On the way back, our attention was divided between the glories of that view, and the "chasse aux poules" or chicken hunt—the one form of sport indulged in by the old ladies of a Burgundian village.
A very few hours in Autun were enough to reveal the fact that this largest Gallo-Roman city of Burgundy contains Roman remains as interesting as any in France, known to me, excepting those of Nimes, Orange, and Arles; while, around two of them—the Temple of Janus[24] and the Pierre de Couhard—there still lingers an element of mystery that renders them doubly attractive to the curious mind.
The "Temple de Janus" lies, as the reader will remember, at the foot of Autun, in the meadow beside the Arroux. Its original purpose is doubtful. M. Viollet le Duc held it to be a Fort Détaché, built outside the ramparts, for the purpose of barring the passage of the river, and commanding the plain.[25] M. de Fontenay, on the other hand, asserts,—and I venture to think proves,—that the building was not designed for military purposes, and was, in fact, a temple; though there is no evidence to tell us to which deity it was dedicated.[26]
M. le Duc contends that the tower had no door on the ground floor, and was entered by means of a ladder; but one of the features that first strike any observer who is endeavouring mentally to reconstruct the building, is, that, along both remaining walls, between the lower openings and the upper windows, run two lines of rectangular holes pierced in the masonry. The purpose of those holes, was, undoubtedly, to carry the roof timbers of a peristyle, or outer gallery, whose foundations have been unearthed at a distance of between five and six metres from the main wall,—a discovery which seems at once to demolish M. le Duc's theory of entry by ladder. The design of the peristyle is not known, nor the order of its architecture; but it probably took the ordinary form of a stylobate, or base, columns with capitals supporting an entablature, and a sloping roof. The niches on the interior sides of the walls, and the traces of red colouring—a mixture of powdered brick and chalk, still easily visible in their more protected parts—are further evidence that the tower was indeed a temple.
M. de Fontenay dates the building, conjecturally, from the founding of Autun. Concerning its popular name, "Temple of Janus," he has some very interesting information to give.
It appears that, until the 17th century, the tower was known as the "Tour de la Gênetoie," a term which a local savant took to be a corruption of Janitect, "à Jani tecto." This legend was accepted by the historians for about the next two centuries, until, in 1843, another Burgundian writer reluctantly announced the truth,—that Gênetoie did not mean "Temple of Janus," but simply, "Champ des balkins" or "genets," the broom known to all Englishmen as the device of our Plantagenet kings. So much for the Temple of Janus. Whatever may have been its purpose, no one who has visited Rome, looking up at the huge, shattered walls, gilded by the sunset, standing out against the purple shadows of the hills far away across the plain, can fail to recall memories of the Roman Campagna.
The Roman city of Augustodunum possessed four gates, at the north-west, north-east, south-west, and south-east corners of the town, leading to the roads for Boulogne, Besançon, Bourbon L'Archambaud, and Lyons respectively. The first and last of these was known also as the "Voie d'Agrippa." The gates, taking them in the same order, are known as the Porte d'Arroux, the Porte St. André, the Porte St. Andoche, and the Porte de Rome. The first two of these are still standing; the others have disappeared.