Part 3 (1/2)
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 Frejus.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Lantern of Augustus.]
Frejus 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, Cla.s.sic, 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 Renaissance 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 Provencal type, the arcade resting on double columns, but walls have been erected blocking up the s.p.a.ces, 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 pa.s.s 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 Doree, one arcade only of what was formerly a n.o.ble 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 Hotel de Ville is a beautiful red porphyry figure of a boy and a dolphin which one would have taken to have been Renaissance work, but that the Renaissance artists would hardly have taken the pains to sculpture such intractable material as porphyry for a petty town of the size of Frejus. 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 sh.o.r.e. 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 circ.u.mstance 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 Frejus 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 Devons.h.i.+re. The red sandstone rocks through which the line pa.s.ses 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 Ma.r.s.eilles, 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 Frejus 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 Frejus, Desaugiers, one of the liveliest of French poets. He was born at Frejus in 1772. One day he was invited to preside at the annual banquet of the pork-butchers. At dessert everyone present was expected to p.r.o.nounce an epigram or sing a song; and when the turn came to Desaugiers, 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 Desaugiers proceeded with his song:--
”Decochons les traits de la satire.”
Sieyes was another native of Frejus, 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 Sieyes as amba.s.sador to Berlin. He invited a prince of the blood royal of Prussia to dine at the emba.s.sy with him; but the prince took the invitation and scored across it his answer:--
”Non--sans phrases.”
Napoleon as national recompense to Sieyes 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 a Sieyes a fait present de Crosne, Sieyes a Bonaparte a fait present du trone.”
But after all, it is chiefly as the birthplace of Agricola, that true model of a Roman soldier of the best description, that Frejus interests us most.
His father, Julius Graecinus, 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 pa.s.sed 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 circ.u.mnavigate 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 pa.s.sed of a man who left such permanent marks in Britain, and to whom we are indebted for our first knowledge of Scotland.
CHAPTER IV.
Ma.r.s.eILLES.
The three islands Phoenice, Phila, Iturium--Ma.r.s.eilles first a Phoenician colony--The tariff of fees exacted by the priests of Baal--The arrival of the Ionians--The legend of Protis and Gyptis--Second colony of Ionians--The voyages of Pytheas and Euthymenes--Capture of Ma.r.s.eilles by Trebonius--Position of the Greek city--The Acropolis--Greek inscriptions--The lady who never ”jawed” her husband--The tomb of the sailor-boy--Hotel des Negociants--Menu--Entry of the President of the Republic--Entry of Francis I.--The church of S. Vincent--The Cathedral--Notre Dame de la Garde--The abbey of S. Victor--Catacombs--The fable of S. Lazarus.
The traveller approaching Ma.r.s.eilles from the sea observes three islets of bare limestone rock that are apparently a prolongation of that rocky promontory now crowned by the fortress of S. Nicolas, and that act as a natural breakwater against wave and storm from the S.E. They go by the names of Pomegue, Ratonneau, and Chateau d'If. But the cla.s.sic geographers called the group the Little Stoechades, and named these islets Phoenice, Phila, and Iturium; and these three appellations give us in a compact form the story of ancient Ma.r.s.eilles, founded by the Phoenicians, refounded by the Greeks, and then made a dependency under the Roman empire.
That Ma.r.s.eilles was a Phoenician colony before the Phoceans settled there is shown by the monuments that have been exhumed from the foundations of the modern houses, and are now collected in the museum. There are some curious images of Melkarth and Melita, the Hercules and Venus of these Asiatic traders, known also to us through the Bible as Baal and Ashtaroth.