The origin of the name is generally considered
Town Plan No. 22.—Arles.
to be the Celtic ‘Ar-lath,’ meaning a wet place, and its position at the mouth of the Rhone, with the island which is now the corner of the Carmargue opposite, was so advantageous to traders that, long before the Romans conquered Provence, earlier even than the founding of Marseilles by the Greeks from Phocæa, there was a busy commercial town at Arles, well known to the Phœnician traders of the Mediterranean. When the Romans found it necessary to conquer Provence they found a Greek city at Arles, and the ruins of the beautiful theatre, built before the Roman occupation was a reality, impress on the mind the change which took place, for within a few paces of the theatre there stands the amphitheatre—the time-defying evidence of the power of Rome. The amphitheatres and most of the other Roman remains in Provence are due to the Imperial policy of ‘panem et circenses,’ and what the huge arenas really meant is vividly brought to mind by Mr. Theodore Cook.
‘For four centuries,’ he writes, ‘the world was ransacked “to make a Roman holiday.” Whole populations taken prisoner were butchered for the delectation of society. Whole nations were ground down with taxes to provide extravagantly gorgeous details for the spectacle. Whole tracts of country were laid waste to supply the animals that furnished jaded epicures with novel forms of death or fiercer appetite for carnage. Unequal combats were not enough. Defenceless families were cast to the lions to be publicly devoured on the excuse of having professed a religion that was considered politically dangerous.
‘It is difficult to believe all this even among the sinister shadows of the Coliseum. At Arles it seems impossible. Yet the fashions of Rome were the fashions of the provinces—the difference was in quantities alone; and there was not a fragment of that huge building where the public circulated which was not given up to the gratification of their passions—sometimes the vilest.’
The beauty of the women of Arles astonishes the stranger even when he is prepared by the statement of the fact in all guide-books. The classic features of their Greek ancestry are constantly reproduced to-day, although in the men the intermingling of Roman, Saracen, and Frank has destroyed all resemblance to the Hellenic type. In a book of this character one is compelled to summarize where expansion is so inviting, and the reader is advised to study Mr. Cook’s two volumes entitled ‘Old Provence’ if he wishes to know more of the story of the region which teems with evidence of the Roman occupation.
The historic monuments of Arles are therefore briefly tabulated below:
1. The Roman Amphitheatre, begun, it is said, about 46 B.C., and capable of holding an audience of about 30,000.
2. The Greek Theatre, of which two beautiful columns of the proscenium, the bases of two others, and the semicircular tiers of seats, remain. It was built before the Christian era, and prior to the Roman occupation of the city. The lovely Venus of Arles, now in the Louvre at Paris, was dug up among the ruins of this theatre.