims, once a hundred and ten feet 
 wide, was larger than any of them, and was probably 
 built in the last years of the Empire. This style of 
 monuments must not be confounded with such a build- 
 ing as the Gate of St. Andre at Autun, or the far more 
 elaborate Gate of Justice, known as the "Porta Nigra," 
 at Treves. The building known as the " Porte 
 d'Auguste" at Nimes is too obviously a town gate to be 
 mistaken for anything else, and it probably had the 
 light arcade above it which is preserved in the Porte St. 
 Andre at Autun. Yet another form of Roman arch is 
 to be found in Provence, and that is the beautiful en- 
 trance-gate placed at each end of a bridge, of which 
 
134 
 
 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 the fine arches on the bridge of St. Chamas are the 
 best examples in the Rhone valley, and the most ele- 
 gant in France. 1 The Triumphal Arch is, in itself, 
 somewhat difficult to justify architecturally, though it 
 is often quite successful as a picturesque commemora- 
 tive monument; and I need only mention one more to 
 complete all I shall have to say upon the subject. 
 
 This is the building long known to historians of 
 Aries as the "Arc Admirable." Writing in 1687, 
 Seguin {Les Antiquites d' Aries) could only trace this 
 arch, which had then disappeared, by a deed of 151 1, 
 mentioning the "Arcus Mirabilis" in the Rue St. 
 Claude. This monument, therefore, which for so 
 many centuries had roused the admiration of those who 
 saw it, had vanished more than sixty years before the 
 Arch of Constantine was pulled down in 1743, so that 
 one of the public streets might be widened. For- 
 tunately, however, some fragments have been left 
 which permit us to reconstruct it, as a smaller and 
 more artistic example of the three-arch type at Orange. 
 
 ' The railway from Aries runs on the east (or left) bank of the Rhone 
 across the Crau to St. Chamas, where there is a beautiful view of the 
 Etang de Berre. The Pons Flavia crosses the Touloubre in a single 
 span of solid masonry, the entrance arch at each end being decorated 
 with Corinthian columns and entablature. The columns are sur- 
 mounted with lions, and there is an inscription on the frieze. Some 
 distance north, on the slope of the Vernegues hills, between the Rhone 
 valley and that of the Durance, is a single Corinthian column, in the 
 pure Greek form exemplified by the monument of Lysicrates, which is 
 the sole remnant of a temple erected by a Greek artist from Marseilles. 
 
THE "ARC ADMIRABLE" AT ARLES 135 
 
 The largest of these fragments is the portico built into 
 the wall of the hotel in the Place des Hommes, which 
 was placed there in 171 5, composed of pieces from 
 various different monuments, for neither the columns 
 nor their capitals were originally portions of the "Arc 
 Admirable." Other remnants would no doubt be 
 found in the old fortifications (made of such frag- 
 mentary stones from Roman buildings) near the Tour 
 de Rolland. A portion of the bas-reliefs of the attic 
 story is preserved in the ancient theatre, and is repro- 
 duced in the appendix to this first volume, together 
 with the other vestiges which enabled M. Gilles to give 
 a plan of the building as it was originally set up in 
 honour of Augustus some years after his visit to Aries, 
 i-n 43 B.C., a visit which is commemorated also by the 
 busts of himself and of Marcellus, and by the splendid 
 carving of his imperial wreath. This arch was called 
 "Admirable," not only by reason of its beauty, but 
 from the same motives which gave the name of "Tour 
 Magne" to the triumphal monument in the pyramidal 
 style set up to the same Emperor at Nimes. 
 
 The vanished "Arc Admirable" was, as I have said, 
 of much the same design as that of Orange, though in 
 better proportion and finer workmanship; and the sur- 
 viving monument further up the Rhone will give some 
 measure of our loss at Aries. In the same way, that 
 mighty cliff of masonry which is the Theatre of Orange, 
 
136 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 will suggest something of the smaller and more beauti- 
 ful construction of which two lonely pillars and a large 
 part of the auditorium still remain at Aries. 
 
 Orange played no important part as a Roman city; 
 it was never as prominent as Aries, as Nimes, or even 
 as Vienne; yet the Roman buildings are all that remain 
 of value in the town, and the size of them is a signifi- 
 cant indication of that Roman character and civilisa- 
 tion which it is my business to describe in Provence. 
 The hill of Orange was the original settlement, and the 
 modern town is built on the site of the first attacking 
 Roman camp, as Dorchester below the hill of Sinodun, 
 without a winding Thames. The colony of Arausio 
 began forthwith to take its amusements very seriously. 
 They used the mass of the old hill as the material for 
 their auditorium, and on its slope they built their stone 
 seats in a semicircle. Opposite to them rises that 
 stupendous wall of massive dark-brown stones, laid 
 weightily one upon another, erect, eternal as the frame- 
 work of the everlasting hills, and resonant still to every 
 tone of modern tragedy. It overtops the town without 
 a rival; and of all Roman theatres we know it is the 
 most impressive, for there is no building of the kind 
 that can compare with it as a whole. That part of the 
 wall which faces the city is chiefly imposing from its 
 , sheer bulk. As we see it now, it rises in a single mass 
 from the ground, but originally it must have looked 
 
THE THEATRE OF ORANGE 137 
 
 like one side of the nave of some vast minster, with its 
 aisle and clerestory; for there was an arcade in advance 
 of it, and the plain second story was once covered by a 
 sloping roof, with a long range of smaller round-headed 
 arches, which forestall the clerestories of Pisa or of 
 Lucca. It is about one hundred feet high, thirteen 
 feet thick, and over nine hundred feet in length. On 
 the side facing the hill it was once faced with marble, 
 set about with carvings, and formed the permanent 
 scenery at the back of the rather shallow stage which 
 the spectators saw; a scenery so tremendous that it 
 seems only appropriate to tragedies " presenting Thebes' 
 or Pelops' line"; and so durable that only those trage- 
 dies themselves can claim an elder place among the 
 few accomplishments of man which have so long out- 
 lasted the generations that produced them. 
 
 On great municipal occasions, the Roman theatre 
 is still used. Once every year the Comedie Franfaise 
 produces a classic tragedy there, and the alexandrines 
 of Corneille or Racine wake the echoes that are still 
 stirring with the mighty lines of ^schylus or Sophocles. 
 Sometimes the Provencal poets, called the Felibres, 
 are gathered here; but for a true Provencal f^te the 
 smaller, lovelier theatre of Aries is a far better setting, 
 with that soft charm of melancholy beauty which Aries 
 alone retains. The sheer bulk of Orange is too over- 
 whelming for our modern life. It was but the pleasure- 
 
138 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 place of the old Romans; yet how many of our most 
 pretentious buildings will last even a quarter as long? 
 Our Gothic churches, mere architectural babes in time 
 compared with it, are fast tottering into decay already. 
 Our modern buildings, our flimsy town halls and 
 stucco palaces, will be dust when the Theatre of Orange 
 is still serenely strong; and I prefer to see that theatre, 
 not filled with modern actors, or with modern crowds, 
 but as my friend saw it some few years ago: "... 
 its sweep of steps graciously mantled in long grass 
 growing for hay, and full of innumerable flowers; its 
 stage tenanted by bushes of red roses and white guelder 
 roses; the blue, empty circles of its wall-space rising 
 serenely against the flame-blue sky. Never have I 
 seen the huge strength of Roman antiquity appear 
 more sweetly venerable, more assimilable to the un- 
 shaken granite structure of the globe itself, than thus, 
 decked and garlanded with the transitory blossoms of 
 its eighteen-hundredth spring." ^ 
 
 Those steps rouse many dreams; for few foreign 
 cities are so often spoken of by Englishmen as is 
 Orange, and few places have ever roused wilder con- 
 fusions of thought; for Orange gave its name to a line 
 of princes, one of whom was also a king of England, 
 and from that king a political party in the British 
 Islands and colonies thought proper to take its title. 
 
 ' Mary Darmesteter: Contemporary Review, November 1892. 
 
MEDIAEVAL ORANGE 139 
 
 The fact that the town is on a tributary of the Rhone, 
 and Hes a httle off the main hne, has preserved it from 
 too much attention on the part of the incurious Enghsh 
 traveller, who hurries past it to the Riviera. Arausio, 
 the Roman colony, is known only from geographers 
 and from its own remains ; and the power and ubiquity 
 of Rome have never been better exemphfied than in 
 the existence of such mighty works in a place histori- 
 cally so insignificant. Its mediaeval history begins with 
 a certain William, of the house of Adhemar, called 
 Duke of Aquitaine in the days of Charlemagne, who 
 delivered Orange from the Saracens. There is a tale 
 of this Guillaume d'Orange, who came home wounded 
 after Roncesvalles,^ the last survivor of that day of 
 slaughter, suddenly aged and pinched and grey, upon 
 a sorry varlet's nag. So the porter could not recognise 
 him, and the lady of the castle would not let him in. 
 "My husband," she cried, "would come a conqueror, 
 with his captives behind him, covered with glory and 
 honour." And when she heard that he had come 
 
 ' In Calendal the poet Mistral tells this same tale of the Count 
 of Orange escaping from the Saracens at the battle of the Alyscamps at 
 Aries : — 
 
 "Guibour! Guibour! ma gento damo 
 Sieu, dis, Guihen, aqueu que t'amo! 
 A Guihen dou Court Nas, Guibour, vene durbi . . . 
 . . . N'as menti! crido 
 Guibour . . ." 
 The unfortunate count is only admitted after he has gone back to the 
 fight and chased the Saracens single-handed to the sea. 
 
140 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 from Roncesvalles : "Less than ever my husband," she 
 cried again, "for he would not have lived when all those 
 heroes died." At last he was let in; and there is noth- 
 ing now of all his castle left upon the hill, save one weak 
 buttress and a tottering wall. But they remind us of 
 such a tale as the great stones of Rome could never tell; 
 for "the monuments of the Middle Ages are other than 
 of stone." By the end of the eleventh century and 
 the beginning of the Crusades, we find a living and 
 distinct Count of Orange, at the time when the Bur- 
 gundian kingdom had arisen out of the ruins of Charle- 
 magne's empire, and had been again united to the im- 
 perial crown with its fellow-kingdoms of Germany 
 and Italy. Orange was no part of France then; it was 
 a member of the kingdom of Aries, and its counts were 
 vassals of the Emperor under the Counts of Toulouse, 
 who claimed the imperial fief of the Provenjal March. 
 The greatest of the Crusading counts was Raimbauld 
 II., whose modern statue now stands in the market- 
 place; and in 1150 another of his name appears as a 
 devoted troubadour, so loyal to a neighbouring countess 
 that he left no heir for his inheritance, and Orange 
 passed to his brother-in-law Bertrand, of the great 
 house of Les Baux, the first to receive the title of prince, 
 granted by Frederick Barbarossa, as he passed by 
 Orange on his way to his Burgundian crowning at 
 Aries. With that title, then so rare that from Orange 
 
LES BAUX AT ORANGE 141 
 
 to Snowdon there was but one other, the Prince of 
 Aberffraw, Bertrand received the right of coining 
 money, and marching with his banners displayed 
 from the Isere to the sea and from the Rhone to the 
 Alps. In 121 5 Frederick 11. granted Bertrand 's son, 
 William, a charter (dated at Metz in 12 15), which 
 further granted him the whole kingdom of Aries and 
 of Vienne, which was probably only the vicariate of 
 the Empire within its bounds; at any rate, some such 
 rights existed, for they were formally renounced by a 
 later Prince Raymond of Orange to Charles of Anjou, 
 and throughout the thirteenth century the Princes of 
 Orange did homage to Provence for the greater part 
 of their dominions. 
 
 The Princes of Les Baux turned the triumphal arch 
 into a fortress, and held the castle on the hill above the 
 town. By some strange hazard, this little scrap of the 
 old kingdom of Aries lived on, side by side, with its 
 neighbours of Avignon and the Venaissin, long after 
 Pope and prince ahke had been surrounded by the 
 gradual annexations of France; even after Lyons, 
 Vienne, Provence, Bresse, Besanfon, and the Bur- 
 gundian counts had been swallowed up. It is difficult 
 to reahse now that the character of France, as regards 
 these places, was that of an encroaching enemy. The 
 siege of Avignon, by Louis viii. in his Albigensian 
 crusade, first showed his danger to imperial Burgundy. 
 
142 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 The acquisition of Provence by Charles of Anjou 
 meant as much to Burgundy as did the later Sicilian 
 crown to the Itahan states. It was not a long step 
 from doing homage to the king's brother to doing 
 homage for Orange to the King of France himself. 
 The Dauphin Charles (afterwards Charles v.) had 
 received the vicariate of the kingdom of Aries from his 
 imperial namesake; but the only reality was the supe- 
 riority of France. To this Dauphin had Raymond 
 of Orange done homage in 1349, and by 1393 Orange 
 had passed by female succession to the house of Chal- 
 lon, a French lordship in ducal Burgundy. Louis xi. 
 exacted homage in the fullest terms in spite of good 
 King Rene's grumblings; but when, in the next reign, 
 Orange had been completely surrounded by French 
 territory, Louis xii. good-naturedly declared Prince 
 John II. its independent sovereign. The full signifi- 
 cance of this was not apparent until in 1531 Rene of 
 Orange began the connection of the old Burgundian 
 county with the house of Nassau. For thereafter the 
 Princes of Orange, technically the peer of any sovereign 
 with whom they had to deal, also became the first 
 nobles in the outlying dominions of the Spanish crown, 
 the first citizens and the first magistrates of a great 
 commonwealth; though they took their title, being of 
 the house of Nassau, from a precarious little principal- 
 ity in the Rhone valley, which they most probably never 
 
ORANGE AND NASSAU 143 
 
 cared enough about to visit. ^ It was as a sovereign 
 prince, owning the Emperor as his only superior on 
 earth, that WiUiam the Silent could make lawful war 
 upon the Duke of Alva. The independent sovereignty 
 of tiny Httle Lichtenstein, which you may drive through 
 in half an hour on the Ragatz road between St. Gallen 
 and Graubiinden, is the only modern parallel. 
 
 During the days of the Nassau princes France was 
 perpetually seizing Orange and giving it back again 
 by treaty. But Prince Maurice made the castle of 
 Orange, upon the hill above the theatre, one of the 
 strongest fortresses in Europe; and it was Louis xiv. 
 who swept away well-nigh every trace of those too pre- 
 sumptuous ramparts. The independence of the prin- 
 cipality only came to an end when William, the Tenth 
 of Orange, set forth for the dehverance of the Protestant 
 religion and the liberties of England, and thereby be- 
 came William the First of Ireland, Second of Scotland, 
 Third of England, Fourth of Normandy, and Tenth 
 
 ' How rarely they came here may be gathered from the legend of 
 that Prince of Orange who visited the home of his ancestors, as it is 
 told in Mistral's "Poem of the Rhone," and of his death by drowning 
 with the beautiful Anglore during a storm upon the river : — 
 
 "Mai lou verai es que, per uno espouncho 
 Que ven dou sang, Guihfen (coume ie dison 
 Au beu ddufin de la nacioun flamenco) 
 Voi trafega lou Rose. Vou couneisse 
 Lou nis, lou couvadou, la terro illustro 
 Que i' a trasmes lou noun preclar que porto 
 Aurenjo e sa famouso flourieto, . . ." 
 
144 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 of Orange. Though the formal incorporation of the 
 town with the French province of Dauphine was de- 
 layed till 1731, it had become a part of the French 
 dominions by 1714, in virtue of the treaty of Utrecht. 
 It is now a quiet, unimportant, yet charming Httle 
 town, filling up its ancient girdle with ample spaces of 
 green garden, and surrounded by lovely meadows of 
 luxuriant flowers, that cover the sweet and fertile plains 
 of Orange with a beauty that is appropriate to its best 
 memories of idyllic Greece and Rome. 
 
 It was the arch that brought us from St. Remy to 
 Orange, and to St. Remy's building I must now go 
 back again, to pick up the thread of Julius Caesar's 
 campaigns which we dropped beneath the shadow of 
 the arch he built. It will need but a few pages before 
 we can move on to Aries. 
 
THE TOMB OF THE HUNTER, ARLES [a]. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE PACIFICATION OF PROVENCE 
 
 "E de que tiron glori 
 Toflti li conquietaire li mai trule 
 Que sus Rose k-de-reng an fan I'emperi, 
 Li Charle-Magne eme li Bonaparte 
 Les Annibau e li Cesar de Rome!" 
 
 — Lou PouEMo Dou Rose.' 
 
 It is a curious thing that the two greatest names of 
 Roman Provence, Marseilles and Narbonne, now con- 
 tain nothing whatever to which we can point as an un- 
 doubted architectural relic of Roman rule. I have 
 determined to say as little as possible of the history that 
 cannot in some degree be traced in stone to-day; but 
 of Marseilles something must now be said, for its siege 
 was the most important event, during the Civil War, 
 in the Roman Province. 
 
 ' "What profit have those conquerors of their greed, those who in 
 turn have held the empire of the Rhone, Charlemagne, and Bonaparte 
 and Hannibal, and the Roman Caesars!" 
 
 145 
 
146 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 Founded in the age of the Gracchi, Narbo remained 
 a town throughout the Republic, the first burgess- 
 colony proper beyond the sea, but isolated. It was 
 strengthened by Caesar, and under Tiberius was "the 
 most populous city of Gaul." ^ But after the fall of 
 Marseilles, and the rise of Lyons, Aries became the 
 great emporium of commerce in the Rhone valley. 
 
 The wealthy Greek mercantile state, which was pro- 
 tected by the standing Roman camp at Aix, was by no 
 means comprised within the city walls of Massalia; it 
 extended along the greater part of the coast, nearly 
 from Montpelher to Nice. But in a pohtical aspect 
 Massalia disappeared after the siege, and became for 
 Gaul what Neapolis was for Italy, a centre of Greek 
 culture and Greek learning, preserving its independence 
 within the modest proportions of a provincial town. 
 
 At first the Massaliot envoys desired Caesar to allow 
 them to remain neutral in the quarrel between their 
 two patrons, Pompey and himself. But their pleasant 
 dreams were soon dispelled by the sudden arrival of 
 Domitius Ahenobarbus (grandson of the first proconsul 
 who made the Via Domitia) with seven swift galleys 
 from the Etrurian coasts ; for he immediately put him- 
 self at the head of the city's sea and land forces, in the 
 
 ' Those who still believe in the artistic tendencies of Franfois t. 
 may be interested to know that he built walls round Narbonne with 
 the fragments of mutilated Roman ruins. 
 
MARSEILLES 147 
 
 cause of Pompey ; a cause which may well have com- 
 mended itself to a majority of the citizens in an ancient 
 and conservative Greek state, naturally opposed, on 
 general principles, to the incarnation of revolutionary 
 politics which was JuUus Caesar. 
 
 Being obHged at the moment to cross the Pyrenees, 
 Caesar left Caius Trebonius to command by land and 
 Decimus Brutus to direct the naval operations against 
 Marseilles. The Phocaean city, as it still was, occupied 
 the triangular peninsula between the Old Harbour to 
 the south and a creek of La Joliette to the north-west. 
 The modern Place d'Aix was just outside its eastern 
 boundary, and a curve drawn from the Place de La 
 Johette, through the Place d'Aix, and round to the 
 "Vieux Port," between the Cannebiere and Rue de 
 Noailles, would about indicate the extent of the Greek 
 city. 
 
 In spite of the pacific expressions of the ambassadors, 
 the town was well equipped for the siege it must have 
 realised to be inevitable, and mihtary reinforcements 
 had been secured from the friendly Celtic tribe of the 
 Albici, who Kved some fifty miles north, between the 
 Verdon and the Durance. Caesar was not slow in 
 taking measures on his side, and the fact that Aries 
 could supply him with twelve warships within thirty 
 days after the trees from which they were built had been 
 felled is one proof of the resources of ancient Arelate. 
 
148 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 With this unseasoned dozen Decimus Brutus lay at 
 anchor outside the Old Harbour, depending only on 
 the veteran infantry who had volunteered from the 
 pick of Caesar's legions to man them. The very 
 solidity of these new heavy-timbered vessels lent added 
 courage to the landsmen on their decks. As soon as the 
 seventeen warships of Domitius bore down upon them, 
 the legionaries grappled, boarded the enemy, and dis- 
 patched their crews. Brutus brought all his dozen 
 safe back to their moorings and six Massaliot vessels 
 with them; three more were sunk; and Domitius had 
 but eight left. 
 
 As soon as possible Pompey sent sixteen more ships 
 of war under Nasidius, who anchored opposite the now 
 vanished Tauroenta, some twenty miles to the eastward 
 of Toulon, and summoned Domitius with his old fleet 
 of eight, and nine new vessels built by the men of 
 Massalia to replace their losses. Unfortunately the 
 squadron of Nasidius took to flight almost as soon as 
 Brutus went into action, and the Massaliot ships were 
 fairly easily defeated after making a good fight of it. 
 The crisis of the struggle now shifted to the land, where 
 Trebonius had been working with might and main to 
 undermine the defences of the city. At last he fatally 
 sapped the principal tower of the city wall by means of ■ 
 an immensely strong covered approach, and the be- 
 sieged, in despair, begged for an armistice till Caesar 
 
THE PACIFICATION OF PROVENCE 149 
 
 should return. In the course of this they treacherously 
 attacked the Roman camp and burnt everything in it 
 that would catch fire, after which they withdrew within 
 their walls again, repaired the breaches, and once more 
 bade defiance to the enemy. But the coast-blockade 
 proved too much for them. Domitius Ahenobarbus 
 made good his escape by sea, and Caesar himself, on 
 his arrival, received the unconditional surrender of the 
 city. He spared all lives, took possession of all arms 
 and military engines, all ships and naval stores, the 
 public treasure, and the territories of the State, and 
 quartered two Roman legions upon the city as a garri- 
 son. Scarcely a trace of Greek or Roman Massalia 
 now remains. 
 
 The fact that Vercingetorix found no successor is 
 almost as great a triumph for Roman diplomacy as was 
 his defeat for Roman arms. The revolts of the Treveri 
 under Juliu§ Florus, in the Ardennes, or of the Haedui 
 and Sequani under JuKus Sacrovir, near Lyons, were 
 but a pale reflection of the determination of the Celtic 
 nobility to seize every opportunity of Germanic unrest 
 to try their strength against Rome. But the policy of 
 amalgamation and reconciliation soon did its work of 
 cautiously but completely Romanising every element 
 in the population. Such a deliverance of the Celtic 
 nation as was contemplated by Vercingetorix, or even 
 dreamed of by Sacrovir, was no longer possible in 70 
 
ISO OLD PROVENCE 
 
 A.D., for already that nation had ceased its separate 
 existence. Its subsequent history was the history of the 
 Roman world, the development of the Romano-Gallic 
 culture founded by Caesar and Augustus. 
 
 The beginnings of that foundation are traceable in 
 the last public acts of Caesar in Provence. He gave 
 to the coastwise canton of the Volcae a Latin municipal 
 constitution, with Nimes, to which the remaining town- 
 ships were made subject, for its urban centre. Latin 
 rights were given to Roussillon, Avignon, Aix, and Apt; 
 and their burgesses, after acquiring the Roman franchise 
 by entering the imperial army or by holding office in 
 their native towns, stood on a perfect legal equality 
 with Italians. The Roman colony of Lyons (second 
 to Narbo under Tiberius) was the native seat both of 
 aU government institutions common to Gaul, and of the 
 Celtic diet of the three Gaulish provinces. What this 
 involved may be seen from the facts that when Rome 
 was desolated by fire in 64 a.d., the men of Lyons sent 
 a subsidy of four million sesterces (;£43,5oo) to the 
 capital, and when Lyons in her turn was burnt out in 
 the next year, she was assisted, not only from the privy 
 purse of the Emperor, but by contributions from the 
 whole Roman empire. It is essential to realise these 
 things if we are to understand the extraordinary amount 
 of traces still remaining in Provence of Roman life and 
 Roman buildings. Just as Christianity took up the 
 
THE PACIFICATION OF PROVENCE 151 
 
 legends and heroes of paganism and made her saints 
 and martyrologies from the materials of more ancient 
 faiths, so did Rome keep all the old memories and 
 transform them into greater permanence and strength. 
 The fountain-god of the Volcae and the temple of 
 Nemausus were the centre of Imperial Nimes. The 
 Emperor Claudius was himself born at Lyons. He 
 married Agrippina, who was born in the camp of her 
 father Germanicus at Cologne. It was but natural 
 that they should each favour the largest possible ex- 
 tension of the privileges of the Gauls. The official 
 language of course became the Latin. But we find 
 Greek inscriptions lingering on for long in Provence/ 
 and no barriers were made to Celtic speech on unofficial 
 occasions. At Aries, indeed, most of the dedications so 
 
 ' I have given in another chapter several examples of this. But the 
 most appropriate here is a bilingual epitaph of about the second 
 century, A.D., of which the first line in Latin is followed by Greek 
 hexameters and pentameters. 
 
 C. Vibio Liguri Maxsuma mater fecit. 
 
 Thv Tdipov ^py&^ovTo yepmorepots' d Se Aaifjtoiy 
 
 N-ffTTtov a.vre^6\'riff' ewrdeTes K\i/j.aTi. 
 ^vyyevees yeveTat re &fwv iy effpe^l/ay edwl/av 
 
 raiov. & fi(p6iruv i\irlSts oi n6vtiu>i. 
 
 The reading does not quite satisfy me; but it is obviously a pathetic 
 lament over a boy of seven, who was killed by the climate and buried 
 by his parents. The name Ligur was naturally common in the country 
 of the old Ligurians. On the island of Ste. Marguerite the name 
 occurs again both in Greek and Latin on a votive tablet: — 
 
 'TiTtp T^s ffaTTjpias KdpKov ^lovKiov Aiyv6s, 
 Pro Salute M. Juli Liguris. . . . 
 
152 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 far discovered might have served just as well in Italy; 
 but at Frejus, Aix, and Nlmes many traces of a prior, 
 indigenous worship have been found. 
 
 The results of all this acted and reacted upon both 
 sides. The cavalry of Imperial Rome was recruited 
 from Gaul, and both its manoeuvres and technical ex- 
 pressions were chiefly derived from the Celts. And 
 the soldiers Gaul gave to Rome were repaid by the wine 
 Rome sold to Aries and Lyons. In the Narbonnaise 
 and in Southern Aquitaine there were indeed early 
 beginnings of that Allobrogian vintage which is now our 
 Burgundy, of the Biturigian wines which are the modem 
 claret. But it was not till the end of the third century 
 A.D. that the provinces were really allowed to infringe 
 on the invaluable Italian monopoly of wine-culture. 
 The great highway from Rome to the mouth of the 
 Baetis was repaired in republican times from the Alps 
 to the Rhone by the Massaliots, from thence to the 
 Pyrenees by the Romans. Augustus relaid it, and 
 ample means existed for communication with all parts 
 of Provence, both military and civil, both by land and 
 water. Small wonder is it, then, that this land of 
 olive-yards and fig-trees, even before the general culture 
 of the vine, rose to great prosperity when its agriculture 
 was once soHdly encouraged by Augustus, a prosperity 
 which is still reflected in the amphitheatres of Nimes 
 and Aries, in the theatre of Orange, in the monuments 
 
FREJVS 153 
 
 of SO small a community as St. Remy, in the public 
 works of Fr^jus. 
 
 Frejus, Forum Julii, was, as its name implies, estab- 
 Hshed by Julius as a forum, viz.: an assize-centre and 
 market, being situated, as fora usually were, on the 
 high road. It was still a forum when first mentioned 
 in Cicero's Letters in the year after Caesar's assassina- 
 tion. ^ After Actium, Augustus made it a naval station 
 and a colony, whence was derived its title of "Pacencis" 
 or "Pacata." 
 
 But there is so much Roman masonry at Frejus that 
 I must give it a separate place to itseK (p. 254); and it 
 will only be necessary here to mention that piece of 
 history which connects it with the period just before 
 the reign of Augustus to which we must proceed with 
 what haste be possible. 
 
 Mark Antony was the most open champion of Caesar- 
 ism after Caesar himseK had died. DolabeUa, the 
 man of the Senate and the assassins, was conveniently 
 shelved in Syria; but the young Octavianus was not 
 to be so easily put off. Claiming his rights as heir to 
 
 ' This same correspondence has preserved one of the few classical 
 texts which actually mention the presence of Julius Caesar on the 
 Riviera; for Caelius writes to Cicero "bemoaning his bad luck in 
 being sent to Vintimiglia, amidst the snows of the Alps at Christmas 
 time, to quell a riot occasioned by the assassination by adherents of 
 Pompey of one of their citizens for having entertained Julius Caesar on 
 his way to Spain at the outset of the civil war." — Quoted by W. H. 
 (Bullock) Hall in The Romans on the Riviera and the Rhone. 
 
IS4 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 his uncle and father by adoption, he was met by the 
 unwelcome news that Antony had spent most of the 
 four thousand talents (about one million sterling) which 
 the widow Calpurnia had handed over to Caesar's 
 relative and chief representative on the spot. Octavi- 
 anus therefore at first joined the party of the Senate; 
 but Cicero soon discovered that this was only part of 
 a far deeper plan, a plan remarkably astute for any one, 
 but nothing short of astounding in a youth of twenty. 
 
 Defeated near Mutina, Antony was at once pursued 
 by Decimus Brutus, and fled by way of Vada Sabata 
 across the Maritime Alps towards the Esterels. The 
 coast road he chose must have been particularly arduous 
 and difficult for his disorganized forces and undis- 
 ciphned followers; for there was hardly any food or 
 water on the way. "Antony," writes Plutarch, "was 
 in misfortune most nearly a virtuous man." Over- 
 taken by famine and by distresses of every kind, he set 
 a splendid example of endurance to his troops. "He 
 who had just quitted so much luxury and sumptuous 
 living, made no difficulty now of drinking foul water 
 and feeding on wild fruits and roots. Nay, it is related, 
 they ate the very bark of trees and creatures that no one 
 before had ever been willing to touch." Even when 
 ameliorated by the repairs which the Massaliots were 
 bound to make upon it, the hardships of the road across 
 the deep gorges of the Esterels, choked with impene- 
 
THE RISE OF AUGUSTUS 155 
 
 trable thicket, killed off a large proportion of Antony's 
 troops, and it was a miserable, starving remnant which 
 presented themselves on the 15th of May, B.C. 43, at 
 the gates of Forum Julii. 
 
 There Antony was joined by Ventidius and three 
 legions, and plenty of forage was brought in for the 
 cavalry, while they rested before the meeting with 
 Lepidus, the general in Provence who had assured 
 Cicero so fully of his loyalty to the Senate. There was 
 no fighting. Even if the senatorial general had not 
 decided to choose "peace and politics," the soldiers 
 would probably have preferred Caesarism to the con- 
 stitution; for many already had traditions of victory 
 behind them as glorious as those of Napoleon's Old 
 Guard, and those traditions were connected with the 
 party represented by Antony. The only victim to the 
 ancient constitution was Laterensis, the senator, who 
 killed himself on the Pons Argenteus from a pathetic 
 loyalty to the hopeless cause of republican institutions. 
 The principles of Plancus, the other Provencal general, 
 were as amenable to argument as those of Lepidus, and 
 he prudently withdrew to Grenoble until Octavianus 
 had shown signs that it would be better to join Antony. 
 This Lepidus immediately did. Decimus Brutus, 
 meanwhile, caught between Octavianus and the rebels, 
 had his indecisions swiftly ended for him by death at 
 the hands of Antony's men. The result of all this 
 
iS6 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 shuffling of cards was the Triumvirate which at once 
 beheaded Cicero. Lepidus had to content himself 
 with Africa in the partition that ensued. Antony mar- 
 ried O eta via; but for the next twelve years was occupied 
 in dreaming with Cleopatra of an empire in the East. 
 Octavianus quietly consolidated his power with most 
 remarkable success, for the last hopes of the Republicans 
 were shattered with the fall of Brutus and Cassius at 
 Philippi; Lepidus was banished; Sextus Pompeius died 
 in 35 A.D.; and the victory over Antony and Cleopatra 
 at Actium left Octavianus alone in his supremacy, and 
 strong enough to justify the title of "princeps," or first 
 citizen. 
 
 Wearied out by twenty years of war and anarchy, 
 the Roman communities were glad enough to welcome 
 one, who, if he had not the dazzhng pre-eminence of 
 patrician descent, the daring disregard of form, the 
 cosmopolitan tastes of Julius Caesar, yet united de- 
 liberate caution and unfailing tact to great adminis- 
 trative capacity and a quiet strength of will, which 
 were especially acceptable in one whose "bourgeois 
 birth" assured his genuinely Italian sympathies. In 
 the years that followed, Rome shared the decline of the 
 Republic. But the provinces grew and flourished under 
 an imperial system, which was seen at its best in de- 
 veloping or protecting an orderly civilisation and main- 
 taining the peace of the world. In the tower at La 
 
LA TURBIE 157 
 
 Turbie and the Tour Magne at Nimes are to be seen 
 two monuments of that protection as exercised by 
 Augustus. 
 
 The colossal monument at Turbie commemorates 
 his final victory over the rebellious Alpine tribes in b.c. 
 12, which implied the opening of a safe road to traders 
 over the Maritime Alps, and immunity from Alpine 
 raids for the lowland farmers. The modern town let 
 of La Turbie (which means "the Tower") stands on an 
 inland pass formed behind the mountain walls that rise 
 precipitously from the sea, about two miles from Monte 
 Carlo, and commands one of the finest views upon that 
 splendid coast. 
 
 The huge tower that was the triumphal monument 
 of Augustus's victories was built of great blocks of stone 
 upon a square base which supported a circular structure 
 with an inscription in letters of gold: "imperatori • 
 
 C^SAR • DIVI • FILIO • AUGUSTO • PONT. • MAX. ■ IMP • 
 
 XIV • TRIE • POT • XVII • s.p.Q.R." ^ The third por- 
 tion of the building was a round colonnade, which up- 
 held yet a fourth circle of statues and pillars, the whole 
 being surmounted by the colossal effigy of the victorious 
 Emperor. The imitation, and still more, the exaggera- 
 
 ' This inscription continues (according to the reading of Desjardins 
 and the text of Pliny): "Quod eius ductu auspiciisque gentes 
 
 ALPINAE OMNES QUAE A MARI SUPEEO AD INPEEUM PEETINEBANT 
 SUB IMPEEIUM POPULI ROMANl SUNT KEDACTAE. GeNTES ALPINAE 
 
 DEVICTAE. . . ." And then follow the names of the conquered 
 tribes. 
 
158 
 
 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 tion of the elegant St. Remy monument will at once be 
 noticed; and it is a matter of abiding satisfaction that 
 the better of the two has survived. The later, and 
 decadent example, invited pillage from its mere bulk 
 of masonry, and what ruins were left by the Barbarians 
 were used to construct a fortress during the quarrels of 
 Guelphs and Ghibellines. This remained until it was 
 in turn dismantled by the French in 1706; and very 
 httle of the original building can now be seen, for the 
 remnants were as usual employed as a convenient quarry 
 for every building set up near it in the eighteenth cen- 
 tury. 
 
 Unfortunately the monument at La Turbie was taken 
 as a model by the citizens of Nlmes when in their turn 
 
 they desired to show their 
 sense of the glories of 
 Augustus; and the Tour 
 Magne, which rises on the 
 hill above the Gardens of 
 the Fountain, is the tribute 
 of gratitude to his valour 
 from "Nemausus, Volca- 
 rum Arecomicorum Colonia Augusta," in B.C. 27, and 
 is therefore the oldest building in Ntmes. Octagonal 
 in plan, and chiefly impressive from its size, the Tour 
 Magne is built of rough ashlar; it is hollow, and some 
 hundred feet in height. Below the topmost story a 
 
 PORTION OF FBIEZK CARVED WITH 
 THE ROMAN EAGLES, NIMES. 
 
TOUR MAGNE AT NIMES 159 
 
 girdle of engaged columns in Roman Doric surrounds 
 the edifice, which was crowned by a terrace supported 
 by the attic. There was possibly a colossal effigy upon 
 this, similar to the one at La Turbie. It was originally 
 entered by an exterior staircase as far as the top of the 
 first story, and the inner staircase now used is as mod- 
 ern as the lower door. Its present name means the 
 same as the older name of "Tour Lampfese" or "Lam- 
 prese," "the splendid tower," like the "Arc Admirable" 
 at Aries. 1 
 
 I have now completed the list of all the important 
 monuments in our district which may be referred to 
 classical military operations. It will be a more pleasant, 
 and perhaps a more interesting task to proceed in my 
 next chapters with the monuments of peace. In doing 
 so, I shall be following the dictates both of history and 
 of inclination if I begin with Aries. 
 
 ' The "Tour Magne" gave nse to the most elaborate pun I know, 
 concerning the romantic adventures of a Provenjal courtier named 
 Gal. It runs as follows, and was composed, I believe, by Marc 
 Monnier : " Gal, amant de la reine, alia, tour magnanime, Galamment 
 de I'Arene a la Tour Magne a Nimes." This is supposed to refer to 
 the athletic lover's feat of carrying his sweetheart on his back from the 
 amphitheatre to the tower. 
 
EARLY CHRISTIAN TOMB AT ARLES [b], 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 GREECE AND ROME AT ARLES 
 
 "Roumo, de nou, t'avie vestido 
 En peiro bianco bfen bastido; 
 De ti grkndis Areno avii mes k toun front 
 Li cfenf-vint porto; avife toun Ciferi; 
 Avi&, princesso de I'Empferi, 
 Per espafa ti refoulferi, 
 Li poumpous Aquedu, lou Tiatre e I'lpoudrom." ' 
 
 — MlKEIO. 
 
 The Aries of to-day is, as I explained in my second 
 chapter, very different in its merely geographical as- 
 pect, to the Arelate of Rome; to that harbour of com- 
 merce by river and by sea which Ausonius could apos- 
 trophise: "Pande duplex Arelate tuos, blanda hospita, 
 portus, Gallula Roma." In the time of the Greeks, 
 and before them, the waters of the Mediterranean and 
 
 ' " Rome dressed thee new, City of Aries ! built thee true with 
 white stones ; a hundred and a score of gates she placed before thee in 
 the Amphitheatre ; and like a princess of the Empire, thou hadst the 
 Circus for thy pleasure, the gorgeous Aqueducts, the Theatre, the 
 Hippodrome." 
 
 160 
 
GREECE AND ROME AT ARLES i6i 
 
 the Rhone were even a more prominent characteristic 
 of the place; and many think that the name, which is 
 neither Latin nor Greek, may be referred to the Celtic 
 word "Ar-lath," the place of waters. In the earliest 
 centuries of its history this commerce must have had 
 its full effect upon the development of the town, and it 
 soon spread out upon both banks of the Rhone; on the 
 left, or eastern, side was the official and patrician quar- 
 ter; on the point of the Camargue to the west and north 
 rose the business town, the merchants' buildings, and 
 the barracks; an arrangement which has many close 
 parallels with that of ancient Alexandria. The mari- 
 time character of the town lasted far longer than we can 
 appreciate to-day, when the whole country from the 
 Durance to the sea is over thirty feet higher than it was 
 two thousand years ago, when the line of the sea itself 
 has retreated several miles, and when so many of the 
 lagoons that stretched from the deep water of the Medi- 
 terranean towards the shallow expanses nearer Aries 
 have disappeared. In 418 the Emperor Honorius 
 picked out Aries as a place of national assembly be- 
 cause there were so many means of locomotion: "Velo, 
 remo, vehiculo, terra, flumine, mari." Even in iioi 
 Roger de Hoveden, describing the course of the Eng- 
 lish fleet to Palestine, says that it touched at St. Gilles, 
 at Aries, and at Marseilles ; all apparently being equally 
 accessible. 
 
1 62 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 Owing to these natural advantages, Aries rose to 
 importance as soon as any foreign traders reached it 
 by sea, and no doubt the Phoenicians had established 
 more than a mere market there even before the Pho- 
 caeans arrived at Marseilles. At the end of that period, 
 at any rate, the swiit preparation of the. galleys already 
 mentioned, which Caesar ordered for the siege of 
 Marseilles, is a convincing proof of the excellence and 
 capacity of the dockyards of Aries. ^ Her prosperity 
 was great enough to last for a long while ; for the descrip- 
 tion given by Honorius and Theodosius is couched in 
 the most flowery language: "Neque enim uUa Provincia 
 ita peculiaris fructus sui facultate laetatur, ut non 
 haec propria Arelatensis soli credatur esse fecunditas; 
 quicquid enim dives Oriens, quicquid odoratus Arabs, 
 quicquid delicatus Assyrius, quod fertilis Africa, quod 
 speciosa Hispania, quod fecunda Gallia potest habere 
 praeclarum, ita iUic affatim exhibetur, quasi ibi nas- 
 cantur omnia." 
 
 The peace that spread over Provence after the vic- 
 tories of Caesar and Augustus was the opportunity 
 that all the towns of Provence took to decorate their 
 
 ' An inscription has preserved the name of one of the head workmen 
 in these dockyards, as follows: "CAITJS JULIUS pom . . . collega 
 FABRORUM NAVALIUM CORPORATOEUM [ARELATENSron] CURATOR 
 
 EiusDEM CORPORIS . . ."; and a patron of the same body is also 
 known who is referred to as: "sevir coloniae juliae pateenae 
 
 ARELATENSIS, PATEONI EIUSDEM CORPORIS, ITEM PATRONI EAB- 
 RORUM NAVALIUM UTRICULAEIORUM." 
 
THE CREEK THEATRE AT ARLES 165 
 
 streets with something better than the old defensive 
 works, and more or less sohd fortifications. There 
 was just a slight pause between the defeat of Marseilles, 
 and the formal colonisation of Greek Aries by Rome. 
 In that pause, Decimus Junius Brutus was appointed 
 governor; and during that interval of rest the theatre 
 was built. Its very ruins still frame a scene that is one 
 of the most beautiful and touching in all France, for 
 they are echoing still with the syllables of a great lan- 
 guage that lives no longer, and the air is full of the 
 rhythm and the cadences of tragic verse. "One of 
 the sweetest legacies of, the ancient world," wrote an 
 author who was not usually fortunate in his experience 
 of Provence.^ The two slender columns that rise 
 above the ancient stage stand "like a pair of silent 
 actors" who still dominate an audience of ghosts; of 
 tender and appreciative spirits ; of gentle wraiths whose 
 living hearts were touched to a tear by the sorrows of 
 Alcestis, or tuned to a smile by the harmonious meas- 
 ures of a dance. ^ Cross northward to the huge arena, 
 
 ' See A Little Tour in France, by Henry James, who was so worried 
 by the stones in the streets of Aries, and by the photographers of 
 Vaucluse, that his discomfort almost entirely obscures, for the un- 
 S3Tnpathetic reader, the beauty of the scenes he visited. 
 
 ^ Associations of Greek actors existed from very early days in Asia 
 Minor and the East, and travelling companies, under the protection of 
 Dionysus and his worship (whence the word Thymele), were soon 
 organised in various large cities, to which I have referred in the list 
 of Greek actors given elsewhere. One of the presidents of these 
 dramatic and gymnastic brotherhoods was approached for a good 
 
i66 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 and you will see what happened when Rome had planted 
 her mailed foot within the Roman walls of Aries. 
 There the solid and gigantic arches rise in tiers to hold 
 a howling populace that shouts for butchery; there the 
 great oval centre, fenced with tall slabs that look like 
 tombstones, seems still to swim with blood as heca- 
 tombs of slaughtered animals are dragged through the 
 darkened gateways at each side, or the gladiators enter, 
 and are slaughtered, for the holidays of Rome. 
 
 The theatre produces a very different effect, and pro- 
 duces it even in its ruins, because the art that built it 
 was not the Roman but the Greek. In truth it would 
 be difi&cult, here in Provence, to recognise that there 
 was a Roman art at all. There was a Roman style, a 
 
 troupe by any town that wished to give a special fete. The Naples 
 Brotherhood, with its especially Greek connections, was famous for 
 its good companies, and on one occasion passed an oiEcial vote of 
 thanks to Titus Julius Dolabella, a prefect of Nimes, who either 
 had behaved very generously to some Greek players, or was more 
 probably the agent in Nimes for the business of the Neapolitan 
 Dramatic Brotherhood. Much the same no doubt occurred in the 
 management of the theatre of Aries, where the existence of a branch 
 of the Dionysiac Brotherhood is even more probable than at Nimes. 
 The corporation called ri Koivhv t&v Trepl tuv Ai6vvfTov rexvifoty was 
 known first at Teos and then at Ephesus, where it spread widely 
 both in influence and area. The brotherhoods lasted right on till 
 the sixth century, when ecclesiastical dogmas became strong enough 
 to stop them, and they were replaced by such unedifying functions as 
 the Fete des Fous, or by the Mystery Plays. Augustus is known to 
 have favoured these Greek companies; Caligula brought them to 
 Lyons; Hadrian so much encouraged them, at Naples and elsewhere, 
 that he was called "the new Bacchus "; and his close connection with 
 Nimes and Aries implies much. 
 
GREEK ART 167 
 
 Roman architecture built for power and strength, and 
 lasting for eternity; a personification in stone of that 
 material brutality which was an elemental character- 
 istic of their conquering blood and iron ; a massive crea- 
 tion of archways and of amphitheatres; of aqueducts 
 that stride relentlessly across mountain, vale, and 
 river. Dominion, durability, Imperial power, these 
 things you may see in every building set up by the 
 Romans in Provence; for in their hands were all the 
 corners of the earth, and the strength of the hills was 
 theirs also. But of the art that loves dehcate propor- 
 tion, that enjoins restraint, that plays in fanciful crea- 
 tiveness with naturally graceful detail — of this you will 
 see nothing that the Romans did not take from Greece.^ 
 Ever since Hellas had been ravaged, and her treas- 
 ures spilt, Greek artists, sculptors, architects, had 
 been travelHng slowly through the Roman world. Al- 
 ready more than half Hellenised by their constant con- 
 tact with Phocaean MassaHa, the citizens of Aries were 
 ever ready to welcome the artists from the motherland 
 of Attica. The Maison Carree is almost the sole trace 
 of pure Greek influence at Nimes, which is as char- 
 acteristically Roman as Aries is individually Greek. 
 But the amphitheatre is almost the only building in 
 Aries which is wholly bereft of all Greek influence, 
 
 ' The Map of Peutinger preserves the tradition of this influence in 
 the name "Gretia," written on the district between the Durance and 
 the sea, of which Aries is the centre. 
 
i68 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 and owes its being and its form to the nation which 
 invented amphitheatres and triumphal arches, and 
 borrowed Ionic columns or Corinthian capitals from 
 the more artistic, the less military state. It was a 
 Greek architect who designed the theatre of Aries, i 
 and gave at once the dignity of proportion and the 
 beauty of detail which distinguished the original con- 
 struction. It is built of the same stone as was used 
 
 ' There were also many Greeks brought over to perform in the 
 theatres of Provence, as is shown by the inscriptions found at Nimes; 
 e.g. the stone placed in 1850 near the Porte d'Auguste, which records 
 the patronage of the emperor extended to Greek theatrical art; as we 
 know, from other sources, was the case with Hadrian. The letters are 
 
 .... 0TMEAIKH2 EN NEMAT2n TXIN AnO .... 
 
 .... NEPOTAN TPAIANON KAI2APA 2EBA2T0N .... 
 which refer to the "Thymelic troupe" at Nimes patronised by Nerva 
 Trajan Caesar Augustus. Another inscription in the Museum refers to 
 Lucius Samnius, an actor in the "Dionysiac Brotherhood," and three 
 times president of the "Thymelic Confrerie." Another is an epitaph: 
 "Afrodis • Symmele ■ , Grex Gallicus, Memphi et Paridis . . ." 
 which not only contains the interesting phrase, "Gaulish troupe of 
 Actors," but mentions a player in the troupe of Memphis and Paris, 
 who may have been the famous actors brought by ^'erus out of Syria 
 in 165 A.D. Compare with this the inscriptions at Vienne. (r)Scaenici 
 Asiaticiani et qui in eodem corpore sunt vivi sibi fecerunt. (2) Niciae 
 citharoedo. (3) Hellas Pantomimus hie quiescit ann : xiiii, a young 
 Greek dancer who died when he was only fourteen. At the comer 
 of the Boulevard Gambetta and the Rue de Corcomaire at Nimes, 
 another inscription refers to the fact that Greek musicians used to 
 play there. The words IONIKH2 KAI are decipherable among much 
 that is erased. Most touching of all these dramatic memories is the 
 tombstone found in the ruined circus of Antipolis (Antibes), which 
 was set up to the memory of a boy of only twelve years old, who 
 died after he had twice danced successfully: D.M. pueri septen- 
 TRIONIS QUI ANNOEUM XII ANTIPOLI IN THEATRO BIDUO SALTAVIT 
 ET PLACtriT. 
 
DRAMATIC COMPANIES 169 
 
 for the amphitheatre which so quickly followed it, and 
 there are strong traces of Roman influence, as would 
 be only natural under the governorship of Brutus, in 
 the archways that were the chief, though the invisible, 
 support of the main walls and the external entrances. 
 But the whole effect of the interior is the effect of the 
 theatres still left upon the soil of Greece.^ 
 
 ' It must not be imagined that the Greek style of theatrical repre- 
 sentations ceased with the extinction of Greek nationality. I have 
 already mentioned the support given by Hadrian to the Dionysiac 
 confraternities. Antoninus Pius v\fas equally enthusiastic, and the 
 connection of his paternal stock v^fith Nimes ensured the benefits of 
 that enthusiasm for Provenfal theatres. The crocodile and the palm- 
 tree on the ancient coins (and the modern escutcheon) of the city of 
 Nimes recall the fact that its original colonists were veterans from 
 Egypt, who would also be likely to have brought Greek theatrical 
 fashions from Alexandria. A very instructive inscription preserved at 
 Athens fixes without further doubt the connection of Hadrian and 
 Antoninus with the Dionysiac brotherhoods. It runs as follows: 
 "Decretum sacrae Hadrianiae Antoninae thymelicae peripolisticae 
 magnae synodi eorum qui ex toto orbe terrarum circa Bacchum et 
 imperatorem Caesarem T. Aelium Hadrianum Antoninum Augustum 
 Pium novum Bacchum sunt artificum. " The title of " no vus Bacchus," 
 given to Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, was continued to Caracalla, 
 and implied a double significance in the priesthoods under the pro- 
 tection of both the god and the divine emperor. Later on we find 
 a treasurer or procurator, appointed by the emperor, who managed the 
 dramatic funds, with the title of "logista thymelae." His functions 
 were necessitated by the fact that every performance had a competitive 
 element, and prizes were awarded to the best players, for tragedy, 
 comedy, flute playing, and poetic composition. Honourable titles were 
 borne by actors who had been thus rewarded at various famous per- 
 formances. One Valerius Eglectus is known to have won prizes in 
 Greece, Italy, Syria, and almost all the ancient world, and cities vied 
 with each other in bestowing titles upon him, and raising statues or 
 monuments in his honour. 
 
I70 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 The steps are built into the side of the hill, which 
 slopes from east to west, towards the columns of the 
 stage, and the Rhone beyond it; and the line of the stage 
 is almost exactly north and south, the entry as you 
 come from the amphitheatre being the northern gate 
 of the smaller building. The tower above the southern 
 entrance, known as the Tour de RoUand, is of course 
 of far later construction. There is no huge wall left 
 at the back of the stage as we saw at the Roman build- 
 ing of Orange, and the original wall here was probably 
 very differently treated. The theatre of Aries has suf- 
 fered sadly, and chiefly at the hands of the religious, 
 for religion seems often to have measured its sincerity 
 by its destructiveness, even from the earliest times. 
 In 446 the Deacon Cyril destroyed every detail of carv- 
 ing his fanatic worshippers could reach, and pulled 
 down every statue; and in 1664 a monastery was built 
 with the materials, and on the actual site of the stage. 
 
 It is somewhat difficult to suggest what used to be 
 here without emphasising archaeological details rather 
 more than would be suitable in the present volume. 
 My chief object is to tell the traveller what he can see, 
 to suggest what he may enjoy, rather than to in- 
 volve him and myself in barren antiquarian discus- 
 sions which he must look for in pages more austere 
 than mine. 
 
 The two beautiful and lonely columns, one from 
 
MUTILATED RUINS 171 
 
 Carrara, the other of African marble, remain the most 
 potent evocation of the vanished splendours of the 
 building, and need least explanation. The eight 
 columns of porphyry and one of verd antique, which 
 were shipwrecked on the Rhone as they were being 
 taken to Charles ix. in Paris, were probably once com- 
 panions of these two, which indicate accurately the 
 background of the somewhat narrow, classical stage. 
 In front of it extended the semicircular space for the 
 chorus and the dancing, called the orchestra, which 
 was reached from the stage by marble steps at each 
 extremity. Part of the marble pavement of this or- 
 chestra may still be seen. Under the Roman Em- 
 perors this central space in front, which corresponds 
 to the orchestra-stalls of modern theatres, was used for 
 the seats of distinguished personages, whereas the Hel- 
 lenic arrangement left it free for the proper development 
 of ceremonial dances. It has been calculated that some 
 sixteen thousand spectators could enter by the great gates, 
 north and south, and find places on seats which were so 
 cleverly arranged that every one could see the stage. ^ 
 A terribly inharmonious thought is suggested by the 
 fact that throughout the Middle Ages, and up to the 
 
 ' There were thirteen small chambers hollowed out in various 
 places beneath the rows of seats, containing a large bronze urn, or a 
 vessel of pottery, which were supposed to aid the acoustic properties 
 of the theatre as a whole. The building was about one hundred and 
 three metres in diameter, with an opening span of some forty-two 
 metres for the stage. 
 
172 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 Renaissance, the common name given to the sole sur- 
 viving pair of columns was the "Fourches de Rolland." 
 Modern poets have seen the shape of a lyre in their 
 graceful lines; but if we are to think that "Fourches 
 de Rolland" means "Fourches Patibulaires," we must 
 conclude that the ruin was used as a gibbet on which 
 were hanged those malefactors who had been im- 
 prisoned in the "Tour Dominante" above the southern 
 arches, or perhaps in the "Tour de Rolland," which 
 is the highest tower added to the Roman amphitheatre. 
 Such a conclusion, followed as it is by the settlement of 
 a convent upon that desecrated stage, suggests that a 
 spot once consecrated to the drama will never be with- 
 out its innate possibilities of tragic, as of comic, hap- 
 penings. The amphitheatre, as I shall point out later, 
 certainly preserved for many centuries the tragic possi- 
 bilities ingrained in its foundation-stones, as other 
 amphitheatres have done on English soil; for when 
 Judge Jeffreys held his "Bloody Assizes" in Dorchester 
 it was in the "Maumbury" (as they call the Roman 
 amphitheatre there) that the population gathered to see 
 two hundred and ninety persons hanged; and it was 
 again in the middle of those haunted ruins that an Eng- 
 lish crowd of ten thousand watched Mary Channing 
 strangled and burnt in 1705, on the accusation of having 
 poisoned her husband. Scarcely less terrible are the 
 memories of "Les Ar^nes d'Arles" in modern centuries. 
 
GREEK SCULPTURE 173 
 
 The Greek character of the whole building of this 
 theatre at Aries is emphasised by the fact that a theatre 
 was as important a part of the life and religion of a 
 Greek town as was its temple; with the result that in 
 the Rhone valley, where there was so much Greek in- 
 fluence, we find one theatre in a small Roman colony 
 at Orange, and another in an important Greek colony 
 at Aries, while in Rome itself there are only the traces 
 of the Theatre of Marcellus, with a diameter seventy 
 feet larger than that of Orange; and in other parts of 
 Italy we have to look in places where Greek influence 
 was paramount, as it was, for example, in Pompeii and 
 in Herculaneum. But even apart from all these gen- 
 eral considerations the details of sculpture discovered 
 among the debris of the theatre would alone be suffi- 
 cient to stamp its artistic origins, even if nothing else 
 survived. The first and most famous of these, dug up 
 during some excavations made by order of the king in 
 1651,^ was the exquisite marble statue known as the 
 Venus of Aries, now in the Louvre. 
 
 The original may well have been a skilled repro- 
 duction of the lost Aphrodite of Praxiteles. The 
 whole of the right arm, and the lower part of the left 
 from the elbow downwards have unfortunately been 
 restored; and this restoration I am compelled to repro- 
 
 ' Seguin says, "excavations made for a cistern in the courtyard of 
 the convent," which in his day (1680) was on the site of the stage. 
 
174 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 duce, though much against my will, for the photo- 
 graph taken in the Louvre is the only one that gives a 
 just idea of the marble. Whatever else may have 
 been the position of the original arms, we may be cer- 
 tain that the goddess did not hold a ball in one hand 
 and a mirror in the other, as the restorer seems to 
 suggest. Only thirty-six years after the Venus was 
 brought to light, Seguin published an engraving of 
 the marble, which was, by a misplaced loyalty, sent as 
 a present to Versailles, in his Antiquitez d' Aries ; and 
 this engraving I reproduce with all its defects to show 
 the effect of the modern additions. The Venus of 
 Milo and the Victory of Samothrace have fortunately 
 been saved from similar desecration. It is only when 
 such masterpieces are- altered by inefficient workmen 
 that we perceive either the relatively unimportant acci- 
 dent of breakage, or the unsurpassable beauty of the 
 Greek treatment and conception. 
 
 The Venus was found by two brothers, whose name 
 was Brun, on the 6th of June, 1651. In May 1684 it 
 was brought to Paris by Jean de Dieu, the sculptor of 
 Aries, a pupil of Puget. Michel Angelo refused to 
 restore the lost hand of the statue of Meleager, as he 
 was requested, for fear his own work might spoil the 
 conception of the ancient artist. M. Girardon felt no 
 such scruples in supplying this Aphrodite with what 
 he thought was needed to complete her, and his execu- 
 
THE VENUS OF ARLES IN THE LOUVRE (restored). 
 
 The smaller figure shows the marble as originally found. 
 
THE VENUS OF ARLES 177 
 
 tion of the hands seems to me as bad as his idea of 
 their position and use. On April 18, 1865, the statue 
 was brought to the grand gallery of Versailles, and it 
 is now in the "Salle du Gladiateur" in the Louvre. ^ 
 Its colour, a delicate warm brown, shows that the 
 marble (which came from Mount Hymettus) was 
 originally treated with burnt wax, which gives it a 
 soft, sun-kissed patina of mellow gold, and there are 
 slight traces of that tender colouring, in light shades, 
 which are to be found in other examples of the best 
 Greek art. More human than the proud and severely 
 simple goddess from Melos, more dignified than the 
 subtly and delicately sensual Venus de Medicis, this 
 exquisite statue holds a middle place, commands a 
 loyalty all its own. For as it shows the maid just 
 blossoming into the perfect woman, so it exemplifies 
 that moment in the art of sculpture which is after the 
 perfection of the divine and before the frank seduction 
 of the feminine. She is but half unclad. She wears, 
 as is her right, the highest charms of mortal woman, 
 yet she has not quite stepped down from Olympus to 
 
 ' Just as the masterpieces of Phidias and Praxiteles were at one time 
 to be seen close to the ancient fetish-stones which represented the 
 earliest conception of Divinity, so, in Provence, there has been found 
 at Antibes an oval fragment of diorite of the fifth century B.C., which 
 represents the ancient fetish-stone before the Aphrodite of Aries had 
 been created. It bears an inscription to Eros (for in that way I 
 construe Tfpiriev) as follows : Ifpirav fT^u fltSs Bepdirav (reiunjs 'Afpo- 
 SirTjs rots 5e KaToffr'fitrcuri K6irpts X^P^^ avrairoSoiT]. No doubt it is a 
 remnant of the Phocaean colonists of Marseilles. 
 
178 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 the earth. If indeed she be the copy, perhaps even 
 the duplicate, of the Aphrodite of Praxiteles, she is the 
 child of his earliest years when' still the influence of 
 Scopas was upon him, before the genius of Phidias was 
 forgotten. There is a copy from the same great origi- 
 nal now in the British Museum, ^ which was discovered 
 at Ostia in 1776 by Gavin Hamilton. But the true 
 copies of the Venus of Aries are the Arlesiennes, as 
 Aubanel has sung: — 
 
 "O doujo Venus d'Arle! o fado de jouvenjo! 
 Ta beuta que clarejo en touto la Prouvenjo 
 Fai bello nosti fiho e nosti drole san; 
 Souto aquelo car bruno, o Venus ! i a toun sang 
 Sempre vi^u, senipre caud " ^ 
 
 Almost at the same time as the Venus was discov- 
 ered, a very beautiful Greek head was dug out from 
 among the same ruins of the theatre. Though the face 
 is imperfect it is far better to have kept it in Provence 
 than to have had it restored at the price of losing it in 
 the Galleries of the Louvre. It has been called the 
 head of Livia, wife of Augustus; but, even supposing 
 a statue had been set up in Aries to the deified Empress 
 
 ' Our Museum has also secured an exquisite statue called the 
 Diadymene of Vaison, one of the marbles which once decorated the 
 theatre there. 
 
 ' Aubanel's graceful lines, written for Paul Arfene, are too long to 
 quote in full, and are of a delicate savour which would evaporate in 
 translation ; but I have included one of their suggestions in the verses 
 that preserve, elsewhere, some of the impressions that Aphrodite's 
 statue made upon the writer of this book. 
 
A GREEK BUST 
 
 179 
 
 after her death, this impassive divinity could not have 
 been the portrait of any human original. The nature 
 of the fissure in the marble 
 suggests that we have here 
 the perfect piece as far as 
 it went, and that drapery 
 in some other material 
 crossed the breast from 
 beneath the left arm over 
 the right shoulder. The 
 modelling of the neck 
 and hair, and the perfect 
 finish of the workmanship 
 throughout, have been 
 considered by the best 
 authorities to indicate the 
 great period of Greek art, 
 and the peculiar treatment 
 
 of the surface has been no less effective than in the case 
 of the Arlesian Aphrodite in the Louvre. The head is 
 placed upon a pedestal which does not, of course, belong 
 to it, but is an altar to the "Bona Dea" set up by her 
 priestess Caiena Attice, the freed woman of Prisca. Of 
 this I shall have more to say in another chapter, and it 
 is only necessary here to point out how much superior 
 is the Greek work at Aries to what little can be attrib- 
 uted to Greece at Nimes, even if we include the Venus 
 
 GREEK BUST AT ARLES. 
 
i8o 
 
 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 of Nimes, and such examples of decadent Graeco-Roman 
 workmanship as the bust of Hermes or the Apollo from 
 Ladignan. 
 
 There is also preserved at Aries a fine head from the 
 colossal statue of Augustus which once adorned the 
 theatre. Though mutilated and defaced, it still re- 
 tains the characteristic Roman physiognomy; the low, 
 
 full forehead, thick lips, 
 and prominent cheek- 
 bones. Above all, there 
 is that expression of 
 lofty thought, of almost 
 austere majesty which 
 only the real artist could 
 convey ; , and the work- 
 manship shows traces of 
 the true Hellenic touch, 
 for it was no doubt 
 carved by some Greek 
 sculptor who had been 
 attracted by the lavish 
 orders given for the 
 later decoration of the 
 theatre.^ By the same hand, too, are the magnificent 
 
 ' In Bernoulli's Bildnisse der romischen Kaiser, in the volume on 
 the Julian and Claudian houses, the author says of this bust at Aries 
 (which is No. 60 on his thirty-eighth page), that it is "vom Typus der 
 Statue von Primaporta im Vatican." The bust, numbered 1877 in the 
 British Museum, may be compared with it. 
 
 THE IMPERIAL WREATH 
 OF AUGUSTUS AT ARLES. 
 
THE DANCING GIRL 
 
 i8i 
 
 imperial wreath, with its broad fillet, which once no 
 doubt formed part of the altar to the divine Augus- 
 tus ; and the separate altar 
 which seems to unite the 
 divinities of the Emperor 
 and of Aphrodite, in the 
 theatre which held so 
 many decorations in hon- 
 our of them both. This 
 latter is a masterpiece of 
 design and execution in 
 white marble, with swans 
 at each corner, holding a 
 thick garland of lavirel in 
 their beaks. The treat- 
 ment of the silken fillet 
 
 and of the birds' wings, is especially fine. Augustus, 
 like every member of the Julian house, prided himself 
 on his descent, through Aeneas, from the goddess 
 Aphrodite; we know, too, from Suetonius, that the 
 palm was his favourite tree, and it therefore appears 
 upon one side of this altar. 
 
 As a last example of the sculpture which this treasure- 
 house of Hellenic art contained, I may select the statue 
 of a dancing-girl in the Aries Museum, full of graceful 
 life, though so little of the carving has been saved. 
 Her strong yet delicate foot scarce seems to touch the 
 
 ALTAR TO VENUS AND AUGUSTUS 
 AT ARLES. 
 
i82 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 ground as she floats forward amid a gentle sway of 
 billowing draperies.: She stood, no doubt, near the 
 steps that led down from the stage to the orchestra, 
 where her living sisters danced the rhythmic steps of 
 Greece. A marble fragment of the proscenium above 
 them has been also found, a bas-relief, representing 
 the triumph of Apollo and the punishment of Marsyas. 
 It should be remembered that although the plans 
 were made, and the building begun, of the Greek 
 theatre at Aries at about the date before Christ which 
 I have mentioned, the decoration of the structure with 
 its elaborate ornaments, and the gradual collection of 
 the statues which adorned it, took at least a century 
 longer, and very probably for some three centuries 
 continual additions of one kind or another were being 
 made. So beautiful and so laboriously perfected a 
 whole deserved better treatment at the hands of St. 
 Hilary's zealous deacon; and it is an ironical commen- 
 tary on generally received opinions to find that what 
 the early Christians cared not to preserve, and what 
 was either wantonly degraded or sullenly neglected up 
 to the seventeenth century, received the unaccustomed 
 honours of a special guardian from Theodoric, King of 
 the Goths, from his successor Athalaric, and from the 
 Queen Amalasonte, who not only appointed a count of 
 their court to watch over the classical remains, but 
 spent money of their own to save them from destruc- 
 
GREECE AND ROME AT ARLES 183 
 
 tion. When more modern Aries awoke to the fact that 
 she was the guardian of a priceless artistic antiquity, 
 she could find no better use for her carvings than in 
 giving them away to French monarchs, or Italian 
 cardinals, or to any notability whose passing favoui: 
 it was important for the municipality to gain. Person- 
 ally, I can never forgive or understand the transporta- 
 tion of their Aphrodite from her ancient shrine. Yet 
 she is but one example out of many lesser losses. They 
 even include the torso of the colossal statue of Augus- 
 tus, whose head remains alone in the museum at Aries. 
 
 "Tout passe. L'art robuste 
 Seul a r^ternite. 
 
 Le buste 
 Survit a la cite ; 
 Et la medaille austfere 
 Que trouve un laboureur 
 
 Sous terra 
 Revfele un empereur." 
 
EARLY CHRISTIAN TOMB AT ARLES [c]. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS IN PROVENCE AND 
 GREEK ART AT NIMES 
 
 ". . . Per omnia quasi superstitiosiores vos video. Praeteriens 
 enim et videns simulacra vestra inveni et aram in qua scriptum erat 
 Ignoto Deo." 
 
 The building of the theatre of Aries marks the end of 
 an era distinguished by the gradual intermixture of 
 various racial elements, chiefly Celtic and Hellenic, 
 upon a favourable soil. After the reign of Augustus, 
 this composite population was profoundly modified by 
 Roman ideas and Roman modes of life; yet it retained 
 certain characteristics which have never been lost; 
 which retarded its union with an alien Paris until very 
 late in its history; and which preserved its individual 
 and peculiar flavour until the present day. This is 
 not the place for ethnological discussions ; but I may at 
 
ANCIENT RELIGIONS IN PROVENCE 185 
 
 least venture to suggest a few of the constituents into 
 which the living unity of Provence can briefly be ana- 
 lysed in its progress through the ages, especially those 
 which so profoundly modified its early years that ma- 
 turity has never lost their influence; and I can do so 
 best by reference to what remains of its most ancient 
 faiths. 
 
 The earliest nurse of Gallic culture was no doubt 
 the religion called Druidic, which taught the doctrines 
 of metempsychosis and of a future life, mingled with 
 much nature-magic, and the use of the moon for the 
 dwisions of the calendar. On the sixth day of the 
 moon was cut the mistletoe, which symbolised the new 
 Hfe flourishing upon the old oak of the past; and 
 at the ceremony two bulls were sacrificed. These 
 rites did not tend to unite a population still widely dis- 
 seminated in many small groups all over the country; 
 and it was the necessity for self-defence, when every 
 man's hand was against his neighbour's, that produced 
 the clans and tribal associations. The tribe of the 
 Allobroges were gathered into Vienne; the Tectosages, 
 a tribe of the Volcae, into Toulouse, Carcassonne, 
 Beziers and Narbonne; the Arecomician tribe of the 
 Volcae into Nlmes, which preserved the name of Ne- 
 mausus, their fountain-god. These attributions can- 
 not invariably be shown to be accurate; but they indi- 
 cate quite fairly how remarkably similar the divisions 
 
i86 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 of the ancient peoples remained after the Roman con- 
 quest to what they had been before it.^ 
 
 This extraordinary persistence in racial characteris- 
 tics continued after Gaul had changed her religion, her 
 customs, her language, and her laws, as far as public 
 life went, for those of Rome. One reason is that the 
 actual infusion of new blood, Latin blood, was not very 
 great in proportion to the indigenous mass of popula- 
 tion. Of relatively few "colonies" can this infusion 
 be proved beyond doubt, and be traced in the official 
 name given. That of Narbonne suggests the importa- 
 tion of the veterans of the tenth legion. Tiie sixth 
 legion had a similar connection with Aries, called 
 "Colonia Julia Paterna Arelate Sextanorum." The 
 Latin colonists, sent to Vienne in b.c. 46, were nearly 
 all expelled later on by the original inhabitants. Lyons 
 was but small, as a Roman town, and represented no 
 large previous settlement in spite of its high-sounding 
 name of "Colonia Copia Claudia Augusta Lugudu- 
 num." Beziers was colonised by veterans from the 
 seventh legion, Frejus from the eighth. Even if Des- 
 jardins's estimate of three hundred families as forming 
 a "colony" be too exiguous, we shall not be justified 
 
 ' Preserved at Avignon is an inscription in which Hirschfeld sees 
 the only trace now left of a supreme magistrate of Nimes (between 
 the fall of Marseilles and the Principate of Augustus), who was still 
 called Praetor of the Arecomician tribe of the Volcae. It runs as 
 
 follows ; T. CARISIUS. PRAETOR. VOLCA. AR. DAT. 
 
ROMAN CITIZENSHIP 187 
 
 in increasing it too far, and in nearly every case it could 
 only influence to a given extent the agglomeration of 
 tribal inhabitants already on the spot. Even then it must 
 also be recalled that many of Caesar's veterans had been 
 recruited in Cisalpine Gaul and in the Narbonnaise. 
 
 After all these considerations it would be very diffi- 
 cult to formulate any precise desire on the part of Rome 
 to "assimilate" the Gauls. Tacitus seems to indicate 
 the process in describing the policy of Agricola, but in 
 its essentials the idea itself is entirely modern. Rome 
 certainly broke down the old barriers of tribal and city 
 exclusiveness ; but it was not at her will that the Gauls 
 changed so much. It was at their own. The Aqui- 
 tanian Juhus Vindex, the Haeduan Julius Sacrovir, 
 the Treviran Julius Florus; these men, who rebelled 
 against Rome, bore the names bequeathed to them 
 by fathers or grandfathers who had been made Ro- 
 man citizens by Julius or Augustus. Innumerable in- 
 stances of the same thing occur in the inscriptions, 
 some of which I shall mention later on; and examples 
 of such Gallic names as Smertulitanos, Comartiorix, 
 or Dubnacus are rare enough to stand out as obvious 
 exceptions to the general rule, and almost entirely dis- 
 appear by 200 A.D. The reason, no doubt, is that the 
 Gauls rapidly recognised the advantages of Roman 
 citizenship, and took the name of the man to whom 
 they owed their rights, just as a liberated slave was 
 
OLD PROVENCE 
 
 described as the freedman of his former master. When, 
 for example, a Gaul named Cabur had been given his 
 citizenship by Caius Valerius Flaccus, he called himself 
 Caius Valerius Caburius, and his son was known as 
 Caius Valerius Procillus. The transformation was com- 
 plete; and in this case, too, before 50 B.C. 
 
 From the condition of subjects, such men as these 
 had aimed at membership of the Empire, and they 
 could rise step by step in the official ranks until, at 
 last, even the highest place was theirs. The price 
 they paid was that instead of calling themselves Gauls 
 they gloried in the name of Roman; by that name 
 Gregory of Tours describes them in the fifth century; 
 and their ancient patriotism insensibly became the 
 love of Rome. As one of their own poets has said, 
 apostrophising the capital of his Empire: "Fecisti 
 patriam diversis gentibus unam." It was not Rome 
 who tried to gather these men into her bosom. It was 
 they who were not content till they had been gathered 
 in, for the sake of the legal protection of person and of 
 property, of recognised sale and purchase, of marital 
 or paternal authority. From the unstable, external, 
 shadowy position of a "peregrinus," they reached the 
 acknowledged status of a citizen. They asked no bet- 
 ter reward for their services in the field, as was seen 
 when the five thousand Gauls who were in Caesar's 
 famous Transalpine legion, the Alauda, were at a 
 
INDIGENOUS TRIBES 189 
 
 Stroke given their citizenship. They expected no 
 other recognition from Augustus and his successors, 
 for their public work or political activity, than this 
 same citizenship, which had much the effect, though 
 far more than the significance, of the modern list of 
 honours which appears on various important dates at 
 the present day; and, in precisely the same way the 
 rich, by degrees, asserted and maintained their right to 
 the same favours. 
 
 It would not be correct therefore to imagine that 
 Gaul was oppressed, enslaved, and desolated by the 
 Roman Conquest. Populations which had never 
 previously coagulated into even the nominal unity 
 which may be called a nation can hardly be said to 
 have bewailed their "loss of nationahty." With very 
 few exceptions they were allowed to retain their own 
 organisations, their own family life. The trifles a 
 man thinks so essential to his personality were un- 
 touched. The only radical changes made were those 
 necessitated by the administration of Roman law and 
 life over large districts, and the rapid approximation to 
 Roman ways of Kving in those districts was the free 
 and subsequent expression of individual desire. Men 
 whose outlook was bounded by their own concerns 
 would notice very little change at all in every detail of 
 private existence. The Vocontii, for instance, in Gallia 
 Narbonensis, retained their tribal integrity, but with 
 
190 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 this weighty difference : that instead of constant inter- 
 tribal feuds they now enjoyed continual peace : the " Pax 
 Romana" of the Empire they soon grew to love. 
 
 For these same reasons such ancient faiths of theirs 
 as Druidism were not persecuted out of existence. 
 They merely ceased to exist. The same modern fal- 
 lacy must be avoided here as we noticed in .transferring 
 modern notions of "assimilation" to Imperial Rome. 
 The missionary is a modern development, and whole- 
 sale religious persecution is chiefly posterior to the 
 formulation of various modern creeds. The need for 
 some kind of spiritual belief is innate in man, if human 
 history has any meaning since its earliest records; but 
 the forms of that belief have changed and are changing 
 since the beginning. Nor is it possible to assert that 
 Druidism was the religion of the Gauls. ^ It was 
 rather a sacerdotal cult imported from more northern 
 peoples, and its highest mysteries were the monopoly 
 of a priestly hierarchy. It grafted itself upon an older, 
 more natural faith, and gradually imposed its cere- 
 monies everywhere; but the people had their gods, and 
 Julius Caesar recognised very little difference except 
 the names in the divinities which represented to 
 
 ' Too much stress has been laid, in this connection, on the passage 
 in Suetonius's life of Claudius, which runs in Holland's translation: 
 " The religion of the Druidae among the Frenchmen, practising horrible 
 and detestable cruelty, and which under Augustus, Romane citizens 
 onely were forbidden to professe and use, he quite put downe and 
 abolished." 
 
ANCIENT RELIGIONS IN PROVENCE 191 
 
 them his Diana (Arduinna), Mercury, Jupiter, Mars 
 (Camul), Apollo (Belen), or Minerva. The conse- 
 quence of this was that the only change observable 
 after the coming of Rome was that Druidical inter- 
 vention ceased. The Druidical corporation came to 
 an end when the conventions for tribal government 
 ceased with the substitution of another government. 
 Its magic rites were forbidden by Tiberius, its human 
 sacrifices by Claudius. It departed, in fact, to its old 
 home in the British islands; and only an unconsidered 
 remnant lasted on a few more centuries in the wilder 
 forests of Provence. 
 
 Once more it will be fair to see the exercise of Gaulish 
 freewill rather than of Roman constraint. The tribes 
 saw that nothing to outrage their established customs 
 was suggested, and of their own accord they gradually 
 gave up what they would have eagerly defended, had 
 it been openly attacked. As the Latin language grew 
 more and more popular, the Gallic gods added the 
 Latin names to their own ancient appellations. Di- 
 vinities more aged still, and brought from other lands, 
 were worshipped also: Isis, and Mithra, for example; 
 for under the Roman rule religion enjoyed nearly al- 
 ways the greatest freedom, except when it took on 
 a dangerous political complexion, as was sometimes 
 the case with Christianity. No nationality at any rate 
 was recognised in the many divinities of the world. 
 
192 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 Greek, or Egyptian, or Asiatic gods were worshipped 
 in Italy; Italian gods in Gaul. 
 
 As an example of this tolerance of ancient faiths, 
 we find that the Arecomician tribe of the Volcae were 
 first attracted to Nimes by the beautiful spring which 
 gushes out from the last low buttresses of the Cdvennes, 
 and the tribe continued to give honour for the founda- 
 tion of their "colony" to Nemausus, the fountain-god 
 who gave the town its name, long after the Romans had 
 established their dominion. Inscriptions were set up 
 by Gallic inhabitants with the words: "Deo Coloniae 
 Nemauso," "Genio Coloniae Nemauso." The Gallic 
 shrine was carefully preserved by the Romans, who 
 built the more enduring temple to the same divinity, 
 which may yet be seen; and sometimes a Celtic wor- 
 shipper dedicated his altar both to his own and to the 
 Roman deity; sometimes both races made their separate 
 offerings to their ancient gods.^ 
 
 ' E.g. (i) "Deo Nemauso Valeria Procilla," inscribed on a bronze 
 votive tablet. (2) " Jovi Optimo Maximo Heliopolitano et Nemauso 
 Caius Julius Tiberii filius Fabia tribu . . ." inscribed on a votive altar 
 with a sword and buckler carved on one side, and on the other the 
 statue of "Jupiter Heliopolitanus," to whom Antoninus built the gigan- 
 tic temple at Baalbec, the only known example of such a statue of -ihis 
 god, who was widely worshipped throughout the Empire at the end of 
 the second century a.d. (3) "Jovi et Nemauso Titus Flavins Hermes 
 Exactor Operum Basilicae Marmorarii et Lapidarii votum solvunt," a 
 votive inscription of thanksgiving from the inspector, and the marble- 
 and stone-workers for the safe erection of buildings at Nimes in the 
 Augustan period. Inscriptions also occur to Mars, as "Augusto 
 Marti Britovio," "Marti Augusto Lacavo." (4) "Laribus Tertius 
 
ANCIENT RELIGIONS IN PROVENCE 193 
 
 Besides the local religions of the Celtic inhabitants, 
 and the Greek rites of later colonists, there existed for 
 long in Provence, and especially in Aries, the memory 
 of Eastern rites which were different from Hellenic 
 faiths; and of these rites we can still see traces in the 
 worship of the "Bona Dea," or Cybele, which had come 
 west in the third century B.C., and of Mithra, which 
 was subsequent to the Roman conquest. In the poly- 
 glot and miscellaneous rituals of Rome, even in the 
 purer, nobler ceremonies of Periclean Athens, there 
 remained traces of a more ferocious, Oriental past, 
 which was the shadowy mother ,of all ritual and all 
 symbolism. Dionysus or Bacchus was more an Asiatic 
 
 Lesbii Filius Minervae et Nemauso Votura Solvit," on a votive altar to 
 the Lares, Minerva, and Nemausus. (5) "Nemauso Augusto Censor 
 Jugarius . . ." inscribed on the base of a portico in honour of the 
 fountain-god. In the "Proxumi" we find some special domestic 
 divinities of the Arecomicians, female, and privately worshipped. 
 e.g. (6) "Proxumis Suis Cornelia Cupita," (7) "Proxumis Bituka 
 Votum Solvit." Other old worships are suggested in (8) "Rufina 
 Lucubus Votum Solvit Libens Merito," an altar to the sacred groves, 
 in (9) "Junonibus Montanis Cinnamis Votum Solvit," an altar to 
 various personifications of Juno of the Hills, sometimes called 
 "Matronae." (10) "TitiaSavinis Ornatrix Fecit Hisidi Votum . . ." 
 inscribed on an altar dedicated by Titia, a lady's maid, to Isis. These 
 are all (except the first) chosen from inscriptions which may be seen 
 at Nlmes, and were published in 1893 by Eugene Germer-Durand. 
 On an epitaph at Nimes is preserved the fact that Tettia, wife of 
 Marcus Gesicus, was a priestess of Isis: "isiDis sacerdos." One 
 of the most curious of all these religious fragments, and in its way 
 unique, is the monument set up at Nimes to the Fates by Valerius 
 Tatinus, "in accomplishment of a vow made according to the orders 
 he received in a dream " : per somnium iussus val • tat ■ 
 
 PARCABUS ■ V • S ■ L • M. 
 
194 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 or an Indian type than he was either Greek or Roman. 
 In the orgies over which he officially presided the 
 Oriental taint is manifest; and in nearly all rites which 
 included "mysteries" the same Eastern survivals may 
 be traced. In exactly the same way the Mysteries 
 of the "Bona Dea" and the cult of Mithra lasted on 
 among the rites of Aries until the sturdy Christianity 
 of the fifth century seems to have dispelled them finally. 
 Mithra was the God of the Sun and of Fire, the 
 supreme divinity of Zoroastrianism, the incarnation 
 of Ormuzd, the regenerator of the world. Some of 
 the earliest representations show him as a young, heroic 
 god, slaying a bull, and the Taurobolic rites preserved 
 that memory. But there was an esoteric presentment 
 of him also, showing all the mighty symbols of his 
 power ; and of this kind is the strange statue in the 
 Museum of Aries. The lion's head has vanished. 
 Round the torso a serpent winds its splendid scales, 
 and between its coils are carved in relief the constella- 
 tions of the Zodiac. This strange and interesting 
 fragment of antiquity was discovered in 1598 on the 
 left bank of the Rhone near the old Porte de la Roquette, 
 and in 1723 was bought for twenty-seven liyres by 
 the consuls of the town, who were under the erroneous 
 impression that it was an Egyptian effigy of Esculapius. 
 The inscription recording this mistake still exists. The 
 lost lion's head represented the strength of the sun when 
 it entered the constellation Leo; the serpent symbolised 
 
THE "BONA DEA" 19S 
 
 the ecliptic course apparently taken by the sun as it 
 moved through its yearly path across the sky. The 
 mysterious nature of these tenets ensured them a long 
 life. Especially to the poorer classes did the sacrifice 
 known as "taurobolia" appeal, and the memories of 
 it are preserved on altars with carvings of oxen's skulls, 
 and the inscription "deo soli invicto mithrae." 
 The ritual consisted in the digging of a pit within which 
 stood the worshipper. Above him, supported by planks, 
 was placed the bull chosen for sacrifice, and its blood 
 was poured upon his body through the interstices of 
 the wood over his head. 
 
 Far less repulsive was the worship, of the "Bona 
 Dea," the Good Goddess, that Mighty Mother of the 
 universe whom the Greeks sometimes called Cybele, 
 who was worshipped in the Eleusinian Mysteries, and 
 whose cult goes back to Phrygian and Phoenician 
 shrines. As Rhea, Demeter, the Idaean Mother, As- 
 tarte, Ceres, this same divinity appeared in various 
 forms, and in her honour also were held those nocturnal 
 dances and debaucheries which accompanied the rites 
 of Cybele. The altar to the Bona Dea in the museum 
 at Aries is a square block of Carrara marble, about 
 four feet high. Upon the front is carved a beautiful 
 wreath of oak leaves, within which are placed two ears,i 
 
 ' This wreath, drawn for me by my mother, now decorates the cover 
 of this volume. The ears here shown are mentioned in the inscriptions, 
 though unknown in other carvings; for Gruter quotes a dedication 
 (Ixxxix. 6) " Auribus Bonae Deas." The combination of the cult of the 
 
196 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 as if to indicate that though no one might carve the 
 face of the divinity, yet she was ever present, and ever 
 listening to her worshippers. Above the wreath is 
 the inscription: "bonae deae caiena priscae lib. 
 ATTiCE MiNiSTRA," which signifies that the altar was 
 set up to the goddess by her priestess Caiena Attice, 
 the freedwoman of Prisca. The elegant ewer carved 
 on one side, with an olive branch upon it, is especially 
 worthy of notice; and the whole style implies a time 
 not much later than Augustus. 
 
 This altar is, somewhat inappropriately, used as the 
 pedestal for the marble head of the goddess "au Nez 
 cass^," with which it has no connection whatever. 
 It was found in 1758 beneath the chief entrance to the 
 church of Notre Dame la Major, which was first built 
 near an old pagan temple in about the sixth century 
 A.D. The male head, with ram's horns carved on one 
 side, represents the sun in Capricorn, and suggests the 
 union of Cybele with Jupiter Ammon, of the spring 
 sunshine with the earth it fertilises. 
 
 The carelessness which the majority of the inhabi- 
 tants of modern Nlmes and Aries display towards the 
 
 Bona Dea with the Taurobolic offerings appropriate to Mithra is 
 observable at Vence: idaeae matri Valeria marciana Valeria 
 
 CARMOSINE ET CASSIUS PATERNUS SACERDOS TAURORIPOLIUM SUO 
 
 STjMPTtJ celebraverxjnt. And at Riez — matri deum magnaeqtje 
 
 DEAE L. DECIMUS PACATUS ET COELIA SECUNDINA [eITJS Ob] SACRUM 
 
 taurorum fecit. 
 
THE APOLLO OF LADIGNAN 197 
 
 extraordinary collections in their museums is only 
 equalled by the difficulty with which the local author- 
 ities surround every effort to discover or to reproduce 
 them. Several of the interesting statues kept in the 
 Maison Carree at Nimes were photographed for the 
 first time in April 1904/ owing to my determination 
 that my readers should be able in some measure to 
 form their own opinion about these practically unknown 
 treasures. The majority it will be more appropriate 
 to mention later on, in my sketch of Roman hfe in 
 Provence, but all of them have a deep interest from the 
 fact that they are among the very relics of an age that 
 comes after the best period of either Greek or Roman 
 art, and before both were swept away by northern or 
 by Saracenic invasions. They are not the work of 
 skilled artists; but they show how the old ideals were 
 preserved by inhabitants of the towns, and even the 
 villages, of Provence, long after" the expression of those 
 ideals in stone had lost its first perfection; and three 
 among them I may take as symbohsing that especially 
 Graeco-Roman form of art which it is the purpose of 
 this present chapter to emphasise. 
 
 One of them is an Apollo. The photograph is be- 
 fore me; but I have hesitated to reproduce it because 
 I think the zeal of the rustic restorer has placed the 
 head from a similar statue of Aphrodite upon the male 
 • By Raphael Royer, 3 Place d'Assas, Nimes. 
 
198 
 
 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 figure of the god, which throws the whole work out of 
 proportion. But Reinach, who mentions this statue 
 (Repert. de la Stat. Grec. et Rom., vol. ii. p. 94), does 
 not notice the substitution of the head, and considers 
 the pose is typical. The little statue still preser\'es its 
 elements of charm, and deserves more than the notice 
 
 it obtains. It was found 
 at Ladignan. Rather 
 better, both in style and 
 workmanship, is the small 
 bust called the Hermes 
 that was found at Nlmes. 
 The hair is bad, the cap 
 is an addition, but the face 
 itseK is original. It is 
 only down to the join of 
 the neck that we have the 
 rest of the original marble, 
 but this is more than 
 enough to convince the 
 sympathetic spectator of 
 its genuine value as the Greek portrait of a Roman 
 boy. 
 
 More important than all is, of course, the graceful 
 figure known as the "Venus of Ntmes." She cannot 
 be compared to the Aphrodite at Aries, either in treat- 
 ment or in workmanship, as was only to be expected 
 
 BUST CALLED THE MERCURY OF N^MES. 
 
THE VENUS OF NIMES 
 
 199 
 
 from the more distinctively Roman surroundings among 
 which she first appeared. But, though decadent, she is 
 still Greek, and the true inspiration is still evident even 
 after the numberless misfortunes to which the hapless 
 marble has had through many centuries to submit. 
 
 Less than thirty years ago, some workmen had dug 
 a trench for the purpose 
 of repairing gas and water 
 pipes, in what is now the 
 Rue Pavee, in a poor 
 quarter outside the boule- 
 vards, which was once the 
 centre of Nemausus, near 
 the Maison Carree. At 
 two metres below the sur- 
 face, which is exactly the 
 level of the Roman city, 
 they found a hundred and 
 three pieces of marble in 
 a fairly compact mass. 
 Luckily M. Irenee Ginoux 
 recognised certain traces of the human form in these 
 pathetic fragments, and he had them all brought in 
 safety to the old town Hbrary. Some time after this 
 the sculptor Prosper Maurin set to work to fit them 
 together, aided by finding that the feet, the bosom, the 
 top of the head, and the lower part of the face were 
 
 THE VENUS OF NIMES. 
 
OLD PROVENCE 
 
 still recognisably intact. He finally reconstructed a 
 statue in white marble, one metre thirty-five in height, 
 a little shorter than the celebrated Venus de Medicis. 
 The right arm alone had disappeared. Luckily he 
 placed neither an apple nor a mirror in a new arm of 
 his own, but left to the imagination the gracious curves 
 of wrist and elbow that once half veiled and half dis- 
 covered the beauties of a breast now bare.^ 
 
 The head-dress is Greek in its simplicity, with a plain 
 "sphendone" to keep the hair in place. The left hand 
 that partly veils the body also lifts up the draperies above 
 the knee; and perhaps the less said about this drapery 
 the better, though there are certain affinities with the 
 treatment of the folds at Aries, which will be obvious 
 after any careful comparison. I cannot, I confess, im- 
 agine this to be a goddess. She is neither nude nor 
 draped, neither girlishly modest nor divinely unabashed. 
 She is but a pretty model, carved as she stood, a some- 
 what saucy baggage, it may be feared, without a trace 
 of ideahsation either in herself or in her artist. Yet 
 there is undeniable attractiveness in the work. It is 
 the work of a clever and a facile hand that has forgotten 
 
 'Compare the famous torso at Vienna, known as the "Venus 
 Accroupie de Vienne," evidently a Greek work in Parian marble, 
 naked, and bending forward upon her right leg in the well-known 
 provocatively pudibund attitude. She, too, has more of the human 
 than the divine, and all the charms of the Hetaira are realistically ren- 
 dered with the same skill of the connoisseur that might have inspired 
 the chubby sirens of a Rubens. 
 
A "VENUS DU QU ARTIER" 
 
 the old dignity of a greater art. The girl was think- 
 ing she was pretty, and the sculptor was thinking of 
 the girl, and I cannot imagine either of them giving 
 much thought to the goddess. The result is that mix- 
 ture of purity and provocation which has inspired the 
 role of the ingenious ingenue in every decadent studio 
 since art began. If she was indeed a Venus, she was 
 a "Venus du Quartier," and I seem to see this "gueuse 
 parfumee de Provence " in the hall of some fat merchant, 
 who shows her off to his commercial partners after 
 dinner, rather than in the sanctuary of a temple. She 
 has the air of that frivolously fashionable religion which 
 amuses the irreligious patrons of an unbelieving art, 
 which makes you see, in the conscious divinities of 
 Versailles, the more or less undraped acquaintances of 
 the eighteenth century sculptor and his elegant young 
 friends. Still, she is the product of a time which has 
 left us scarcely any trace of its existence ; and she would 
 have her value were you but to see, from looking at her 
 closely, the reason why her sister of Aries, still more 
 her sister from Melos, are so immensely her superiors. 
 And she is the best that Nimes can show. 
 
 Of the four other carvings from the Maison Carree 
 Museum, which I shall reproduce later, three are ob- 
 viously Roman portraits of about the beginning of the 
 third century a.d., and the fourth is a priestess of Ceres 
 whose Roman origin becomes conclusive when she is 
 
OLD PROVENCE 
 
 compared to the Apollo and the Venus just described. 
 Judging from the head-dress (see p. .303) she was made 
 about the time of Domitian, and very likely for the 
 decoration of the Nymphaeum. The Venus, too, is 
 very like the type of those fountain-goddesses often 
 found in Italy, and, whether carved with that idea or 
 not, she may very well have been considered as an ap- 
 propriate decoration of the Fountain of Nemausus 
 (see Reinach, op. cit., p. 357). I have drawn more 
 attention to these carvings than, as far as I know, has 
 been done before by any other writer, because they 
 represent an age which has been singularly barren in 
 art-products hitherto, and therefore possess a value 
 entirely apart from their individual excellence. 
 
 In a most interesting note on the statues lately dis- 
 covered in the wreck off Cerigotto (see the Journal of 
 Hellenic Studies, vol. xxiii.), Mr. K. T. Frost has shown 
 that the famous bronze Hermes, then so miraculously 
 retrieved, though inspired by the Praxitelean school, 
 was not the handiwork of either Praxiteles or Scopas. 
 The cargo, in fact, was that of a wrecked Graeco- 
 Roman merchantman, consisting of clever, shop- 
 made copies and artistic adaptations of great origi- 
 nals which still remain in Greece up to the time 
 of Pausanias. They are, therefore, admirable ex- 
 amples of the "art-furniture" of the period from 200 
 B.C. to 300 A.D., just the period of the classic art of 
 
THE MAISON CARREE 203 
 
 Aries and Nimes; and I believe that most of what I 
 have reproduced as Graeco-Roman from these Pro- 
 venf al sites may be referred to a similar origin, with the 
 exception, of course, of such admitted masterpieces as 
 the bust with the broken nose at Aries, and the Aphro- 
 dite of Aries, which, if not originals, are such fine copies, 
 carved in Greek marble, that they may well be dupli- 
 cates from the hand of the master himself. 
 
 Though the details of the temple of Nemausus of 
 the Fountain are thoroughly Greek in treatment and 
 conception, the whole style and workmanship of the 
 fabric are so characteristically Roman that in this 
 chapter I must pass on at once to the most Hellenic 
 work of art in Nimes, the temple so absurdly called the 
 Maison Carree, which, as the now vanished inscription 
 once declared, was dedicated to Caius and Lucius, 
 those sons of Agrippa and Julia whom Augustus adopted 
 as his heirs. "As for Caius and Lucius," writes Sue- 
 tonius in the translation by Philemon Holland which 
 I shall invariably quote in these pages, "Augustus 
 adopted them for his owne children at home in his house, 
 having bought them of Agrippa their father by the 
 brazen coine and the ballance. Whom being yet in 
 their tender yeeres he emploied in the charge of the 
 common-weale : and no sooner were they consuls-elect, 
 but hee sent them abroad to the government of prov- 
 inces and the conduct of armies." Caius died in Lycia, 
 
204 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 Lucius at Massilia, and the empire passed to Tiberius, 
 son of the third nephew, Agrippa; but Provence re- 
 membered the two "Princes of the Imperial Youth," 
 whom Augustus had so dearly loved, one of whom 
 had died within her borders, while the other was official 
 patron of the colony of Nlmes ; and it was to their deified 
 memories that this temple rose, before Augustus died.^ 
 From the five centuries of Roman imperial rule in 
 Gaul we have records in medals, inscriptions, monu- 
 ments, and tombs, besides actual written evidence. 
 In none of this do we find hatred of the Empire ex- 
 pressed by the inhabitants. Emperors might person- 
 ally be criticised in Gaul, as they were by Tacitus or 
 Juvenal in Rome; but the Imperial system was as 
 highly honoured there as here. Even whei^ Gaul had 
 the choice of her own destiny in the third century, apart 
 entirely from Italian influence, she chose an emperor. 
 Nor were the inhabitants ever disarmed. The thirty 
 legions of the empire could never have controlled so 
 
 ' The inscription was deciphered, from the holes left by the lost 
 bronze letters, by Seguier, as follows: c. caesari augusti p. cos. 
 
 L. CAESARI augusti F. COS. DESIGNATO PRINCIPIBUS JUVENTUTIS. 
 This dates the occasion of the inscription as a.d. i; but I am not sure 
 that this should be taken as the exact date of the building. To 
 Lucius, of whom there were no doubt once traces in Marseilles, this is 
 the only inscription I know in Nlmes. But of Caius, its patron, there 
 is undoubted trace elsewhere in the inscriptions on a long stone found 
 in 1810 near the amphitheatre, which records: "C. Caesar Augusti 
 filius consul designatus patronus Coloniae Augustae Nemausensium 
 xystum dat." 
 
THE WORSHIP OF AUGUSTUS 205 
 
 many millions unless their political ideals had gradually 
 become identical. The monarchy, as a system, was 
 universally beloved, for the simple reason that men 
 found their interest and profit in it, without a thought 
 either of moral reasons or of logical justifications. 
 
 This affection was reflected in such titles addressed 
 by provincials to various Emperors as "Pacificator of 
 the World," "Preserver of the Human Race," "the 
 Patron and Father of the Peoples." It was reflected 
 also in the numerous dedications by individual pro- 
 vincial worshippers of a temple, an altar, or a monu- 
 ment, in honour of such Emperors as Caligula, Domi- 
 tian, or Marcus Aurelius, whom they could never have 
 even seen at any time. From this it was but a slight 
 transition to that religious cult which made divinities 
 of the Emperors themselves. Near Lyons, at the con- 
 fluence of the Rhone and Saone, sixty tribal federations 
 joined together to consecrate a common shrine to Rome 
 and to Augustus. Though this form of worship was 
 officially established by Augustus, it is a suggestive 
 and interesting fact that the rites near Lyons were 
 served by prominent Gauls who had held ofiice in their 
 own country, and who were publicly thanked for their 
 devotion to the common altar. ^ 
 
 ' Some of their names survive: Vecundaridub, the Aeduan, Losidius, 
 the Nervian, and others; and inscriptions record their honours: 
 "C. Servilio Martiano Arverno sacerdoti ad templum Romae et 
 Augustonim tres provinciae Galliae" . . . "Losidio Quieti filio 
 
2o6 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 This universal deification of the Emperor, with its 
 resulting priesthoods and temples, was far from im- 
 plying mere servility during the three centuries it lasted. 
 The palace of the prince was almost the only spot in 
 which it could not be found. All Rome elsewhere, and 
 all the Empire beyond it, worshipped him as the em- 
 bodiment of beneficent institutions, and hence it was 
 that the Christian faith at first incurred the suspicion 
 of political significance. Until the time of Diocletian 
 this worship was spontaneous and sincere, though after- 
 wards it may have degenerated into forms and formulas. 
 In the second century a.d. religion held a far larger 
 place than it ever will again in ordinary hfe. The 
 outburst of spiritual enthusiasm which built the twelfth 
 and thirteenth century cathedrals is the only parallel 
 to it; and before we despise it we must ask ourselves 
 the value of any substitute with which we may have 
 endeavoured to replace it. In those ages of the early 
 Empire, divinity was immanent everywhere, and super- 
 
 Nervio sacerdoti ad aram Caesaris nostri ad, templum Romas et 
 August! inter confluentes Araris et Rhodani tres provinci^ Gallia;." 
 There were also special priests for the temples of the Emperors set up 
 in each provincial city, and these men were each known as "Flamen 
 of Augustus," which is quite distinct from the "Flamen Romae et 
 Augusti," recorded at Ntmes in an inscription. Half a century after 
 the death of Claudius we find a "Flamen Divi Claudii" elsewhere. 
 Though the erection of these temples was fashionable, it was certainly 
 not compulsory, and the freedmen also took their share in these same 
 rites, presided over by six "Seviri Augustales," who held annual 
 office, wore the toga praetextata, and had lictors before them. Many 
 names of these "Seviri" occur in inscriptions at Nimes. 
 
THE TEMPLE OF NIMES 207 
 
 stition was the only alternative. There was "no divine 
 right of kings," but there was a head of the Empire; 
 and the representative of so beneficent an institution, 
 of so world-wide a power, was adored as divine what- 
 ever was his personality, as the principle of that author- 
 itative monarchy which filled and satisfied the minds 
 of all men. 
 
 Though the "Maison Carrie" had nothing to do 
 with "Caesar- worship," among all the temples in the 
 provinces of the Empire, that erected to Caius and 
 Lucius Caesar at Nimes is far the most beautiful that 
 survives, and in the opinion of many it is the finest 
 outside Hellenic territories,^ and one of the most elegant 
 in the Roman world. Small in size, for it is only forty- 
 five feet by eighty-five, the beauty of what must now 
 be called the Maison Carree depends on its exquisite 
 proportions and tasteful Greek decoration. It is hexa- 
 style, with eleven Corinthian columns on each side, 
 three of which stand free and support the portico, the 
 remaining eight being attached to the walls of the cella. 
 Counting the columns at each end there are thirty in 
 
 ' Vienne is, as I have said, outside my district; but it is full of 
 interesting parallels to which I shall have occasion to refer; foremost 
 among them being the beautiful little temple Divo atjgusto Optimo 
 MAXIMO ET diVjE AUGUSTS, which is almost the same size as • the 
 Maison Carree, being about fifty feet by eighty feet, with six Corinthian 
 columns in front. Though not so fine in detail or proportion, it is 
 more technically Greek in construction than the Nimes building, for 
 there are six detached columns on each side, and only two pilasters at 
 the end of each side are attached to the cella. 
 
2o8 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 all, and the structure is built on what is known as the 
 pseudo-peripteral plan, the true peripteral temple hav- 
 ing all the columns separate from the cella, as in the 
 case of all famous Greek temples, except the huge edifice 
 at Agrigentum, in which the interstices of the columns 
 are built up with walls. ^ 
 
 The NImes building was therefore ordered by Ro- 
 mans, who had definite ideas about the plan they con- 
 sidered appropriate; but it was set up and decorated 
 by a Greek architect of the Augustan Age, who knew 
 how to give the best effect to his work. Merimfe talks 
 a good deal about "the evidences of decadence" which 
 point to the architecture of the Antonines. Proofs of 
 this he selects in unequal spacing of the columns, 
 and unequal number of modillions on opposite sides, 
 and other "irregularities." He made a singularly 
 bad choice. It is just its subtle divergencies from 
 
 * The Parthenon, which measures a hundred and one feet across 
 by two hundred and twenty-eight long, has octastyle porticoes, but 
 within them are porticoes of six columns like that of the Maison 
 Carrfe. This screen of free columns all round the cella, which is a 
 characteristic of Greek architecture, was probably planned to protect 
 the frescoes on the walls from rain. In Rome the plan was modified. 
 The Ionic temple of Ftjrtuna Virilis in Rome, mutilated as it is, shows 
 clearly the arrangement of six free columns of the porch and the twelve 
 engaged columns round the cella. The Temple of Antoninus and 
 Faustina, also in Rome, which measures seventy-two feet by a hundred 
 and twenty, has six pillars in front of the porch like the Maison Carree, 
 and ten in all are free, the rest being engaged and looking more like 
 pilasters. Any arguments about the Ntmes style being the product of 
 Antonine art must surely have omitted to take this Roman temple into 
 account. 
 
TB.E PRINCIPLES OF BEAUTY 
 
 mathematical exactness which make the Parthenon so 
 beautiful and so unapproachable. It is just because 
 the Madeleine in Paris is a strictly mathematical en- 
 largement of the Maison Carree that the modern build- 
 ing is so dull and unsuccessful, i People are apt to 
 think that a straight-lined, symmetrical modern copy 
 of an ancient masterpiece of architecture is Hkely to 
 reproduce its beauty; and when they lind this is not the 
 case, they say the older structure gets an unfair handi- 
 cap from "the kindly hand of time," "the mellowing 
 finger of antiquity," and so forth. The real causes 
 lie far deeper. Beauty is not a matter of mere lineal 
 reproduction, it is a question of essential differences; 
 of subtle variations, not of machine-made uniformity. 
 Only in 1810 did Cockerell estabhsh the entasis of the 
 columns of the Parthenon. Only in 1851 did H. Pen- 
 rose pubhsh the Principles of Athenian Architecture. 
 The vertical lines of the Parthenon had been supposed 
 to be perpendicular, the horizontal lines to be level, 
 and therefore straight. To discover an exact mathe- 
 matical ratio in its proportions was the main effort of 
 the archaeologist; that he did not exactly and every- 
 where succeed was supposed to be rather his fault than 
 that of the Greek. Suddenly Penrose proved that no 
 two capitals were of corresponding size, that the diame- 
 
 ' I can only here suggest the elements of a theory that is more fully 
 worked out elsewhere. See chap, vi., Spirals in Nature and Art. 
 London: Murray, 1903. 
 
OLD PROVENCE 
 
 ters of columns were unequal, that the columns were 
 irregularly spaced, that the metope spaces were of un- 
 equal width, that apparently vertical columns lean 
 towards the centre of the building, that the architrave 
 and frieze lean backward, while the pilasters at the 
 angles lean forward, and finally that the main horizontal 
 lines of the building are constructed in curves, which 
 rise in vertical planes, but are never parallel. This 
 means that there was an unquestionable intention of 
 avoiding exact ratios or mathematically exact corre- 
 spondences wherever such an avoidance was calculated 
 to produce a certain effect. It was also clear that these 
 deviations were not the result of error in the workmen, 
 or of accidents by time or vandalism; for irregularities 
 which would be easily detected or obtrusively conspic- 
 uous were avoided; and where accuracy was neces- 
 sary it was so finely achieved that the maximum devia- 
 tion of the Parthenon in lines intended to correspond 
 (as at the two ends) is as little as the fiftieth part of an 
 inch; while the refinement of joining the masonry is 
 so great that the stones composing the huge steps have 
 actually grown together beneath the pressure of the 
 columns they support. Nor must it be imagined that 
 the intentional differences are large. The columns 
 which lean towards the centre of the building would 
 only meet if prolonged to a height of five thousand eight 
 hundred and fifty-six feet above the pavement. 
 
DELICATE DIFFERENCES 213 
 
 Though Penrose proved the measurement of those 
 divergencies in the Pajthenon, it was John Pennethorne 
 who discovered their existence after he had seen the 
 undoubtedly convex constructive curves in the Theban 
 Temple of Medinet Habou. The same discovery was 
 made concerning the constructional curves of the Maison 
 Carree by Professor W. H. Goodyear in 1891. That 
 these subtle irregularities should have remained un- 
 noticed, even longer than those of the Parthenon, is 
 not remarkable. The superiority of Greek art implies 
 a superiority in eyesight too. Nowadays we look but 
 we very rarely see. The effects produced, too, by these 
 variations, tend to obscure the underlying causes. We 
 are pleased without knowing why. We wonder, indeed, 
 that a modern line, reproduced from a Greek line, does 
 not attract us so much as the original. We have not 
 yet realised that this is because modern Hnes are straight, 
 and the Greek were not. Neither are the lines of the 
 Maison Carree. Professor Goodyear's measurements 
 establishing this fact were assisted and approved by 
 Eugene Chambaud, architect of the city of Nlmes, 
 and by his colleague A. Augiere. These gentlemen 
 have proved that, for example, the curves of the cornice, 
 wholly due to masonry construction, are in horizontal 
 planes convex to the position of the spectator, and 
 measure about five inches ; the side-walls, in fact, bulge 
 outward to that extent, at about the middle of their 
 
214 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 highest point, and the stylobate beneath them shows 
 sHght corresponding curves. 
 
 This was done not merely to give apparently in- 
 creased dimensions to the building when seen from a 
 point of view facing the centre of either side, but also 
 to give it a life and beauty far superior to the monoto- 
 nous and cold effects of mathematical exactitude. The 
 line of the horizon, "Nature's great and only horizontal 
 line," is in fact a delicate but not inappreciable curve. 
 The sides of this temple at Nimes are in fact also deli- 
 cately, though now not inappreciably, curved, because 
 all curves in plan convex to the line of vision produce 
 an effect of curves in elevation. At an angle of forty- 
 five degrees a curve of five inches in plan, when not 
 perceived by the eye, will produce an effect of five 
 inches curve in elevation. In the Parthenon the curve 
 is under four inches in two hundred and twenty-eight 
 feet. At Nlmes it is nearly five inches in less than a 
 hundred feet. At Medinet Habou it is as much as 
 eight inches in about the same distance. The fact 
 that no curves occur in the entablature of the pedi- 
 ments at Nimes shows that the side-cur\'es were in- 
 dependent of these, instead of a complement to them, 
 as Penrose considered was the case in the Parthenon, 
 and we have here therefore a case not of deliberately 
 correcting an ordinary optical illusion, but of deliber- 
 ately creating an optical illusion with a definite purpose. 
 
CURVES IN CONSTRUCTION 215 
 
 From Egypt then, from Periclean Athens, and from 
 Roman Nimes we have traced a definite theory of 
 curves, of divergencies, of differences, which has now 
 been lost, chiefly owing to a division of labour which 
 has lowered the capacity of the individual artisan, 
 and to a machine-made work which has accustomed 
 the eye to inartistic uniformity of ornamental detail, 
 and destroyed its proofs of delicate structural effects. 
 But it was some time before this loss occurred. From 
 Roman buildings the true tradition was handed on to 
 Italo-Byzantine, Byzantine-Romanesque, and Gothic 
 structures, and only fell into abeyance when a Renais- 
 sance which forgot the vital principles of classical work- 
 manship reintroduced the barren elements of classical 
 style. But in the cathedrals these curves can still be 
 traced. Mr. Julian Moore has shown that the walls 
 in the nave of Westminster Abbey are bent inwards 
 at about the height of the keystones of the arches and 
 outwards above and below this point, and they are 
 structurally sound unto this day. In the same way 
 the piers and upper walls of the nave of St. Mark's in 
 Venice lean outwards to an extent of eighteen inches, 
 a deviation which, if accidental, or subsequent to their 
 original making, would have ruined the mosaics and 
 destroyed the building. The same divergencies may 
 be seen in the choir of Sant' Ambrogio at Milan, and 
 in Sta. Maria della Pieve at Arezzo. I may perhaps' 
 
2i6 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 explain the difference as something of the difference 
 between an architectural drawing done with compasses 
 and rulers, and an artist's painting of the same build- 
 ing done with a free hand and with just those "inaccu- 
 racies " which give it life and beauty. But I must linger 
 no more upon an essential principle which, known to 
 Greece and known to the builders of the Maison 
 Carree, is one of the chief reasons why this little temple 
 is the greatest treasure of classical architecture north 
 of the Alps. 
 
 Apart from all constructional questions, the de- 
 tailed carving of the cornice and the frieze is worth 
 the most careful examination, and no one has really 
 seen this temple who has not walked carefully all 
 round it with a pair of field-glasses. Its interior is 
 now used for the housing of a small collection of antiq- 
 uities, not to be compared with the Museum of Aries, 
 and not'so rich in varied detail as that called the Musee 
 Lapidaire in the old Lycee of the Grand' Rue at Nimes, 
 but still full of interest, and, as I have already said, 
 not half appreciated or understood by its possessors. 
 I shall have to return to its contents later on, so it will 
 be only necessary here to say that the present use of 
 this building is by far the best to which it has been put 
 since the religion for which it was erected passed away. 
 
 From 1050, when it was partly disinterred from ex- 
 crescences of masonry all round it, the temple served 
 
FATE OF THE MAISON CARREE 217 
 
 as a kind of H6tel de Ville until 1540. At the latter 
 date a certain Pierre Boys bought it, and lived in it 
 with various architectural arrangements to suit him- 
 self. One would imagine that by this time it had been 
 forgotten altogether; so it is refreshing to find that the 
 Intendant of Languedoc actually refused to let the 
 Duchesse d'Uzes buy it to make a family mausoleum. 
 However, this refusal can hardly have been based on 
 artistic considerations, for it was eventually bought 
 by Felix Bruyes, Seigneur de St. Chaptes, who made 
 a stable of it, filed away the pillars to give wider passage 
 to his carts, and built haylofts in the roof. Once more 
 the eccentric Intendant of Languedoc puts in official 
 objections; this time to the idea of the Augustinian 
 monks turning it into a church. But they secured 
 permission from a higher court in 1672, and the long- 
 suffering temple became a church, which had probably 
 been its first, though unknown, destination in the early 
 centuries of Christianity. Not content with building 
 chapels, a nave, a choir, and stalls, the monks buried 
 their dead in the vaults beneath the portico, and the 
 building was in this state when the remaining houses 
 still adhering to it were finally cleared away. The 
 Augustinians remained till 1789, when the structure 
 was put to vague municipal uses, and afterwards served 
 as a granary and a public market. But in 1823 it was 
 saved at last. A museum was established in it, dedi- 
 
2i8 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 cated to Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Angou- 
 leme. Further clearances have since been made, which 
 give a better view of this exquisite little building; and 
 it may be hoped that it will now be left at rest. 
 
 The stones of the solid walls of the cella come from 
 the Sernhac quarries near the Gardon. The bases 
 of the columns are of the same used in the amphi- 
 theatre. The columns and entablatures were chosen 
 from yet a third source, beyond the village of Fons- 
 outre- Gardon, from the quarries at Lens. Originally 
 it formed the central sanctuary of a large covered 
 colonnade, with long lateral porticoes, and buildings 
 for many various purposes behind them. 
 
 With the Maison Carree we have come to an end 
 of all the material traces of Greek life in Provence. 
 The influence of Hellas lived on, however, as long as 
 the Roman Empire lasted; and in what I have now 
 to say of life in Provence under the Roman rule, it will 
 be seen that though I can only illustrate my pages with 
 Roman buildings and with Roman handiwork, the 
 Greek spirit has left traces intangible, yet no less valu- 
 able, in many and various directions. 
 
 One of these traces is to be found in language, a 
 very different thmg from that Hellenistic attitude tow- 
 ards literature and art, which is of more general appli- 
 cation. There is a Gallic inscription preserved at Nimes 
 which not only shows this linguistic survival, but is 
 
ANCIENT RELIGIONS IN PROVENCE 219 
 
 also appropriate to the chief subject of this cliapter, 
 the more ancient of the religions of Provence. It runs 
 as follows: — 
 
 . . . APTAB . . . IAAANOTIAKOSAEAE 
 MATPEBONEMAT^IKABO BPATOTAE ' 
 which means that Karta, of Bedilhan, dedicated this 
 altar to the Mothers of Nimes by their order. The 
 cult of the Mothers is one well known elsewhere in 
 Gaul, and may perhaps in this instance be connected 
 with that of the "Proxumi," already noticed, ^ as 
 specially favoured by the Arecomicians of Nimes. ^ 
 
 ^ This would be Kapra 'Bt^iKKa.voviaKos 5e5e MaTpejQo l^e^avffiKa^o 
 PparovSe, being the Greek letters for the Latin form: Karta Bidillano- 
 viacus dedit matribus Nemausicabus ex imperio. The last word in 
 the inscription (as translated by Pictet) is, I confess, new to me, 
 though frequent at Nimes; but the rest is clear enough. 
 ^ P. 193 note. 
 
 ' There are other Gaulish inscriptions in the same letters, such as 
 that of Cassitalus (who writes KACCITAAOC), and of the altar found 
 in the little chapel of Notre Dame de Laval. But three more Greek 
 inscriptions will be suiScient to quote to show the survival of the 
 language among various races. The first was found on the Avignon 
 road, a mile out of Nimes, and runs as follows : — 
 
 0eo7s Sttifioo'ii' To the Divine Manes 
 'IouA./ot (petScf And to Julia Fida 
 TtTia jurjTp! ■ Titia to her 
 yAvKVTaTTj \ sweet mother. 
 The second is of special interest, because, though fragmentary, it 
 evidently refers to another fountain-god, worshipped, as was Nemau- 
 sus, by the Celts. It was found between Orange and Vaison, and con- 
 tains (among others) the Greek letters TPAC EAGT BPATOTAE KAN- 
 TENA, which refer to the god of the Spring of Grosel, a source 
 which has many affinities with that of Vaucluse. At Marseilles the 
 signboard of a grammarian who taught Latin to the Greeks long before 
 Augustus's reign has been discovered: A0HNAAHC AIOCKOPIAOT 
 
 0EOIC —AAIMGC IN 
 lOTAIA *EIAA 
 TITIA— MHTPI 
 rATKTTATH 
 
OLD PROVENCE 
 
 At Aries, of course, the Greek idiom is likely to have 
 lasted much longer than it did elsewhere, and indeed 
 in 540 we find St. Cesaire inviting the congregations 
 of the diocese of Aries to sing their anthems in Greek 
 while waiting for the service in church. Two hundred 
 years before that the funeral oration of the younger 
 Constantine was pronounced in Greek before the same 
 population, and something of the beauty of the Aries 
 speech at the present day may perhaps be owing to 
 traces of Hellenic syllables. M. Martin has, for in- 
 stance, published a long list of Provencal words derived 
 from the Greek, especially those used in the Marseilles 
 district with reference to the sea, and to fishing, and to 
 simple articles of food and of ordinary Hfe.^ 
 
 rPAMMATIKOC PnMAIKOC. For many generations such Greek 
 names survived as Eupor, Nice, Athenais, Hellas, Attica; such funereal 
 greetings as XAIPE, or as Euir\ol, or the letter 0, the beginning of 
 the name of Death. Gaulish inscriptions, it should be noted, use Latin 
 characters in the north and centre of France, but Greek letters in 
 the south. The third and last example I need give is as follows: 
 CErOMAPOC OTIAAONEOC TOOTTIOTC NAMATKATIC EinPOT 
 BHAHCAMI COCIN NEMHTON, in which the word "Nemetum" for 
 a sacred place is to be especially noticed. The words are: "Sego- 
 maros Villoneos, magistratus Nemausensis, effecit Behsemae hocce 
 fanum." 
 ' Such as : 
 
 -Bread. Provencal artoun. 
 
 Greek Upros. 
 
 Gluttonous. ' 
 
 boufaire. 
 
 11 
 
 Pov<t>iyos. 
 
 Basket. ' 
 
 canasto. 
 
 " 
 
 Kdvaa-Tpov. 
 
 Axe. ' 
 
 destraou. 
 
 (t 
 
 Se^TpoKtoy* 
 
 Small boat. ' 
 
 esquifou. 
 
 " 
 
 irxdipr}. 
 
 Foolish. ' 
 
 matou. 
 
 11 
 
 fjUXTOtOS, 
 
 Hearth or home. ' 
 
 oustaou. 
 
 " 
 
 ioTia. 
 
 I have not mentioned the evidence of the language of the New 
 
GREEK INFLUENCES 
 
 In matters of Hellenic cultivation, the Gauls were 
 of course still more ready to copy their Roman friends. 
 Having no models of their own, for the Druids left 
 neither temples nor statues, and the cromlechs can 
 hardly be called architecture, the Latinised Gauls 
 sought artistic training where the Romans had found 
 it; and it was to Greece that they looked for types of 
 beauty in the various arts, or of philosophy and scholar- 
 ship in educational matters. Their local schools were 
 as much a question of voluntary effort as the majority 
 of their local public buildings, and the expense was 
 borne partly by their own rich famiUes and partly from 
 the pubHc funds. This is the true reason why, under 
 the aegis of the Roman Peace, civilisation spread so 
 swiftly and so deeply, upon Greek and Roman models, 
 among the peoples of Southern Gaul, that on the soil 
 of Provence more evidences have survived of what life 
 meant under the Roman Empire than is the case in 
 any other equal space beyond the boundaries of 
 Italy. 
 
 As Cicero expressed it, the peoples of Provence had 
 
 "two fatherlands, one of their birth and the other of 
 
 their citizenship." With the "Jus Suffragii" went 
 
 Testament, but it should be added that all official letters to the Bishops 
 of Gaul were written in Greek; that the responses in the liturgy were 
 for long written in both languages; and that the indestructible traces 
 of this remain in such French religious words as hymne, psaume, 
 liturgie, hom^he, catechisme, bapteme, pretre, evfique, eglise, and 
 others. 
 
OLD PROVENCE 
 
 the "Jus Honorum," under the Empire, if the recipient 
 had the "latus clavus." Under Augustus we find 
 already a Spanish consul in Rome. Eventually the 
 provinces supplied the Emperor himself. The "father- 
 land of birth" had insensibly become merged in the 
 "fatherland of citizenship," and, as is so often noticed 
 in similar cases, the provincials became "more Roman 
 than the Romans." A very similar process, under 
 very similar conditions, is going on in British India at 
 the present day, with the exception that the highest 
 offices are not open to the Hindu. 
 
 If the Romans quickly appreciated that Massiha, 
 hke their own Campania, was a ceritre of Hellenism, ^ 
 the Gauls in their turn were not slow to travel across 
 the Alps in the opposite direction, even when their 
 fame had not preceded them. It was from Hellenic 
 motives that, in the Augustan age, a Vocontian his- 
 torian (Pompeius Trogus) began his history of the 
 world with Alexander the Great, and only included 
 Roman affairs within that Grecian framework of the 
 first "Universal History." It was Gaul which gave 
 Rome her Roscius; and Petronius Arbiter, born Hear 
 Marseilles, who gave the world our first romance. ■ 
 
 ' It may be noted that the coins of Ntmes in the Augustan period 
 show the Crocodile of Egypt and the Alexandrian numbering of the 
 years, which is not solely to be put down to the settlement of Alexan- 
 drian veterans in Nemausus, but also to the fact that the city itself 
 shov\'cd no inveterate opposition to the Hellenism traditional in 
 Marseilles. 
 
GALLIC CIVILISATION 223 
 
 Varro Atacinus, from near Carcassonne, and Cornelius 
 Gallus of Frejus, the friend of Virgil, were not un- 
 worthy of their poetic rivals on more classic ground. 
 In oratory the genius of Southern France estabUshed 
 itself even more decidedly. Caesar and Cicero them- 
 selves were indebted to the rhetoric of Gnipho. Votie- 
 nus Montanus from Narbonne was called the Ovid of 
 Orators in the late Augustan age. Caligula had two 
 eloquent Gauls among his personal friends: Valerius 
 Asiaticus of Vienne and Gnaeus Domitius Afer of 
 Nimes, who was consul in 39 a.d. Favorinus, of an 
 esteemed burgess family in Aries, was a Gaul by birth, 
 who wrote in Greek, and was a distinguished scholar 
 in all branches of science under Hadrian. The pupil 
 of Dion of Prusa, the friend of Plutarch and Herodes 
 Atticus, the master of Aulus Gellius, the opponent of 
 Galen in one direction and of Lucian in another, 
 Favorinus was not only an author, a philologist, and a 
 rhetorician, but a philosopher of the sceptical, Aris- 
 totelian school, and one of the most brilhant examples 
 of the cultivated man of letters of his time. Marcus 
 Aurelius himself was the pupil of the Gaulish rheto- 
 rician Cornelius Fronto. 
 
 Under Caesar and Claudius, Gaul had provided 
 Rome with senators; under CaKgula with a consul. 
 It was to the Aquitanian, Vindex, that Nero owed his 
 fall; Galba, his supremacy. It was Agricola, the Pro- 
 
224 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 venfal, who subdued Britain to Domitian.^ It was 
 NImes which gave the Empire one of its best Em- 
 perors, Antoninus Pius, who succeeded the two Span- 
 iards, Trajan and Hadrian, and adopted a third in 
 Marcus Aurelius. Caracalla, born in Gaul, was 
 Syrian on his mother's side, African on his father's. 
 The spread of civilisation now produced a mixture of 
 races, and a community of ideas, which went far to 
 break down all the conventional barriers of geography. 
 Provence, for instance, became as "Roman" as any 
 spot in Italy. The proofs of this are in the buildings 
 and the inscriptions I shall discuss in the next chapter. 
 
 * Enthusiastic Provenf al poets have explained to me that this was 
 the first of three victories over perfidious Albion. For if Agricola 
 conquered Britain, so did William the Conqueror, the son of Arlette; 
 and who, they ask, was Arlette but a girl of Aries ? And then what 
 about the Prince of Orange already mentioned ? 
 

 BttanaifeMiBi^if-r' a>gLj 
 
 
 
 
 w^MXI^y^SM^S^^^B^m 
 
 EAKLY CHRISTIAN TOMB AT ARLES [dJ. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 LIFE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPERORS 
 
 PART I.— ABOVE GROUND 
 
 "... Aedificemus civitates istas; et vallemus muris; et 
 roboremus turribus et portis et seris donee a bellis quieta sunt 
 omnia . . ." 
 
 ". . . Et erit fortitudo eorum in direptionem, et domus eorum 
 in desertum; et aedificabunt domos, et non habitabunt . . ." 
 
 To step from Greece to Rome, in Aries, it is only neces- 
 sary to walk from the theatre to the "Arenes." The 
 one is the flower of that Greek culture which had its 
 nearest centre in Marseilles; the other is the symbol of 
 those public pleasures which were the hall-mark of the 
 Roman Empire; of those buildings, erected for amuse- 
 ment only, which have long outlasted subsequent edi- 
 fices that owed their origin to the religious beliefs, to 
 the municipal energies, or to the private necessities of 
 a society less broadly based, less proudly conscious of 
 its eternal significance and merit. Rome has no greater 
 
 225 
 
226 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 relics of her glorious antiquity than the Coliseum and 
 the Baths of Caracalla. Beside them the remnants cf 
 the Forum, of the temples, of the triumphal arches, 
 fade into insignificance. In the same way, it is the 
 amphitheatre that bulks still the largest both at Aries 
 and Nlmes, as it does still at Frejus, at Verona, at 
 Pompeii, at Pozzoli, at Capua. In all these places you 
 may read, in those now silent stones, the story of a lust- 
 ful Roman mob. It is not always a pleasant story; but 
 some of it we may profitably listen to in these pages. 
 
 The reason for these enormous public pleasure- 
 places is very like the reason for the beauty of the 
 Gothic cathedrals. The ordinary middle-class popu- 
 lation of the thirteenth century lived under circum- 
 stances of restraint and poverty; the poor, in surround- 
 ings of the most abject squalor; only the richest, the 
 strongest, the very few had habitable and spacious 
 homes. There was no middle term between the palace 
 and the hovel. And as the cathedral was the poor 
 man's palace, the one building which opened wide its 
 doors to every Christian of the lowliest degree, and 
 closed them to the sinner of the highest; so the amphi- 
 theatres were among the few buildings in which pauper 
 and patrician of the Roman Empire might enjoy them- 
 selves together, over the brutalities of the spectacle 
 which appealed to both. The days had long passed 
 when citizens, absorbed in wars or pohtics, found their 
 
LIFE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPERORS 227 
 
 common meeting-place in the F;orum. With the ac- 
 cession of Augustus neither of these things remained 
 attractive to the multitude. Peace abroad was accom- 
 panied by apathy concerning local issues. The loss 
 of pubhc liberty was lightly masked in the vast increase 
 of individual freedom for dissipation. Already Julius 
 Caesar 1 had realised that the chief preoccupation of 
 the Dictator would be to feed the people and keep them 
 amused. Every Emperor after him remembered it. 
 At length it might fairly have been imagined that the 
 Roman only left the luxurious idleness of his pubHc 
 bath to enjoy the carnage or the debauchery of his pub- 
 lic pleasure-houses. 
 
 The Roman ruins in Provence nearly all owe their 
 origins to this deliberate programme of "Panem et 
 Circenses." The magnificent baths at Nimes, the 
 amphitheatres both there and at Aries, the "spina" of 
 the Roman circus, the theatre we have just been visit- 
 ing at Orange, are but indications of a luxury of life 
 that has departed from all but individual existences 
 to-day. The theatre, the circus, and the palaestra the 
 Hellenic world had known. But the amphitheatre was 
 
 ' As Plutarch says of Caesar, in the English of Sir Thomas North: 
 "When he was made ^dilis he did show the people the pastime of 
 three hundred and twenty couple of sword-players, and did besides 
 exceed all other in sumptuousness in the sports and common feasts 
 which he made to delight them withal ... he so pleased the people 
 and won their love therewith that they devised daily to give him new 
 offices for to requite him. . . ." 
 
228 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 distinctively Roman; and as it is in the Coliseum that 
 you may best realise the meaning of imperial Rome, so 
 it is in the similar and more perfect buildings at Nimes 
 and Aries that you will best imagine what Hfe meant 
 in the provinces under the Roman Emperors. Their 
 type remains the same in all. Only the dimensions 
 vary. The Cohseum's walls were over fifty metres 
 thick all round its huge arena, and within their massive 
 stone recesses, below the pubhc corridors, were vast 
 caves for the wild beasts, the prisoners, the countless 
 servants, and the gladiators. More than ninety thou- 
 sand persons could sit upon its stone and marble 
 benches at each performance; and it was always full, 
 for it gave the most pompous and the most cruel trag- 
 edies ever seen in the world, in which the blood that 
 flowed was real, the men and beasts and women really 
 died, the game of public murder went on as merrily 
 and as continuously as the prattle of our pantomimes 
 at Christmas. For four centuries the world was ran- 
 sacked "to make a Roman holiday." Whole popula- 
 tions, taken prisoner, were butchered for the delecta- 
 tion of society. Whole nations were ground down with 
 taxes to provide extravagantly gorgeous details for the 
 spectacle. Whole tracts of country were laid waste to 
 supply the animals that furnished jaded epicures with 
 novel forms of death, or fiercer appetite for carnage. 
 Unequal combats were not enough. Defenceless fam- 
 
LIFE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPERORS 229 
 
 ilies were cast to the lions to be publicly devoured, on 
 the excuse of having professed a religion that was con- 
 sidered politically dangerous. 
 
 It is difficult to believe all this even among the sinister 
 shadows of the Coliseum. At Aries it seems impos- 
 sible. Yet the fashions of Rome were the fashions of 
 the provinces; the difference was in quantities alone; 
 and there was not a fragment of that huge building 
 where the public circulated which was not in some way 
 given up to the gratification of their passions — some- 
 times the vilest. After a brilliant sketch of what went 
 on in Rome, Montaigne (iii. vi.) concludes that men 
 in his own time were far less virile, less inventive, than 
 in those hot-blooded, breeding days, when the fertihty 
 of invention was only equalled by the unbridled ex- 
 travagance in execution which attended it. 
 
 Did they wish to represent a hunting of wild beasts, 
 they tore up huge trees by the roots and planted them 
 in the centre of the arena, filling this quick-grown forest 
 with a thousand ostriches, a thousand stags, a thousand 
 fallow-deer, a thousand wild boars. The next day 
 showed a massacre of a hundred lions and lionesses, two 
 hundred leopards, and three hundred bears. By the 
 younger Gordian, searching for unknown delights, two 
 score of zebras were brought over, ten elks, and as many 
 giraffes, together with thirty African hyaenas, and ten 
 Indian tigers. Among them moved the savage bulk 
 
230 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 of the hippopotamus and rhinoceros, and the patient un- 
 wieldiness of two-and-thirty elephants. While all these 
 were being slaughtered, nothing was omitted that 
 might delight the other senses of the cloyed spectators. 
 An ample canopy protected them from sun or rain, yet 
 left the free air of the sky to ventilate that seething 
 crater of fresh bloodshed. Fountains played among 
 the marble columns, scented with aromatic herbs. 
 The nets that guarded the audience from the frantic 
 struggles of the beasts in the arena were made of gold 
 and silver wire. The porticoes were gilded. The cord 
 that divided the various ranks of spectators from each 
 other was studded with precious stones. The walls 
 were clad in marble; the pavements shone with multi- 
 coloured mosaics. And it is thus we must imagine 
 the first century of the amphitheatre at Aries. ^ 
 
 ' On p. 1 68 note, I have given a list of some Greek actors and others 
 known to us. I will add here some names of gladiators from the 
 inscriptions at Nimes. (i) In the Museum at Nimes is a terra-cotta 
 medallion found at Cavillargues in the Gard, which represents a fully 
 armed man lighting a lightly-dressed soldier, who carries a buckler 
 and a trident. Behind them are two men in togas, one holding a 
 small wand, and four others sit in a tribune, who have spared the lives 
 of both combatants, for the inscription says "Pugnantes Missi," and 
 the names of the gladiators are given as Eros and Xanthus. (2) An 
 epitaph setting forth that a stone was put up by Optata, his wife, to 
 Lucius Pompeius of Vienne, a retiarius who fought with net and 
 trident, and was nine times crowned. He died at twenty-five. (3) 
 His widow married again, and again survived her husband, Aptus of 
 Alexandria, who fought in the Thracian manner, and died at thirty- 
 seven. (4) Sperata, his wife, put up an epitaph to the myrmillo (a 
 
1 
 
LIFE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPERORS 233 
 
 Under Domitian, though the games began soon after 
 the rising of the sun, the day was not long enough for 
 the troops of African, Thracian, and German gladiators 
 to finish all their combats. Line upon line of torches 
 rose in flaming circles from the arena to the topmost 
 tier of stone, to light up the scenes of bloodshed that 
 went on far into the night, while the populace were fed 
 (and even clothed) without leaving the huge building. 
 St. Jerome, in his chronicle of Eusebius, speaks of three 
 whole days and nights having been passed in this way 
 on one occasion. During the celebration of the triumph 
 of Aurelian over the Queen of Palmyra, the forum, the 
 streets, the shops, and houses of Rome were deserted. 
 The whole population was in the public pleasure- 
 buildings. Aries at its height of splendour, when a 
 Roman Emperor lived in his palace within her walls, 
 must have sometimes seen sights Hke this. To the 
 sound of the long trumpets, the combats of the gladia- 
 tors closed. After them came the boxers. Whole pro- 
 
 fuUy armed gladiator) Columbus, who was an Aeduan, and member of 
 Serenus's troupe of fighters. He died at twenty-five. (5) Another 
 Thracian fighter was Quintus Vettius Gracilis, born in Spain, who was 
 crowned thrice. His trainer, Lucius Sestius Latinus, put up a tomb- 
 stone to him at his death at twenty-five. 
 
 The "Myrmillo" fought with a short and sharp-pointed sword, 
 defended by a helmet, a brassard, greaves, and square-ended buckler. 
 The "Retiarius" wore nothing but a waistband and a brassard, aiming 
 to envelope his enemy in a net, and slay him with a trident. The 
 "Thracian" carried a small round buckler, and his right arm was fully 
 protected. He had a plumed helmet, and fought vrith a curved cutlass. 
 
234 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 cessions of victorious soldiers would celebrate their 
 triumphs by marching through the arena in full armour 
 to the plaudits of the multitude. Then two animals, 
 of different kinds, but bound together by a chain, 
 would be thrust out upon the sand to fight each other, 
 or to be attacked by various weapons. The corpses 
 were dragged out, one after another, by the busy hooks, 
 and there was scarcely any pause between one item of 
 the entertainment and the next. Even the edicts of 
 the Christian Constantine could not wholly eradicate 
 a passion so deeply seated in the Roman heart; and 
 Honorius, when the Goths were beating at the gates of 
 Italy, only exchanged the amphitheatre for more ef- 
 feminate and just as inexcusable amusements. Pro- 
 fessionalism in football is rapidly developing the same 
 proportion of lazy and insatiable spectators in Eng- 
 land. Already the difference between it and the glad- 
 iatorial games is rather in favour of the Romans.^ 
 
 ' The inscription numbered (23), in the Hst at the end of the second 
 part of this chapter, gives a particularly engaging view of the character 
 of one of these gladiators. It is the epitaph set up to a young man by 
 his trainers and his sister, and may be roughly translated as follows: 
 "Stay thy steps, I pray, thou young and pious traveller, to learn from 
 these lines the jealousy of fate. For nineteen years I lived, pure, and 
 doing no harm to any one, and my character won me the esteem of all. 
 Eager to learn the lessons of youth, I was well trained for the amphi- 
 theatre. I was the famous Pulchcr; and with various weapons I 
 appeared in combat against the wild beasts. Besides that I knew 
 somewhat of the art of Medicine. I was a colleague not only of those 
 who had charge of the Bears, but also of those who slew the victims 
 
ROMAN ARLES 
 
 235 
 
 I have already said that the Greek theatre in Aries 
 was built during the short period of the governorship 
 of Decimus Junius Brutus, which gave its Greek in- 
 habitants time to set up their characteristically national 
 monument. But by 48 b.c. the definitely Roman 
 "colonisation" of Aries was provided for by Julius 
 
 RUINS OF THE ROMAN AMPHITHEATRE (exTERIOr) AT ARLES (1903). 
 
 Caesar, who sent Tiberius Nero with the veterans of 
 the sixth legion, at first to hold the mihtary position, 
 and then by that process of civilisation already de- 
 scribed, to give the population every opportunity of 
 
 at the public sacrifices, and who decorated the statues of the Gods 
 with gariands at the first of every spring. The inscription tells you 
 my right name." This was set up by Sextus Julius Felicissimus and 
 by Sextus Felix to their unrivalled pupil; and to her brother, by 
 Felicitas. 
 
236 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 thoroughly Romanising themselves. These necessities 
 prescribed the order of the pubHc buildings which 
 soon sprang up, and their position may roughly be 
 reahsed by looking at any good map of the town. 
 
 Modern Aries is shaped like a right-angled triangle, 
 St. Honorat des Alyscamps being at the right angle to 
 the south-east, while the longest side follows the left 
 bank of the Rhone. (See the map in Appendix to 
 this first volume.) Roman Aries was much smaller, 
 in the shape of an irregular pentagon, the western 
 angle of the river- wall beginning more than a hundred 
 yards higher up stream than the present Pont de 
 Trinquetaille, and only extending about four hundred 
 metres up the Rhone along the Quai de la Gare, the 
 "Pons Navalis" being outside its northern angle. 
 From that northern angle the Roman walls moved 
 south-east to the arena, then went on towards the Route 
 d'Avignon, turning sharply southwards round Notre 
 Dame la Major, which was the Roman temple to the 
 Bona Dea. From this eastern angle, the southerly 
 line past the "Porta Romana" to the angle tower at 
 the extreme south-east can still be traced, on the oppo- 
 site side of the road to the cemetery. I have given, in 
 the Appendix to this volume, Auguste Varan's recon- 
 struction of this "Porta Romana" from the ruins as 
 they remain to-day; and in his drawing it will be noticed 
 that the first Roman walls, erected by the first garrison 
 
ROMAN ARLES 
 
 237 
 
 sent by Julius Caesar are on the right and left of the 
 central doorway built later on by Augustus. 
 
 The south-eastern angle was formed by the Roman 
 temple of Diana, and is still marked by a ruined tower 
 near the old abbey of St. Cesaire, from which the walls 
 passed westward to the south side of the Greek theatre, 
 and from there in a straight Hne past the Porta Pretoria 
 (or "Aquaria") to the south-eastern angle, which was 
 
 RUINS OF THE PORTA ROMANA AT ARLES. 
 
 close to the present Place du Marche Neuf. From 
 this angle the walls went straight north to the river 
 bank. They were two metres twenty-five thick, made 
 of small and easily worked stones. 
 
 The Celtic settlement of Arlath began at about the 
 point of the present bridge, while the docks and the 
 circus were still further down stream, close to the river 
 bank. 
 
 It may be well to say that the obelisk now set up in 
 the centre of the Place de la RepubHque, opposite the 
 
238 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 western door of St. Trophime, was originally discovered 
 near the Rhone in 1389, among the ruins of the Roman 
 circus, of which it formed the "spina." Fifteen metres 
 in height, without the base, it is the only granite mono- 
 lith from European quarries which can compare in 
 size with the obeHsks of Egypt, and it was brought from 
 the gorges of the Esterels. Left for a long time with 
 only its extremity emerging from the soil of a private 
 garden, it was dug out during the visit of Catherine 
 de Medicis and Charles ix., and Henri iv. joviaUy 
 suggested that it should be planted in the middle of the 
 amphitheatre. At last MM. de Boche, Romany, Agard, 
 and Maure, consuls of the town, raised it on the masts 
 of eight stout sailing barques, to the sound of trumpets 
 and firing of cannon, and it was solemnly dedicated to 
 Louis XIV., with a globe of azure on the top and a disc 
 to represent the Roi Soleil; the whole was rested on a 
 pedestal inscribed with fulsorrie compliments to the 
 monarch, which are now only preserved in the antiqua- 
 rian volumes of his reign. This was replaced by four 
 bronze representations of the Lion of Aries early in the 
 nineteenth century, and by these appropriate emblems 
 it is still upheld. 
 
 Within the first Roman walls of Aries the public 
 offices and barracks were placed to the north, near the 
 river; and the huge space needed for the amphitheatre 
 was only obtained, about the middle of the northern 
 
ROMAN TRINQUETAILLE 241 
 
 line, by incorporating about a hundred metres of the 
 wall built by Caesar's soldiers within the substructure 
 of the vast arena reared at the end of the reign of Augus- 
 tus, who built a temple in Aries during a two years' 
 visit to Provence which he divided between this city, 
 Frdjus, and Aix. The principal axis of the oval arena 
 does not go from east to west as was thought usual, 
 but from north to south; and its slight deviation to the 
 west of north was no doubt arranged, not only to take 
 advantage of the old town-walls, but also to make a 
 correct alignment with the head of the Roman bridge 
 across the river to the Camargue, the exact point also 
 reached by the great road from Milan across the Cottian 
 Alps, upon which (near the same spot) rose the famous 
 arch called "Admirable," of which I have spoken else- 
 where. 
 
 The increase of palaces and of public buildings within 
 a restrained area soon necessitated the migration of 
 many of the manufacturing classes and business men 
 across the river to the island of the Camargue, on much 
 the same spot where now is the Faubourg of Trinque- 
 taille. Here, favoured by both branches of the river, 
 by two bridges which took the road across the Rhone 
 from Aries to Nimes, by a long extent of docks and 
 quays, and by the protection of the fortifications so 
 near at hand, the business-suburb flourished exceed- 
 ingly. Thus did Aries, the doubje city, "duplex 
 
242 
 
 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 Arelata," live within her towers and ramparts on the 
 double Rhone, for more than two centuries, until 
 Gallus, on the Ides of October, 254 a.d., celebrated the 
 peacemaking with the Goths by magnificent enter- 
 tainments in the amphitheatre. 
 
 The building was worthy both of that and of its many 
 previous triumphs. By the middle of the third century 
 Aries had already heard the warning of her fall. One 
 last aftermath of splendour, one Indian summer, she 
 was still to see before she fell. And she enjoyed life 
 to the full while she had it. Her amphitheatre held 
 places for thirty thousand persons. In Italy only 
 Pozzoli, Capua, and the Coliseum held more; only 
 Poitiers, in France. ^ It covered a space of over eleven 
 thousand square metres, having a large diameter of 
 one hundred and thirty-six metres, and the smaller one 
 of one hundred and seven. From north to south the 
 thickness of the walls from outside to the line of the 
 arena is thirty-three and a half metres, and a trifle 
 
 ' A few comparisons in size will be of interest, the measurements 
 being exact, the estimates below the mark. 
 
 Audience. 
 
 Exteraal-Diameters. 
 
 Thickness of Walls. 
 
 Area of Arena. 
 
 Coliseum, 
 Capua, . 
 Aries, 
 Nimes, . 
 Pompeii, 
 
 90,000 
 62,000 
 30,000 
 22,000 
 20 000 
 
 187 X 155 metres. 
 169 X 139 „ 
 136x107 „ 
 133x101 „ 
 
 51 metres. 
 46i „ 
 33i .. 
 
 3611 m. 
 2740 „ 
 2166 „ 
 2092 „ 
 
THE AMPHITHEATRE OF ARLES 243 
 
 more from east to west (across the short axis) in order 
 to give space for arranging the chief places. The 
 arena to-day has two thousand one hundred and sixty- 
 six square metres of free surface, and is sixty-nine metres 
 long, but that space was not wholly available when 
 it was in full use in the first century of its construction, 
 soon after the death of Augustus, a date which is also 
 suggested by the noble sobriety of design, the absence 
 of trivial ornament, and the trabeated archways of the 
 grand gallery, one instance among many of that just 
 eye for proportion and correct appreciation of massive 
 values which was the privilege of the early builders of 
 the first century a.d., when the true principles of Greek 
 construction had not yet been lost. 
 
 Of the founders and the date of the foundation no 
 documentary evidence exists. The only inscription 
 that can refer to structural work is the fragmentary 
 letters which record that C. Junius Priscus paid two 
 hundred thousand sesterces (about ;^i5oo) for the 
 restoration of certain arches and stairways. ^ 
 
 The amphitheatre of Aries may be considered as 
 an immense polygon with sixty sides formed by pro- 
 jecting pilasters. Upon vast substructures, which are 
 
 ' This may be compared with the inscription preserved at Pompeii in 
 honour of the duumvirs who restored the amphitheatre there after the 
 damage done by the earthquake of February 63, in which it is recorded 
 how Celer, a magistrate appointed for the games, paid for entrance- 
 ways and a block of seats; how Saginus and Marcellus did the same; 
 how passages and stairways only were put in by Cicinius and Rufus. 
 
244 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 continued throughout the whole space covered by the 
 building, rises a stage of Doric architecture, above 
 which is another tier of arches with Ionic columns. 
 The square towers now to be seen over the main en- 
 trances are of course later, mediaeval constructions, 
 set up when the place was used as a fortress long after 
 the days of the Saracens. The attic story, also of 
 Ionic architecture, and probably a reduced copy of 
 that still visible at the summit of the Cohseum, has dis- 
 appeared from the Aries building, partly owing to its 
 continued use as projectiles against an attacking enemy 
 beneath, partly owing to deliberate destruction in order 
 to give room for those battlements dear to the heart of 
 the mediaeval military architect. But there is no doubt 
 that this attic existed to hold up the great awning, and 
 there are traces of steps which went up to the highest 
 tier of seats, now vanished, in which the spectators 
 were the only ones who had their backs against the 
 actual outside wall. 
 
 There are twenty-four great staircases and twelve 
 passages leading to the seats of the patricians, alter- 
 nating with sixteen other passages that lead to the 
 higher places. The thirty-seven tiers of seats were 
 probably divided into four divisions, the lowest, for 
 the patricians, containing four ranks; the next for the 
 knights, with ten; eleven more for the freedmen; and 
 the uppermost twelve for slaves and common people. 
 
THE AMPHITHEATRE OF ARLES 245 
 
 The most perfect of these now remaining are the four 
 lowest, with their larger seats slightly divided one from 
 the other, just above the podium, or arena-wall. Be- 
 yond these are also traces of the balteus which divided 
 the senators from the knights, especially on the west 
 side, on the right of the Imperial box, which was placed 
 at this extremity of the short axis to secure a perfect 
 view, and probably extended straight back from the 
 parapet of the arena to the balteus of the knights be- 
 hind. Opposite to it was the box for local magistrates, 
 also with its own special entrance and other construc- 
 tive conveniences. No doubt the Imperial box had 
 also a private way of communication direct from the 
 palace in the town behind it. 
 
 I have reproduced various views of this remarkable 
 building, and among them I would draw particular 
 attention to the extraordinary engraving made in 1666. 
 Among the views of the outside and inside of the amphi- 
 theatre, I have tried to include a series which would 
 show its various aspects as the centuries progressed; 
 its new original, its seventeenth-century debasement 
 into a mass of houses, its present noble ruins. As is 
 so often the case in ancient buildings, which have pre- 
 served even in their dilapidation a charm which modern 
 exactitude can never reach, this amphitheatre is even 
 more full of mathematical irregularities than we found 
 to be the case in the Maison Carree, for there is hardly 
 
240 
 
 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 a single one of the external round arches which is of 
 the same height or width as its neighbour. 
 
 This arena was never flooded with water for the 
 presentment of those mimic naval battles which were 
 frequently the joy of Rome. The crowds of horse- 
 men and charioteers who so often began the day's en- 
 
 RUINS OF THE ROMAN AMPHITHEATRE (INTERIOR) AT ARLES (1903). 
 
 tertainment were gathered in the great corridors on each 
 side of the north and south doors. The gladiators 
 waited at one or other of the side entrances. The 
 wild beasts and those who fought with them were 
 collected in the great passages beneath the arena. At 
 the signal of the Emperor, or the chief magistrate 
 present, the trumpet would be blown to call each of 
 these various troops of men and beasts from their own 
 
THE GLADIATORS 247 
 
 quarter, and to the roar of thirty thousand voices they 
 marched in to fight and die. The sound of that ap- 
 plause seems still to echo in the silent building when 
 the shadows fall in a clear line across its white stone 
 seats from the burning blue above. It is a sound that 
 was in my ears whenever I entered the amphitheatre 
 — a cruel roar of lusty encouragement as the fighting 
 lines drew close: a sudden hush as in some separate 
 corner of the arena a death-struggle went on : the shout 
 of partisans from this side and from that, the deep- 
 drawn sob of agony from some strong man, wounded to 
 the death, the scream of tenderer victims as they felt the 
 sullen stroke of steel or claw ... It is all over now; 
 but the place is as full of ghosts as some great battle- 
 field, and must have claimed, ere all was done, as many 
 dead and wounded. 
 
 Some few details of the gladiators who fought here 
 I have reproduced on p. 230, note. But this is the right 
 place for the inscription set up to his favourite pupil 
 by Olympus, the captain of the gladiatorial team at 
 Aries. It runs as follows : L • cranio • L ■ riLio teretina 
 
 ROMANO M • JUL • OLYMPUS NEGOTIATOR FAMILIAE GLADI- 
 ATORIAE OB MERIT • L • GRANII VICTORIS AVI EIUS 
 MERENTI POSUIT. 
 
 Traces are also to be found at Aries of the place 
 allotted in the amphitheatre to various persons. Near 
 the Imperial box was carved the inscription reserv- 
 
248 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 ing places for the trumpets: " Chororum Tibicinarum 
 Gradus." Opposite were placed the rhetors: "Loca 
 Scholasticorum." In other parts of the building are 
 certain seats set apart for citizens who had merited this 
 distinction by some public service: "Loca data 
 decreto Decurionum xxx." An actual ticket of ad- 
 mission, found among the debris, was preserved by 
 M. de Romieu, with the words: "cav. ii. cun. v. grad. 
 X. GLAD. VELA," which not only mark out the seat 
 with minute exactness, but even promise that it shall 
 be shaded by the "vela," or awning, which was spread 
 from the now vanished attic story. 
 
 At Nimes, where inscriptions have been far more 
 carefully preserved than at Aries, these traces of the 
 various arrangements made for the amphitheatre are 
 more numerous. The epitaph exists of C. Veratius 
 Trophimus "curator ludorum," one of the " managers" 
 of the games. In the ruins of the arena were found 
 inscriptions reserving twenty-five places for the boat- 
 men of the Ardfeche and the Ouvfeze; and forty seats 
 for the boatmen of the Rhone and the Sa6ne.^ These 
 are carved on three long stones, five and a half metres 
 long in all, found at the foot of the north-western wall 
 of the arena boundary. Ball games are also known 
 
 ' "n • RHOD ■ ET • ARAR ■ XL ■ D • D • D • N," which is: "Nautis Rho- 
 danicis et Araricis (loca numero) XL Data Decreto Decurionum 
 Nemausensium," 
 
TBE AMPHITHEATRE OF NIMES 251 
 
 to have been played, for the word sphaeristeria has 
 also been discovered. 
 
 The amphitheatre at Nimes is not so large as that 
 at Aries, nor has the original work in its interior been 
 so well preserved, though the whole has been far more 
 fully restored, and many of the topmost rows of seats 
 remain intact, showing that there was no attic story 
 in the original building. The exterior, which is in a 
 far better state of preservation, and still shows the fine 
 cornice which finished off the skyline, was composed of 
 two superimposed arcades of sixty arches, with square 
 pilasters on the ground-tier, and engaged Doric columns 
 above them. The consoles and holes that received the 
 masts to hold the awning may still be traced round the 
 top, but the circle in which they occur is not large 
 enough to be dignified with the appellation of a separate 
 story. The vela had to be there, and the arrangements 
 to support it were added to the second tier of archways, 
 helping to emphasise the bold shadows thrown by the 
 cornice. There are traces of sculpture here and there. 
 Two bulls' forequarters are placed above the north 
 entrance, and there are also carvings of two gladiators, 
 and of the Roman wolf. Only the ornaments of the 
 western division were finished off, the remainder being 
 left in roughly blocked-out stone. 
 
 As was the case at Aries, this building has suffered 
 more from man's brutality than by the ravages of time. 
 
252 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 It has been a fortress. It has been filled up with earth. 
 It has been crowded with mean houses. There has 
 even been a church in its upper gallery, which bricked 
 up two of the archways, and the little Romanesque 
 window with its twisted column may still be seen among 
 the huge masonry of pagan Rome. The whole build- 
 ing measures over three hundred and sixty-four metres 
 all round the outside, and the cornice at the top is over 
 twenty-one metres from the ground. There are five 
 concentric galleries in the thickness of the great circu- 
 lar walls, which unite the passages at various stages, 
 and are themselves approached by massive staircases. 
 
 The breaking of the long sweeping curve of the en- 
 tablature over every column is, to my mind, a defect 
 in design when compared with the magnificent effect 
 of these unbroken, flowing lines on the outside of the 
 Coliseum at Rome. Like the amphitheatre at Aries, 
 and most of the other great Roman buildings, this 
 huge arena is constructed of massive materials, built 
 without cement, and bound together with solid stone 
 lintels and arches. The stones were quarried at 
 Barutel, seven kilometres from Nimes, on the Alais 
 road, and are frequently a cubic metre in size. The 
 letters "T. Crispius Reburrus fecit," found in the 
 debris of the arena, may possibly refer to the original 
 architect, whose plans are now being very considerably 
 modified by the restoratioti of the monument which 
 
THE AMPHITHEATRE OF NIMES 253 
 
 has steadily been going on since Revoil began it in 
 1858. It will soon be completely ready for spectators 
 again, and it is often as crowded as that at, Aries, 
 though it never looks so picturesque, on the occasion 
 of what are known as " bull- fights " in Provence. 
 Some authorities consider that water could be intro- 
 duced into this arena for "naval" displays, and that 
 the walls of the podium were too low to admit of the 
 larger wild beasts in the arena, though the teeth of 
 wolves and wild boars and the antlers of stags have 
 been found among the debris. But both these con- 
 clusions lack precise proof. The only thing that can 
 probably be said is that the building is later than that 
 at Aries, and may date from about 100 a.d. Its thirty- 
 four rows of seats are divided, in the same way, into 
 four tiers for the senators: ten for the knights, ten for 
 the freedmen, and ten for the slaves and menials. 
 And, as is the case with all these constructions, the 
 rapidity with which the whole audience could either 
 enter or leave the building is one of its most remark- 
 able features. It may be better appreciated and under- 
 stood by an examination of the excellent models of 
 the arenas of Nimes and Aries, and of the Coliseum 
 in the town museum. 
 
 I first saw the amphitheatre at Nimes by moonlight 
 on one of those perfect spring nights of April in Pro- 
 vence. The arches, as we approached it, showed like 
 
254 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 giant eyebrows over darkened eyes that peered out of 
 abysses of the past. Within, the shadows lay deep- 
 blue upon the long stone seats. Ringed round by that 
 gigantic cup of masonry, all white and grey, the sky 
 itself, with all its ancient constellations, was the one 
 external thing that we could see; the one thing, too, 
 that was unchanged as long, and had a longer life, 
 than that elhpse of stone which was the moment's 
 perfect microcosm. Beyond those walls the life of 
 old Rome might still be stirring in its sleep for all we 
 knew. Here, and on the same spot at Aries, you may 
 put back the hands of Time. His wings are motion- 
 less; his scythe is stayed. When Rome fell, it seems, 
 his task was done. There was no more to chronicle. 
 
 At Frejus there are far more dilapidated ruins of an 
 amphitheatre which was once almost as large as that 
 of Nlmes, for its external length was nearly one hundred 
 and fourteen metres, by over eighty-two metres broad, 
 and the arena measured sixty-seven metres by thirty- 
 nine; but there could only have been seating accom- 
 modation for some ten thousand spectators. All the 
 Roman public buildings at Frejus are built in the same 
 way, of the same materials, and in rather smaller 
 stones than usual, without a trace of ornaments. 
 
 By Tacitus, who was associated with it as the birth- 
 place of his father-in-law, Agricola, Frejus was called 
 "Claustra Maris." To Caesar it was "Claustra 
 
ROMAN FREJUS 257 
 
 Galliac"; and its western gate still bears the title of 
 the "Porte des Gaules." It was the "Caput," or 
 place of measurement for that section of the Via Aurelia 
 which ended at Aries, having started from Rome to 
 Vada Volaterrana, and so by way of the Var to Forum 
 Julii, keeping along the coast almost the whole way 
 from Rome to Aries. Like pearls along that route, 
 the flourishing seaboard and inland towns were 
 threaded. Cannes and Antibes had theatres hke 
 Frejus; Clausonne and Vallauris had their aqueducts 
 as well; Vence and Grasse, their temples to the twelve 
 great gods. But in her best days Frejus was the equal, 
 if not the superior, of them all; and among her many 
 Roman ruinsj that of the amphitheatre remains the 
 most imposing. Some ancient walls and towers were 
 pulled down when the Route d'ltalie was laid out, 
 which comes from the west straight into the Place des 
 Herbes, and there turns to the north-east. (See the 
 map in Appendix to this first volume.) The first 
 Roman construction just outside the town, west of the 
 Eglise St. Francois and the Place Agricola, is the semi- 
 circular bastion with a tower at each end of its diameter 
 of fifty-five metres, known as the "Porte des Gaules," 
 near the station. After this the Roman wall continued 
 west by north, along the bottom of the sloping ground, 
 to the aniphitheatre, which is clearly visible from the 
 railway, on the east or left bank of the Reyran; and. 
 
258 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 like that of Aries, was built at an angle of the city 
 walls; but its north-eastern corner is supported by a 
 slight hill which avoided the necessity for substruc- 
 tures to hold up the lowest rows of seats at that point, 
 though it also necessitated a certain clumsiness of con- 
 struction which lessens the perfection of the building. 
 The view from the Butte du Mouhn k Vent, just above 
 the amphitheatre, is particularly beautiful, and gives 
 a good idea of how much larger and more important 
 was the Roman Fr^jus than the modern town, and 
 how different were the geographical conditions of two 
 thousand years ago. 
 
 Nearly two kilometres to the north-east from the 
 amphitheatre are the ruins of the theatre, and no doubt 
 the patrician quarter of the Roman town lay between 
 them. The walls, however, went further north than 
 the theatre, and follow the lines of a rocky hill until 
 they turn south and east again towards the point 
 where the arches of the aqueduct (eighteen metres 
 high) enter their enclosure close to the "Porte Ro- 
 mainc," and the line of the modern "Grande Route 
 d'ltalie." As soon as the aqueduct had reached this 
 point, the water was carried along the same line as the 
 ramparts we have just passed, which thus served a 
 double purpose. The meeting of these two construc- 
 tions is still distinctly traceable near the Porte Romaine, 
 and is a most imposing mass of solid masonry and lofty 
 arches. The furthest point east to which the old walls 
 
THE 'PORT' OF FREJUS 259 
 
 extended was the platform above the hill to the south- 
 east of the Porte Romaine, and it should be remembered 
 that the sea washed the base of this hill two thousand 
 years ago, and that the coastline went south from there 
 to the east of the Chapelle St. Roch. Within the plat- 
 form are certain subterranean constructions, difficult of 
 access, which were probably huge cisterns or reservoirs, 
 like those of the famous Abbey of Vezelay. The pattern 
 of the external brickwork is especially noticeable. 
 
 The "Porte Doree," just north of the railway- line, 
 and at the south-eastern corner of the modern town, 
 is more carefully built than anything in Frejus, and 
 originally formed part of far larger constructions on 
 the same spot. It is one of the most remarkable relics 
 of antiquity on the Riviera. From this gate the fortifi- 
 cations extended to cover the Butte St. Antoine south- 
 wards, and at least as far as the Tower called "La 
 Lanterne" to the east, which was the landmark of the 
 Roman harbour, and is just south of the railway-line. 
 Within that harbour, now almost completely dry land, 
 Augustus moored the ships he took from Antony at the 
 battle of Actium, and desired to add the title of " Navale 
 Augusti" to that of "Forum Julii." Just what we saw 
 had happened at the mouths of the Rhone has hap- 
 pened again here in the valley of the Reyran and the 
 Argens, which have filled up the old coastline with 
 alluvial deposits and driven back the sea. In vain was 
 Frejus made a naval headquarters in 1555. By 1663 
 
26o OLD PROVENCE 
 
 its port was already dangerous even for light barques 
 of just over fifty tons. In 1704 it had become little 
 more than a pestilential swamp that had lost communi- 
 cation with the sea. A demand made in 1847 for the 
 excavation of the old harbour was followed in 1859 by 
 its complete disappearance beneath the embankments 
 of the railway from Toulon to Nice, and its locomotives 
 are now rolling to and fro where once the galleys of 
 Antony were moored. Frejus had suffered the fate of 
 Ravenna, of Ostia, of Narbonne, of Aigues-Mortes. 
 
 I have already spoken of the defection of Lepidus at 
 the bridge over the Argens, and I need only add that 
 this historic stream rises close to Tegulata (La Grande 
 Pegiere) on the victorious battlefield of Marius. The 
 gulf through which it reached the sea was once fifteen 
 kilometres further up the valley, and even in Roman 
 times the port was not on the sea itself but on the salt 
 lagoon, which has now in turn been filled up, and which 
 was not entirely healthy even in classical days, if the 
 tomb of C. Vibius Ligur (see note, p. 151) may be 
 taken as an indication. 
 
 In considering the possibilities of the Roman port, 
 the light weight and small size of Roman warships 
 must of course be realised. They were nearly always 
 pulled out of the water at night: "Trahuntque siccas 
 machinae carinas." The legionaries fought on them 
 with military tactics that savoured very little of nautical 
 
FREJUS 261 
 
 evolutions. Fleets were only a disagreeable necessity 
 imposed by a long coastline; and it was as the naval 
 arsenal of the Narbonnaise that Frejus was added to 
 her elder sisters at Misenum and Ravenna. ^ She 
 rapidly rose to importance as a civil and military colony, 
 though never of very large size; and her buildings are 
 a most remarkable evidence of the rapidity and uni- 
 formity with which the official stamp could be put 
 upon a colony by the use of masses of men, easily- 
 worked material (very different to the huge blocks at 
 Nimes and Aries), and simple processes of structure, 
 in which every natural advantage in the way of rocks 
 or hills was promptly seized upon, covered with bricks, 
 and worked into the plan. Judging from the amphi- 
 theatre and the walls there could never have been more 
 than thirty thousand in the Roman population. 
 
 The ruins on the Butte St. Antoine are especially 
 worth visiting, just south of the canal, and to the east 
 as you go out of the railway station; and the remains 
 of the high lighthouse, which was copied from the 
 famous Pharos at Alexandria, are a particularly impos- 
 ing type of the careful and solidly-built constructions 
 with which the Roman port was guarded, and in which 
 arms or provisions for the fleet were stored. These are 
 
 ' Lentheric quotes Tacitus: "Italiam utroque mari duae classes, 
 Misenum apud et Ravennam, proximumque Gallic littus rostratae 
 naves praesidebant, quas Actiaca victoria captas Augustus in oppidum 
 ForojuUense miserat, valido cum remige." 
 
262 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 the only buildings (with the mole and the quays) which 
 are quite different from any other constructions in the 
 Roman provinces. They stamp its essential naval 
 character on the town. But it is the aqueduct which, 
 to my mind, is one of the most interesting things to 
 trace along the valley of the Reyran, as its arches stride 
 across the country bringing water to Frdjus from Siag- 
 nole, fifty kilometres away. Here and there all traces 
 of it disappear; suddenly you come upon gigantic 
 masses of masonry again; and each surviving section 
 has its own name among the peasants : Arcs Serraillier, 
 Arcs Berenguier, Arcs de Gargalon, Arcs BouteilHere 
 (the best of all). Arcs Escoffier (which are double, as 
 are those called Senequier), Arcs de Grisolle, and sev- 
 eral more. I can conceive no more interesting journey 
 than one, with a good guide, which foUows the whole 
 line of these arches on their way from the Siagne. The 
 different modes of construction employed to meet the 
 various difficulties of the route, and keep the water at 
 the right level, are a revelation of Roman persistence 
 and ingenuity, which thought as little of piercing moun- 
 tains as of bridging valleys. 
 
 For the finest Roman aqueduct, not only of Pro- 
 vence, but of the world, we must return, however, to 
 Nimes; for the famous Pont du Gard is certainly the 
 most impressive construction in this or any other dis- 
 trict. It is situated in a beautiful gorge of the valley 
 of the Roman river Gardon, rather more than twenty 
 
THE PONT DU CARD 263 
 
 kilometres out of Nimes, and can be reached by car- 
 riage along the Avignon road, or by train to Lafoux, 
 which is about half an hour's distance on foot through 
 interesting country. 
 
 This colossal piece of engineering was built more 
 than nineteen hundred years ago, and still remains as 
 gigantic and as enduring as when it brought the spring- 
 water of the Eure from Uzfes to the Roman baths and 
 public buildings of Nemausus. Its solid yet elegant 
 arches span the whole ravine with masonry that rises 
 from the bed of the stream to the lip of the hills on either 
 side, 'a height of one hundred and sixty feet. The 
 lowest tier of six arches, which span the river like a 
 bridge, are built with four distinct courses in the 
 breadth of the structure. They support a second row 
 of eleven arches, which in their turn hold up the highest 
 tier of thirty-five small arches, eight hundred and eighty- 
 two feet in length, upon which the actual conduit is laid. 
 All three tiers are built of enormous blocks of stone 
 from a neighbouring quarry, fitted without cement, and 
 the two upper arcades have three courses in the breadth 
 of their structure. The waterway is five feet high and 
 two feet wide, lined with strong Roman cement that is 
 still sound and good, and covered with immense flag- 
 stones, which the Goths themselves were unable to 
 carry awajy' The calcareous deposit of the water left 
 so thick a layer in the channel, after many centuries of 
 use, that many houses near are built of thirty centi- 
 
264 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 metres of sediment found in it, and the village church 
 of Bezonce was entirely constructed out of it. 
 
 It must have been chiefly with the idea of cleaning 
 out this conduit when necessary that projecting blocks 
 of masonry were left on the flanks and under the arches 
 to hold up any scaffolding that might be required; and 
 it is no trifling indication of the builder's faith in the 
 eternal duration of the Roman Empire that he should 
 have made such careful provision for the repairing of 
 a structure so titanic in its proportions and its strength. 
 The name "Veranius," placed within the eighth arch 
 (counting from the right bank) of the second tier, is 
 probably that of the architect. The carving, which is 
 called "Le Lievre du Pont du Gard," is probably not 
 a hare at all, but very possibly represents one of the 
 same symbols of nature-worship which are to be found 
 in the amphitheatre. There is also an inscription at 
 Nimes which may refer to an early example of those 
 guilds of bridge-builders, of which I shall have more 
 to say at Avignon; but it is more likely to be one of 
 the many altars set up by the gratitude of classical 
 antiquity for springs of good fresh water. i 
 
 ' AUGUSTIS LAEIBTJS CULTORES XIRAE FONTIS. "To the Lares, 
 the worshippers (or perhaps the guardians) of the spring of the Eure." 
 Four lines of somewhat incorrect elegiacs found at Uzfes preserve a more 
 naive admission of the benefits of the spring. They run as follows : — 
 "Sextus Pompeius . . . cognomine Pandus 
 Cujus et hoc ab avis contigit esse solum 
 Aediculam hanc ny mphis [posui] quia saepius ussus [ ?] 
 Hoc sum fonte senex tam bene quam juvenis." 
 
THE PONT DU CARD 265 
 
 Those who recall the aqueducts of the Campagna 
 will remember that those lines of brick arches are de- 
 void either of ornament or of architectural design, in 
 spite of that quality of impressiveness which they re- 
 tain in common with all Roman work of the kind. 
 Roman engineering was as free from the transitional 
 element as it was from all the affectation of style which 
 occasionally weakened their public buildings of a dif- 
 ferent class. The engineers knew what they wanted, 
 and they went directly for it, achieving their purpose 
 with a massive simplicity of strength and fitness which 
 gives attractiveness even to the wonderful substructures 
 of the Appian Way. In such an aqueduct as the Pont 
 du Gard this quality is especially conspicuous. The 
 three tiers of arches, as Fergusson points out, produce 
 the same effect as an entablature and cornice upon a 
 long range of columns, with the additional and stupen- 
 dous feature that the whole structure spreads out wider 
 and wider as it rises in height from its foundation. 
 The full beauty of the work is therefore only appreci- 
 able from a httle distance down the valley where the 
 sloping hills above the stream add their supporting 
 lines to a picture which combines the majesty of nature 
 with the daring skill of man. From here you realise 
 how the Roman converted a merely utilitarian structure 
 into an architectural screen of unrivalled beauty with- 
 out the introduction of a single ornament or a single 
 
266 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 useless feature. A comparison with the double tiers of 
 the aqueducts at Segovia or Tarragona, or with the 
 single arches of the Bridge of Trajan at Alcantara, will 
 bring out the architectural supremacy of the Pont du 
 Gard by comparison with the best works of the kind. 
 By such buildings as this did the Romans acquire the 
 constructive skill and magnificence of proportion which 
 enabled them fearlessly to plan buildings so vast in size, 
 and to vault spaces so huge, that the impress of their 
 maker's power has lasted while the rock on which they 
 built them has endured. As I have frequently pointed 
 out in other cases, another reason for the particular 
 charm of the Pont du Gard lies in the fact of its irreg- 
 ularity. The arches are unequal in span. The 
 structure itself is bent in its length. It is not mere 
 machine-made measurement, but the strong handi- 
 work and giant eyesight of a conquering race; and the 
 orders for it may well have been given by that Agrippa, 
 son-in-law of Augustus, whose mighty monuments at 
 Rome had earned for him the title of "Curator per- 
 petuus aquarum."! 
 
 In the sixteenth century the Due de Rohan, who 
 
 ' An inscription mentioning his name was found at Nimes in 1742, 
 and I am inclined to attribute it to a commemoration of Agrippa's 
 work at the finishing of the aqueduct from the Pont du Gard within 
 the town itself, perhaps near the celebrated baths. His third consulate 
 was in B.C. 27, and he was in Provence again in B.C. 19. The words 
 are : "m. agrippa lucu filius consul hi coloniae dat." 
 
THE PONT DU CARD 267 
 
 was engaged near Nimes in manoeuvres necessitated 
 by the Wars of Religion, cut through a third of the 
 thickness of the archways on the second rank in order 
 to give room for his cannon to be transported along the 
 space upon the first row of arches. Further mutila- 
 tions did not improve the strength of the original ma- 
 sonry, and, after some repairs had been made, the 
 estates of Languedoc restricted the traffic to men on 
 foot or on horse-back. But the increase of intercom- 
 munications, and the frequent floods which blocked 
 the ford beneath, soon necessitated a more commodious 
 bridgeway; so between 1743 and 1747, M. Pitot, the 
 Director of Public Works, built a new bridge, carrying 
 a road along the eastern flank of the lowest arcade; and 
 from this bridge a close examination of the Roman 
 masonry is possible. 
 
 The drive to the Pont du Gard takes you along a 
 broad white road, of the best, too spacious to be dull, 
 too flowing in its curves to be monotonous, through a 
 mild and sunlit plain of olive-trees. You see the arches 
 for the first time when you are close to them, and it is 
 not until you move down into the gorge itself that it is 
 possible to realise how exquisite a choice of setting was 
 made by the old builders. As has happened to so many 
 Provencal ruins, these stones are of light golden-yellow, 
 which is particularly rich in tone in all its shadows. 
 They spring out of the green-clad slopes on either side. 
 
268 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 and through their noble frames the blue of the infinite 
 air looks deeper and more full of memories than it does 
 in the free space above ; as if some intimate community 
 had been established between the present that we know 
 and the past that has been captured by some far-off 
 spell, some strong enchantment of a builder who builded 
 more wisely than he knew. 
 
 But if there is here so strong a shadow of the ever- 
 lasting Roman name, the image of their vanished world 
 is reflected even more clearly in the dark and cool and 
 ever-changing scenes of the Roman baths at Nimes. 
 Beneath the Pont du Gard it is difficult to believe that 
 a monument more lasting than any modern London 
 has to show was built but to carry the water of a pair of 
 springs to a provincial town, and was but a single por- 
 tion of an aqueduct that assured the passage of good 
 water for more than forty kilometres. In the gardens 
 beneath Mont Cavaher, even more than in any spot at 
 Nlmes, it is possible to realise how large a part fresh 
 water played in Roman life. If cleanliness be luxury, 
 our eighteenth century was one of the most ascetic in 
 our history; and even yet we are but faintly approach- 
 ing the state of civilisation, which was familiar to every 
 Roman until the Empire fell, and to every inhabitant 
 of a Mohammedan city for many centuries afterwards. 
 The Roman baths of Nimes and the temple to the 
 Fountain-god Nemausus are a typical example of one 
 
ROMAN nImES 269 
 
 pleasure — and that the simplest — which every Roman 
 town enjoyed of right. 
 
 Opposite to the Maison Carrie is the modern theatre, 
 and from its north-western corner the Rue Antonin 
 runs straight to the long military canal called the Quai 
 de la Fontaine. As you walk westwards along this you 
 soon see the long straight Boulevard de la R^pub- 
 lique, which leads in a mathematically correct line to 
 the Jardin de la Fontaine, with its iron gateway and 
 its concierge complete. It is one of the most delight- 
 ful public gardens in provincial France, and though 
 eighteenth-century architecture has done much to alter 
 its original appearance, there is still much left that has 
 the true flavour of Imperial Rome. It will be well to 
 begin with the ruined temple that is the least changed 
 of all the old constructions, the shrine raised by the 
 Romans upon the earher Celtic temple to the fountain- 
 god. 
 
 Fortunately an inscription has been found, and 
 deciphered, which throws a great deal of light both 
 upon the building itself and upon the original disposi- 
 tion of its surroundings, and the wording of this in- 
 scription shows that the title of "Temple de Diane," 
 which persistently survives, may well be a tradition of 
 one of the divinities to which the Roman temple was 
 dedicated as follows: — 
 
 "To the God Nemausus, and to the Goddess Diana, 
 
270 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 the Commonwealth of Nimes has dedicated this Foun- 
 tain of the Nymphs, constructed, with its marble 
 columns, its statues, and all its ornaments, by the 
 munificence of the Emperor Augustus, consul for the 
 tenth time, consul designate for the eleventh time, and 
 there were built in addition to it this portico and 
 temple."! 
 
 This valuable and interesting inscription, the original 
 of which I reproduce, according to Germer-Durand's 
 reading, in the footnote, was found on a magnificent 
 fragment of a frieze and architrave of Corinthian archi- 
 
 ' The original inscription, found near the Roman basin of the 
 fountain in 1739, runs as follows, as deciphered by Gerraer-Durand : — 
 
 DEO NEMAUSO ET DIANAE SANCTAE RES PUBLICA NEMAUSESIUM 
 NYMPHAEUM CUM COLUMNIS MARMOREIS SIGNIS CETERISQUE ORNA- 
 MENTIS SUIS EXSTRUCTUM MUNiriCENTIA IMPERATORIS CAESARIS 
 DIVI FILI ATJGUSTI CONSULIS X DESIGNATI XI ADDITIS PORTICU ET 
 AEDE DEDICAVIT. 
 
 I may add here some other inscriptions found in these same gradens. 
 
 (1) NEMAtJSO Q. CRASSUS SECUNDINUS QUAESTOR COLONIAE. 
 
 (2) C. ANDOLATIUS NEMAUSO VOTUM SOLVIT LIBENS MERITO. 
 
 (3) NEMAUSO SACRUM RENICCI FILIUS CAPITULUM DAT. 
 
 (4) PAETUS ET RENICCIUS VOTUM SOLVUNT. 
 
 (5) NYMPHIS AUGUSTIS SACRUM TERTIUS BAEBII FILIUS L. DE- 
 
 CUMIUS DECUMANUS L. POMTINUS MARTIALIS L. ANNIUS 
 ALLOBEOX DE SUO. 
 
 (6) NYMPHIS AUGUSTIS SACRUM LICINIA SEVERINA V.S.L.M. 
 
 [See No. (2)]. 
 
 (7) NYMPHIS. 
 
 (8) LARIBUS AUGUSTIS MINERVAE V.S.L.M. 
 
 (9) VENERI AUGUSTAE. 
 
 (10) JOVI OPTIMO MAXIMO HELIOPOLITANO ET NEMAUSO . . . 
 
 [el eel, V. supra, p. 192 nole\. 
 
 (11) JOVI ET NEMAUSO TITUS FLAVIUS HERMES EXACTOR OPERUM 
 
 BASILICAS M ARMOR ARII ET LAPIDARII VOTUM SOLVUNT. 
 
E 
 
ROMAN NtMES 273 
 
 tecture dug out of the soil on the south side of the 
 square Roman basin. Sufficient fragments were re- 
 united to form a fajade, which had originally eight 
 columns, with a colonnade at an angle, and rich carv- 
 ings. The square basin, south of the actual pool of the 
 spring, is the "Nymphaeum" which Augustus first 
 constructed in B.C. 24 (his tenth consulate), and which 
 appears with its eighteenth-century urns and cherubs, 
 in my illustration. Eight years afterwards (b.c. 16 
 and 15) he built the town walls, the finest remnant of 
 which is the "Porte d'Auguste"; and the Nimes medal, 
 showing the palm-tree and the crocodile, was no doubt 
 struck to commemorate a fortification which would be 
 intimately connected with the veteran soldiers from 
 Egypt who had been settled in the town. The "por- 
 tico" was a splendid colonnaded entrance to the baths, 
 and was added to the constructions of Augustus by 
 the free township, or Commonwealth (Res Publica) 
 of Nimes, which also built the "temple" that is still 
 standing. No doubt the portico connected this temple 
 with the Nymphaeum. In a.d. 121 Hadrian restored 
 all these buildings, and the inscription recording their 
 foundation by Augustus, and by the city, is chiefly 
 written in letters of Hadrian's date, for that Emperor 
 was always careful (as Spartianus records) to preserve 
 the ancient founders' names and inscriptions on all the 
 many buildings he restored. 
 
274 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 Ruined and dilapidated as is this little temple, it 
 retains the charm that is due to the locahty and the 
 interest that is inseparable from anything unique; for 
 in its way this fountain-temple is unique, though some 
 have compared it with the "Nymphaeum" built by 
 Augustus at the spring of Egeria, in a lonely field some 
 three miles out of Rome ; and others see in it consider- 
 able resemblances to that temple to the Heliopolitan 
 Jupiter, built by Antoninus at Baalbec, which is sug- 
 gested by the inscription on an altar to that deity found 
 in the Nlmes fountain, and already referred to in these 
 pages (pp. 270 and 192). 
 
 The fafade was originally formed of three irregular 
 arches, and there are traces indicating that the centre 
 entrance once had a porch in front of it. The actual 
 space "now covered by the "cella" is fourteen metres 
 eighty, by nine metres fifty- five; and of the two side 
 galleries (two metres fifty broad), that to the right of 
 the entrance alone remains, the whole of the south side 
 having been irreparably damaged. The existing gal- 
 lery provides an extremely interesting example of 
 barrel-vaulting, the roof being arranged in three sepa- 
 rate parts which permit the light to enter, but overlap 
 each other sufficiently to keep out the rain, and accom- 
 pany the rising steps, as it were, towards the window 
 in the fafade which originally lighted them. But the 
 vaulting of the "cella" itself is an even more picturesque 
 
THE TEMPLE OF NEMAUSUS 275 
 
 example of the strength and skill of Roman masonry; 
 for here you may see the naked ribs soaring upwards 
 and across, apparently in defiance of every law of 
 gravity and weight, without a trace of mortar to sup- 
 port them. This roof was evidently first built over 
 with a series of twelve thick arches, or transverse ribs, 
 and the space between them was then filled in with a 
 plain wagon vault or flags of stone. This structure 
 had undoubtedly a great influence on the first vaulted 
 churches of Provence; and it is a very curious coin- 
 cidence that it was also adopted in the construction of 
 the early Christian churches of Syria, for in referring 
 once again to the altar dedicated to Jupiter Heliopoli- 
 tanus, and found on this spot, I find that the Tiberinus 
 who set it up was a native of Berytus, which is close to 
 Heliopolis in Syria. The construction of the early 
 Christian churches in Syria has been carefully de- 
 scribed by Count Melchior de Vogiie, and it is so ex- 
 traordinarily like that of the early churches in Provence 
 that, if this temple at Nimes had not existed, we should 
 be obliged to believe the method had been brought here 
 from the East by the monks of the eleventh century, 
 who visited Palestine while it was in the hands of the 
 Crusaders. 
 
 This Roman temple is on the site of a far older shrine 
 to the fountain-god, set up by the Celtic tribes. Close 
 to the same site has been found an altar to Isis. The 
 
276 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 twelve well-designed niches within the temple no doubt 
 contained the statues of as many different divinities, 
 and the especial care taken to protect this structure 
 from damage either by settlement of the soil, or by 
 floods, is very remarkable, resulting in elaborate sub- 
 structures and drainage arrangements, which have pro- 
 vided antiquarian problems for centuries. The wall 
 of the fafade alone is no less than three metres thick. 
 This is just as well; for the temple was altered by the 
 Benedictine monks who owned it till it was used as a 
 granary by a sixteenth-century farmer. Then it was 
 almost destroyed by fire in 1576, and suffered even 
 more by the wanton violence of the townspeople in the 
 next year, who wished to prevent Marshal de Belle- 
 garde holding it for the Catholics in the Religious 
 Wars. In 1622 it was still further weakened by 
 being pillaged for stonework for the fortifications of 
 the town which passed not far off and included the 
 Tour Magne (just above, on Mont Cavaher) in their 
 circuit. " 
 
 The Baths themselves are somewhat difficult to re- 
 construct beneath the ItaHan-Formal-Garden that now 
 almost conceals them. The strange column now kept 
 in the right-hand passage of the temple originally 
 served as one of the supports of the velarium that shad- 
 owed the central block of masonry in the square bath; 
 and beneath it the Roman ladies reclined in the sun 
 
ROMAN BATHS AT NIMES 277 
 
 after they had bathed, or waited for their turn to "take 
 the waters." The pattern of this column is worth 
 notice, for an acanthus-leaf is carved upon its base, 
 which must be almost a unique instance of such a posi- 
 tion. It was but one among many of the adornments 
 which originally made this place worthy alike of the 
 fountain-god and of the Emperor; and, as may be seen 
 from the inscriptions preserved in the Museum, it was 
 the pride and pleasure of the inhabitants of Nimes to 
 contribute to its beauty with votive-offerings of carved 
 capitals, of altars, of fine marbles, and of pillars. There 
 were also statues of famous citizens placed round its 
 borders, and the names of some of them have been pre- 
 served. Quintus Solonius Severinus, for example, had 
 held high office, civil, rehgious and military, in Rome; 
 he had been pontiff at Nimes; and he was "patron" of 
 the city of Frejus, which sent his statue here for the 
 decoration of the Baths. Lucius Sammius Aemihanus 
 was another Roman knight, the prefect of an auxiliary 
 cohort, and an ofhce-holder in the province of Nar- 
 bonne. His statue was placed here by a freedman 
 who was at the head of that Dionysiac dramatic brother- 
 hood in Nimes which was so warmly supported by 
 Hadrian. Caius AemiUus Postumus, a military tri- 
 bune, was decreed the honour of a statue by the town. 
 Quintus Cominius Aemilianus, headman of the city 
 watch, was awarded a statue by the Gauls of Nimes. 
 
278 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 To Quintus Soillius Valerianus the three cities of 
 Cavaillon, Avignon, and Frejus had united in erecting 
 a statue in these same gardens. To complete the rough 
 idea of Roman luxury these various details will gradu- 
 ally permit you to imagine, it is only necessary to re- 
 member that on the east side of Mont Cavalier, within 
 easy reach of the Baths, are the vestiges of a little 
 theatre, and several of the inscriptions referring to its 
 actors I have already quoted in connection with the 
 theatre of Aries. 
 
 For the rest, no further merely problematical archae- 
 ology is necessary to enjoy the impression of cultured 
 pleasure still conveyed by the " Jardin de la Fontaine," 
 changed as it is in nearly every essential since its first 
 foundation. The spring itself, with its semi-circular 
 stone borders, is probably the least changed of all its 
 features, and remains the most beautiful. The garden 
 terraces are now arranged very much after the formal 
 Italian manner common near TivoH or Albano; and 
 apart from the temple, little of the original Roman 
 structures remains except some of the columns that 
 stand in the water in the square basin beneath the 
 eighteenth century balustrade. The urns and cupids 
 do not spoil the effect. They are so obviously dif- 
 ferent, and the setting of the whole picture is on such 
 a large and generous scale that a blended harmony of 
 line and atmosphere is achieved with far greater sue- 
 
LIFE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPERORS 279 
 
 cess than any written description of the place could 
 ever suggest to the untravelled reader. 
 
 With the Roman Baths of Nimes I have now com- 
 pleted the list of those larger monuments of Roman life 
 and luxury which reveal so much of what Rome did 
 for Provence in the four best centuries when her influ- 
 ence was paramount. In Italy itself the very multi- 
 tude of ruins somewhat obscures the significance of 
 each; but in the Rhone vaUey, each Roman relic has a 
 value of its own. The Maison Carrfe of Nimes, the 
 amphitheatre of Aries, the triumphal monuments of 
 St. Remy, each have the value of an ordered, spacious 
 setting; each, too, as it seems to me, is preserved in an 
 atmosphere of more kindly antiquity, and more appro- 
 priate grace, than is the case with many similar ex- 
 amples in a modern Italian town. They are not sur- 
 rounded by the bustle and the tramcars and the electric 
 lights of modern Rome. They are not preserved 
 within the living tombs of Herculaneum or of Pompeii. 
 They seem to be the appropriate setting for the mild 
 dignity and the unhasting commerce of a Provence that 
 has never lost her memories of classic Greece and 
 Rome. 
 
 Before I pass on to the Middle Ages, by way of St. 
 Trophime at Aries, I propose to touch on a few of those 
 smaller personal details of Roman life and Roman in- 
 dividual character which history must sometimes omit. 
 
28o OLD PROVENCE 
 
 and art can only now and then suggest. From some of 
 the smaller portrait statues, from a few inscriptions, 
 from the wonderful tombs preserved at Aries, it will be 
 possible to picture for ourselves a classical antiquity 
 that is not wholly out of the pages of our school-books; 
 that is a little more intimate in its revelations of a com- 
 mon humanity, a common joy, a common sorrow. Be- 
 fore we say good-bye to Rome, it will be well to realise 
 what we shall have lost; that so, with a somewhat better 
 grace, we may pronounce our "Ave atque Vale" above 
 the ruins of her decline and faU. 
 
 EARLY CHRISTIAN TOMB AT AELES [e], 
 
 PART II.— BENEATH THE SURFACE 
 
 "... Edebant et bibebant ; emebant et vendebant ; 
 plantabant et aedificabant . . . usque in diem qua veni 
 diluvium et perdidit omnes . . ." 
 
 So much might be said about the Romans in Provence 
 from the time of Augustus up to the invasions of the 
 Barbarians, that I shall confine myself to selecting those 
 typical suggestions which the traveller may confirm for 
 
LIFE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPERORS 281 
 
 himself by studying what he can actually see upon the 
 spot.i 
 
 The Nymphaeum and the Temple of Nemausus 
 may well serve as the starting-place for our brief con- 
 sideration of Roman life, inasmuch as his baths were 
 one of the most important functions in a Roman's 
 day. Many bathed twice; and the demands of luxu- 
 rious effeminacy were occasionally responsible for as 
 many as seven or eight baths in the twenty-four hours. 
 The price of admission was low enough to enable every 
 section of the population except the lowest of the slaves 
 to enter, and there was a portico (filled with notices 
 and advertisements) in which people waited their 
 turn when the rooms were full. From here every 
 one passed into a dressing-room which was also a 
 cooling-room, in which arrangements were made for 
 hanging up clothes, or placing them on shelves. Its 
 walls were yellow, the ceiling panelled in white with 
 red borders, the pavement of common white mosaic, 
 and stone benches ran round the walls. Ground 
 glass was used (as at Pompeii) for the window placed 
 under the vault of the roof. The decorations usually 
 represented some such subject as a pair of tritons carry- 
 
 ' Part of what I have to say is sufficiently illustrated by the pictures 
 reproduced in these pages. Other points may be studied from the 
 original inscriptions, and a Ust of those which I have chosen will be 
 found at the end of this chapter, numbered thus " (i)," for convenience 
 of reference from the text. 
 
2S2 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 ing vases and surrounded by a shoal of dolphins with 
 cupids playiag among them. Out of this apartment 
 opened the door to the cold swimming-bath, shaped 
 like a circle, with four alcoves framing it in a square, 
 and a walk all round of about a yard wide, the whole 
 in white marble, beneath a domed roof painted blue. 
 The walls were yellow, with certain green branches 
 painted on them, the alcoves being blue or red. Eight 
 feet from the floor a decorated frieze of stucco-work 
 ran round the walls, representing a chariot race. 
 
 The monument erected to the memory of Antistius 
 (see No. (9) of the epitaphs) shows that there was a 
 doctor at Ntmes, for he is described as "Medicus." 
 His profession was one that was only honoured in Rome 
 at comparatively a very late period, for the "chirurgi" 
 and " iatraliptae " of Greece were at first looked upon 
 with a distrust which rapidly ripened into aversion. 
 Only by the reign of Tiberius did any division into 
 special departments occur in this profession; but I 
 have no doubt that the use of hot baths, and of per- 
 spiration generally, was one of the earliest remedies 
 the doctors suggested with any certainty of credence 
 owing to the immediate visibility of "results." Bath- 
 ers therefore who, either by their doctor's advice or 
 from natural indolence, preferred warmth, used a 
 dressing-room with an open charcoal stove at the end 
 of the room, and bronze seats all round. Here the 
 
ROMAN BATHS 285 
 
 walls were crimson, and the cornice was supported by 
 terra-cotta statues which separated the available space 
 into recesses. Here the number of fragrant oils in 
 which the Romans delighted were applied, from the 
 oil of saffron (or "crocus") beloved by Elagabalus 
 to the "nardinum," with which the hair was anointed 
 before festive garlands were placed on it. The rich 
 carried their own perfumes to the baths in precious 
 boxes; the poor, who used meal of lupins instead of 
 soap, were supplied with cheaper odoriferous powders. 
 Opening from this was an apartment, hke the hot 
 room of the modern Turkish bath, and used for the 
 same purpose; which was kept at the right temperature 
 by a kind of universal flue which surrounded floor 
 and ceiling and all four walls with a column of heated 
 air from a central furnace. At one end was a large 
 "labrum" or tazza, of basalt, granite, porphyry, or 
 alabaster, with a lion's head in the centre, from which 
 a spray of water rose to cool the bather before he moved 
 into less heated apartments. There was also a large 
 circular marble bath, full of hot water, so constructed 
 as to contain eighteen or twenty bathers at once in 
 a comfortable sitting posture round the edge. The 
 only seats here were of wood, and everything in the 
 apartment was naturally warm and dripping. There 
 were windows in the domed roof which could be closed 
 or opened at will. The floor rested on small pillars 
 
286 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 throughout to ensure the proper distribution of heat, 
 as described above, and the walls were hollow for the 
 same reason. 
 
 It wiU easily be seen that great magnificence could 
 be displayed in the ornamentation of these buildings; 
 and very varied amusements were contained in the 
 largest of them. A library, for instance, was con- 
 sidered fashionable from the days of Claudius onwards. 
 Though at first the property of private speculators, 
 the baths at Rome soon became as free to the people 
 as the amphitheatre or the circus, and remained so, 
 while the older, private institutions still survived be- 
 side them. There were separate baths for the ladies; 
 though it is a well-known fact that a good deal of dis- 
 order was occasionally created in Italian cities by persons 
 who objected even to this temporary separation ; and on 
 certain festivals, for instance the Kalends of April, 
 the poorer classes first celebrated the cult of Fortuna 
 Virilis, and then their richer sisters did honour to Venus 
 Verticordia, by bathing with the men, a kind of solenrn 
 "lustration" involving the wearing of myrtle. Women 
 were especially fond of the worship of Fortuna, whose 
 dedication-day (now that of St. John the Baptist) was 
 exactly at the summer solstice, and whose symbols 
 were the wheel, the rudder, and the globe. On the 
 eleventh day of that same month of June was the 
 festival of Matralia, at which the goddess Mater 
 Matuta was worshipped with sacred cakes cooked in 
 
THE WOMEN'S FESTIVALS 287 
 
 old-fashioned earthenware. She may well have been 
 only another form of the Bona Dea, whose altar was 
 described on p. 195, whose temple on the Aventine 
 had been first dedicated on the ist of May, and was 
 ever afterwards cared for exclusively by women, as 
 was the case with the Athenian Demeter Thesmoph- 
 orus, another feminine personification of the earth- 
 ■ goddess, of the fructifying power which was shown 
 also in the child-bearing of women. Her appropriate 
 sacrifice was a pig, and this was offered by the women 
 on the night of the 3rd of December, with rites which 
 continued to be perfectly decorous until at least a cen- 
 tury after the famous sacrilege of Clodius in 63 B.C. 
 
 With that sacrifice, £.s with the spring festival of 
 the Parilia, the Vestal Virgins were associated at 
 Rome. Their chief ritual consisted in the visitation 
 of barefooted matrons on the 7th of June, praying for 
 blessings on their households. While sacred cakes 
 were offered plucked from the earhest com, the bakers 
 and millers all kept holiday, their mills were garlanded, 
 their donkeys wreathed in flowers. In Provence we 
 find also, as was only to be expected, that women were 
 as closely connected with the pubUc religion as they 
 were in Italy. At Aries we have seen the altar of the 
 priestess of the Bona Dea. At Nlmes one of the most 
 conspicuous tombs in the courtyard of the museum 
 is that of Licinia, a priestess of the Augustal rites, 
 and of her husband beside her. She is represented. 
 
OLD PROVENCE 
 
 not in her priestly dress, but as an honourable Roman 
 matron, her hair dressed in rows of tight curls above 
 the forehead, with a long plait hanging down to the 
 breast on each side of the face. Her epitaph is : " D.M. 
 Liciniae Lucii Filiae Flavillae Flaminicae Augustali." 
 Above the two heads the sculptured dolphin at each 
 corner refers only to the happy voyage of the beloved 
 dead towards the Blessed Isles. They have no refer- 
 ence either to her own or to her husband's profession. 
 The importance to which these priestesses of the Im- 
 perial divinities might rise, and the wealth they might 
 possess in a career which did not depend at all upon 
 their husbands, may be estimated from the inscription 
 found on the podium of the amphitheatre at Vienne, 
 which records of a lady who held the same ofhce as 
 Licinia that she gave gilt-bronze tiles for the roof, 
 statues of Castor and Pollux on horseback, and of 
 Hercules and Mercury, besides other ornaments at 
 her own expense for the decoration of the building 
 (Alhner. Inscr., Vienn., No. 191). 
 
 Licinia's husband, whose sturdy face is carved next 
 to her own, was Tribune of the Sixth Legion, called 
 the Victorious; one of the four chief magistrates of 
 the town; and a pontiff — no small official record. He 
 is represented in the cuirass, which shows his mihtary 
 rank, and on each side of the carving are the fasces, 
 or ceremonial rods, terminating in laurel-leaves, which 
 
ROMAN GARDENERS 
 
 289 
 
 typify his magisterial functions. It is interesting also 
 to note that the man who reached these high honours 
 in the township of Nimes before the reign of Septimius 
 Severus was undoubtedly of Gallic blood. His epitaph 
 
 runs as follows: "D.M. 
 
 Sex. Adgennii Macrini 
 
 Tribuni Legionis vi. Vic- 
 
 tricis Quattuorviri Juredi- 
 
 cundo Pontificis Praefecti 
 
 Fabrum." Curiously 
 
 enough the stone which 
 
 probably commemorates 
 
 the names of the children 
 
 of Licinia and Adgennius 
 
 is stiU to be found in 
 
 what must have been its 
 
 original position, and on 
 
 it may be read the words: "Sextus Adgennius So- 
 
 lutus et Adgennia Licinilla Parentibus." 
 
 From the httle sketch of family affection and justifi- 
 able pride which these inscriptions give us, it is an easy 
 transition to the various epitaphs, still preserved at 
 Nimes and elsewhere, which throw light on some of 
 the ordinary avocations and proceedings of the Roman 
 citizen. On two tombs are recorded the deaths of 
 gardeners (numbered (i) and (2) in the list at the end 
 of this chapter). The first, named Cornelius, had his 
 
 TOUB OF ADGENNIUS AND HIS WIFE 
 LICINIA AT NIMES. 
 
290 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 dibble and his favourite billhook carved above his 
 epitaph; and on the tomb of Nundinus there also ap- 
 pears the wheel of the well that gave him water for 
 his vegetable-beds in a thirsty land. Restricted to the 
 flora of the country in which he happened to be living, 
 deprived of all those far-fetched blooms which are the 
 exotic glory of modern horticulture, the Roman citizen 
 had to make the most of what he had; and he very 
 naturally developed a style of formal gardening and 
 cHpped shrubbery which might well have anticipated 
 the French eighteenth century on the one hand and 
 the English box-borders on the other, and was very 
 probably copied from Oriental examples. Among the 
 trees and flowerbeds was a broad regular pathway, 
 in which the owner took exercise in a litter; and in 
 larger gardens the "hippodrome" for private horse- 
 and-chariot racing was a distinctive feature, set apart 
 by groves of laurel and box, of myrtle, and the rose- 
 mary, which grows much higher in Italy than with us. 
 Among the flowers they loved were the rose and violet, 
 the crocus, hly, and narcissus, the iris, hyacinth, and 
 poppy, of which it was the bright red damask-rose 
 that was most frequently employed for garlands. By 
 the time of Martial something ' which closely corre- 
 
 '"Hybernis objecta Notis specularia puros 
 Admittunt soles et sine faece diem . . . 
 Quid non ingenio voluit natura licere? 
 Auctumnum sterilis ferre jubetur hiems." 
 
 [These quotations are given by Becker.) 
 
VINEYARDS 291 
 
 sponded to the modern greenhouse or conservatory 
 had come into use for winter grapes and early melons 
 as well as for lilies and roses/ which were not only 
 forced in Rome, but also imported from Egypt in 
 winter. Among their fruit were apples, pears, plums, 
 cherries, quinces, peaches, pomegranates, figs, chest- 
 nuts, almonds, medlars, and mulberries, besides the 
 grapes and olives, which were the most important of 
 all; and we may be sure that in a town so near St. 
 Remy as is Nimes, a climate where flowers and vege- 
 tables grow luxuriantly in the mild sunshine, the garden- 
 ers whose epitaphs I have quoted had not much dif- 
 ficulty in supplying all their patrons' wants, when once 
 the water question had been satisfactorily solved, as 
 the Pont du Gard had solved it. 
 
 Vine-growing was a rather different matter. For 
 a long time the monopoly of the wine-trade had 
 formed the staple of Italian commerce with Medi- 
 terranean coast-towns, and it was only by slow degrees 
 that the Romans encouraged those vineyards in South- 
 ern France which were in later centuries to produce 
 the best wines in the world. It is known, for instance, 
 that Domitian (in 81 a.d.) tore up the vineyards of 
 Provence; but it is also known that Probus (in 276 
 A.D.) restored and encouraged the culture of the vine; 
 Martial calls Vienne "vitifera"; and there was cer- 
 
 ' "Dat festinatas, Caesar, tibi bruma coronas : 
 Quondam veris erat, nunc tua facta rosa est." 
 
292 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 tainly much vine-growing near Nimes before the Ro- 
 mans left it, for Quartina (see No. (3) in the epitaphs) 
 set up a monument to her "excellent brother Vallo," 
 and carved upon it the pruning-knife which may still 
 be seen in every vineyard near the Southern Rhone. 
 From Vallo's grapes, no doubt, was made the "ordi- 
 naire" served in the httle wine-shop commemorated 
 in another inscription (see No. (4) of the epitaphs), 
 which was kept by an innkeeper with the sounding 
 name of Lucius Trebonius Nicephorus Patillus, a 
 bachelor apparently, whose tombstone was provided 
 by his good friend Epaphroditus.^ We are apt to 
 forget that inns are not entirely the invention of the 
 modern traveller. In the Roman Empire the hostelry, 
 as opposed to the wineshop, was a necessary result 
 of the "colonising" of various centres, of the move- 
 ments of officials between their "homes" in Italy and 
 their "situations" elsewhere, and of the commercial 
 
 ' Mommsen quotes a dialogue from an ancient bas-relief which I will 
 leave the antiquarian to translate, the price list being of great interest 
 in its comparison between various items: — 
 
 Guest. A. Copo computemus. 
 
 Host. B. Habes vini sextarium unum: panem, assem unum: pul- 
 mentarium, asses duos. 
 
 A. Convenit. 
 
 B. Puellam, asses octo. 
 
 A. Et hoc convenit. 
 
 B. Foenum mulo, asses duos. 
 
 A. Iste mulus ad me factum dabit. 
 A bill of something over sixpence certainly deserves no more than 
 the gentle irony of the last sentence. Its charges would certainly not 
 appeal to the modern representative of Nicephorus at Nimes. 
 
TAVERNS AND HOTELS 293 
 
 activities engendered by the growth of luxury. Even 
 in our own little Roman Silchester, our unknown ruins 
 just ten miles south of Reading, there was a hotel within 
 a few yards of the southern gate. The inn of Niceph- 
 orus was far from being the only one of its kind at 
 Nlmes. It may have been a little wine-shop like that 
 so well known in Pompeii, where the stone counter 
 still shows the circular holes of various sizes cut to 
 receive the "amphora" of good Falernian, of mellow 
 Massic, of costly Caecuban, or of the thick, sweet 
 wines of Greece. It was possibly just like one of the 
 inns which Horace so wittily describes in his poem 
 about the journey from Rome to Brindisi in the train 
 of Maecenas. At Forum Appii the water was bad; 
 another inn made his eyes smart with the smoke of 
 the fires; several were obviously started by owners of 
 villas on the road to sell off the wine grown on their 
 own estates. As "Caupo" (the title on his epitaph), 
 Nicephorus would technically be a retailer of food and 
 wine, which was sold in his "caupona" or "taberna," 
 but might be consumed elsewhere. People generally 
 made use of inns to sleep in only in the country dis- 
 tricts, which accounts for the universal contempt 
 shown for innkeepers in Rome itself. At Nlmes these 
 feelings were less prominent; and though the "social 
 reunions" of the modern "public house" were there 
 to be seen more frequently at the Baths than anywhere 
 else, it is evident that Nicephorus had made his mark; 
 
294 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 for his epitaph is the only one of the kind that has come 
 down to us. 
 
 Besides pure wine, the Roman affected a drink 
 called "mulsum," in which four-fifths was composed 
 of "must" and the rest of honey. Hot spiced wine 
 was well known in winter. Beer, or something very 
 like it, was better known in Gaul and Germany than 
 in Italy; and one customer of Nicephorus who may 
 have asked for it was Satuminus the sheep-shearer 
 (see No. (5) of the epitaphs), whose tombstone shows 
 the blunt-ended shears and the rough comb of his 
 trade. Some of the bronze drink-vessels and wine- 
 coolers which have survived in our museums from the 
 days when Nicephorus first filled them were no doubt 
 made by that Sextus Spurius Piperclus (see No. (6) 
 of the epitaphs), whose trade is clearly stated on the 
 monument he set up before his death to himself and 
 his good wife Secunda. Music there must have been 
 in the inn too, occasionally upon feast days; and the 
 instruments were made by Avidius Secundus, who 
 had a shop at Nlmes and a wife called Festa (see No. 
 (7) and (8) of the epitaphs). Some of these instru- 
 ments, a seven-tubed Pan-pipes, and a kind of hand- 
 organ, are carved at Aries upon the tomb of Julia 
 Tyrrannia, a lady whose artistic culture was evidently 
 only less than the sweetness of her natural disposition: 
 "Quae moribus pariter et disciplina ceteris feminis 
 exemplo fuit." Though couches were usual at feasts 
 
"GARLANDS FOR LOVERS" 295 
 
 at home, chairs were also in common use for visitors; 
 and one can imagine that some of those made for the 
 audience at Nicephorus's concerts came from the shop 
 of Julius Albus, the chairmaker (see No. (10) of epi- 
 taphs), to whom his widow Eupha set up a monument. 
 For women the more comfortable "cathedra," with a 
 broad and sloping back, was used; the men's "sella" 
 had straight back and sides, with elegantly carved 
 legs and small footboards attached. Many in the 
 Pompeii paintings are strikingly like modern articles 
 of furniture. They were genera'-'y of wood, sometimes 
 veneered or inlaid with ivory 1 
 
 Garlands were an equally necessary adjunct in the 
 Roman's "happy day"; and a particularly seductive 
 inscription (see No. (11) among the epitaphs) preserves 
 the charming sentence on a signboard, announcing 
 that here dwelt a merchant who sold "Garlands for 
 Lovers only"! Romance flies out to us at once from 
 these letters that so many Roman lovers read; and I 
 should like to think that among this crafty shopkeep- 
 er's customers was a certian "viveur" from Vienne, 
 whose epitaph still secures those good wishes for his 
 jovial soul which his delightful personality had drawn 
 so readily from all his friends in life. "Marcus Magius 
 
 ' At Aries, as elsewhere in every part of the Empire, there was a 
 regular guild of carpenters and builders, as is shown by the following 
 inscription : — 
 
 "Tit. Fl. Tito. Corp. Fabror. Tignarior. Corp. 
 Aral. Tit. Fl. Inventus Patrono Pient." 
 
296 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 Sotericus" — it does not sound a jaunty name at first 
 (see No. (12) of the epitaphs), but listen: — "a lover 
 of his friends who was nicknamed 'the Cheerful.'" 
 Cannot you see him rolling through the streets of 
 Nimes, on a holiday; his eye, alert for every pretty 
 face, caught by that subtle sign-board; leaning across 
 the counter and chaffering with the lady behind it 
 for the most fashionable garland in her stock? His 
 conquests must have often given a toast to happy 
 revellers in that amorous vaUey of the Rhone. His 
 epitaph he wrote himself, asking that happy shouts 
 of greeting might fellow him even beyond the tomb — 
 "ut esset memoriae bonum iter vocibus 'Feliciter.'" ^ 
 Not only in the days of garlands did Sotericus, we may 
 be sure, enjoy himself. Every 17th of December, 
 after the pubhc sacrifice at the altars of Saturn, the 
 citizens of Nimes, of Aries, or of Vienne sat down to 
 feast together, shouting "lo Saturnaha!" as they dis- 
 persed. Early the next morning every one met again 
 at the baths, and each man on his return home made 
 the family sacrifice of a sucking-pig. There followed 
 visits to every friend in town, congratulations, games, 
 and such light gifts as wax candles or small earthen- 
 ware images. Here and there the slaves were sitting 
 in their masters' couches, and the masters gaily ran 
 about with jars of wine and pasties; for the goodwill 
 of the holiday had levelled every rank. 
 
 ' Others read "reducibus" instead of "vocibus." 
 
THE FUTURE LIFE 297 
 
 Of ladies, just as ready for a revel, there was no lack. 
 Some of their names still sound delightful even on 
 a tombstone — "Attiolae Dulcissimae" . . . "Lu cilia 
 lucet Secundilla salve" . . . "Mariae Nemausinae 
 Maria Marituma Liberta." Who was this freedwoman 
 whose name was "Mary of the Sea"? It is the stran- 
 gest classical foreshadowing of later Christian nomen- 
 clature, and all the stranger that it hides an actual 
 death. (See Nos. (17), (16), (15) of the epitaphs.) 
 
 There is one very curious inscription of this epoch, 
 written in a pair of verses, of which the hexameter 
 scans (to our ears) as badly as the pentameter (see No. 
 (13) of the list), and they give us the last words of one 
 Aetherius upon his deathbed: "Let earth, our com- 
 mon mother, hold the body which she gave." This 
 is from Ste. Colombe. The epitaph of the young boat- 
 man of Marseilles, which I have quoted in .No. (21) 
 of the list at the end of this chapter, reveals yet another 
 system of philosophy of great interest. It runs as 
 follows: "Traveller, stay thy steps beside this tomb. 
 A young man calls you, one dear to the God, and hav- 
 ing now laid aside mortality, unmarried, and of the age 
 of those divinities of Amyclae who watch over sailors. 
 A sailor myself, I delighted in the waves of the sea. 
 But in this tomb, which my devoted parents gave me, 
 I am delivered from all disease and toil and sorrow 
 and labour; for these evils during life the flesh endures 
 without respite. The dead, on the other hand, are 
 
298 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 divided into two bands, of which one is borne hither 
 and thither on the earth, while the other joins the dance 
 of the celestial bodies; and of this army am I one with 
 the God as my leader." 1 Vienne provides again a 
 cheerier outlook (see No. 14): "Here Mercasto rests 
 in peace, who flourished during sixty years, and led a 
 happy life through all of them." No hesitation here; 
 an unabashed Epicurean to the last. Vienne, if all 
 these indications may be believed, must have been a 
 gay little town in its best days. That jovial poet, 
 Martial, was naturally full of sympathy with the place,^ 
 and boasted of the popularity of his rhymes in it; and 
 this very fashion in "pretty Vienne" throws a very 
 characteristic light upon the town of Sotericus. Cu- 
 riously enough, the inscriptions of Lyons reveal quite 
 a different state of things. The chastity of the home, 
 the sanctity of the marriage-tie, are their almost in- 
 variable note. At Aries and Nimes it was the same. 
 Vienne was evidently the Capua of the Rhone. One 
 of the few Roman paintings surviving in Provence is 
 to be seen there, a fresco in water-colours on thick 
 plaster, arranged in rectangular panels of bright green, 
 framed in red. On a back-ground of brilliant black 
 
 ' The letters L. P. S. at the end of the inscription probably mean 
 "Libertis Posterisque Suis." The "divinities of Amyclae" are the 
 Dioscuri, the twin brethren, sons of Leda, and friends of seamen. 
 ^"Fertur habere meos, si vera est fama, libellos 
 Inter delicias pulchra Vienna suas." 
 
MOSAICS AT nImES 299 
 
 are drawn arabesques, garlands and birds, vine leaves 
 growing russet in the autumn sun, with golden yet 
 transparent grapes in clusters, and branches of cherry 
 laden with sparkling red fruit. Above the foliage and 
 the twisted patterns rise two figures, one a bacchanal, 
 the other the goddess Fortune on a globe. 
 
 In Nimes, though there are no pictures left, there 
 are some good mosaics. The largest is a rectangle 
 of some fifty metres square, representing the marriage 
 of Admetus, who drives up to the palace of his future 
 father-in-law in a chariot drawn by a wild boar and a 
 lion, followed by two soldiers, and received by Peleus 
 and Alcestis. Elsewhere in the composition a very 
 clever geometrical arrangement of various figures fills 
 up the ground, with winged cupids, dolphins, and fish 
 playing amongst them. Perhaps the best workmanship 
 is that of the Acanthus, which is particularly well 
 modelled and coloured, the foliage being filled with 
 animals of every kind: dogs, hares, leopards, Hons, 
 tigers, antelopes, partridges, frogs, serpents, snails, 
 and others. Not so large in size, but finer in execution, 
 is the Nimes mosaic, representing the sleep of Endy- 
 mion, who slumbers naked on Mount Latmos, pillowed 
 on his cloak, his right arm above his head, his left 
 arm near his body, still holding his shepherd's crook, 
 while his Spartan sheep-dog watches by his side. The 
 goddess is not seen, but it is to her, no doubt, that the 
 
30O OLD PROVENCE 
 
 little winged Cupid beckons; and when we have passed 
 on, she will approach. The border of lotus-flowers is 
 richly worked in very small marble cubes, which have 
 enabled the artist to express himself far more subtly 
 than is usual in this material. There are other ex- 
 amples of mosaic at Aix, especially a figure of Orpheus 
 with his lyre charming the animals, but none are as 
 good as the mosaics of Nimes. 
 
 Houses with such treasures within their walls might 
 well, it may be thought, have looked beautiful from 
 the streets. But those familiar with the streets of 
 Pompeii will know better, for those ancient thorough- 
 fares are lined with blank walls wherever a temple or 
 a great public building does not interrupt and beautify 
 them. This was because in nearly every case the liv- 
 ing-rooms were turned towards the central courtyard, 
 and the level surface of the outside walls was only 
 broken by small shops, which were crowded into any 
 suitable recess, and sometimes seemed to go right 
 back into the house behind, though in that case the 
 shop-room was entirely shut off from the rest of the 
 building. 
 
 It will perhaps scarcely be believed that we have 
 in England itself many of those traces of Roman life 
 which have enabled me to reconstruct so much of it 
 from what is left in Nlmes and Aries. But an Eng- 
 lishman will always prefer to visit Provence or Italy, 
 
ROMAN LIFE IN ENGLAND 301 
 
 even if he can see much of what they hold in his own 
 country; so it is from no fear of comparisons that I 
 recall the Roman town of Silchester, with its baths, its 
 forum, its temples, its amphitheatre, its walls; or the 
 Roman walls and amphitheatre of Dorchester; or the 
 Roman epitaphs and the magnificent fortifications on 
 the north and east of Chester, which was once a sea- 
 port with sailing-ships upon the watery expanse of what 
 is now the racecourse on the Roodee. Now it is only 
 the highest point touched by the sea-tides up the Dee, 
 and its harbours are as desolate of maritime adventure 
 as that sea-gate of Pompeii, which was once at the 
 water's edge, and now is on the road from Naples, 
 separated from the Mediterranean by the whole width 
 of the railway to Salerno and the expanse of cotton 
 fields. Then, too, from Newcastle to Carlisle we can 
 still see the traces of that mighty wall which Hadrian 
 first founded, after he had restored so much in Nimes, 
 to keep out the northern raiders. But at Bath we have 
 an even closer parallel. There is the old shrine to 
 the native fountain god, Sul, as the shrine was first 
 built to Nemausus. Above it, as above the Provenfal 
 altar, rose a Roman temple; here, to Minerva. Some 
 fourteen feet below the modern level is a Roman bath, 
 eighty feet long by forty feet across, larger than that in 
 Pompeii, larger than I have suggested even for Nlmes; 
 and in it bathed the soldiers from the legions of the 
 
302 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 Rhine who caught the rheumatism in our British 
 cHmate. Here, too, is a separate round bath for ladies, 
 and, strangest parallel of all, the ruins of a Corinthian 
 fafade, forty feet high, just like that portico which the 
 township of Nlmes added to the Nymphaeum of Au- 
 gustus. The Rhone valley was far enough, in those 
 days, from Rome. But Britain was infinitely further. 
 Yet in each, we find the Roman living as he loved to 
 live. In each we find the original inhabitants deliber- 
 ately choosing to copy his way of life, his ways of wor- 
 shipping, his very language. 
 
 It may be suspected that the old Roman, who at 
 first knew no glorious gods in human shape such 
 as the Greek divinities, tried to make up for his vague- 
 ness as to their individuality by a remarkable formality 
 in ritual, which for long remained the chief character- 
 istic of his religion. Augustus recognised this when 
 he tried to bring back the flavour of the pristine days 
 of virtue by reviving the old minutiae of worship, by 
 extending them to the cult of the Emperors, by restor- 
 ing (as he tells us himself) no less than eighty-two of 
 the old temples by his own orders, and by carefully 
 emphasising the connection between their worship and 
 the general prosperity of family life both in town and 
 country. His most delightful poet is careful to echo 
 a view at once so statesmanlike and so sure of popu- 
 larity : — 
 
THE GODDESS CERES 
 
 303 
 
 "Jam Fides et Pax et Honos Pudorque 
 Priscus et neglecta redire Virtus 
 Audet, apparetque beata pleno 
 
 Copia cornu." {Carm. Sec. 57.) 
 
 Or, again, Horace points out the results of this return 
 to simple faiths: — 
 
 " Tutus bos etenim rura perambulat, 
 Nutrit rura Ceres almaque Faustitas, 
 Pacatum volitant per mare navitae, 
 
 Culpari metuit Fides." {Carm. iv. v. 17.) 
 
 I have reproduced in these pages a little statuette of a 
 priestess of Ceres, found 
 at Bouillargues, and now 
 preserved in the Maison 
 Carree. It is not of the 
 best period, and from 
 the arrangement of the 
 hair it may be argued 
 that it was carved in the 
 reign of Domitian, as 
 may be seen from the 
 bust of his wife, which is 
 No. 1892 in the British 
 Museum. It is roughly 
 carved, and in bad pro- 
 portion here and there. 
 But the sway of the 
 body is well rendered, and it is a valuable and interest- 
 ing relic of a decadent age which has left few works of 
 
 PRIESTESS OF CERES FROM BOUILLARGUES. 
 
 (Now in Maison Carrie at Nimes.) 
 
304 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 art, and of a small Roman village which could never 
 have boasted skilled artificers. The festival of Ceres 
 was on the 19th of April, when her temple was first 
 founded at the foot of the Aventine, and from its very 
 beginning was closely associated with the common 
 people; for the famine from which they were then suf- 
 fering was only relieved next year by importations of 
 corn from Etruria, Cumae, and Sicily. That association 
 lasted while the worship of Ceres survived, and as the 
 goddess of the fertility of the earth she was worshipped 
 by its labourers: — ■ 
 
 "Fertilis frugum pecorisque Tellus 
 Spicpa donet Cererem corona." 
 
 {Carm. Sec. 29.) 
 
 In the spring her favour was invoked upon the sowing; 
 in the autumn both she and Tellus were prayed to 
 bring the crops to their maturity at the "Feriae Semen- 
 tivae" or "Paganalia." There were offerings of cake 
 and a sacrifice of a pregnant sow, and the oxen which 
 were to serve in ploughing were decorated with gar- 
 lands. 
 
 It there was one person to whom a cry of gratitude 
 must have gone up from all Provence for the peace that 
 had given beauty to her cities and plenty to her lands, 
 it was Augustus, whose bust is in the Museum at Aries. 
 His personaHty is worth looking at a little more closely. 
 It is described in careful detail by Suetonius, and I can 
 
THE EMPEROR AUGUSTUS 
 
 305 
 
 do no better than quote Philemon Holland's version as 
 It was published in 1606, for there is a flavour of inti- 
 mate antiquity in his Ehzabethan periods that our 
 modern speech has either vulgarised or lost. Au- 
 gustus, then, "was of an 
 excellent presence and 
 personage and the same 
 throughout all the de- 
 grees of his age most 
 lovely and amiable; 
 negligent though hee 
 were in all manner of 
 pickednesse, for combing 
 and trimming of his head 
 so carelesse as that he 
 would use at once many 
 Barbers, such as came 
 next hand, it skilled not 
 whom; and one while 
 hee clipped ; another 
 while hee shaved his 
 
 beard; and yet at the very time he either read or else 
 wrote somewhat. His visage and countenance, whether 
 he spake or held his peace, was so mild, so pleasant and 
 lightsome, that one of the Nobles and Potentates of Gaule 
 confessed unto his countrymen he was thereby onely 
 staled and reclaimed. . . . Hee had a paire of cleere 
 
 BUST OF AUGUSTUS AT ARLES. 
 
3o6 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 and shining eyes. . . . But in his old age he saw not 
 very well with the left eye, his teeth grewe thinne in his 
 head, and the same were small and ragged; the haire of 
 his head was somewhat curled and turning downeward; 
 and withall of a light yellow colour. His eyebrowes met 
 together : his eares were of a meane bignesse : his nose 
 both in the upper part (toward his forehead) bearing out 
 round, and also beneath somewhat of the longest. Of 
 colour and complexion hee was betweene a browne and 
 a faire white. . . . Hee was five foote and nine inches 
 high. ... In his left hucklebone, thigh and legge 
 hee was not very sound, insomuch as many times for 
 griefe thereof he halted on that side: but by a remedie 
 that he had of Sand and Reedes he found ease and went 
 upright againe. Also, the forefinger of his right hand 
 hee perceived otherwhiles to be so weake that being 
 benummed and shrunke by a crampe upon some colde, 
 he could hardly set it to any writing, with the help of 
 an hoope and fingerstall of home. ... In winter 
 time clad he went against the colde with foure coates, 
 together with a good thicke gowne, and his Wastcoate 
 or Peticoate bodie of woollen, well lapped also about 
 the thighes and legges. During sommer he lay with 
 his bed-chamber dores open, and oftentimes within 
 a cloisture supported with pillers, having water walm- 
 ing out of a spring, or running from a spout conduit. 
 . . . Even at home hee never walked up and down. 
 
THE YOUNG MARCELLUS 
 
 307 
 
 in the aire without a broad brimd Hat (or Bond-grace) 
 upon his head. He travailed in a licter, and never 
 lightly but in the night." 
 
 Yet the man whose bodily infirmities were thus ap- 
 parent probably knew 
 the truth about the in- 
 habitants of a greater 
 extent of Empire than 
 was ever under one con- 
 trol until our own Vic- 
 toria ruled her seven 
 seas. He was, as we 
 know, for some time, 
 and on several occasions, 
 in Provence; and at 
 Aries is preserved a 
 touching memory of one 
 of those tragedies from 
 which not even the lives 
 of emperors are free. 
 
 In the museum opposite St. Trophime is a bust of 
 Marcellus,! son of Octavia, the sister of Augustus, 
 whose daughter, Julia, the young prince married in 
 B.C. 25, when he was eighteen, and when Horace wrote 
 of him: — 
 
 MARCELLUS. 
 
 (From a drawing by Jane E. Cook of the 
 bust at Aries.) 
 
 ' Compare this head with the statue of Marcellus in the Candelabra 
 gallery of the Vatica,n, and see Bernoulli {op. cit.) p. 124. 
 
3o8 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 "Crescit occulta velut arbor aevo 
 Fama Marcelli: micat inter omnes 
 Julium sidus velut inter ignes 
 Luna minores." 
 
 Within two years he died. "Shortlived and unfor- 
 tunate were those to whom the Roman people gave 
 their love." His brilliant promise, and his early death 
 seem to have touched every poet even in that age when 
 sudden death had grown so common. They inspired 
 one of the most beautiful passages in Virgil which closes 
 with the famous lines: — 
 
 " Heu miserande puer ! si qua fata aspera rumpas 
 Tu Marcellus eris. Manibus date lilia plenis: 
 Purpureos spargam flores. . . ." 
 
 The pathos of those mournful cadences shows still in 
 the boyish face at Aries; a face, I can but think, which 
 Augustus himself may have brought there, as a proud 
 reminder of the prince whose power should follow his. 
 Mutilated as it is, uneven as its workmanship may be, 
 this bust is to me more touching in expression than 
 many a more ostentatious statue that was meant to 
 typify both splendour and catastrophe; for here the 
 boy who has hardly yet realised the one seems already 
 impressed with the impending sorrow of the other. 
 
 "Egrcgium forma juvencm ct fulgentibus armis 
 Sed frons laeta parum et dejecto lumina vultu." 
 
 Very different are the memories aroused by three 
 other portrait-busts, which are here reproduced for the 
 first time from the httle collection in the Maison Carree. 
 
THE EMPEROR SEVERUS 309 
 
 They represent the Emperor Caracalla in his youth; 
 the woman who was most intimately associated witli 
 the horrors of his subsequent career, his mother, Juha 
 Domna, and her niece Julia Mamaea.^ The brutahsed 
 and heavy features of Plantilla are to be found there 
 also, but they are better known. 
 About the year 186 a.d., Septimius Severus had lost 
 
 ' A careful comparison of the three busts I have reproduced here 
 with others in the British Museum, and with coins, and with the 
 volume of Bernoulli dealing with the reigns from Pertinax to Theo- 
 dosius, has convinced me that the attributions here given are correct. 
 The way this face of the young Caracalla changed as he grew older 
 may be studied in Bust No. 1917 in the British Museum. In the coin 
 department there is also a charming "aureus," showing his youthful 
 face with that of Geta, and another with Caracalla alone, showing just 
 the type of this bust at Nimes. The very characteristic face and head- 
 dress of his mother, Julia Domna, are also unmistakable. See Ber- 
 noulli {op. cit.), p. 40, No. 14, and plate xvi, which shows the deep-set 
 eye so conspicuous in the Nimes carving. The only doubt I had was 
 concerning Julia Mamaea, whose face in the Vatican (illustrated in 
 Bernoulli's plate xxxii) has a decidedly aquiline nose, and strong, proud 
 features, more like what we should expect in one who virtually ruled 
 the Roman world. The only likeness to this head at Nimes is in the 
 thin underlip and the upward turn of the corners of the mouth. The 
 " aureus " of Julia Mamaea also seems to show a more aquiline nose ; 
 and, when I had examined bust 1905 in the British Museum, I almost 
 concluded that the bust at Nimes represented the wife of Marcus 
 Aurelius. But I am now convinced that this is indeed Julia Mamaea 
 in her youth before her marriage, before power and responsibility had 
 hardened her features; and in this I have the valuable support of Ber- 
 noulli, who says {op. cit., p. no, No. 15) of Julia Mamaea's portraits: 
 "Kopf im Nimes, mit hohem Untergesicht, dock vielleicht richtig 
 benaiinl." The Caracalla was found at Nimes, the JuUa Domna at 
 Pont du Gard, and the Julia Mamaea at Ste. Colombe. The bust of 
 Julia Mamaea in the British Museum is labelled No. 1920, as "the 
 mother of Alexander Severus, died 235." It is later than the one at 
 Nimes, which was probably sent there by her aunt. 
 
3IO OLD PROVENCE 
 
 his first wife, while he was acting-governor of Pro- 
 vence. An African by birth, Severus successfully con- 
 cealed his real and daring ambition during his gradual 
 ascent of honours until he was in command of the Pan- 
 nonian army. When the news reached him that the 
 Praetorians had foully murdered Pertinax and then sold 
 the throne to a vain old senator, the wealthy Didius 
 Julianus, he felt that the discontent of Rome would 
 justly be diffused throughout the frontiers of the Em- 
 pire. Unfortunately two other generals were also filled 
 with equally righteous, and perhaps equally selfish, in- 
 dignation. From Britain, from Syria, and from Pan- 
 nonia, the legions of Clodius Albinus, of Pescennius 
 Niger, and of Septimius Severus hurried to punish the 
 assassins in the capital; but Severus was in the most 
 advantageous situation, his province extended to the 
 Julian Alps, and he was but fourteen days' march at 
 most from Rome. His army, stimulated alike by 
 honest vengeance and by strictly business principles, 
 hastened to salute him as the Emperor, and surrounded 
 his person with a picked bodyguard of six hundred men 
 throughout the march, which ended almost blood- 
 lessly; for its only victims were the actual assassins, 
 whom the other Praetorians cheerfully betrayed, and 
 the wretched Julian, who was beheaded in the baths 
 of his palace. The other competing generals were 
 crushed one after another, and Byzantium alone held 
 
JULIA DOMNA 
 
 3" 
 
 out a three years' siege in loyalty to Niger. Peace and 
 a measure of prosperity were by degrees restored to 
 the distracted provinces. It was time for the Emperor 
 to choose a second wife. 
 
 Addicted, as was every African, to magic and divina- 
 tion, Severus picked out 
 a young lady of Emesa, 
 in Syria, whose first rec- 
 ommendation was her 
 "royal nativity" ; but 
 Julia Domna, throughout 
 her long life, proved that 
 she was well worthy of 
 all the stars could prom- 
 ise her, and there are 
 indubitable traces of the 
 beauty of her youth in 
 the bust that represents 
 her in maturer years at 
 Nimes. The combina- 
 tion of a lively imagina- 
 tion, a firm mind, and 
 a strong judgment had 
 
 seldom been visible in a woman who united to it so 
 many amiable qualities; or whose love of letters, phi- 
 losophy, and art was only equalled by her disre- 
 gard of those conventions which are usually supposed 
 
 ^^^Hk^;-'^ r-''4^ ^^^^^1 
 
 
 ^^^H 
 
 ^H^^^H 
 
 I^S^I 
 
 BUST OF JULIA DOMNA. 
 
 (From the Pont du Gard, now in 
 Maison Carrie at Nimes.) 
 
312 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 to bind even the most exalted of her sex. She was the 
 mother of Caracalla and of Geta; and if her prudence 
 was the sole support of her son's authority, her modera- 
 tion was also the unique correction which his wild 
 extravagance received. The constant quarrels of the 
 young princes had early divided the court into two fac- 
 tions, which were as sharply hostile as those of the 
 circus or the theatre ; nor was the situation improved 
 when their anxious father bestowed on each the titles 
 of Antoninus and Augustus. 
 
 Hearing in 208 a.d. that Britain had been invaded 
 by the Barbarians of the north, Severus welcomed the 
 opportunity, though he was a gouty old man of over 
 sixty, to take his two sons with him on a punitive ex- 
 pedition beyond the Wall of Hadrian, which only sub- 
 dued the stern and wild Caledonians while the obsti- 
 nate legions were still actually fighting on their territory. 
 In 211 A.D. the Emperor Severus died at York, and his 
 veterans immediately hailed both his sons with the 
 august title of emperor. The brothers retired, with 
 every sign of mutual suspicion, to the capital, where 
 the vast estates of the Imperial P-alace were scarcely 
 large enough to separate the sinister ambitions of a 
 mutual hostility. Only in the presence of their mother, 
 Julia Domna, were they ever seen together; and by 
 her passionate intervention alone was prevented the 
 formal separation of an empire whose wide extent had 
 
THE MURDER OF GETA 
 
 313 
 
 hitherto remained inviolate. Caracalla at once pre- 
 pared a swifter solution of the problem. While Julia 
 Domna was striving to reconcile her sons, his cen- 
 turions rushed in and despatched the wretched Geta 
 in his mother's arms, and she herself was wounded in 
 her unavaiHng efforts to protect her first-born from 
 assassination. An enor- 
 mous donative rapidly 
 placated the uneasy sol- 
 diers, but nothing availed 
 to give the imperial 
 murderer forgetfulness. 
 Even his weeping mother 
 he compelled by threats 
 of instant death to wel- 
 come him with simulated 
 smiles of approbation. 
 Some twenty thousand 
 others, less able to pro- 
 tect themselves, he con- 
 demned to death on the sole plea that they reminded 
 him of Geta. Papinian, the Praetorian Prefect whose 
 memory is immortalised in the annals of Roman 
 jurisprudence, suffered the usual fate of an honour- 
 able refusal to condone his master's crimes. That 
 little carving in the Maison Carree represents the youth 
 of one who became, in Gibbon's just and striking 
 
 BUST OF THE YOUNG CARACALLA. 
 
 (In Maison Carrie at Nlmes.) 
 
314 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 phrase, "the common enemy of mankind." If it be 
 difficult to trace the future we now know in the linea- 
 ments that do not yet bear the stamp of senseless and 
 universal villainy, it is at least possible to look with a 
 new understanding at the firm lips, the deep-set eye, 
 the strongly-marked and characteristic profile of the 
 unhappy mother of that prodigy of vice. The end of 
 Caracalla came in another assassination as he was on 
 a pilgrimage from Edessa to the Temple of the Moon 
 at Carrhae. It is a strange coincidence that to this pre- 
 cociously cruel and iniquitous despot was owing the 
 important edict which conferred the name and privi- 
 leges of a Roman citizen upon every free inhabitant 
 of the Empire; and this apparent Hberahty would be 
 entirely unintelhgiblc were it not the direct result of 
 his desire to increase by a more widespread taxation 
 those funds which he so rapidly exhausted in gratify- 
 ing the dictates of an insatiate extravagance. The 
 Provincials soon found that any distinction which had 
 formerly attached to their new title was rapidly ob- 
 scured in the burdens of a comphcated and intolerable 
 tribute. 
 
 The dangerous honours of the imperial throne passed 
 to Macrinus in 217 a.d., who at once attempted to 
 strengthen his position by bestowing the highest titles 
 on his ten-year-old son Diadumenianus ; and amidst 
 the growing tumult of the disorderly army in Syria 
 Julia Domna saw herself obliged to descend from the 
 
JULIA MAMAEA 315 
 
 position of Empress-Mother to that of subject; and her 
 proud spirit found release in voluntary death. 
 
 Her sister, Julia Maesa, meanwhile retired to Antioch 
 with an immense fortune, and with two daughters, 
 Soaemias and Mamaea, each a widow, and each with 
 an only son. To her grandson, Bassianus, she soon 
 managed, by intrigues and bribes, to transfer the affec- 
 tions of the soldiery. Macrinus and his son were con- 
 quered and destroyed. In twenty days the East was 
 hailing the advent of a new Emperor, of Asiatic blood; 
 and the Senate of Rome was reading soon afterwards 
 the astonishing tidings of Macrinus's fall. It was not 
 long before Elagabalus, as the new Emperor called 
 himself from the sun god of Emesa, was celebrating 
 extravagant and impious rites within the walls of 
 Rome and defiling the Eternal City with every cir- 
 cumstance of unrestrained debauchery and hcence. 
 Julia Maesa had no sooner foreseen his downfall than 
 she had provided a successor in his cousin Alexander, 
 the son of her other daughter, Julia Mamaea, the prin- 
 cess whose singularly frank and pleasing girlish coun- 
 tenance is preserved in the last bust I reproduce from 
 the collection in the Maison Carree. On the loth of 
 March a.d. 222, the Praetorians assassinated Elagab- 
 alus, his mother, and his favourites, and raised Alex- 
 ander Severus to the throne under the guidance of his 
 mother, Julia Mamaea, who virtually ruled the Em- 
 pire, without attempting to secure those outward mani- 
 
3i6 
 
 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 festations of majesty which had ruined her sister 
 Soaemias, and which were invariably repellent (in a 
 woman) to the majority of the Roman state. She 
 preferred the substance to the pageantry of power; 
 but she would brook no interference between herself 
 
 and her son, and his wife 
 she banished with igno- 
 miny to Africa. By 
 means of a special coun- 
 cil of sixteen senators, 
 headed by the wise and 
 celebrated Ulpian, she 
 strove to fashion the 
 growing strength of the 
 young Emperor for good. 
 The story of his educa- 
 tion and his life is the 
 best testimony to the real 
 worth of Julia Mamaea. 
 Her fame would have 
 remained unsullied but 
 for the pardonable weakness which led her to demand 
 from her son's riper years that minute obedience 
 which had so much assisted his inexperienced youth. 
 The imputation of effeminacy could never be eradi- 
 cated, and all the devotion of his mother did not save 
 her son the Emperor Alexander from assassination by 
 ' These busts were photographed for me by R. Royer of Nimes. 
 
 BUST OF TULIA MAMAEA IN YOUTH.^ 
 
 (From Ste. Colombe, 
 now in Maison Carrie at Nimcs.) 
 
LIFE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPERORS 317 
 
 the partisans of the rough Thracian soldier, Maximin. 
 She perished with him, and would no doubt volun- 
 tarily have given up a life which had then lost its 
 dearest object. ^ 
 
 Far off as were these tragedies from the valley of the 
 Rhone, the certainty that Nimes was not unaffected by 
 them is preserved by the presence of these busts among 
 the ruins of her Roman past. With good reason a 
 modern monument recalls the benefactions Nlraes re- 
 ceived in earlier years from Antoninus Pius. The pub- 
 lic works of Augustus, and of Hadrian on the same 
 spot, have been already mentioned. There is no 
 doubt that for a long time after the confirmation of 
 Augustus in his power the vices of his successors fell 
 upon the capital alone, and it was the blessings of their 
 ordered rule that were enjoyed by Provence. Even 
 the bloodshed and disorder that followed the death of 
 Marcus Aurelius did not prevent the prosperity of 
 Aries from continuing for another sixty years. But it is 
 significant that the magnificent gladiatorial shows pro- 
 
 ' There is an inscription preserved at Aix, concerning Julia Mamaea, 
 part of which I give here because it is curious to find both these lines 
 and the bust in Provence. This inscription was first brought from St. 
 Cannat to King Rene's chapel in Aix, and was brought by St. Vincens 
 in 1798. Kaibel thinks it must have originally come from Ostia, or 
 rather Porto. It begins as follows: virep (rairiipias MdpKov 'AvpTjKiov 
 ^eovfipov ' AKe^dv^poj 'EvTuxovs *Eu(r€j8oCs SejSatrTOu «ai 'lovXias Mafxaias 
 ^e^aarrjs iifiTphs SejSotT'i'ftO Ait 'HA.£^ fie'y(i\t^ ^cpoLTriSi Kot TOis ffvvvaOLS 
 Beols M. 'Avp-ii\tos "Hpuv vewK&pos rov iv ll6pTio ^epdtriSos eTri Aapyiviof 
 PsiTa\iaii'i . . . . K. T. A. The original is in Uncial letters divided 
 into verv short lines. 
 
3i8 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 vided in her amphitheatre by the Emperor Gallus in 
 the October of 254 a.d. were given to celebrate a suc- 
 cessful treaty of peace with the Goths, whose leader, 
 Crocus, eventually pillaged the city and destroyed 
 many of its monuments only six years afterwards. It 
 was entirely due to the favour of Constantine that she 
 ever recovered. The greatness of her Roman ex- 
 istence rose, indeed, to its highest point under the reign 
 of that enhghtened Emperor, whose palace is still 
 represented on the banks of the Rhone by the ruined 
 tower called La Trouille. From his time began a 
 more intimate connection between Provence and the 
 Emperors than had ever been before, a connection 
 which was no doubt the beginning of that lasting pres- 
 tige which made the city of 879 the capital of an inde- 
 pendent kingdom. Valerius Paulinus, the imperial 
 "Procurator" of Provence, had assured the loyalty of 
 Gaul to Vespasian. The Emperors Carus, Carinus, 
 and Numerian were all natives of Narboime. But the 
 Emperor Constantine, at the beginning of our fourth 
 century, made Aries his chosen seat of power, and was 
 confirmed in his affection by the birth there of his eldest 
 bom, the son of the Empress Fausta. 
 
 By the munificence of Constantine, the public and 
 the imperial buildings of Aries rose to a greater splen- 
 dour than had ever been seen before; and with him the 
 Christian religion had become the religion of the throne. 
 Even when the Emperor himself left it, the city was 
 
THE TOMBS OF ARLES 319 
 
 made the seat of the Praefecture of Gaul, including 
 Spain, Britain, and a part of Germany within its juris- 
 diction, and it was often visited by his successors. 
 Already the first great council of the Church had been 
 summoned by Constantine, and attended by the 
 Bishops of York, Trfeves, Milan, and Carthage, and 
 many more, under the primacy of the Bishop of Aries. 
 By Saturninus, another Bishop of Aries, the Arian 
 heresies favoured by the Emperor Constantine were 
 supported in a second Council. By Honorius in 418, 
 Aries was picked out as the meeting-place of the seven 
 provinces of Gaul; and there, too, in 455, Avitus was 
 proclaimed Emperor in the Alyscamps, while Theo- 
 doric and his Goths looked on. The Court of Majo- 
 rian, established in 458 in the palace of Constantine 
 (which was carefully described by Sidonius), was the 
 last flicker of independent Roman power. Aries was 
 captured, after an eight months' siege, by the King of 
 the Visigoths in 468. Rome in Provence had died. 
 We have only to look at a few of the tombs of Roman 
 dead in Aries before we pass on to other centuries, and 
 other forms of civilisation. Nearly all which I shall 
 here describe are to be seen in the museum opposite 
 St. Trophime. 
 
 A mighty hunter was evidently buried in the sar- 
 cophagus, which is carved with details of the chase. 
 (See [A], page 145). In the left-hand corner a wild 
 boar, standing at bay, is despatched by a spearman. 
 
320 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 In the middle a pair of stags are endeavouring to es- 
 cape. Out of the meshes of a net in the right-hand 
 corner a hare slips away to safety, and above rides a 
 huntsman in a Gallic hood. The workmanship is 
 vigorous, though rude, and may well have been exe- 
 cuted for one of those Gallic nobles whose country life 
 in the vicinity of Nimes Sidonius described in the fifth 
 century. In the morning they played tennis in the 
 "sphaeristerium," while the idle visitors read profane 
 Latin authors in the library, leaving religious volumes 
 to the ladies. They sat down twice in the day to a 
 table spread with hot meat (boiled or roast) and wine. 
 They hunted or rode on horseback at their pleasure, 
 and used the hot baths on their return before the 
 dinner-hour. Whoever the dead man may have been 
 for whom this tomb was made he was certainly not a 
 Christian, but this does not alone prove to me that the 
 tomb itself is prior to the reign of Constantine. A far 
 finer "hunting tomb" than this represents the slaying 
 of the Boar of Calydon by Meleager, and was given by 
 the town to A.lphonse du Plessis Richelieu in 1640. It 
 is now in the Museum at Autun. 
 
 A magnificent example of the work of the best clas- 
 sical epoch is the tomb of Cornelia Lacaena, which she 
 set up in her lifetime to be cared for by her heirs. 
 Finely carved rams' heads adorn each comer, and are 
 also placed at each end of the heavy garlands of fruit 
 
ROMAN EPITAPHS 323 
 
 that fill the space on each side of the tablet. It is a 
 well-proportioned and well-executed piece of sculpture; 
 and its reticence is typical of the Roman ideas of what 
 was appropriate to a funereal monument. Another 
 epitaph, numbered (18) in my list, shows that in early 
 centuries a Roman husband and wife could record 
 their sorrow for the death of a promising son of seventeen 
 in language as touching and as dignified as that (No. 
 20) in which Donatus of Cologne deplores the loss of 
 a baby of three years old at Nimes ; and in this Museum 
 at Aries exists the most outspoken expression of sorrow 
 I have ever seen on a pre-Christian tomb. It is in- 
 scribed over the body of Julia Lucina (No. (19)), the 
 beloved daughter of Parthenope. The grief felt for a 
 loss of the opposite nature is well expressed in the 
 Greek epitaph quoted in No. (22) of the list given 
 (p. 329) in the Appendix, and taken from the tomb set 
 up by his young son at Marseilles, to a father untimely 
 dead. " This is the tomb of Glaucias, which was set up 
 by the fihal love of his young son, who showed, small 
 as he was, this reverence towards his father. Ah! 
 unhappy father ! Thou didst not live long enough really 
 to see thy child, who should have grown up to give thee 
 sustenance instead of building thee a tomb. But 
 envious Fortune was all too hard upon thee, dealing 
 out tears to thine aged mother, widowhood to thy wife, 
 together with orphanhood for thy unhappy son." 
 
324 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 A most striking difference, both in treatment and in 
 subject, is to be found in the early Christian monuments 
 which form the most interesting part of this unparalleled 
 collection of Roman sarcophagi. The pagans ap- 
 proached death cheerfully. They carved upon the dead 
 man's tomb an agreeable recollection of the happiest 
 scenes of life: the vine-gatherings, the olive-plantings, 
 the hunting excursions that had filled his days; or they 
 gave a frank and free expression of the best art they 
 considered appropriate to his memory. The grace of 
 these conceptions vanishes in early Christian work. It 
 is replaced by saints and mourners, whose expression 
 reveals an intensity of conviction that makes you forget 
 their enormous hands, their unwieldy heads, their dis- 
 proportionate limbs and bodies. Where the Roman 
 took his happiness from the past, the early Christian 
 fervently looked forward to the future that was the 
 integral factor of his passionately-trusted creed. One 
 of the largest of these Christian tombs was made to 
 hold two bodies, that of the husband and wife who are 
 shown in the plain round medalhon in the centre, 
 dividing the two hues of horizontal sculpture which 
 cover the front of the sarcophagus. (See [b.], p. i6o.) 
 In the upper division on the left are shown the stoning 
 of St. Stephen jand the sacrifice of Abraham. On the 
 other side Moses (nearest the circle) receives the tablets 
 of the Law from God; Susanna, standing between two 
 
EARLY CHRISTIAN' TOMBS 325 
 
 trees, is watched by two old men ; and in the right-hand 
 corner Pontius Pilate washes his hands. Beneath him, 
 on the lower line, are seen the Israelites escaping after 
 the passage of the Red Sea, which is shown engulphing 
 Pharaoh's horses under the central medallion. On 
 the left are carved Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego; 
 and Daniel in the Den of Lions. 
 
 Scarcely less full of Scriptural allusion is the tomb 
 on which the central medallion, holding the portraits 
 of husband and wife, takes the form of a shell. (See 
 [c], p. 184.) Again there are two lines of carving. 
 In the upper one, beginning on the left, is God receiving 
 the sacrifices of Cain and Abel. This is followed by 
 the seizure of Christ in the Garden, the Jews being 
 given the form of headdress common to their sect in 
 the fourth century. Further on is shown the healing 
 of blind Bartimaeus, and the reception of the tablets 
 of the Law by Moses. These subjects are closely 
 crowded together with as little regard for space as for 
 chronology. On the other side of the shell is again the 
 sacrifice of Abraham, followed by the miracle of the 
 loaves and fishes. The left-hand corner of the lower 
 line is another representation of Susanna in the Garden, 
 spied upon by only one old rrfan. The miracle of the 
 water which became wine is interposed between her 
 and the story of Jonah, whose boat is represented 
 bsneath the shell, while on the left side the whale devours 
 
326 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 him, and on the right it vomits him on shore again. 
 Next to this is the tree beneath which he slept, which 
 the Lord withered. Further on are Adam and Eve 
 with the devil as a serpent coiled round a tree; and the 
 last group depicts Daniel in the Lion's Den. 
 
 A remarkable Christian tomb is that which shows 
 the Cross, above which two, of the Twelve Apostles 
 represented, are holding a laurel wreath. (See [d.], 
 p. 225.) At the foot of the Cross are two kneeling 
 soldiers. It may well be that the soldier on the left 
 represents Constantine when he saw the sacred signal 
 in the heavens; and if so, this carving represents a very 
 interesting transition from pagan to Christian art, a 
 transition which would be further emphasised by the 
 thoroughly pagan treatment of the medallions and 
 winged children on the cover above it, if that cover can 
 be proved to have originally formed part of the same 
 tomb. In no case can the monument have anything 
 to do with that son of Constantine and Fausta who was 
 born at Aries in 316, as has sometimes been imagined. 
 
 The last Christian tomb I need select for special 
 mention is that which represents the figure of Christ 
 standing between two lambs in the central arch of an 
 arcade with six Corinthian columns. (See [e.], p. 280.) 
 Christ hands to St. Paul, upon his left, the Gospel 
 which he is to preach to the Gentiles; St. John stands a 
 little further on. St. Peter and St. James are carved 
 
LIFE UNDER THE ROMAN EMPERORS 327 
 
 upon the other side. In the corner, to the spectator's 
 left, Christ washes Peter's feet. In the other niche is 
 the scene of Pilate washing his hands at the Condemna- 
 tion. The arcade upon this tomb is especially worth 
 notice for the style of architecture it reveals. It is sup- 
 ported on columns with composite capitals and bases, 
 and shafts like those of the early mediseval cloisters, 
 ornamented with spirals and flutings. The archivolt 
 has become an architrave with leaf-encirclement carried 
 round the arch, and filled in with a scallop shell, which 
 shows very distinctly how the late Roman architects dis- 
 pensed with the straight architrave, and adopted the 
 arch springing directly from the capitals of the columns ; 
 so that we get here not only the transition from the 
 Greek trabeated style to that of the Roman builders, 
 but also a very valuable indication of the mode in which 
 Roman art was continued into Christian times. The 
 steps by which Provencal architecture bridged the gap 
 between her great Roman ruins and her twelfth century 
 churches and castles will be suggested in later pages. 
 But the example of this tomb was too good to be omitted 
 here; and from it we may pass on, knowing a little of 
 what is soon to come, to that avenue of tombs which 
 leads to the holy fields of Aries, the Alyscamps ; for there 
 we shall find the beginnings of modern history in 
 Provence. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 A LIST OF THOSE ROMAN INSCRIPTIONS TO WHICH 
 
 REFERENCE HAS BEEN MADE IN THE FOREGOING 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 N.B. — All are from Nimes, unless otherwise stated. 
 
 (i) T. COENELio TiTl FiLio [Sa]turioni. [Beneath symbols which 
 appear to be a dibble and a biU-hook. 
 
 (2) NuNDiNO Patri et Mateen^ Matri Pateenus FiLros 
 
 PoSTJiT. [Beneath a water-wheel and a dibble. Accents on 
 the second letters of the first and fourth words.] 
 
 (3) Diis Manibtjs Valloni Qtjartina Fratei Optimo. [Above 
 
 a pruning-knife of a peculiar form still found in southern vine- 
 yards.] 
 
 (4) D. M. L. Trebonio Nicephoro Patillo Coponi Maximus 
 
 Epaphrodittjs Amico Optimo. 
 
 (5) PxTBLio Brittio Saturnino. [Between a pair of square-tipped 
 
 shears and a rough comb.] 
 
 (6) Sex. Spueius Piperolus Aeeaeius Sibi et Suis Vivos et 
 
 Secitnd^ Uxsoei. 
 
 (7) L. AviDio Secundo Musiciaeo Festa Uxoe. 
 
 (8) JULIAE Luc. FiLIAE TYEANNIAE VIXIT AnN. XX. M. VIII. QUAE 
 
 Morieus Pariter et Disciplina Ceteris Feminis Exemplo 
 Fuit Autarcius NuEtn Laueentius Ucxori. [From a 
 tomb at Aries, carved with musical instruments.] 
 
 (9) D. M. C. Antistii Ant . . . Medici et Antisti^e Ip . . . 
 
 Syneeos Libertus. 
 
 (10) D. M. C. Julio Albo Sessoeaeio Spuria Euplia Uxor. 
 
 (11) NoN Vendo Nisi Amantibus Coeonas. [Above a woman 
 
 seated behind a counter and holding a crown.] 
 
 (12) D. M. Marcus Magius Sotericus Signo Hilari Amicorum 
 
 Amator Vivus Sibi Fecit ut Esset Memori^ Bonum Iter 
 Vocibus: Feliciter. [At Vienne.] 
 
 (13) Aetherius Moriens Dixit Hic Condite Corpus 
 
 Tbrea Mater Rerum Quod dedit ipsa tegat. 
 
 [At St. Colombe.] 
 329 
 
330 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 (14) Hic Requiescit in Pace Mercasto Qui Floeentem Aevum 
 
 LX Egit Per Annos Juctjndam Vitam Haec Pee Tempoea 
 DuxiT. [AtVienne.] 
 
 (15) D. M. Maeiae Nemausinae Maria Marituma Liberia. 
 
 (16) D. M. Luciliae Lucii Filiae Sectjndillae P. Atettius 
 
 Satueninus Uxori Rarissimae Quae Secum Vixit Ann: 
 
 XX. . . . LUCILLA LUCET. SECUNDILLA SaLVE. 
 
 (17) Attiolae Dulcissimae. 
 
 (18) D. M. T. Calvii Pompeiani T. Calvius Secundus et 
 
 PoMPEiA QuiNTi Filia Seveeilla Filio Pientissimo et 
 Desideratissimo Qui Indigne Ereptus est Juvenis 
 Exempli Rarissmi Annoeum xvii Mensium v Diekum vi. 
 [Note the accents on the first e in Desideratissimo, the last i in 
 Rarissimi, and the a in Pompeiani.] 
 
 (19) D. M. O DoLOE Quantae Lacheimae Feceee Sepulcheum 
 
 JULIAE LUCINAE QUAE ViXIT KaEISSIMA MatEI FLOS 
 
 Aetatis Hic Jacet Intus Condita Sacxo O Utinam Possit 
 Reparari Spiritus Ille Ut Sciret Quantus Doloe Est 
 Quae Vixit Ann: xxvii. M. x. Die. xiii. Julia Parthen- 
 OPE PosuiT Inpelix Mater. [Tomb at Aries.] 
 
 (20) Perpetuae Quieti Domitio Tatiano Infanti Dulcissimo 
 
 QuEM Prima Aetate Floeentem Mors Dira Subripuit. 
 Vixit Ann: hi. Mens: vi. Die: xix. Agripinensis Donatus 
 Pater et Jovina Matee Filio Carissimo Posuerunt. 
 
 (21) [Brought from Marseilles to Aix in 1613.] 
 
 o-TTJei irapepxif^ei'os rdyS' IXNE2I TiijUjSON OAEITA 
 K0TP02 Em KAAEil 2E ©Efl *IA02 OTKETI 0NHTO2 
 HI0EO2 KOTPOI2IN OMHAIKIH nAN0M0I02 
 nAnTHPflN 2nTHP2IN AMTKAAI0I2I 0EOI2IN 
 nAflTHP KATT02 EflN nONTOT T EN KTMA2IN H20HN 
 ET2EBIA TPO*EnN AE AAXflN TOAE 2HMA nEHATMAl 
 N0T2nN KAI KAMATOIO KAI AX0EO2 HAE nONOIO 
 TATTA TAP EN ZaOI2IN AMEIAIXA 2APKE2 EXOT2IN 
 EN AH TE0NEm2IN 0MHrTPIE2 TE nEAOr2IN 
 AOIAI TnN ETEPH MEN EniX0ONIH nE*OPHTAI 
 H A ETEPH TEIPE221 2TN AI0EPIOI2I XOPETEI 
 H2 2TPATIH2 EI2 EIMI AAXflN 0EON HrEMONHA. 
 
 L. P. S. 
 [See Corpus Inscript. Grcec. Sicilia, etc. 
 (ed. Kaibel, Berlin), 2461.] 
 
APPENDIX 331 
 
 (22) [Found at Marseilles, 1799. 
 
 Re-produced in facsimile at Aix.] 
 
 TAATKIA E2TI TA*02 nAI2 A ANE0HKE NE02 
 
 AEIHA2 EK MEIKPOT nP02 OATEP ET2EBIAN 
 
 OTK E*0H2 n TAHMON lAEIN TONON 0I02 AN HN 20I 
 
 PHPAin TETXEIN OT TA*ON AAAA BION 
 
 H *0ONEPA A TMA2 OANT AAIKOT2A TTXH 
 
 MHTPI MEN EN THPA AAKPT 0HKATO TH AE TTNAIKI 
 
 XHPIAN AT2THNOT nAIA02 AM OP*ANIH. 
 
 [See Corpus Inscript. GrcEC. SiciliiE, etc. 
 (ed. Kaibel, Berlin), 2437.] 
 
 (23) [Found at Aix, 1839.] 
 
 Paulo siste gradum juvenis pie quaeso viator 
 Ut mea per titulum noris sic invida fata 
 Uno minus quam bis denos ego vixi per annos 
 Integer innocuus semper pia mente probatus 
 Qui docili lusu juvenum bene doctus arenis 
 Pulcher et ille fui variis circumdatus armis 
 Saepe feras lusi medicus tamen is quoque vixi 
 Et comes ursaris comes his qui victima sacris 
 Caedere saepe solent et qui novo tempore veris 
 Floribus intextis refovent simulacra deorum 
 Nomen si quaeris titulus tibi vera fatetur 
 Sextus Julius Felicissimus 
 
 Sextus Julius Felix 
 Alumno Incomparabili (et) 
 
 Felicitas F(ratei). 
 
 [See Corp. Inscr. Lot., xii. 533.] 
 

 • THE "arc admirable " AT ARLES. 
 
THE "ARC ADMIRABLE" AT ARLES 
 
 From various fragments of carving preserved at Aries, and found 
 in different parts of the town, M. Gilles has reconstructed the "Arc 
 Admirable" on Unes that are almost exactly the same as the arch at 
 Orange (see illustration opposite p. 126), though rather smaller. 
 In his diagram (i.) is part of the bas-rehef on the attic at the top; 
 (11.) and (hi.) were carvings from the spaces beneath the attic, on 
 each side of the triangular "fronton"; (iv.) are carved caissons from 
 the inner surface of the central arch, as at Orange and St. Remy 
 and (v.) are similar caissons from the side arch; (vi.) is the light 
 relief sculpture on the pilasters at each side of the central arch; 
 (vii.) formed part of the long line of architrave which passed straight 
 over the three arches and just above them; (viil.) is larger in pattern 
 for a higher elevation, and formed part of the cornice just beneath 
 the attic; (ix.) is part of the lost lower portion of the triangular 
 "fronton" preserved in the hotel wall in the Place des Hommes at 
 Aries, near which, as at Orange, was the dedicatory inscription, for 
 holes to receive the bronze letters are still visible on the entablature. 
 The hotel wall was embellished in this strange way in 17 19, but the 
 columns come from a different ruin, and their capitals from yet a 
 third. 
 (See chapter iv. vol. I.) 
 
VIIT 
 
 THE " ARC 
 
 ADMIRABLE " AT AELES. 
 
THE WALLS AT ARLES. 
 
 PLAN OF THE PORTA ROMANA (after Auguslc \'eranj. 
 
 HtT WrFi^SlIffit I ^ 1 >-Ys™ 
 
 
 M 
 
 -r. ,-^N^ l> 
 
 THE PORTA ROMANA AT ARLES as built by Augustus (after Auguste Veian). 
 
MONUMENTS HISTORIQUES 
 
 BEFORE THE TENTH CENTURY A.D. 
 Drome. 
 
 Die. (Dea Augusta). Trois autels Tauroboliques. 
 Porte St. Marcel. 
 Vaucluse. 
 
 Carpentras . . Triumphal Arch in the Palais de Justice 
 Cavaillon . . Triumphal Arch. 
 Orange . . . Triumphal Arch. 
 Amphitheatre. 
 Theatre. 
 Vaison . . . Bridge. 
 
 Amphitheatre. 
 Venasque . . Roman remains. 
 
 Gard. 
 
 
 Aigueze . 
 
 Dolmen "Sie de Mounie." 
 
 Barjac 
 
 Group of three Dolmens. . 
 
 Campestre 
 
 Dolmen "Peyre Descabussoludo." 
 
 Grand-Gallargues . 
 
 Roman Tower and Bridge. 
 
 Nimes 
 
 Amphitheatre. 
 
 
 Maison Canie. 
 
 
 Roman Baths and Temple of Nemausus. 
 
 
 Porte d'Auguste and Porte de France. 
 
 
 Tour Magne. 
 
 Remoulins 
 
 Pont du Gard (Roman). 
 
 Uzes 
 
 Crypt of sixth century. 
 
 BoucHES Du Rhone. 
 
 
 Aix . . . . 
 
 Camp of Entremont. 
 
 
 Sextius' Baths. 
 
 336 
 
MONUMENTS HISTORIQUES 
 
 337 
 
 BoucHES DTj Rhone 
 
 {continued) . 
 
 Aries 
 
 Amphitheatre. 
 
 
 Theatre. 
 
 
 Forum. 
 
 
 Ramparts. 
 
 
 Obelisk. 
 
 
 Aqueduct of Barbegat. 
 
 
 Palace of Constantine. 
 
 
 Les Alyscamps. 
 
 Fontvielle 
 
 Grotto-Dolmens des Fees. 
 
 
 Grotto-Dolmens du Forgeron. 
 
 
 Remains of Dolmen of Contignargues. 
 
 St. Chamas . 
 
 Flavian Bridge. 
 
 St. Remy 
 
 Triumphal Arch. 
 
 
 Triumphal Monument. 
 
 Salon 
 
 Roman remains. 
 
 Herault. 
 
 
 Minerve . 
 
 Dolmen (dans le tumulus des Bois-Bas). 
 
 
 Dolmen de Brunan. 
 
 Murviel . 
 
 Ramparts of Altimurium. 
 
 St. Thibery . 
 
 Roman Bridge. 
 
 Soumont 
 
 Dolmen de Coste Rouge. 
 
 
 Dolmen du Belv^dfere. 
 
 AUDE. 
 
 
 Villeneuve-Minervois Dolmen. 
 
 Var. 
 
 
 Cabasse . 
 
 Menhir de Champdumy. 
 
 Draguignan . 
 
 Dolmen. 
 
 Frejus 
 
 Amphitheatre. 
 
 
 Aqueduct. 
 
 
 Porte Doree. 
 
 
 Roman Harbour and Ramparts. 
 
 Alpes Maeitimes. 
 
 
 Cimiez . 
 
 Arfenes. 
 
 St. Cesaire 
 
 Dolmens. 
 
 La Turhie 
 
 Tour d'Auguste. 
 
 Vence 
 
 Roman columns. 
 
 
 Merovingian Carvings in Cathedral. 
 
fit ..INDEX^ 
 
 ffoliimna ConiLjntuii. 
 CiipUaliiim 
 fiftteriiuii 
 /iii.ifiiiiii Imptrtab 
 Mil/ fares ,clla 
 Basilica argehtaria. 
 l htrniix 
 .•I II la liixtona. 
 .■IpptnJii. aiiia pnxloruM' 
 Thtatj-um 
 .4inph ifJitalrum 
 CasL'lUim ^^uaruun 
 7^mpl,ui> Bona Dea, 
 Tfiiiplimi/ Dutna 
 Itinp/iim- .'iii^asH 
 Areui Lo/it/cuiluu 
 liiiip/ujii MuAne 
 Jrifcuin jaetiluiii 
 firqini.t l}fjp4iaf 
 U Tei>ij:-l„m />'iJ Afjml-'ii 
 
 UlCltlu,,, 
 
 Planus 
 
 .ta^* " - i 
 
INDEX 
 
 Aberffraw, 141. 
 Aboriginal carvings, 55. 
 Actium, 153, 259. 
 Actors, 166, 168, 169. 
 Adgennius, 289. 
 Aegina, 36. 
 Afer, 223. 
 A-gde, 35. 
 
 Agricola, 187, 223, 224, 254. 
 Agrigentum, 208. 
 Agrippa, 204, 266. 
 Agrippina, 151. 
 Ahenobarbus, C. D., 43. 
 Aigues-Mortes, 27, 29, 30, 57, 260. 
 Aigueze, 12. 
 
 Aix, 43> 55> 62, 64, 72, 73, 82, 84, 
 92, 146, 150, 152, 241. 
 
 museum, 55. 
 
 Alauda, 188. 
 
 Albano, 278. 
 
 Albici, 147. 
 
 Alcantara, 266. 
 
 Alesia, 93. 
 
 Alexandria, 26, 161, 222, 261. 
 
 Allobroges, 44, 45, 51, 90, 91, 92, 
 
 185. . 
 
 Allobrogian, 152. 
 
 Allobrogicus, 52. 
 
 Alpilles, 12, 21, 58, 61, 112, 116. 
 
 Alps, 92. 
 
 Altar to Venus, 181. 
 
 Alva, Duke of, 143. 
 
 Alyscamps, 84, 139, 319, 327. 
 
 Amalasonte, 182. 
 
 Ambrons, 63, 64, 73, 98. 
 
 Amphitheatres, 166, 228, 230, 242, 
 
 251J 252, 254. 
 Angouleme, Duchess of, 21S. 
 Anne of Geierstein, 69. 
 Antibes, 35, 177, 257. 
 Antioch, 315. 
 
 Antipohs, 168. 
 
 Antonines, 208. 
 
 Antoninus, 274, 312. 
 
 Antoninus Pius, 169, 224, 317. 
 
 Antony, M., 154, 156, 259. 
 
 Aphrodite, 40, 173. 
 
 Apollo, 182, 191, 197. 
 
 Appian Way, 265. 
 
 Apt, 150. 
 
 Aquae Sextiae, 43. 
 
 Aqueduct, 262. 
 
 Aqueducts, Frejus, 262. 
 
 Aquitanian, 187. 
 
 Arausio, 136. 
 
 Arc (or Lar), 63. 
 
 battle of, 64. 
 
 Arc Admirable, 135, 241. 
 
 Arch of Orange, 126. 
 
 Ardfeche, 248. 
 
 Ardennes, 149. 
 
 Arecomicians, 185, 192, 
 
 Arelate, r6o, 186. 
 
 Ar&nes, Les, 242. 
 
 Arezzo, 215. 
 
 Arge^, The, 259, 260. 
 
 Ariarre, 319. 
 
 Aristarche, 2,Z' 
 
 Arlath, 161, 237. 
 
 Aries, 21, 22, 28, 30, 41, 60, 84, 
 135, 141, 142, 146, 160-183, ^94» 
 220, 223, 226, 241, 279, 317, 31S, 
 
 319- 
 
 arena, 242. 
 
 Roman, 236. 
 
 Venus of, 173. 
 
 Arlesiennes, 39. 
 Arlette, 224. 
 Arras, 93. 
 Art, Greek, 167. 
 Artem.is, 34, 42. 
 Artemisia, 43. 
 
 339 
 
340 
 
 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 Arverni, 51. 
 Astarte, 195. 
 Asymmetry, 214. 
 Athalaric, 182. 
 Athens, 193. 
 Attic race, 41. 
 
 story, 244. 
 
 Attica, 167. 
 
 Aubanel, 178. 
 
 Augifere, A., 213. 
 
 Augustinians, 217. 
 
 Augustus, S3, 130, 135, 153, 157, 
 
 204, 205, 207, 241, 243, 259, 273, 
 
 305.306, 312. 
 
 bust of, 180. 
 
 wreath of, 180. 
 
 Aulus Geilius, 223. 
 
 Aurelia, Via, 63. 
 
 Aurelian, 233. 
 
 Autun, 133, 320. 
 
 Avignon, 21, 36, 46, 47, 119, 141, 
 
 150. 
 Avitus, 319. 
 
 Baalbec, 192, 274. 
 Bacchus, 169, 193. 
 Baetis, 36, 152. 
 Balearic Isles, 35. 
 Ball-Games, 248. 
 Balteus, 245. 
 Barbarossa, 140. 
 Barbentane, 49. 
 Barjac, 12. 
 Barri, 12. 
 Barthelasse, 47. 
 Barutel, 252. 
 Bath, 301. 
 Baths, 268. 
 
 at Nlmes, 268. 
 
 Roman, 281, 285. 
 
 Ladies', 286. 
 
 Baux, Les, 74, 75, 79, 112. 
 
 at Orange, Les, 141. 
 
 Baux, Raymond des, 130. 
 Beaucaire, 21, 29, 30, 45, 46, 57. 
 Beaumes-de-Venise, 12. 
 B6darrides, 54. 
 Beer, 294. 
 Bellegarde, 25. 
 
 Marshal de, 276. 
 
 Benedict rx., 84. 
 Benedictines, 276. 
 B^rard, v., 13. 
 
 Bernouilli, 180, 307, 309. 
 
 Berre, i^tang de, 134. 
 
 Berytus, 275. 
 
 B6ziers, 46, 57, 185. 
 
 Bezonce, 264. 
 
 Bituitus, 51. 
 
 Biturigian, 152. 
 
 Boatmen, 297. 
 
 Boii, 48. 
 
 Bona Dea, 179, 193, 195, 236, 
 
 287. 
 Bondurand, E., 131. 
 Bouc, Canal de, 60. ' 
 Bouillargues, 303. 
 Boys, P., 217. 
 Braziers, 294. 
 Breuil, 118. 
 Brianfon, 46. 
 Britain, 191, 224, 310, 319. 
 Brittany, 15. 
 Brun, 174. 
 Brutus, D., 147, 148, 154, 156. 
 
 D. J., 165, 235. 
 
 Bruyes, F., 217. 
 Burgundy, 142. 
 
 wine, 152. 
 
 Bust, Greek, 179. 
 Byzantium, 310. 
 
 Cabasse, 12. 
 
 Cabassols, 72. 
 
 Cabur, 188. 
 
 Caesar, Julius, 74, 223. 
 
 Caius, 112, 204. 
 
 Caldus, 77. 
 
 Caligula, 166, 205, 223. 
 
 Calpurnia, 154. 
 
 Calvinus, C. S., 43. 
 
 Calydon, 320. 
 
 Camargue, The, 22, 25, 46, 161, 
 
 241. 
 Camin Aur^lien, 118. 
 Campagna, 265. 
 Campania, 222. 
 Campestre, 12. 
 Campi Putridi, 63. 
 Canal de Bouc, 60. 
 Canal des Lonnes, 60. 
 Caninius, 93. 
 Cannebifere, The, 147. 
 Cannes, 114, 257. 
 Capua, 226, 242. 
 Capua of the Rhone, 298, 
 
INDEX 
 
 341 
 
 Caracalla, 169, 224, 309, 312, 313. 
 
 Caracalla's Baths, 226. 
 
 Carcassonne, 185, 223. 
 
 Cardon, 218. 
 
 Carinus, 318. 
 
 Caristie, 130. 
 
 Carlisle, 301. 
 
 Carpenters, 295. 
 
 Carpentras Arch, 107, 108. 
 
 Carrhae, 314. 
 
 Carthage, 43, 319. 
 
 Carus, 318. 
 
 Cassius, 156. 
 
 Castelet, 21. 
 
 Castellar, 115. 
 
 Catiline, 91. 
 
 Catulus, 73, 99. 
 
 Caupo, 293. 
 
 Cavaillon, 54, 118. 
 
 Cavares, 45, 47. 
 
 Celtic invasions, 45. 
 
 Celts, 149. 
 
 Ceres, 195, 303, 304. 
 
 Cerigotto, 202. 
 
 Cesaire, St., 85, 220, 237. 
 
 Cette, 21, 27. 
 
 Cevennes, 192. 
 
 Chairmakers, 295. 
 
 Challon-Orange, 142. 
 
 Chambaud, E., 213. 
 
 Channing, Mary, 172. 
 
 Charles i., 121. 
 
 Charles il., 121. 
 
 Charles v., 142. 
 
 Charles ix., 121, 171, 238. 
 
 Chateau d'lf, 20, 34. 
 
 Chateau-Renard, 60. 
 
 Cherbourg, 15. 
 
 Chester, 301. 
 
 Christian tombs, 324, 326. 
 
 Cicero, 89, 90, 102, 153, 154, 155, 
 
 221, 223. 
 Cimbrians, 56, 73, 98. 
 Cinna, 103. 
 Circus at Aries, 238. 
 Clairon, 84. 
 Claret (wine), 152, 
 Claudius, 151, 190, 191, 223, 286. 
 Claudius Marcellus, 15. 
 Clausonne, 257. 
 Claustra Galliae, 254. 
 Claustra Maris, 254. 
 Cleopatra, 156. 
 Clodlus, 287. 
 
 Clodius Albinus, 310. 
 
 Cockerell, 211. 
 
 Coinage, 120. 
 
 Coins, 37. 
 
 Coliseum, 226, 228, 242, 244. 
 
 Cologne, 151, ^23. 
 
 Colonies, GreeK, 32. 
 
 Columns, Greek, 171. 
 
 Comani, 53. 
 
 Comanus, 38. 
 
 Comartiorix, 187. 
 
 " Comes Ripae," 60. 
 
 Constance, Tour de, 28. 
 
 Constantine, 85, 220, 318, 319, 
 
 Construction, 214. 
 
 Corfu, ^2. 
 
 Corinthian, 207. 
 
 Cornelia Lacaena, 320. 
 
 Cornelius Fronto, 223. 
 
 Gallus, 223. 
 
 C6te d'Azur, 26. 
 
 Cottian Alps, The, 241. 
 
 Crau, The, 19. 
 
 Crocodile, 222. 
 
 Crocus, 3 1 8. 
 
 Croix de Machine, 76. 
 
 Cross of Provence, 72. 
 
 Curves, 214. 
 
 Cybele, r93, 195, 196. 
 
 Cyril, Deacon, 170. 
 
 Cyzicus, 37. 
 
 Dancer, Greek, 181. 
 Darmesteter, Madame, 112. 
 Daudet, 123. 
 Dea, Bona, 193, 195. 
 Deacon Cyril, 170. 
 De Dieu, J., 174. 
 Dee, The, 301. 
 Deified Emperor, 206. 
 Demeter, 195, 287. 
 De Saulcy, 131. 
 Diana, 191. 
 Didius Julianus, 310. 
 Dikes, 23. 
 Diocletian, 206. , 
 Dion, 223. 
 
 Dionysiac brotherhood, 168, 277. 
 Dionysus, 165, 169, 193. 
 Doctors, 282. 
 Dolabella, 153. 
 Dolmens, 12. 
 
 Domitian, 202, 205, 224, 233, 291, 
 303- 
 
342 
 
 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 Domitius, 51, 54, 146, 148. 
 
 Domitius Ahenobarbus, 43.. 
 
 Domna, Julia, 309. 
 
 Dorchester, 172, 301. 
 
 Draguignan, 12. 
 
 Druidism, 190. 
 
 Druids, 185, 221. 
 
 Dubnacus, 187. 
 
 Duke of Alva, The, 143. 
 
 Durance, The, 21, 46,48, 59, 60, 62, 
 
 118, 147, 161. 
 Duransole, 60. 
 D'Uz&s, Duchesse, 217. 
 
 Early Christians, 324. 
 Eastern religions, 193. 
 Edessa, 314. 
 Egeria, 274. 
 Egypt, 238. 
 Elagabalus, 285, 315. 
 Elba, 122. 
 Eleusis, 195. 
 Embrun, 46. 
 Emesa, 311. 
 Emperor-worship, 204. 
 
 deified, 206. 
 
 Emporiae, 35. 
 Endymion, 299. 
 Entremont, 55. 
 Ephesus, 166. 
 Epicureans, 298. 
 Ernaginum, 58, 80. 
 Eros, 177. 
 Esculapius, 194. 
 Esterels, 26, t^t^, 154, 238. 
 ;^tang de Berre, 134. 
 Etruscans, 44. 
 Eure, The, 263. 
 Eusebius, 233. 
 Evaenetus, 40. 
 Eygaliferes, 116. 
 
 Fabius, 51. 
 
 Maximus, Q., 44. 
 
 Favorinus, 223. 
 F^libres, 137. 
 Fergusson, 265. 
 Fetish-stone, 177. 
 Flaccus, C. v., 188. 
 Flavius Mamorius, 60. 
 Florus, J., 149, 187. 
 Fonteius, 89. 
 
 Fontville, 12. 
 Fortuna Virilis, 208, 286. 
 Forum Julii, 153, 155. 
 Fos, 21, 46, 57, 60. 
 Fossa Mariana, 59, 60. 
 Fosses Mariennes, 57, 58. 
 Fourches de Rolland, 172. 
 Fourques, 28. 
 
 Frejus, 122, 152, 153, 223, 226, 241, 
 254-262. 
 
 aqueducts, 262. 
 
 Freta, 117, 119. 
 Frigolet, 48. 
 Frost, K. T,, 202. 
 Furca (glacier), 25. 
 
 Gaie, Le, 75, 78. 
 
 Gal, 159. 
 
 Galba, 223. 
 
 Galegeon, Lake, 6q. 
 
 Galen, 223. 
 
 Gallic carvings, 55. 
 
 Gallus, 242, 318. 
 
 Gap, 46. 
 
 Garagai, 70. 
 
 Garagoule, Lou, 71. 
 
 Gardeners, 287. 
 
 Gardens, Roman, 290. 
 
 Gardon, 262. 
 
 Garlands, 295. 
 
 Gasparin, 130. 
 
 Geiersiein, Anne of, 6g. 
 
 Geneva, Lake, 25, 90. 
 
 Germanicus, 151. 
 
 Germany, 319. 
 
 Geta, 312, 313. 
 
 Ghibellines, 158. 
 
 Gibbon, 313. 
 
 Gibraltar, 36. 
 
 Gilles, I., 4Sj 135- 
 
 Ginoux, L, 199. 
 
 Girardon, 174. 
 
 Gladiator, 234. 
 
 Gladiators, 230, 233, 247. 
 
 Glanum, 62, in, 116, 119. 
 
 Glaucias, 323. 
 
 Gnaeus Domitius, 223, 
 
 Gnipho, 223. 
 
 Goodyear, W. H., 213. 
 
 Gordian, 229. 
 
 Gothic Cathedrals, 226. 
 
 Goths, 182, 234, 242, 318, 319. 
 
 Gounod, 123. 
 
INDEX 
 
 343 
 
 Gracchi, The, 146. 
 Grande Pegifere, La, 65, 260. 
 Grasse, 257. 
 Graubiinden, 143. 
 Great Rhone, 25. 
 Greek art, 167. 
 
 artists, 168. 
 
 bust, 179. 
 
 Greek colonies, 32. 
 
 dancer, 168, 181. 
 
 language, 219. 
 
 theatre, 165, 170. 
 
 types, 40. 
 
 words, 220. 
 
 Gregory of Tours, 73, 188. 
 Grenoble, 155. 
 Guelphs, 158. 
 Guibour, 139. 
 Glyptis, 34. 
 
 Hadrian, 130, 166, 169, 223, 224, 
 
 273* 277,301, 312. 
 Haeduan, 187. 
 Haedui, 149. 
 Hamilton, G., 178. 
 Hannibal, 45-49. 
 
 and Scipio, 49. 
 
 Hanno, 49. 
 
 Heliopolis, 28, 192, 275. 
 
 Heliopolitan Jupiter, 274. 
 
 Hellas, 167. 
 
 Hellenism, 222. 
 
 Helvii, 45. 
 
 Hemeroscopeum, 35. 
 
 Henri IV., 238. 
 
 Herakles, 20. 
 
 Herculaneum, 279. 
 
 Hermes, 198. 
 
 Hexastyle, 207. 
 
 Hilary, St., 85, 182. 
 
 Hirschfeld, 186. 
 
 Holland, Philemon, 203. 
 
 Honorius, 161, 162, 234, 319. 
 
 Horace, 293. 
 
 Houdon, 84. 
 
 Houses, Roman, 300. 
 
 Hoveden, R. de, 161. 
 
 Hunter's Tomb, 320. 
 
 Hyferes, 35. 
 
 Hymettus, Mount, 177. 
 
 Iberians, 12, 45. 
 
 Igel, loi. 
 
 Innkeepers, 292. 
 
 Inns, Roman, 293. 
 
 Inscription, 132, 157, 204, 234, 247, 
 
 266, 292, 317. 
 Inscriptions, 130, 192, 193, 206, 
 
 219, 220, 248, 270, 323, 329. 
 lonians, 38. 
 Isfere, 44, 51, 90, 92. 
 Isis, 191, 103, 275. 
 Italy and Phocaea, 44, 
 
 James, Henry, 165. 
 
 Jardin de la Fontaine, 269. 
 
 Jeffreys, Judge, 172. 
 
 Jerome, St., 233. 
 
 Jodelle, E., 122. 
 
 John XXII., Pope, 120. 
 
 JonqueroUes, 62. 
 
 Juha, 61, 74, 77, 83, 203. 
 
 Julia Domna, 309, 311, 314. 
 
 Julia Maesa, 315. 
 
 JuUa Mamaea, 315, 316. 
 
 Julian Alps, 310. 
 
 Julius Caesar, 74, 88, 91, loi, 103, 
 
 146, 150, 156, 190, 227. 
 Jupiter, igi. 
 Jupiter Ammon, 196. 
 Jupiter, Heliopolitan, 274. 
 Jus Honorum, 222. 
 
 Lacaena, C, 320. 
 
 Ladies' baths, 286. 
 
 Ladignan, 198. 
 
 Lafoux, 263. 
 
 La Grande Pegiere, 65, 260. 
 
 Lamartine, 123. 
 
 Lambesc, 63. 
 
 La Petite Pegi&re, 65. 
 
 Lar (or Arc), 63. 
 
 Lar, Battle of, 64. 
 
 Laterensis, 155. 
 
 La Trouille, 318. 
 
 La Turbie, loi. 
 
 Laurade, 60, 118. 
 
 Lazarus, 79, 84. 
 
 Le Gaie, 78. 
 
 Lentheric, 261. 
 
 Lentinus, Manhus, 91. 
 
 Lepidus, 155, 260. 
 
 Les Arenes, 242. 
 
 Les Baux, 61, 74, 75, 79, 112, iig. 
 
344 
 
 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 Les Baux at Orange, 141. 
 
 Les Milles, 63. 
 
 Les Saintes Maries, 75, 79, 81. 
 
 Les Trois Maries, 75. 
 
 Lichtenstein, 143. 
 
 Licinia, 287. 
 
 Ligur's tomb, 260. 
 
 Ligurians, 12, 45. 
 
 Ligyans, 35. 
 
 Lion of Aries, 238. 
 
 Lions, Gulf of, 37. 
 
 Li Santo, 76. 
 
 Little Rhone, 25. 
 
 Livia, 53, 178) 207. 
 
 Lombards, ^19. 
 
 Lonnes, Canal des, 60. 
 
 Louis XI., 142. 
 
 Louis xu., 142. 
 
 Louis xrv., 143, 238. 
 
 Louvre, 177. 
 
 Lucian, 223. 
 
 Lucina, 323. 
 
 Lucius, 204. 
 
 Lycia, 203. 
 
 Lydians, 36, 
 
 Lyons, 25, 90, 93, 141, 146, 150, iSo, 
 
 205. 
 Lysicrates, 100. 
 
 Machine, Croix de, 76. 
 Macrinus, 314, 315. 
 Madeleine, The, 211. 
 Maillane, 47, 48, 58, 62, 114, 118, 
 
 123. 
 Maison Carrie, 167, 197, 203-218. 
 Majorian, 319. 
 Mamaea, Julia, 309, 315. 
 Mamorius, Flavius, 60. 
 Manlius Lentinus, 91. 
 Mars, 191. 
 Marcellus, 65, 67. 
 
 Claudius, 307, 308. 
 
 Marcus Aurelius, 205, 223, 224, 
 
 , 317- 
 
 Mareotis, 28. 
 Margaret, Queen, 69. 
 Maria Marituma, 297. 
 Maries, Les Saintes, Si. 
 Maritime Alps, 154, 157. 
 Marius, Cams, 56-86, 99, 102, 
 112, 
 
 Statue of, 77. 
 
 Mark Antony, 153. 
 
 Marks, St., 215. 
 
 MarseiUes, 14, 20, 26, 33, 34, 84, 
 90, 145-149, 162, 177, 204, 220, 
 
 297, 323- 
 
 and Rome, 44. 
 
 Marsyas, 182. 
 
 Martha, St., 61, 74, 76, 78, 79, 80, 
 
 82. 
 Martial, 290, 298. 
 Mary Magdalene, 79, 83. 
 Mas du Juge, 123. 
 Massalia, 37, 117, 222, 
 Mater Matuta, 286. 
 Matralia, 286. 
 Maumbury, 172. 
 Maurin, P., 199. 
 Maximin, S., 84, 317. 
 Maximus, Q. Fabius, 52. 
 Medals, 117. 
 Medinet Habou, 213. 
 Mediterranean, 14. 
 Meleager, 320. 
 Melkarth, 20. 
 Mercury, 191. 
 M^rimee, P., 99, 131, 208. 
 Michel Angelo, 174. 
 Milan, 215, 319. 
 Millin, 130. 
 Minerva, 191. 
 Minerve, 12. 
 Mint, 120. 
 Mireille, 123. 
 Mireio, 75. 
 Misenum, 261. 
 Mistral, F., 39, 114, 123. 
 Mithra, 191, 193, 194, 195, 196. 
 Monaco, 20, 43. 
 Monnier, M., 159. 
 Mont Cavalier, 268. 
 
 Genfevre, 46. 
 
 Ventoux, 11, 112. 
 
 Ste. Victoire, 69. 
 
 Montaigne, 229. 
 Montluc, General, 122. 
 Montmajour, 21, 59. 
 Montpellier, 46, 146. 
 Moore, J., 215. 
 Moors, 119. 
 Mosaics, 299. 
 Mourre de Sfeve, 12. 
 "Mulsum," 294. 
 Munition, Pain de, 65. 
 Museum at Aix, 55. 
 Musicians, 294. 
 
INDEX 
 
 345 
 
 Mutina; 154. 
 Mynnillo, 233. 
 
 Names, 197. 
 
 Nannos, 33. 
 
 Naples, 301. 
 
 Napoleon, 122. 
 
 Narbo Martius, 89. 
 
 Narbonensis, 189. 
 
 Narbonne, 28, 46, 92, 93, 145, 185, 
 
 186, 223, 260. 
 Nasidius, 148. 
 Nassau-Orange, 142. 
 Nemausus, 151, 185, 192, 202, 263. 
 
 Temple of, 274. 
 
 Nero, 223. 
 Newcastle, 301. 
 Nice, 35, 114, 146, 260. 
 Nlmes, ^, /I, ^6, 5^, 
 
 I-S4, ip2, 'Z^ST 
 25*1, 2 TO, 290. 
 
 baths, 268. 
 
 Nostradamus, 121. 
 Numerian, 318. 
 Numidians, 48. 
 Nyraphaeum, 202 273. 
 
 Obelisk of Arles, 238. 
 
 Octavia, 156. 
 
 Octavianus, 153, 155, 156. 
 
 Odessa, 26. 
 
 Orange, 46, 87, 126, 129, 136. 
 
 Theatre of, 137. 
 
 William of, 139. 
 
 Raimbauld of, 140. 
 
 Les Baux at, 141. 
 
 Orange-Challon, 142. 
 Orange-Nassau, 142. 
 Orchestra, 171. 
 Orgon, 62. 
 Ostia, 178, 260. 
 Ouvfeze, 44, 51, 248. 
 Oxellodunum, 93. 
 
 Pactolus, 37. 
 Pain de Munition, 65, 66. 
 Palmyra, 233. 
 Palustre, Leon, 99. 
 Pannonia, 310. 
 Papinian, 313. 
 
 Parilia, 287. 
 
 Parthenon, 208, 211. 
 
 Paulet,Abb6 L., 76. 
 
 Pausanias, 202. 
 
 Pegiere, La Grande, 65, 260. 
 
 La Petite, 65. 
 
 Peiresc, 130. 
 
 Pennethorne, 213. 
 
 Penrose, 211. 
 
 Pepys, 121. 
 
 Perpignan, 46. 
 
 Persephone, 40, 117. 
 
 Pertinax, 310. 
 
 Pertuis, 70. 
 
 Pescennius Niger, 310. 
 
 Petite Pegifere, La, 65. 
 
 Petronius Arbiter, 222. 
 
 Pharos, The, 261. 
 
 Pheidon, 36. 
 
 Philippi, 156. 
 
 Phocaea and Italy, 44. 
 
 Phocaean carving, 42. 
 
 Phocaeans, 32, 
 
 Phoenicians, 17, 19. 
 
 Pitot, M., 267. 
 
 Place des Hommes, 135. 
 
 Plancus, 155. 
 
 Platter, T., 130. 
 
 Plautilla, 309. 
 
 Pliny, 157. 
 
 Plutarch, 59, 66, 77, 223, 227. 
 
 Po, The, 73. 
 
 Poitiers, 242, 
 
 Pompeii, 226, 243, 279, 281, 293, 
 
 301. 
 Pompeius, Trogus, 222. 
 Pompey, 89, 102, 146, 148, 153. 
 Pomptinus, 9r. 
 Pons Argenteus, 155. 
 Pont du Gard, 262-268, 291. 
 Porta Nigra, 133. 
 
 Romana, 236. 
 
 Porte d'Auguste, 273. 
 
 des Gaules, 257. 
 
 Doree, 259. 
 
 Romaine, 258. 
 
 Pottery, 117. 
 Pourriferes, 6^, 65, 80. 
 
 Arms of, 68. 
 
 Battle of, 67. 
 
 Monument of, 68. 
 
 Pozzoli, 226, 242. 
 Praxiteles, 173, 178, 202. 
 Priapus, 118. 
 
346 
 
 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 Priestesses, 287. 
 Priscus, C. J., 243. 
 Probus, 291. 
 Protis, 7,^. 
 
 Provence, Cross of, 72. 
 Proxumi, 193. 
 Psalmodi, 29. 
 Puget, 174. 
 Pulcher, 234. 
 Putridi, Campi, 63. 
 Pyramid of Vienne, 52. 
 
 Rabanus-Maueus, 76. 
 Raudine Plain, 98. 
 Ravenna, 260, 261. 
 Regnaux, 131. 
 Reinach, 198, 202. 
 Religion, Roman, 302. 
 Religions, 297. 
 Rene, King, 81, 82, 83. 
 Retiarius, 230. 
 Revolution, The Great, 113. 
 Reyran, The, 257, 259, 262. 
 Rhea, 195. 
 
 Rhone, The, 21, 46, 51, 90, 92, 205, 
 241. 
 
 trade, 146. 
 
 Richelieu, 320. 
 Riez, 196. 
 Roi Soleil, 238. 
 RoUand, Tour de, 172. 
 Roman Aries, 236. 
 
 baths, 268, 281, 285. 
 
 style, 167. 
 
 Romanin, ii6. 
 Romany, 116. 
 Rome, 152, 193, 205, 208. 
 
 and Marseilles, 44. 
 
 Roncesvalles, 140. 
 Roodee, 301. 
 Roscius, 222. 
 Roumanille, 120. 
 Roussillon, 150. 
 Ruskin, 126. 
 
 Sacrovlr, Julius, 149, 187. 
 Saint Andr6, 118. 
 
 gate of, 133. 
 
 Baume, 83. 
 
 Cannat, 63. 
 
 C^saire, 12, 85, 220, 237. 
 
 Chamas, 134. 
 
 Saint Gabriel, 58, 61, 80.. 
 
 Gilles, 20, 43, 57, 161. 
 
 Gothard, 25. 
 
 Hilary, 85, 182. 
 
 Jerome, 233. 
 
 Mark's, 215. 
 
 Martha, 76, 80, 82. 
 
 Maximin, 84, 85. 
 
 Paul, 98. 
 
 Remy, 21, 36, 46, 47, 58, 61, 
 
 87, loi, 115, 117, 279, 291, 
 
 — Arch, 94, 104. 
 
 Monument, 94. 
 
 Sauveur, 84. 
 
 Trophime, 84. 
 
 Victor, 84. 
 
 Virgile, 84. 
 
 Sainte Marguerite (island), 151. 
 
 Victoire, Mont, 69. 
 
 Saintes Maries, Les, 81, 85. 
 Salon, 121. 
 Santi, Li, 76. 
 Saone, 205. 
 Saturnalia, 296. 
 Saturninus, 103, 319. 
 Salyes, 2,2,- 
 Scipio, 45-49- 
 
 and Hannibal, 49, 
 
 Scopas, 178, 202. 
 Scott, Sir W., 69. 
 Segobrigians, zz- 
 Segovia, 266. 
 Seguier, 130, 204, 
 Seguin, 174. 
 Sens, 218. 
 
 Septimus Severus, 310. 
 Sequani, 149. 
 Sernhac, 218. 
 Sertorius, 89. 
 Severus, 310, 312. 
 Seviri, 206. 
 
 Sextius, Calvinus C., 43. 
 Sheepshearers, 294. 
 Siagnole, 262. 
 Sidonius, 319, 320. 
 Silchester, 203, ^01. 
 Simos, 12) ■ 
 Smertulitanus, 187. 
 Soaemias, 315. 
 Sorgue, 44, 51. 
 Soumont, 12. 
 Spain, 319. 
 Spartianus, 273. 
 Sphaeristeria, 248. 
 
INDEX 
 
 347 
 
 Stoechades, 35. 
 
 Style, Roman, 167. 
 
 Suetonius, 190, 203, 304. 
 
 Sulla, 102. 
 
 Sylve-Godesque, 2^. 
 
 Syria, 310. 
 
 Syrian Architecture, 275. 
 
 Tacitus, 187, 261. 
 
 Tarascon, 21, 24, 36, 40, 46, 47, 49, 
 
 57, 62, 80, 82, 115, 118. 
 Tarasque, 82. 
 Tarquin, 44. 
 Tarragona, 266. 
 Tartessus, 32, 36. 
 Taurobolia, 194, 195, 196. 
 Tauroenta, 148. 
 Taven, 75. 
 Tectosages, 185. 
 Tegulata, 65, 67, 260. 
 Temple of Vienne, 53. 
 
 of Nemausus, 274. 
 
 of the Spring, 274. 
 
 Teutomalius, 43. 
 Teutons, 56, 64, 73, 98. 
 Theatre, Greek, 165. 
 
 ■ of Aries, 166, 170. 
 
 of Orange, 137. 
 
 Theodoric, 182, 319. 
 Theodosius, 162. 
 Thracian fighter, 233. 
 "Three Marys," 61. 
 Thymelic mystery, 168. 
 Tiberius, 131, 146, 191, 282. 
 
 Arch of, 132. 
 
 Titus, Arch of, 133. 
 Tivoli, 278. 
 Tombs, 325. 
 Toulon, 148, 260. 
 Toulouse, 185. 
 Tour de Constance, 28. 
 
 Magne, 158. 
 
 de Rolland, 172. 
 
 Tours, Gregory of, 73, 188. 
 
 Trajan, 224. 
 
 Treaty of Utrecht, 144. 
 
 Trebonius, C, 147, 148. 
 
 Tremaie, 75, 79. 
 
 Trets, 65. 
 
 Treveri, 149. 
 
 Treves, loi, 319- 
 
 Treviran, 187. 
 
 Trieste, 26. 
 
 Trinquetaille, 28, 241. 
 Triumvirate, The, 156. 
 Trogus, Pompeius, 222. 
 Trophime, St., 84. 
 Trouille, La, 318. 
 Turbie, La, 157. 
 
 Ulpian, 316. 
 Utrecht, Treaty of, 144. 
 Utricularii, 31, 58. 
 Uzfes, 263. 
 
 Vada Sab ATA, 154. 
 Vaison, 36. 
 Valcares, 28. 
 Valence, 90. 
 Valerius, Asiaticus, 223. 
 
 Paulinus, 318, 
 
 Vallauris, 257. 
 Varro Atacinus, 223. 
 Vauvenargues, 70. 
 Vecundaridub, 205. 
 Venaissin, 141. 
 Vence, 196, 257. 
 Venice, 26, 28, 215. 
 Ventidius, 155. 
 Venus of Aries, 173, 177. 
 
 of Nimes, 199. 
 
 Verticordia, 286. 
 
 of Vienne, 200. 
 
 Veran, Augusta, 236. 
 
 Veranius, 264. 
 
 Vercingetorix, 92, 93, 108, 149. 
 
 Verdon, 147. 
 
 Verona, 226. 
 
 Verres, 89. 
 
 Versailles, 174, 177, 201. 
 
 Vespasian, 318. 
 
 Vestal Virgins, 287. 
 
 Vezelay, 259. 
 
 Via Aurelia, 21, 6^, 118, 257. 
 
 Domitia, 21. 
 
 Victoire, Mont Ste., 69. 
 
 Vienne, 52, 53, 90, 92, 93, 141, 185, 
 
 200, 207, 288, 291, 295, 29S. 
 Villefranche, 20. 
 Villeneuve, 47. 
 Vindalium, 51, 54. 
 Vindex, 223. 
 
 — J., 187. 
 
 Vineyards, 291. 
 
I 
 
 348 
 
 OLD PROVENCE 
 
 Vintimiglia, 153. 
 
 Virgil, 223. 
 
 Virgile, S., 84, 
 
 Vocontii, 45, 189. 
 
 Volcae, 45, 150. 15T, 185, 186, 
 
 192. 
 Votienus Montanus, 223. 
 
 Westminster Abbey, 215. 
 William x., 144. 
 
 William the Silent, 143. 
 Wine, 152. 
 Wine trade, 291. 
 Wreath of Augustus iSo. 
 
 YoRK^ 312, 319. 
 Zoroaster, 194. 
 
 END OF VOL. I.