[1] ] Diodorus.
[2] ] Idem.
[3] ] Max Sutaine’s Essai sur le Vin de Champagne.
[4] ] This arch is said to have been called after the God of War from the circumstance of a temple dedicated to Mars being in the immediate neighbourhood. The sculptures still remaining under the arcades have reference to the months of the year, to Romulus and Remus, and to Jupiter and Leda. Reims formerly abounded with monuments of the Roman domination. According to M. Brunette, an architect of the city, who made its Roman remains his especial study, a vast and magnificent palace formerly stood nigh the spot now known as the Trois Piliers; while on the right of the road leading to the town were the arenas, together with a temple, among the ruins of which various sculptures, vases, and medals were found, and almost immediately opposite, on the site of the present cemetery, an immense theatre, circus, and xystos for athletic exercises. Then came a vast circular space, in the centre of which arose a grand triumphal arch giving entrance into the city. The road led straight to the Forum,—the Place des Marchés of to-day,—and along it were a basilica, a market, and an exedra, now replaced by the Hôtel de Ville. The Forum, bordered by monumental buildings, was of gigantic proportions, extending on the one side from half way down the Rue Colbert to the Place Royale, and on the other from near the Marché à la Laine, parallel with the Rue de Vesle, up to the middle of the Rue des Elus, where it terminated in a vast amphitheatre used for public competitions.
Other buildings of less importance were situated here and there: the thermæ along the Rue du Cloître; a palace or a temple on the site of the archiepiscopal palace; another temple at the extremity of the Rue Vauthier le Noir, in the ruins of which a bas-relief and some small antique statues were discovered; a third temple in the Rue du Couchant, in which a votive altar was found. Four triumphal arches were erected at the four gates of the town: one dedicated to Mars; another to Ceres, on the same site as the gate of to-day; a third to Bacchus, in the present Rue de l’Université, in front of the Lycée; and the fourth to Venus, in the Rue de Vesle. Outside the walls, following the Rue du Barbâtre, the road was dotted with numerous graves according to the Roman custom; while on the site of the church of St. Remi there arose a temple and a palace, and on that of St. Nicaise a vast edifice which M. Brunette supposed to be the palace of the Consul Jovinus.
[5] ] Henderson’s History of Ancient and Modern Wines.
[6] ] Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
[7] ] Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
[8] ] According to this document, published in Marlot’s Histoire de Reims, he leaves to Bishop Lupus the vineyard cultivated by the vine-dresser Enias; to his nephew Agricola, the vineyard planted by Mellaricus at Laon, and also the one cultivated by Bebrimodus; to his nephew Agathimerus, a vineyard he had himself planted at Vindonisæ, and kept up by the labour of his own episcopal hands; to Hilaire the deaconess, the vines adjoining her own vineyard, cultivated by Catusio, and also those at Talpusciaco; and to the priests and deacons of Reims, his vineyard in the suburbs of that city, and the vine-dresser Melanius who cultivated it. The will is also noteworthy for its mention of a locality destined to attain a high celebrity in connection with the wine of Champagne, namely, the town of Sparnacus or Epernay, which a lord named Eulogius, condemned to death for high treason in 499 and saved at the bishop’s intercession, had bestowed upon his benefactor, and which the latter left in turn to the church of Reims. To this church he also left estates in the Vosges and beyond the Rhine, on condition of furnishing pitch every year to the religious houses founded by himself or his predecessors to mend their wine-vessels, a trace of the old Roman custom of pitching vessels used for storing wine.
[9] ] Marlot’s Histoire de Reims.