“I was in winter quarters,” he wrote, “in my dear Lutetia, which is situated in the middle of a river on an island of moderate size joined to the mainland by two bridges. The winter is less severe here than elsewhere, perhaps because of the gentle sea breezes which reach Lutetia, the distance of this city from the sea being only nine hundred stadia. This part of the country has excellent vineyards, and the people cultivate fig-trees which they protect against the winter’s cold by coverings of straw.”
In the huge palace where Julian found himself so happy his physician, Oribasius, prepared an edition of the works of Galen, the first book published in Paris; and here it was—or perhaps in the palace on the Cité—that in 361 the rebellious Roman soldiers proclaimed Julian as their emperor. Of the palace there is left to-day what was probably but a small part of the original building, but which is, in reality, a section of no small size. It was that portion of the structure which contained the baths, and it gave its name to the building—Palais des Thermes (Palace of the Baths). One room, preserved in fair condition and showing the enduring Roman brick and stone-work, is sixty-five feet long and thirty-seven feet wide and springs to a vaulted height of fifty-nine feet. It is used as a museum of Gallo-Roman remains. The baths were supplied with water by an aqueduct some eleven miles in length, fragments of which have been found at various parts of its course. At Arcueil, a town three miles from Paris, named from the Latin word arculus, a little arch, there still remain parts of two arches whose small stones are held by the extraordinarily tenacious Roman cement and are varied by occasional thin, horizontal layers of red tiles. At present they are built into the walls of a château which has recently been bequeathed to the town for an old men’s home.
Somewhere south of the palace and not far from it was a garrison to protect the suburb and the Cité from southern invasion. That it was not greatly needed during this peaceful and prosperous period seems proved by the fact that Lutetia’s amusement ground was not within its easy reach, but on the eastern slope of Mons Lucotetius. Here at some time during the Roman occupation, perhaps during the second or third century, an amphitheater was built, and here emperors and generals and merchants, Romans and Gauls, gazed upon the pageants and contests of the arena. Christianity wrought a milder mood in her believers and even before the invasion of the Franks the stone seats of the ellipse had been converted to other uses. Enough was discovered, however, some thirty
INTERIOR OF THE ROMAN PALAIS DES THERMES.
AMPHITHEATER OF LUTETIA AT PRESENT TIME.