FIG. 1. TEMPLE OF AUGUSTUS AND LIVIA, VIENNE.
It was formerly converted into a church, and shockingly disfigured. The columns surrounding the cella were blocked up with common masonry, and, as if this was not Barbarism enough, the fluting of the columns was scraped off to make them flush with the line of the enclosing wall. The edifice has now been carefully and judiciously restored; and as a complete specimen of a temple of the Romans in Gaul is only surpassed by the “Maison Carrée” at Nimes. It is about 80 feet long by 50 feet wide. In front are six Corinthian columns, crowned with entablature and pediment, and on each side six detached columns with two pilasters in rear attached to the cella. The whole is placed on a stylobate, to which twelve steps ascend in front. The temple stood in a Forum, some of the pavement of which has been recently uncovered, and the foundations of the colonnade which surrounded it laid bare.
FIG. 2. ROMAN FORUM, VIENNE.
A large number of antique relics are here collected—amongst others, portions of shafts, and bases of columns of gigantic size, which must have belonged to a building of immense proportions. The admirably preserved and well known group of two children struggling for the possession of a bird is one of the finest objects in the collection, which also includes many interesting fragments of sculpture and architecture. Vienne possessed at least one ancient theatre, some relics of which still exist in the ranges of steps forming the seats of the auditorium.
Remains of underground aqueducts and Roman ways are also to be seen in the neighbourhood. Of the arcade of the ancient Forum there now only remain two arches and part of a vault ([Fig. 2]). The Corinthian columns are half buried in the soil, and the entablature has been heightened with a mediæval upper storey, but the colossal proportions of the original building are still very striking. Near this are some massive sub-structures and a portion of an immense staircase, the stones of which still fit as well as the day they were built.
