THE CITIES OF THE LAGOONS
"The Ligurians--subdued finally by Augustus ... had constituted
the first nationality ... of Provence. Perhaps Asiatic in
origin, they extended, with the Celts and the Iberians ...
from the Pyrenees to the Alps, along the littoral ... at the
epoch assigned for the founding of Marseilles, 590 or 600 B.C.
"The Ligurians extended from the seventh or eighth century
B.C. from the Pyrenees to the Arno along the Mediterranean
shores.
* * * * *
"The Ibero-Ligurians have left memories of three tribes, the
Bebrykes, the Sordes, and the Elesykes....
"In spite of the successive influences of the Phœnicians
and the Greeks, in spite of the mixture of the neighbouring
Celts and the Roman colonists, the type of the Ligurians has
perpetuated itself across the centuries."
PAUL MARIÉTON.
The rivers of Provence are strangely fascinating; perhaps because they
so dominate and ensoul the country, and because of their tumultuous
flowing. The really fascinating thing for the living is life!
The river Asse is so impetuous that a proverb has grown up about it:
"l'Asse; fou qui la passe."
"And fleet Durance ...
Rugged in gait as wild of appetite...."
The Rhone has a little wind all to herself; the west wind that is called
_lou rosau_, the Provençal name for the river being _la Rose_.
The Rhone and the Durance are very different in character, though it
would take some telling to make the distinction clear. Both are swift
and strong, but the Durance is always a wild mountain creature, clear
and singing, while the Rhone is more humanised, more experienced, more
profound in the still passion of its flowing.
Its calm is perfect, its storm tremendous. _Rohan le taureau_ is a name
well deserved when the mistral descends from the mountains, waking the
"majestic music" of the river; impetuous, stormy, but always with that
mysterious under-note of calm that seems to belong to all great things.
Even the stern St. Jerome called the persuasive Hilarius "the Rhone
of eloquence," because nothing could resist the seductive power of his
language.
"His waves like herded cows that roar and bound" is one of Mistral's
many descriptions of the river which has inspired poet after poet and
traveller after traveller with a sense of its splendid power and beauty.
It is to the rivers, those patient builders, that the Gulf of Lyons
owes its curious formation which is of extraordinary interest to the
geologist as well as to the historian and the artist.
It was when the glacial epoch of the world was just over and the great
glaciers were breaking up along the valleys that lead down to the
Mediterranean that the present contours of the Gulf of Lyons began to
form. It is the old story of river-borne material forming deltas and bars,
but in this case, perhaps because of the great number of rivers--(the
Tech, the Aude, the Olbe, the Hérault, the Vidourle, the Durance, and
above all the Rhone)--there has arisen a sort of twin-coast; a double
shore enclosing a complicated series of lagoons or _étangs_ producing a
labyrinth of land and lake; "ephemeral isles," and wandering waterways,
long stretches of sand-dunes--shores that fly before the wind--great
swamps and deserts such as the Rhone-enclosed island of the Camargue and
the plain of the Crau. In its desolate way, this coast of many changes
and fortunes is one of the most interesting features of the country.
On the outer beach break the waves of the Mediterranean; the inner is
bathed by the smooth waters of the great chain of lagoons, blue, lonely,
strangely bright and still.
[Illustration: ON THE DURANCE.
_By E. M. Synge._]
This lake system in the early centuries was the scene of active navigation
and commerce, and on its shores were brilliant cities. A canal or _grau_
connected the lagoons with the sea, and these avenues in the prosperous
days were kept carefully open so that the sea could enter and keep the
water fresh and moving, and so perfectly wholesome.
Gradually, as one by one the great ports fell into decay, the canals were
neglected and the lakes became stagnant, silting up and so developing
into poisonous morasses, till the whole dismal regions in the Middle
Ages became a place of death.
[Illustration: AIGUES MORTES FROM THE CAMARGUE.
_By E. M. Synge._]
Let any traveller cross the Camargue on some calm afternoon in winter,
leaving the wonderful dark walls and towers of Aigues Mortes behind him
on the marshy plain, and he will probably be disinclined to admit that
any important changes can have taken place since those unhappy days.
Nevertheless vast improvements have been made, at any rate as regards
hygienic conditions; and though still dangerous in the hot season, these
swampy spaces cannot rival the old appalling death-roll which in certain
times of the year would summon so many victims from the marsh-encircled
towns that there were not sufficient hands left to bury them.
At Aigues Mortes the people used to say that the fever held its spring
assizes, and there were out of 1,500 inhabitants never less than five
or six deaths per day.
Aigues Mortes is but one of the Dead Cities of the coast; some of these
are still existing in that sadly pensive way in which once active and
famous centres survive their time of glory; while others are ruined or
have altogether disappeared.
The series begins at Port Vendre (Portus Veneris), following the coast
eastward past Narbonne, Aigues Mortes, Marseilles (the most famous of
all, with its Phocæan colonists) to Olba, whose site every traveller
passes on his dusty way to the Riviera.
Many of these ancient cities are now inland, but formerly they were still
on the shore; as, for instance, Rousillon (the ancient Roscino), Narbonne,
and Illiberis. This last is so ancient that Pomponius Mela and Pliny are
quoted as having referred to it as "once a great and glorious city." In
their day it was reduced to a small village. Its name is thought to be
Iberic or Basque, and signifies a new town (Illi beris).
One seems never able to get back far enough to arrive at the beginning
of Illiberis, for the city that was already decayed in Pliny's time
had a predecessor called Pyrene, named after the daughter of the king
of the mysterious Ligurian race of Bebrykes. Pyrene had for a lover no
less a person than Hercules, and she gave her name to the capital of
the Bebryke Kingdom and to the great chain of mountains that dominate it.
These vast masses of the Pyrenees seem to be the only fixed thing in
this region of deltas; this strange, lone land, which rises and flees
in a mist before one's eyes, gathering now here, now there in restless
dunes, encroaching on the sea at this point, falling back at that; always
wandering and wild; shifting, drifting against the walls of ancient
cities; stirring, shivering in forgotten corners, by forsaken ways and
shrines; silting up round old wrecks or ruins of years ago, till an
island or a mount is born out of the waste; giving way before the rush
of some swollen current, as it breaks forth into a fresh channel with
bright, victorious waves bearing new fortunes to whole regions along
the coast.
Among the many races that have populated this shore, besides the great
and far-reaching Ligurians and Iberians, there were the agricultural
Volscians in the fifth century and the Sordares or Sordi, another
traditional half-fabulous people who belonged chiefly to the country
about Rousillon, the ancient Roscino.
The whole coast was haunted by the Phœnicians from the earliest times; and
the Volscians held a large part of the region for centuries, cultivating
the land in quiet bucolic fashion. Narbonne, Agatha (Agde), Brescon,
Forum Dimitti (Frontigen), St. Gilles, Maguelonne, Aigues Mortes, were
among these old cities or ruins, of which Narbonne alone is of much
importance to-day.
When they were flourishing, the country was more or less covered with
vegetation; and of a dream-like loveliness these twin-shores must have
been with their fair cities dotting the green shores; towers and palaces
repeating themselves in the stillness of the lagoons; gliding ships
richly laden threading the waterways, passing and repassing; a fresh
little wind coming in from the sea, and the vast blue of those waters
stretching forth to the edge of the world!
* * * * *
The most ancient of the dead cities, those whose origin recedes far back
before the Roman occupation, are generally a few miles inland, and mark
the old line of the coast.
Narbonne, the famous capital of Gallia, was, like all the Celtic cities,
sombre and severe in aspect, with mortarless walls of enormous blocks of
stone. The people of Marseilles who traded with Narbonne "found no charm
in these marshy solitudes beaten by all the winds in the midst of the
indefinite and shallow lagoons, which rendered almost unapproachable the
grey walled town whose sadness contrasted strikingly with the magnificence
of the elegant Massilia."
Since then the Romans have occupied Narbonne, the Visigoths and Saracens
have devastated it. This, the first Roman colony in Gaul, was civilised
and Romanised by Fabius Maximus, a bold undertaking in the newly conquered
country inhabited by wild Ligurians and Celts. But the Roman genius
for government and colonisation produced its usual brilliant results.
Theatres, amphitheatres, baths, temples and palaces sprang up in the
Celtic city which the traders from Marseilles had thought so gloomy,
and for many a long day Narbonne was the most important of flourishing
ports in Gaul always excepting Marseilles the immortal.
At Narbonne have been found "monumental stones" with small caps carved
upon them. When a Roman left in his will that certain of his slaves
should be liberated, a cap was carved upon their tombs, and so it has
become "the cap of liberty," the symbol of a freedom greater than the
freest Roman ever dreamt of.
There were also found in the burial-places of children little rude clay
toys representing pigs and horses.
More striking and unexpected than these discoveries, however, were those
of several tombs said to have been found in the city with inscriptions
proving that some Pagans at least believed in immortality, for the
survivors speak of looking forward joyfully to reunion in another life
with their lost ones.
The towns of Agde and Brescon, or Blascon, follow next in the chain
of dead cities, both situated on volcanic islands at the mouth of the
Hérault. If the speculations of etymologists have brought them to a
correct conclusion, the name of Blascon proves the Phœnicians to have
known something of geology. For Blascon is thought to be derived from the
Pnician root _balangon_, to devour with fire; so that these ubiquitous
traders must have recognised volcanic soil when they saw it.
Agde (Agatha Tyche--Good Fortune--from the happy position of its port,
nautically considered) was a Greek colony from Marseilles carrying with
it the cult of Hellas. A temple to Diana of Ephesus was erected on the
coast, this goddess being the tutelar deity of the mother city. A few
columns of the temple are said still to remain.
Agde was called the Black Town by Marco Polo; and by many a luckless
traveller in the Middle Ages, a Cavern of Thieves.
Across the whole of this district between the cities, great roads used
to run; the Domitian Way being founded on a primitive Ligurian or Celtic
road, and extending from Carthagena through Gallia Narbonensis as far
as the Rhone.
The Aurelian Way was another of these routes running further westward,
but as to its exact course, no profane outsider may dare to pronounce.
It is a subject that destroys all peace in antiquarian circles.
* * * * *
It has been remarked[4] that all names on a certain line of route, ending
at Béziers in Languedoc, are Celtic, while all south of that route are
Latin. Among the first we find Ugernum (Beaucaire), Nemausus (Nimes),
Ambrossus (Ambrusian), Sostatio (Castelnau), Cessero (St. Thibery),
Riterræ (Béziers).[5] The second or Latin names comprise Franque Vaux
(Francavallis), Aigues Mortes (Acquæ Mortuæ), Saint Gilles (Fanum Sancti
Ægidii), Vauvert (Vallis Viridis), Villeneuve (Villa Nova), Mirevaux
(Mira Vallis), and so forth.
From their names, therefore, one may judge whether these towns were built
before or after the Roman occupation, and thence whether the district was
above water at that time, or at least whether it was possible for human
habitation. It appears that this historical theory tallies precisely
with the geology of the district, and that the whole country--even
including the Alpilles, whose peaks formed islands at the beginning of
our era--was covered with the sea. Mont Majour, near Arles--where is now a
magnificent ruined castle characteristic of the country--the Montagnette
de Tarascon, a curious little limestone height among whose recesses is
perched a strange old monastery, and one or two other places, form the
sole exceptions.
The old beach far inland can be traced easily by the line of sand-dunes
often covered with Parasol Pines and white poplars. This line, therefore,
marks the scene of some of the great changes and events of French history.
On the coast between sea and lagoon lies Maguelonne, a dead city
indeed, but one of the most romantic spots in the South of France. Its
fortress-church, gloomily shrouded by a grove of pines, stands on the
lonely island, listening, one might fancy, to the incessant beat of the
waters on the deserted shores--sole remnant of a great city.
Aigues Mortes with its wonderful walls untouched since they were built by
Philip le Hardi; St. Gilles, in the Camargue (famous for its exquisite
church), built perhaps on the site of the Greek city Heraclea, which
had disappeared even in Philip's time; Arles, "the Gallic Rome," the
residence of Roman Emperors and the capital of a later kingdom--these,
too, belong to the astonishing list which might lengthen itself almost
indefinitely.
Each town, moreover, is the scene of geological changes, of racial,
social, and historical romance which would take a lifetime to learn and
volumes to relate.
It is a strange, sad story--if truly the decadence of what we call
prosperous cities and the desolation of brilliant sights be sad.
"Scarcely two thousand years," says Lenthéric, "have sufficed to convert
these lagoons, formerly navigable, into sheets of pestilential water,
to annihilate this immemorial vegetation, to transform into arid steppes
this gracious archipelago of luxuriant wooded isles, and to outline this
coast with a desolating dryness and an implacable monotony."
But at least it is peaceful: at least it is free from the fret and fume
and tragedy of human life!