In five hundred years much may be brought to pass, and the Paris that Sainte Geneviève saved from Attila the Hun (451 A.D.) and in which Clovis established himself (481) was a town vastly different from the stockade-defended hamlet which Labienus set out to destroy. While its position was selected by the Gauls because it could be easily defended, it was evident in later and more peaceful times that the city could be developed into a valuable commercial station. The Seine and its tributaries, the Marne and the Oise, proved highways on which the products of a large district could be carried to the distributing center, Lutetia, whence they could be packed north or south or to the coast provinces over the masterly roads which always made an important feature of the Roman colonizing policy. There are Paris streets to-day which follow these same roads into the country.
Roman civilization made its last stand in Gaul, and Paris became one of the flourishing places which the Romans knew how to encourage. As soon as the strength of the builders permitted, the town ceased to be confined to the island and spread on both sides of the river. A bridge, fortified at the mainland end, connected the island with the right bank and with the road threading its way northward to avoid the marsh whose name (Marais) is still given to a district of the city. Where now on the north shore is the square in front of the Hôtel de Ville there has always been an open place, originally kept free for the landing of merchandise from the river boats. This open place was called the Grève or Strand, and the busy scenes enacted upon it sometimes included quarrels between the masters and the longshoremen. Such a dispute came to be called a grève, the French word to-day for a strike.
Where now the Palais Royal rises on the right bank, a reservoir held water to supply the public baths. Tombs clustered along the roads leading north and east, for cemeteries were not allowed within Roman cities. Otherwise the north side of the river with its unwholesome marsh was but scantily populated.
Far different was the southern or left bank, sloping pleasantly to the Seine from Mons
Lutetia under the Romans.
Lucotetius. This hill is now known as Mont Sainte Geneviève and is crowned by the church, Saint Étienne-du-Mont, that holds her tomb, and by the Pantheon, long dedicated to her, but now a secular building. This southern district was drained by the little stream, Bièvre, whose waters in later times were believed to hold some chemical properties which accounted for the brilliancy of the tapestries made in the Gobelins factory situated on its banks. Fields, fruitful in vines and olive trees, clustered around villas which the Romans knew well how to build for comfort and beauty, and which the conquered Gauls were not slow to adopt, modifying the form to their needs as they modified the Roman dress, covering with the graceful toga the business-like garments of older Gaul.
The later emperors came often to Lutetia. They, too, saw the beauty of the river’s left bank connected with the Cité by a fortified bridge. Some one of them, probably Constantius Chlorus, built a palace of majestic size with gardens sweeping to the river bank, and here in Lucotecia, Lutetia’s suburb, Constantine the Great and his two sons lived when they visited this part of Gaul. Constantine’s nephew, Julian, called the Apostate because of his adherence to the old philosophies, spent parts of three years here.