LES ALYSCAMPS.
Difficulty of finding one's way about in Arles--The two inns--The
_mistral_--The charm of Arles is in the past--A dead city--Situation
of Arles on a nodule of limestone--The Elysian Fields--A burial-place
for the submerged neighbourhood--The Alyscamp now in process of
destruction--Expropriation of ancient tombs--Avenue of tombs--Old church
of S. Honoré--S. Trophimus--S. Virgilius--Augustine, apostle of the
English, consecrated by him--The Flying Dutchman--Tomb of Ælia--Of
Julia Tyranna--Her musical instruments--Monument of Calpurnia--Her
probable story--Mathematical _versus_ classic studies--Tombs of
_utriculares_--Christian sarcophagi--Probably older than the date usually
attributed to them--A French author on the wreckage of the Elysian Fields.
I do not know a more perplexing place anywhere to find one's way in and
out of than Arles. During a fortnight spent there I never could hit my
inn aright once on coming from the railway station. The place is like a
labyrinth; but one of those labyrinths that our forefathers delighted to
construct of pleached alleys of box or lime were always to be traversed
when you possessed the key. There is no key, no principle whatever upon
which Arles has been built. Every public edifice seems to be dodging round
the corner, like Chevy Slyme, hiding from some other public edifice with
which it is on dubious terms, or not quite on social equality, and wishes
to avoid the difficulties of an encounter.
Arles streets are about the worst paved in Europe. They are floored with
the cobble-stones rolled down by the diluvium, and torture the feet that
walk over them and rick the ankles. There are two melancholy inns in the
Place du Forum, and it is hard to choose between them, probably it does not
much matter. I was given a bed-chamber in one where neither the door nor
the window would shut, and where there were besides two locked doors that
did not fit, and as the _mistral_ was blowing, my hours in that room were
spent in a swirl of draughts. Moreover, an old party with bronchitis was
in the adjoining room, also suffering from the draughts, and in despair
of recovering his health in such a situation. I complained, and was given
another room where the draughts were the same, but I was without my
coughing and hawking neighbour. No wonder that I was charged half a franc
per night for my candle. It guttered itself in no time into the tray of
the candlestick, as it was blown upon from four distinct directions
simultaneously.
Arles--when not in a _mistral_--is charming, but the charm is in the past.
There one must be a _laudator temporis acti_, for the present is wholly
wretched and bad. The fact is, Arles had a glorious past, from which it has
been falling throughout the Middle Ages till it reached a point approaching
extinction, and it has not as yet realised that better days are shining
before it, and that there is a future to which it may look up.
So depressed did Arles become some time ago, that its only lively trade
was in old coffins. It had a vast cemetery outside its walls, crammed with
memorials of the dead of all ages; and as the curators of the museums
of Paris, Marseilles, Avignon, Aix, &c., thirsted after sarcophagi, the
mournful Arelois went to their necropolis, dug up as many as were wanted,
and forwarded coffins to those who had made requisition for them.
Arles is planted upon a nodule of limestone rock that rises out of the
diluvium of rolled stones. In former times it was almost the sole dry spot
to be found for miles round, and as the dead of Pagan and Christian times
alike seem to have objected to wet beds, their bodies were transported from
all the country round to the plateau east of Arles and there entombed. This
plateau was called the Elysian Fields, now Alyscamp, and is so thick with
tombs that you walk over them as you follow the road that runs along the
plateau. You see the grass at the side dead in one place, there is a tomb
there; you see a bit of white marble cropping up in another, that is a
tomb. You see a great stack of stones heaped up by the side of a railway
cutting, they are all tombs. You look at the cutting itself, and see that
to a certain depth it is honeycombed with tombs, some cut through, some
sticking out. In every farmyard the pigs eat out of old sarcophagi. The
fountains squirt into them, the bacon is cured in them. The farrier dips
his hot iron into a sarcophagus. In the churches the altars are made of
them. The foundations of the houses are laid in them. The very air seems
to be pervaded with the dust of the dead, and this dust lies heavy on the
spirits and energies of the inhabitants.
But what an age we live in! Utilitarian and disrespectful of the past! The
other day a cargo of mummied cat-deities arrived at Liverpool and was sold
for manure. At Arles, the Paris, Lyons and Mediterranean Railway Company
has bought up the Elysian Fields to convert them into a factory for their
engines. The company are excavating Les Alyscamp for this purpose, throwing
about the sarcophagi, Pagan or Christian, or using them for building
materials--and sawn in half they make decent quoins for a brickshed--and
strewing the dust of the dead of ages under the wheels of the locomotives.
One undesecrated, unrifled headland remains above the factories, on which
is a venerable but abandoned church. The company would grub that up too,
but the proprietor will not sell, as he believes the tradition that an
incalculable treasure is hidden somewhere among these tombs.
But the Arelois not only expropriate the tombs of their forefathers, they
have given away or sold other things as well. On the Alyscamp is the
venerable church of S. Honoré, half ruinous, in which, underground in the
crypt is the ancient baptistery that had served the first Christians when
the church was young. It was furnished with a large porphyry circular
vessel for immersing adults. Louis XIV. saw it, coveted it for some
water-works, and got the Arelois to give it him. Among the ruins of the
theatre was found a Venus of Greek workmanship and of Parian marble. They
sent it away also; it is in Paris.
The old church of S. Honoré is now reached by a long avenue of poplars
lined with Pagan Roman tombs. The nave of the church is in ruins, but the
choir is in tolerable condition, and is the most interesting portion. It
consists in fact of an early Romanesque basilica with three aisles ending
in three apses. The pillars separating nave from aisles, three on each
side, are great drums ten feet in diameter. The later, ruinous nave
contains the reputed chapel of S. Trophimus, apostle of Arles. When the
fourteenth century church was added, this little chapel was left standing
within, and though now crumbling, it is comparatively watertight. It has,
however, undergone recasing in Renaissance times, and to understand its
structure the chapel must be entered. It is then seen to have been an open
porch of four semicircular arches, and may possibly have been erected over
the tomb of S. Trophimus. The only ornament about it is a moulding, which
may give its date.
S. Trophimus, reputed apostle of Aix, is now said to have been that Asiatic
who was a companion of S. Paul mentioned in Acts xx. 4, xxi. 27-29, and 2
Tim. iv. 12, 20. But the very early diptychs of the church of Arles mention
S. Dionysius as the first prelate, and the cathedral was built in 625 by
S. Virgilius, and dedicated to S. Stephen. It did not take the title of
S. Trophimus till the twelfth century, when the relics of this saint were
brought to it from the little chapel just described. The exact date was
1152; the tradition of S. Trophimus having been one of the disciples of
Christ and companion of S. Paul arose about this time. Not a trace of such
a tradition appears in the Provençal poem composed by an eye-witness of the
translation of the relics.
There was, no doubt, a bishop of this name at Arles, and probably early,
but the first whose name is authenticated is Martianus, who followed the
Novatian heresy in 254. Gregory of Tours--and his testimony is confirmed by
a MS. of the fifth century--says that S. Trophimus was sent into Gaul in
the consulship of Decius and Gratus, i.e., 250, and that he was the first
bishop of Arles, and Gregory of Tours is the earliest and most reliable
authority that we have on the beginnings of the Christian church in Gaul.
The church of S. Honoré was built by S. Virgilius, Archbishop of Arles A.D.
588-618, and the baptistery dates from his time. According to the legend,
whilst he was erecting the basilica, the people toiled ineffectually to
move the pillars to their destined place. At last they sent word to S.
Virgil that the truck was fast, and the pillars could neither be taken on
nor carried back. Then Virgil hurried to the spot, and saw a little devil,
like a negro boy, sitting under the truck, obstructing its progress. Virgil
drove him away, whereupon the columns were easily moved. He was buried in
this church, but I do not fancy his tomb is known. A strange story is told
of him, how one night, as he was pacing the walls of Arles, or possibly
walking in the Alyscamp, he saw a mysterious ship come sailing over the
meres. In the starlight he discerned forms of sailors. The ship drew up
near where he stood, and a voice called to him: "Reverend father, we know
who thou art. Now we are bound for Jerusalem, and are here to ask thee to
come on board with us." "No, thank you," answered Virgilius, "not till
you have shown me who you are." Then he made the sign of the cross, and
suddenly the ship resolved itself into a drift of fog that rolled away
before the wind along the surface of the mere. This is the _second_ version
of the world-wide-known myth of the Flying Dutchman. The earliest form
comes to us in the legend of S. Adrian, a martyr in Asia Minor. As his
widow Basilissa was sailing over the Black Sea with his body, to bury it at
Byzantium, a phantom ship passed by, which also vanished when adjured in
the sacred name.
What is, to us English, of interest in connection with S. Virgil of Arles
is, that it was he who consecrated Augustine for his mission to Kent, at
the command of Gregory the Great. So here, probably, in this ruinous,
silent old church, our apostle of the English knelt and received his
commission to go and preach the Gospel to us Angles. This same Virgil also
built the cathedral, and dedicated it to S. Stephen. But of his work there
not a trace remains. Another bishop of Arles of some note was Regulus, who
when preaching one day was so troubled by the noise made by the frogs, that
he interrupted his sermon to order them to be silent, and--they obeyed.
In a side chapel of the old church of S. Honoratus is a sarcophagus that
contains the skull and bones and dust of a young girl. The coffin is of
lead, and this perhaps accounts for the preservation. Along with it were
found the gold ear-rings and other trinkets. On the ear-rings a cross, but
the inscription on the tomb hardly leads one to believe the girl was a
Christian. She was aged seventeen years, eight months, and eighteen days,
when she died. Her name was Ælia. Here is the inscription in the lead,
translated:--
ÆLIA, DAUGHTER OF ÆLIA.
Thou who can'st read these lines, read a sad mishap, and learn our
plaintive lay.
Many call that a sarcophagus which contains bones,
But this has become the home of unhallowed bees. [1]
Shame it should be so! Here lies a damsel of exceeding beauty.
There's more than grief in this: a dearly loved wife has been snatched
away.
She lived a virgin so long as Nature willed.
When she became a bride, the marriage vows were a joy to her parents.
She lived seventeen years, eight months, and eighteen days.
Happy the father who lived not to see such sorrow.
The wound rankles in the bosom of her mother, her precious jewel,
And her father, taken away in old age, still holds her clasped to his
heart.
[Footnote 1: The ancients thought that bees were bred of dead bodies. See
Virgil, Georgics. iv. 281-5.]
Here is the original with conjectural restorations. Would not old Dr.
Keates have whipped the Eton boy who wrote such barbarous Latin verses! But
it must be remembered the Arles folk were Græeco-Gallic, and not masters of
Latin. Some of the words are run together. It runs thus--
ÆLIA ÆLIÆ
Littera.quinosti.lege.casum.et.d(_ice querelam_.)
Multi.sarcophagum.dicunt.quod.con(_tinet ossa_:)
Set.conclusa.decens.apibus.domus.ist(_a profanis_:)
Onefas.indignum.jacet.hic.præclara(_puella_.)
Hoc.plusquam.dolor.est.rapta.est.s(_uavissima conjux_.)
Pervixit.virgo.vbi.jam.natura.placebat.
Vixit.enim.ann.xvii.et.menses viii.diesque xviii.
O.felice.patrem.qui.non.vidit.tale.dolorem.
Hoeret.et.in fixo.pectore.volnus.dionysyadi matri.
Et junctam.secum.geron.pater.tenet.ipse.puellam.
This is an exact copy. I am not responsible for the grammatical blunders,
they were made clearly by the sculptor of the inscription, who did not
understand what he cut.
Among the tombs extracted from the Alyscamp and now in the Museum of Arles,
is another of a girl, and a very accomplished young lady she must have
been; her name was Julia, and she was the daughter of Lucius Tyrannus. She
died at the age of twenty; the inscription on her tomb records that in her
morals and in her schooling she was a pattern to all other girls.
[Illustration: Musical instruments from the tomb of Julia.]
What is particularly interesting about this monument is that it gives
illustrations of all the musical instruments she was able to play, and it
affords us I believe, the earliest known example of the organ. [1] But what
is even more curious is that on it is represented a guitar, very much the
same as is now manufactured.
[Footnote 1: Nero on the night when he died was going to try a water-organ,
when the news of the revolt of Galba and the defection of the troops
reached him. I am puzzled about this organ on the tomb of Julia Tyranna.
Sir George Grove, in his 'Dictionary of Music,' gives an illustration of
this same organ copied from Dom. Bedos' 'L'Art du Facteur d'Orgues,' Paris,
1766. This represents two slaves crouched and blowing into the organ
bellows. I could not see these figures. I made my sketch carefully, and can
hardly suppose the figures have been chipped away since the monument was
placed in the museum.]
The instruments she could play were the organ, the guitar, the syrinx
or panpipe, and the lyre, which she struck not with her fingers, but a
plectrum represented beside it. Observe, between the lyre and the banjo
her little satchel of music-books, and below the syrinx a lamb and palm.
This is the only sign on the monument that could in the least lead to a
supposition that Julia Tyranna was Christian. The inscription bears no
trace of Christianity.
[Illustration: Calpurnia's monument.]
Another interesting monument found there is that to Calpurnia, daughter of
Caius Marius. Probably she died from the exposure and roughness of life
camping out, when the barbarian hordes rolled west, and all the inhabitants
of the towns were obliged to fly before them to the hills. I shall in a
future chapter tell the story of Caius Marius and his great victory at
Pourrières over the Teutons, having first thrashed the Ambrons near Aix.
Suffice it now to note that here is the tombstone of his poor little
daughter. I must, however, state that the genuineness of this inscription
has been called in question. It is also worthy of notice how that the
victory of Marius and delivery from the barbarians impressed the people
of the neighbourhood. In the museum the name of Marius occurs on other
monuments. The name of Marius is even now a popular Christian name in
Provence.
But to return to Calpurnia. The place where the Arles inhabitants fled from
the Teutons was the limestone range of Les Alpines, almost an island, so
surrounded was it by lagoons and marshes.
Looking at Calpurnia's monument I fell into a dream, and saw her whole
story unfolded before me. Caius Marius was a rough-mannered man, of peasant
origin, but he had a wife Julia, of patrician rank, and who, I have not a
shadow of doubt, flourished her noble origin before him, and talked very
big of her grand relations. When little missie was born: "I'll have none
of your plebeian names, if you please, for my baby," said Julia; "you will
please note that my family derives from the immortal gods. I shall call the
child Calpurnia." [1] Madame Julia was a good wife, and she followed her
rough husband everywhere. At the beginning of windy March, tidings came
that the Teutons and Ambrons were on the move. In April all the women
and children of Arles, Glanum, Ernaginum, and Cabelio were clustered on
the heights of Les Alpines, in extemporised cabins or in some of the
prehistoric habitations they found scooped out of the limestone. Down came
the rains. A gale and driving out-pour then as to-day, when M. Carnot comes
into Provence. The roofs of the cabins let in water, the sides of the caves
ran down with moisture. Then the wind changed, the sun shone out hot, but
the _mistral_ tore over the country cold and sharp as a double-edged sword.
Poor Calpurnia could not stand it. She shivered and coughed, lost appetite
and spirits. Next came the tidings of the battle at Les Milles, and a
couple of days later of the extermination of the enemy at Pourrières. Now
the refugees might in safety descend from their rocky refuges, and return
to their homes.
[Footnote 1: See Appendix A, on this monument and the question of its
genuineness; as well as for some other inscriptions in the Arles Museum.]
Then Julia went with the sick girl to Arles. Meantime Marius on the
battlefield had received the ovation of his officers and soldiers, and the
salutations of the delegates from the senate proclaiming him consul. But
at the same time there appeared--I doubt not, though Plutarch does not say
so--a slave with a note from Julia:--
"I am sorry to tell you that Calpurnia is very unwell. That horrible
_mistral_ froze her, and she has done little else than cough night and day
since. I have given her snail broth, but it has not relieved her much, and
she is now spitting blood. Bother these Teutons, it is all their work. I
always told you that you made a mistake in letting them come into Provence,
and cross the Rhone. However, you were ever pigheaded, and now it serves
you right. You will lose Calpurnia, who is the apple of your eye. Now if
you had listened to me, etc., etc.
"Salve."
But there was something further to complicate matters, and superinduce
sickness in a delicate girl. To escape to the hills the good people of
Arles could not follow a road, for the whole district between them and
the range of Les Alpines was covered with one vast lagoon. They could
not travel in boats, for the lagoon was shallow, so they went on rafts
supported on inflated skins, about which I shall have something to say
presently. So Calpurnia, creeping close to her mother, wrapped in her
_pallium_, was exposed for hours on a raft at the beginning of April to the
cold winds, and to the water oozing up between the joints of the raft.
The whole story works out like an equation. I fancy--but am not sure--a
quadratic equation, somehow thus:--
As I, in a 19th cent. hotel, and in Jäger underclothing:
Calpurnia, on a raft and in a pre-historic cave:: a cold in the head
I got: x
x X self in hotel and Jäger costume = Calpurnia on a raft and in a
cave X cold in the head.
x = pthysis.
I think this is right. I cannot be sure; and I cannot be sure, though I was
educated to be a mathematician by a senior wrangler.
The facts were these. My dear father thought, and thought perhaps justly,
that a classical education was but a throwing back of the current of
the mind into the past, whereas a mathematical education directed it to
the future, and was the sole course which would prove Pactolean. So I
was cut down in my classical studies, and drawn out in those which were
mathematical. Likewise I was sent the year before entering the university
to a senior wrangler to ripen me. I then learned that what as a boy I was
wont to call the Rule of Three was more properly termed equations, and that
equations might be complicated to the highest limits of muddledom, and when
so complicated were termed quadratics. After a course of equations that
flattened out my head like the Camargue, I was thrust into what are called
surds, a sort of wood of errors, in which one spends hours in hewing one's
way to get at nothing of the slightest profit to man or beast; finally, I
believe my good tutor, now a bishop, got tired of me. I was stupefied by
surds; and I entered the university. Now, after thirty-seven years, I find
that every ode of Horace, every chapter of Cæsar, every line of Virgil
I learned at school lies as a sprig of lavender in the folds of my
memory--but I cannot even set and work out a common equation, or add up a
sum in compound addition correctly.
I beg the pardon of the reader for this digression. I have made it because
I think, should my reader be a father, this experience of mine may be of
profit to him.
To return to the monuments of the Elysian Fields. A considerable number
have been found here, also at Nimes, S. Gabriel, and Cavaillon, which are
the memorials of _utriculares_. [1] There were guilds of these men. They
appointed noble Romans as their patrons, and these patrons on their
tombstones made mention of the fact. But what were these _utriculares_?
They were raftsmen who carried on trade over the lagoons, sustaining their
flat vessels upon distended skins. The lagoons were so shallow that no
vessel of deep draught could travel over them, and all the merchandise of
central Gaul for the Mediterranean--the tin from Britain for instance--and
all the goods of the Mediterranean for Gaul, had to be transhipped at Arles
from the river boats, unable to cross the bar, on to these barges sustained
on inflated skins that conveyed them to Fos, at the mouth of the lagoons,
where they were again shipped for the sea voyage. After Marius had cut
a canal, matters were better. Ships could come up through the lagoons
to Arles, but none at any time of deep draught, and the raftsmen, the
_utriculares_, carried on their trade till the Middle Ages, when the mouths
of the lagoons became choked, and the lagoons themselves turned into
noxious morasses. Here is one of their monuments, in the museum of Arles:--
"To the manes. To Marcus Junius Messianus, of the guild of the
utriculares of Arles, four times president of this corpora
Junia Valeria raised this monument to him, her son, who died aged
twenty-eight years, five months, and ten days."
Here is another, found near Lyons:--
"To the manes and eternal repose of Caius Victorinus ... urix, also
called Quiguro, citizen of Lyons, one of the corporation of utriculares
there, who lived twenty-eight years,... months and five days, without
giving offence to anyone. His mother, Castorina, raised this to the
memory of her sole and very dear boy."
The navigation on distended skins is now everywhere extinct except on the
Euphrates. On some of the Nineveh sculptures may be seen men swimming
across rivers sustained on these primitive air-vessels.
[Footnote 1: See Appendix C.]
In the museum at Arles are numerous sculptured Christian sarcophagi,
with groups of the Raising of Lazarus, the Multiplication of Loaves, the
Striking of the Rock by Moses, the Opening of the Eyes of the Blind, &c.
These are attributed to the fourth and fifth centuries. For myself I am
by no means satisfied that the Christian sarcophagi of rich and beautiful
sculpture are as late as the dates generally given to them. I judge by the
fashion of the hair worn by the ladies. Now there is a sarcophagus at Arles
with the twelve apostles on it, six on each side of Christ, and a portrait
of the deceased. This is set down to be a tomb of the fifth century, and
yet the lady wears her hair in precisely the fashion, and it was a peculiar
one, of the Faustinas, the wives of Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius,
A.D. 138-177. It must not be forgotten that the protection of the laws
was extended to Christian sepulchres as well as Pagan till the edict of
Valerian in A.D. 257, and although this was withdrawn by Gallienus in A.D.
260, yet after that edict, the cemeteries, the catacombs, were never quite
secure; before that, the Christians made no concealment of their places of
burial, they used the richest available decorations for them, in sculpture
and in painting. Only after A.D. 257 do the ornamentations cease, or become
hastily sketched and rude, and the inscriptions degenerate into scrawls.
All the finest, costliest work in the Roman catacombs belongs to the first
two centuries and the beginning of the third. When peace returned to the
Church, art had fallen into decay, and there were not sculptors capable of
performing such work as had been done before. No more convincing proof of
this can be found than the two porphyry tombs of Constantia and Helena,
daughter and mother of Constantine, now in the Vatican.
To what a depth of degeneracy sculpture fell may be judged by the lid of
the sarcophagus of S. Hilary, Bishop of Arles, d. 449, now in the Arles
museum. Beside the rude lettering, there are but a leaf and two birds
on it, but they might have been scribbled by a child. It is to me
inconceivable that some of the beautiful white marble sarcophagi both
at Arles and at Rome, sculptured with Scriptural scenes, can belong to
the period when art was as degraded as it certainly was in the time of
Constantine, and I think that antiquarians have been misled in dating them.
Before taking leave of the Elysian Fields, I must quote the words of a
French author upon them:--"It has been a rich quarry only too easily
worked, and we will not here enter on the painful story of its spoliation.
All the museums of the south of France possess tombs stolen from the
Alyscamp. As to the monolithic tombs, they were abandoned to any one who
cared to have them, and for many centuries have been regarded as stones
quarried ready for use. The city of Arles has on several occasions had
the culpable condescension of giving up the tombs of its ancestors to the
princes and great men of the world. Charles IX. laded several ships with
them, which sank in the Rhone at Pont S. Esprit. The Duke of Savoy, the
Prince of Lorraine, the Cardinal Richelieu, and a hundred others have taken
away just what they liked, and Arles to-day has hardly more to show of
this vast cemetery than an avenue--but a noble one--of sarcophagi and some
fragments of fine Gothic or Romanesque chapels lost in the midst of a
desert." [1]
[Footnote 1: Lenthéric, 'La Grèce et l'Orient en Provence,' 1878.]