FRÉJUS.
The freedman of Pliny--Forum Julii--The Port of Agay--The Port
of Fréjus--Roman castle--Aqueduct--The lantern of Augustus--The
cathedral--Cloisters--Boy and dolphin--Story told by Pliny--The _Chaine des
Maures_--Désaugiers--Dines with the porkbutchers of Paris--Siéyès--_Sans
phrase_--Agricola--His discoveries.
It was strange. The first person I thought of, on arriving at Fréjus, was
not Julius Cæsar the founder of this old port--no, nor Agricola, a native
of Fréjus, who is so associated with British history, especially with
Scottish--no! it was Pliny's sick freedman, about whom that polished orator
wrote in his nineteenth letter, in Book V. of his collected epistles. Pliny
was a native of Como, he had two villas on the lake. He was a kindly,
honourable, somewhat bumptious man--but what great talkers think small
matter of themselves? He had a slave, a Greek, named Zosimus, of whom he
writes to his friend Paulinus, who had an estate at Fréjus: "He is a person
of great worth, diligent in his services, and well skilled in literature;
but his chief talent is that of a comedian. He pronounces with great
judgment, propriety, and gracefulness; he has a very good hand too upon
the lyre, and performs with more skill than is necessary for one of his
profession. To this I must add, he reads history, oratory, and poetry. He
is endeared to me by ties of long affection, now heightened by the danger
in which he is."
Pliny had given Zosimus his liberty, but Zosimus remained attached to
his service as freedman. Some years before, this accomplished slave had
overstrained his voice, and begun to spit blood. Thereupon Pliny sent him
to Egypt, where in the dry air he seemed better, and after a while Zosimus
returned to his master, apparently completely restored. Pliny goes on, in
his letter: "Having exerted himself again beyond his strength, there was
a return of his former malady and a spitting of blood. For this reason, I
intend to send him to your farm at Forum Julii (Fréjus), having often heard
you mention the exceeding fine air there, and recommend the milk of that
place as very salutary in disorders of this nature. I beg you will give
directions to your people to receive him into your house, and to supply him
with what he shall have occasion for: which will not be much; for he is so
temperate as not only to abstain from delicacies, but even to deny himself
the necessaries his ill health requires. I shall supply him with all that
is needful for his journey. Farewell."
Now, on reaching Fréjus on a balmy day in April, when the air was soft as
butter-milk, and the sun was hot, not scorching, my thoughts went at once
to poor Zosimus, with his hacking cough, his delicate complexion, come here
to inhale the soft air and drink the warm milk. And I thought of him the
more from certain experiences of my own relative to Como. I went to that
city in January from England, thinking that it lay in a warm nook, and
that there I might bask for a few weeks, when recovering from an attack of
bronchitis, till I was able to go further south.
I went into an hotel where I had stayed in summer and been comfortable;
but--oh!--never shall I forget the horrors of that hotel in January! I was
the sole person staying in it. There was no bedroom that had in it a stove.
In the _salle-à-manger_ the fire was lighted for half-an-hour at nine in
the morning, then let out and not rekindled through the day. The fountain
in the square was frozen. An icy wind descended from the Alps. My bedroom
was a tomb; brick-floored, stone vaulted. My bed measured two feet across,
and the sheet and crimson _duvet_ were so nicely adjusted as exactly to fit
the bed, when unoccupied. When I lay in the bed, that _duvet_ was balanced
like a logan stone on the ridge of my body shivering under it, and it
oscillated as I shivered. Then it slid gently to the floor, and left me
with a chill and damp linen sheet over me, the thermometer being below
zero, and I--afflicted with a cough.
Next morning I fled--fled to Milan--was stabbed there by the Tramontana,
fell ill, escaped to Genoa, and there recovered.
Now, perhaps, the reader will understand how it was that naturally, and at
once, my mind turned to poor Zosimus, as I entered Fréjus. His dust is laid
there--I doubt not. He had wandered there--some eighteen hundred years ago,
and, like me, had inhaled the sweet scent of the flowering beans, looked
on the Esterel chain glowing as if red-hot in the sunshine, and had
entertained, like me, kindly, affectionate thoughts of that somewhat
pedantic, conceited, but eminently worthy Caius Plinius Cæcilius Secundus.
Although Julius Cæsar is said to have formed the port at Forum Julii,
and to have given the place his name, it is probable that there was a
settlement there earlier. He, however raised it into consideration by the
construction of the harbour. The port is there still, within its moles, and
guarded by two castles on heights above it, but--alas for the well being of
Fréjus, the harbour is filled with sand and soil brought down by the river
Argens and washed in by the waves, and is now a level meadow, every portion
belonging to a farmer cut off from another portion by a ditch, in which
spring the rushes and croak the frogs. Augustus enlarged the port, and
after the decisive battle of Actium (B.C. 31) sent thither the galleys
captured from Anthony. The sea is now two miles distant.
The mistake of making ports at the mouths of rivers was one constantly made
by the Romans. The Greeks knew better--Marseilles has not been choked.
Hard by, at Agay, is a perfect natural harbour. The red porphyry mountains
rise in fantastic shapes above it, and plunge in abrupt crags into the deep
blue water. It is a little harbour that calls out "Come and rest in me from
every wind." Now a lighthouse has been erected at the extremity of one of
the natural moles of rock, a coastguard establishment crowns the heights,
two or three fishermen's cottages nestle in the lap of the bay--that is
all.
On the south of the port of Fréjus is an old castle. There must have
existed there originally a nodule of rock, but out of this a platform has
been formed artificially of earth gathered from the port, and this platform
was converted in Roman times into a fort. On one side may be seen a curious
contrivance for resisting the outward pressure of the earth heaped up
within. The basement wall has not buttresses thrust forth, but consists of
a series of semicircular concave depressions in its face. In Mediæval times
a strong castle with circular towers was erected on the ancient basement,
that also is now in ruins, the ledges where the old Roman wall ended and
the Mediæval wall sprang at half the thickness of the former were, when I
saw them, dense with white irises.
[Illustration: Aqueduct of Fréjus.]
Fréjus was supplied in Roman times with an aqueduct, the arches of which,
broken and ruinous, still stretch across the plain, and were destined to
convey into the town the waters of the Siagnole, from a distance of about
fifty miles. The arcade is about forty-five feet high.
Following a path that leads along the ancient mole one reaches a
quadrangular tower of Roman masonry with a stone conical roof, which goes
by the name of the Lantern of Augustus, and is supposed to have served
as lighthouse at the entrance of the harbour, but the height is too
insignificant for this purpose, it is not over thirty-five feet, and there
is no indication of any contrivance whereby it could have been utilised for
the purpose of a pharos. In the Torlonia Museum at Rome is a bas-relief
representing the port of Ostia, with its pharos; that is a structure of
several stages, each receding as it is superposed on the other, and the
topmost sustains the ever-burning fire--quite a different sort of building
from this tower at Fréjus.
[Illustration: Lantern of Augustus.]
Fréjus is a cathedral city, though numbering only 3,500 inhabitants, but it
is an ancient see, dating from about 374, when it was an important maritime
place. Its fortunes had gone down in the Middle Ages, and the citizens and
prelates were never in a position to build much of a cathedral. The present
church is of the eleventh century, both small and plain. It contains little
of interest save a fine painting on gold ground of S. Margaret and other
saints, brought from the ancient Monastery of Lerins. The organ gallery
is supported on granite pillars, Classic, found among the ruins of the
amphitheatre. The baptistery is surrounded by eight porphyry columns with
Corinthian capitals taken from a pagan temple.
The carved doors of the cathedral deserve to be seen, they are of rich
Rénaissance work. In the north aisle of the cathedral to the west is the
tomb of two bishops of the seventeenth century, Bartholomew and Peter de
Camelin, kneeling; and at the east end are two alabaster monuments of
bishops three centuries earlier. The cloisters are of the usual Provençal
type, the arcade resting on double columns, but walls have been erected
blocking up the spaces, and the interior yard is turned into the bishop's
fowl-house.
But--is not that sufficient? I am not writing a guide book; and I enter
into these details here solely because the guide books pass over the
cathedral very slightingly, and concern themselves chiefly with the Roman
antiquities. Of these latter, besides what I have mentioned, there is the
Porte Dorée, one arcade only of what was formerly a noble portico facing
the harbour; also a fine amphitheatre, now traversed by a highway, not
however as perfect as those of Nimes and Arles. Fragments also remain of
the ancient theatre, but they are unimportant.
Hard by the Hôtel de Ville is a beautiful red porphyry figure of a boy and
a dolphin which one would have taken to have been Rénaissance work, but
that the Rénaissance artists would hardly have taken the pains to sculpture
such intractable material as porphyry for a petty town of the size of
Fréjus. The group recalls that very odd story told by Pliny in one of his
letters, which, as it may not be familiar to many of my readers, I will
venture here to repeat. He says that the story "was related to him at table
by a person of unsuspected veracity." At Hippo, in Africa, when the boys
were playing in the lake that communicates with the sea, and the lads were
contending together which could swim furthest, one boy found a dolphin play
about him as he swam, and he ventured to climb on the back of the fish. The
dolphin was not alarmed, but conveyed the little fellow on his back to
the shore. The fame of this remarkable event spread through the town, and
crowds came down to the water's edge to see the boy and ask him questions.
Next day he went into the water again, and once more the dolphin appeared,
played round him, and again took him on his back. This happened several
times, and the circumstance was bruited throughout the neighbourhood, so
that great numbers of people came in from the countryside to see the fish
play in the water with the children, and carry them on its back. At last
the authorities of the town, annoyed at the concourse of the curious,
destroyed the playful dolphin, a bit of barbarity that excites Pliny's
wrath.
To the south-west of Fréjus lies the Chaine des Maures, the outline of
which is by no means so bold as that of the porphyry Esterel, but the
mountains rise in sweeping lines from a broad and fertile plain covered
and silvered with olives, growing out of rich red soil, like the old red
sandstone of Devonshire. The red sandstone rocks through which the line
passes are ploughed with rains. On the right appears the wonderfully
picturesque little town of La Pauline, with an extensive ruined castle, and
the walls and towers of the town in tolerable condition. Above it rises a
stately peak capped with the white limestone that forms the mountains about
Toulon and Marseilles, and having all the appearance of a flake of snow.
When we reach the basin between Aubaine and Camp-Major we are surrounded
by these barren white ranges, so white that they look as if a miller had
shaken his flour-bag over them.
But I have not quite done with Fréjus yet. I fear the reader will think
I have given him a dull chapter of antiquarian and historical detail, so
I will here add an anecdote, to spice it, concerning a worthy of Fréjus,
Désaugiers, one of the liveliest of French poets. He was born at Fréjus
in 1772. One day he was invited to preside at the annual banquet of the
pork-butchers. At dessert everyone present was expected to pronounce an
epigram or sing a song; and when the turn came to Désaugiers, he rose,
cleared his throat, looked around with a twinkle in his eye, and thundered
forth "Des Cochons, des Cochons."
The pork-butchers bridled up, grew red about the cheeks and temples,
believing that an insult was intended, when Désaugiers proceeded with his
song:--
"Décochons les traits de la satire."
Siéyès was another native of Fréjus, that renegade priest, to whom is
attributed the ferocious saying, when called on to give his vote on the
condemnation of Louis XVI., "La mort--sans phrases." Some few years after
the Directory sent Siéyès as ambassador to Berlin. He invited a prince of
the blood royal of Prussia to dine at the embassy with him; but the prince
took the invitation and scored across it his answer:--
"Non--sans phrases."
Napoleon as national recompense to Siéyès for the services he had rendered
to France, and to himself personally, gave him the estate of Crosne. This
gave rise to the epigram--
"Bonaparte à Siéyès a fait présent de Crosne,
Siéyès à Bonaparte a fait présent du trône."
But after all, it is chiefly as the birthplace of Agricola, that true model
of a Roman soldier of the best description, that Fréjus interests us most.
His father, Julius Græcinus, had fallen a victim to Caligula, because he
refused to undertake the prosecution of a man the Emperor was determined
to destroy, and there is some reason to suspect that Agricola himself was
sacrificed to the suspicions and envy of Domitian. Like most good and
honourable men, he had a good mother, whose virtues Tacitus records.
When Agricola was proconsul of Britain, his rule was mild, and he took
pains to win the confidence of the provincials. He it was who drew a chain
of forts from sea to sea between the Tyne and Solway, to protect the
reclaimed subjects of the southern valleys from the untamed barbarians who
roved the Cheviots and the Pentlands. He was not merely a conqueror, but an
explorer and discoverer, in Scotland. In A.D. 83 he passed beyond the Frith
and fought a great battle with the Caledonians near Stirling. The Roman
entrenchments still remaining in Fife and Angus were thrown up by him.
In 84 he fought another battle on the Grampians, and sent his fleet to
circumnavigate Britain. The Roman vessels at all events for the first time
entered the Pentland Frith; examined the Orkney islands, and perhaps gained
a glimpse of the Shetlands.
It was interesting to tread the soil where the childhood was passed of a
man who left such permanent marks in Britain, and to whom we are indebted
for our first knowledge of Scotland.