The most ancient of the dead cities, those whose origin recedes far back before the Roman occupation, are generally a few miles inland, and mark the old line of the coast.
Narbonne, the famous capital of Gallia, was, like all the Celtic cities, sombre and severe in aspect, with mortarless walls of enormous blocks of stone. The people of Marseilles who traded with Narbonne "found no charm in these marshy solitudes beaten by all the winds in the midst of the indefinite and shallow lagoons, which rendered almost unapproachable the grey walled town whose sadness contrasted strikingly with the magnificence of the elegant Massilia."
Since then the Romans have occupied Narbonne, the Visigoths and Saracens have devastated it. This, the first Roman colony in Gaul, was civilised and Romanised by Fabius Maximus, a bold undertaking in the newly conquered country inhabited by wild Ligurians and Celts. But the Roman genius for government and colonisation produced its usual brilliant results. Theatres, amphitheatres, baths, temples and palaces sprang up in the Celtic city which the traders from Marseilles had thought so gloomy, and for many a long day Narbonne was the most important of flourishing ports in Gaul always excepting Marseilles the immortal.
At Narbonne have been found "monumental stones" with small caps carved upon them. When a Roman left in his will that certain of his slaves should be liberated, a cap was carved upon their tombs, and so it has become "the cap of liberty," the symbol of a freedom greater than the freest Roman ever dreamt of.
There were also found in the burial-places of children little rude clay toys representing pigs and horses.
More striking and unexpected than these discoveries, however, were those of several tombs said to have been found in the city with inscriptions proving that some Pagans at least believed in immortality, for the survivors speak of looking forward joyfully to reunion in another life with their lost ones.
The towns of Agde and Brescon, or Blascon, follow next in the chain of dead cities, both situated on volcanic islands at the mouth of the Hérault. If the speculations of etymologists have brought them to a correct conclusion, the name of Blascon proves the Phœnicians to have known something of geology. For Blascon is thought to be derived from the Pnician root balangon, to devour with fire; so that these ubiquitous traders must have recognised volcanic soil when they saw it.
Agde (Agatha Tyche—Good Fortune—from the happy position of its port, nautically considered) was a Greek colony from Marseilles carrying with it the cult of Hellas. A temple to Diana of Ephesus was erected on the coast, this goddess being the tutelar deity of the mother city. A few columns of the temple are said still to remain.
Agde was called the Black Town by Marco Polo; and by many a luckless traveller in the Middle Ages, a Cavern of Thieves.
Across the whole of this district between the cities, great roads used to run; the Domitian Way being founded on a primitive Ligurian or Celtic road, and extending from Carthagena through Gallia Narbonensis as far as the Rhone.