THE ROMAN CITY
Leaving the Hotel St. Louis, about which I shall have more to say later
on, and passing along the Rue de l'Arquebus, you emerge upon an open
space, where stands a statue to a Gaulish chieftain with whom we have
already made acquaintance--the Druid, Divitiacus.
It may be heresy on my part, but I must admit that I have very little
sympathy with the French passion for erecting statues of known or
unknown persons, in every public place, quite irrespective of any
ulterior considerations, such as whether such a monument is in any way
expressive of the celebrity's particular talent or genius, or whether
modern garments in carved stone are desirable in a "Place," often
bordered with the most beautiful examples of Gothic or Renaissance
architecture.
Many an open space in the ancient cities of France might have been
spared such an indignity, had the French people cared to remember that,
in the absence of a more worthy memorial--such as a house that can
be lived in--a wall-tablet is sufficient for all practical purposes.
M. Emile Montégut, in his "Souvenirs de Bourgogne," has very justly
satirized the French idiosyncracy; but France in general, and Burgundy
in particular, still bristles with unnecessary statues.
The memorial of Divitiacus, however, is an exception to the general
rules, for the figure is a successful and spirited piece of work,
showing the Druid, bareheaded, pointing down the Roman Road. His helmet
lies at his feet, and he carries a shield on which a battle scene is
engraved. The figure stands upon a historic site; for here, on the west
side of the Voie d'Agrippa, joining gate with gate, stood three of the
most important buildings of the Roman city,--the Temple of Apollo, the
Schools, and the Capitol.
The Aedui had always conceived of Apollo as surrounded by the Muses.
He was their God of poetry, of youth, of joy, of prosperity, and of
beauty; he was the healer and enlightener; to him the woods and streams
were consecrated in the days
"When holy were the haunted forest boughs,
Holy the air, the water, and the fire;"
In the third century the Healer was already the most venerated of the
Roman divinities in the hierarchy of Augustodunum, and his temple was
probably the most important of them all, until 270, when it fell, with
many another Roman temple and palace, before the hordes of Tetricus.
The Emperor Constantius Chlorus, however, decided that the temples
should rise again; and it appears, from the records of Eumenes, that,
by the end of the third century, the house of "Apollo Noster" was
restored to more than its former beauty. The house was restored; but
not the cult. Influences more powerful than the decree of Constance
Chlore, or of Constantine, were at work within the Roman city. Every
year, meaner gifts were offered, fewer vows were made before the Temple
of Apollo; every year more citizens--at first in fearful secrecy, later
with open enthusiasm--worshipped the Carpenter of Nazareth.
Excavations have revealed the substructure of the circular building
which is generally accepted as having been the Temple of Apollo. The
character of the remains, shewing that strings of bricks were used in
the construction of the building,[36] point to the reign of Constantius
Chlorus, or of his son Constantine,[37] as the probable date. Readers
familiar with the Roman buildings of Arles, will recognise the same
architectural feature in the Palace of Constantine in that town.
The great schools of Autun, the Ecoles Méniennes, as they were called,
were probably situate between the Temple of Apollo and the Capitol,
just below the site of the present Sous-préfeture. They appear to have
been well known throughout the Roman Empire; for Tacitus[38] mentions
the capital of the Aedui as a place where the children of the Gaulish
nobility were wont to apply themselves eagerly to the study of the
liberal arts, while Eumenes speaks of them as "a sanctuary consecrated
to instruction and eloquence, a very home of literature; for," says he,
"the study of letters is the foundation of all the virtues; they are,
indeed, a school of temperance, of modesty, of vigilance, of patience;
and when all these virtues are implanted as a habit in the heart of
childhood, they penetrate, like a vigorous sap, all the functions of
civil life, and even those which seem to be in opposition to it, I mean
the charges and duties of military life."[39]
Many men, celebrated in their day, must have attended these schools,
which seem to have retained their popularity well into the third
century, though, at the time of their destruction in the catastrophy
of 270 A.D., they may, perhaps, have been living, to a certain
extent, upon their past glories. We do not know much concerning their
architecture; but Eumenes says they were known as a monument of
imposing beauty, and adds this interesting detail--that "the buildings
were surrounded by galleries or porticos, in which the students could
see every day the extent of all the lands and of all the seas, the
towns restored by the good-will of the invincible emperors, the nations
conquered by their valour, and the barbarous countries chained by the
terror of their arms. There were shewn the name and situation of each
country, its extent, its relative distance, the source and outfall of
each river, the windings of the banks, and the circuits of the sea
which washes the continents and the shores of the countries swept by
its impetuous movement. The whole universe was there pictured. There
were to be seen the two rivers of Persia, the parched regions of Lybia,
the joined branches of the Rhine, and the many mouths of the Nile."[40]
The schools had been named after these galleries, on whose walls or
ceilings the young nobles of Gaul could learn all that was known of
the world of their day, that is to say, the whole of the Roman Empire.
Maeniana,--in French, Ménienne,--means a construction projecting from
the front of an edifice, an exterior gallery or balcony, which appears
to have been so common a characteristic of the schools of Augustodunum,
that the term Maeniana came to be applied to them generally.[41]
In 270 A.D. the schools suffered the general fate, and the scholars,
henceforth, had to be accommodated in separate quarters. Eumenes talked
of restoring the porticos, and repainting the map of the world; but,
probably, the work was never carried out, and the schools remained in
their shattered state, even after the adjoining buildings--the Temple
of Apollo and the Capitol--had been restored to something of their
former glory.
The Capitol was probably the building whose foundations, circular
on plan, have been traced to the garden of the Hospice St. Gabriel,
beside the Ecoles Méniennes, and fronting also upon the great central
street leading from gate to gate. Authorities appear to have differed
considerably on this point; but many Corinthian capitals, fragments of
entablatures, statuettes, groups of goddesses, etc., have been found
on this site, suggesting that it was once occupied by a building of
great importance,[42] decorated as one would expect of such a temple,
and dedicated, as the Capitol was, to the principal divinities of the
official hierarchy. Eumenes, moreover, states that the Capitol was
situate beside the schools. M. de Fontenay, however, thinks that,
possibly, the Capitol may have occupied the other circular site, now
attributed to the Temple of Apollo; and, conversely, that the latter
building should be placed below the schools.
* * * * *
Not far from this centre of Roman civilization, beyond the shady
plantation of plane trees, the Promenade des Marbres, dotted with
seats of Roman stone, and stretching eastward from the statue of
Divitiacus, you will find, if you follow the Faubourg des Marbres, on
the right side of the downward slope, a board with the legend "Caves
Joyaux." Then, turning up the path to the right, passing a hideous
modern cottage devoted principally to "tir," from the walls of which
the counterfeit presentments of dead citizens look out stonily upon
you from the Roman stele, you will come upon a grassy, semi-circular
terrace, planted with lime trees, whose green banks slope down towards
a smaller semi-circle of sward below.
Beyond it lies a broad expanse of allotment garden, in which peasant
women are bending over their crops. Standing among the leaves, that,
on this bright autumn day, are fluttering upon the grass, and looking
down more closely into the semi-circle, one observes irregularities
in the surface of the horseshoe, lines suggestive of terracing;
strangely shaped, hollow, grassy boulders that seem to have shouldered
their way up from below. Here, at the end of the curve, is a mass of
broken stone; there a black shadow below the revealed head of an arch
projecting from the weed-entangled débris.
The reader will have guessed his whereabouts. This is, or was, the
Roman theatre. Upon those heavy shoulders rested the marble seats;
there were the entrances and exits by which the spectators passed to
and from the staircases and corridors. From the flat semi-circle below
us, the chorus chanted their melodious comments upon the play that was
being enacted on the stage where now the women are at work.
[Illustration: ·AUTUN·
·MEDIAEVAL TOWERS·]
There are those who will tell you that the Theatre is not worth the
trouble of a visit,--that it has lost all charm. I cannot agree. On the
contrary, ruined though the monument is, hardly one stone of it left
upon another, there is nothing more impressive to be seen in Autun;
for the general contour of the building is so preserved, that, for any
person in the least degree familiar with the forms of these monuments,
no great effort of the imagination is needed to restore the play-house
to some of its ancient glory, and to re-people it with the voices of
the past. Moreover, the spectator, though he cannot see the graceful
columns, that, probably, as at Arles, rose from the back of the stage,
nor the sculptured frieze, nor the marble capitals and statues that
adorned the proscenium, nor the arcaded gallery that crowned the upper
rows of seats, though he may not follow with the eye the distant white
roads of Vesentio and Agrippa; yet still his glance can range over the
same landscape that met the Roman of old, the near fields and meadows,
the distant uplands and gloomy forest lit by the rising sun.
Still more impressive must the theatre be, when moonlight has shed her
revealing mystery over the terraces of this forsaken garden.
Tradition has it, that, until the latter part of the 17th century, a
considerable portion of the Roman theatre was still standing; and M. de
Fontenay gives a very interesting sketch of the ruins in 1610, showing
that soil and débris had not then obliterated the tiers of seats, and
that the fore-part and the arcaded gallery of the semi-circle were
still in existence.[43] This comparatively happy condition of affairs
might have endured until to-day, but for an unfortunate temptation that
overcame Gabriel de Roquette, Bishop of Autun, in 1675, to make use of
the Roman theatre as a quarry for the new seminary he was building. It
was a deed doubly inexcusable, because, at so late a period, after the
publication of Eden Thomas' book, and others dealing with the subject,
he had no longer the commonly-urged excuse that no interest was taken
in the ancient monuments of Autun.[44] It is quite possible, however,
that we are blaming the bishop needlessly. After the fate of Cluny,
who shall say of what a Frenchman is not capable, when the lust of
destruction is upon him?
The theatre of Autun was 147m.80. in diameter, the largest in Gaul,
and the fourth largest of the known buildings of the kind; coming
immediately after that of Bacchus at Athens, and those of Ephesus and
Smyrna.[45] The orchestra was paved in red marble, and the stage lined
with white marble veined with red.
The exterior arcades of the hemi-cycle were formed of large blocks,
the space between ornamented with pateræ. Anfert's, the oldest
description we have, dating from the 17th century, mentions that
the circumference of the theatre is broken by several chambers and
subterranean passages; these chambers are vaulted; they are seven or
eight feet wide, and known as "Caves Jolliot."[46]
This brings us back to the legend "Caves Joyaux," which greeted our
approach to the theatre. Up to the end of the 16th century, the remains
appear to have been known as the "Grotto" (Grottes), an interesting
example of the extraordinary vulgarity of popular nomenclature.
Later, a certain worthy Autunois, whose line of business has not
come down to us with his name, decided that these vaulted chambers
would suit him excellently as a domicile. No doubt his venture proved
successful, for the Grotto soon became known as the "Cellier Jolyot,"
or "Caves Jolyot," a name which, in the form of "Caves Joyaux," still
passes current among the vulgar of Autun.[47] This is by no means the
first time that the substructure of a Roman monument has been dubbed
"cellars" by an indiscriminating public.
For us the Roman theatre was more than a historic relic,--it was our
favourite lunching place in Autun! However severe a shock the admission
may be to some of my readers, I admit boldly, that never, during all
our travels in France, do we, if we can avoid it, lunch either in
restaurant or hotel. To go twice a day, with credit, through the six
courses of a French déjeuner and dinner, is a gastronomic effort of
which we confess ourselves wholly incapable; consequently, before
setting forth on our day's excursion, we may be seen passing into the
épicerie, boulangerie, or other boutique of the village street, whence,
our pockets bulging with sundry small paper parcels, we emerge, amid
the not wholly disinterested curiosity of all the old ladies who have
been eyeing us from door and window during our journey down the street.
The custom of picnic lunches is one that I recommend to all travellers
in Burgundy, including those to whom the saving of a five-pound note,
at the end of a month's holiday, is a matter of no moment whatever.
The Burgundians feed more richly, perhaps, than any other people of
Europe, and their dinners, like the country's monuments--rich rather
than dainty--need a healthy appetite to do them justice. Further,
the secrecy that these picnic methods necessarily involve--for you
cannot proclaim your intention to a maître d'hôtel, whose luncheon
tables groan beneath their burden of good things appointed for you to
eat,--will titillate deliciously the insatiable curiosity of the lady
his wife, who passes hours in wondering where and how you lunched.
[Illustration: A Burgundian Welcome]
"Monsieur et Dame will not be in to lunch to-day?"
"No, Madame."
"Monsieur et Dame were not in to lunch yesterday."
"No, Madame." A pause, during which our hostess, screwing up her
courage for the plunge, eyed us with a glance, half-timid, half-amused.
"Where did Monsieur et Dame lunch yesterday?" The speaker looked at my
wife; my wife looked at me. I looked innocently at Madame.
"On a wall, Madame." Madame's eyebrows rose slightly. She could make
nothing of it.
"But it was raining all day yesterday, Monsieur!"
"Not on the wall, Madame. The fact is, we never lunch at an hotel--even
when it rains."
"Vous faites bien" was what she said to us. What she said to her
husband, an hour later, I leave to the reader to guess. But we parted
excellent friends.
These picnic lunches, of course, are rather scrappy. Things get blown
away sometimes, or are fastened upon by ants. Il faut souffrir pour
bien vivre.
While I have been writing these notes, my wife has left the bench of
Roman stone that is our table, and is seated on the grass half way down
towards the orchestra, where she is exercising her not inconsiderable
powers of imagination in recreating the traditions of the spot. Also
she is proving, unwittingly, the excellent acoustic properties of the
natural theatre, constructed in the Greek, rather than in the Roman
method; that is to say, by hollowing out of the hill, not building up
upon the plain. The keeper of the buvette told us that a play is to be
given in the theatre next June (1911) and "a little bull-fight."
Going back to the hotel that day, we noticed, among the crisp leaves of
the Promenade des Marbres, many a handful of confetti,--souvenirs of
the great fair or festival of St. Lazare, that, for nearly the whole
of September, disturbs the tranquillity of Autun. Let the traveller,
therefore, see the Roman city before September, or after it.
The stone benches beneath the trees of the Promenade des Marbres,
placed there about 1765, appear to have been taken from another of the
most important Roman monuments of Autun, the Amphitheatre, a building
which, in the middle ages, was known by the same name as its neighbour,
the Theatre, and suffered a similar fate. It was situate to the north
of the Caves Joyaux, close to the wall of the town, in such a position
that the Faubourg des Marbres nearly bisects its site. Not very much
is known concerning it; but its dimensions have been determined by
excavations that prove it to have been the largest of the known
amphitheatres of France, as it is of Burgundy as a whole.
Here are the figures, compared with those of the Arènes of Arles and
Nimes, both of which still exist.[48]
-----------------------------------------------
| | Large diameter. | Small diameter. |
| |-------------------+------------------|
| Autun | 154 metres | 130 metres. |
| Arles | 140 metres.28 | 103 metres.20. |
| Nimes | 135 metres.27 | 105 metres.87. |
-----------------------------------------------
M. de Fontenay publishes in his work, a drawing which shows that, in
1610, there remained of the amphitheatre two parallel, vaulted arcades;
but he does not venture on an attempt to reconstruct the building.
It appears that, by the 18th century, all trace of the construction
had vanished, except the oval site, which, being at a lower level
than the surrounding land, is still popularly known as the Crot-Volu
(Creux Volu), the latter name being that of a 14th century family
who occupied part of it.[49] One of the most significant discoveries
made among the ruins was that of the skull of a lion, probably the
victim of a gladiator. It is supposed that the amphitheatre was built
contemporaneously with the theatre, and, in the year of the siege,
suffered the same fate.
A walk round the quiet roads and avenues of this outlying portion of
Autun, and half an hour spent on the grassy slopes of the theatre,
cannot fail to impress the most casual observer with a sense of the
grandeur and extent of the Roman city. Modern Autun is a town of
respectable dimensions; but here, within the Roman Enceinte, the few
dwelling houses stand isolated among their own gardens; and ancient,
immemorial trees cast their shadows over quiet spots once resounding
with the hum and rumour of Roman life.
All those who would visualize Burgundian history will be grateful that,
in spite of the destructive enmity of her foes, and the scarcely less
destructive ignorance and folly of certain of her inhabitants, enough
of Augustodunum is left to enable us to group round her our mental
pictures of this part of Gallo-Roman Burgundy.
[Illustration: End of chapter III; Masks of Comedy and Tragedy]
FOOTNOTES:
[36] "Autun et ses Monuments," p. 151.
[37] Constantius Chlorus died 306 A.D. Constantine reigned from 306-337.
[38] "Autun et ses Monuments," p. 160.
[39] Ibid, p. 161.
[40] "Autun et ses Monuments," p. 165.
[41] Ibid, p. 167.
[42] Ibid, pp. 152-158.
[43] "Autun et ses Monuments." Facing p. 181.
[44] "Autun et ses Monuments," p. 183.
[45] Ibid, p. 189.
[46] "Autun et ses Monuments," p. 181.
[47] "Autun et ses Monuments," pp. 178-179.
[48] "Autun et ses Monuments," p. 193.
[49] Ibid, p. 196.
[Illustration: Heading, chapter IV; Roman Vine Ornament]
THE ROMAN CITY