A Book of the Riviera

by S. Baring-Gould

High aloft, towering above Monaco, 1,270 feet from the sea-level, accessible by a cog-railway, is La Turbie, the point where the old Roman Via Aurelia and the modern Corniche Road cross a neck that is the natural division between France and Italy; the point where, in Roman times before the Empire, Gaul ended, and Italy began.

La Turbie is a corruption of Tropaïa—the Trophy, for here stood the monument erected by Augustus about the year B.C. 13, commemorative of his victories over the Ligurian natives of the coast. For some seventeen years the empire had existed. All exterior marks of flattery and submission had been accorded to him. To him had already been given an official worship, as if he were a god. Even that “white soul” Virgil thus speaks of the living emperor:—“A god has vouchsafed us this tranquillity; for to me he (Augustus) shall always be a god. A tender lamb from our folds shall often dye his altar with its blood.”

Ancient writers have left us no description of the monument. Pliny records the inscription it bore in seventy-eight words, of which thirty-three were devoted to the official dedication to the divine Augustus and to record his dignities, and forty-five to the enumeration of the conquered peoples.

The monument has gone through a period of sad wreckage. The Genoese pillaged it of marbles wherewith to decorate the palaces of the citizen nobles; and in the period of the furious struggles between Guelfs and Ghibellines it was converted into a fortress. It now presents a substructure of the period of Augustus, above which rises the shattered fragment of a mediæval tower.

Before the year 1869 only fourteen letters of the inscription had been recovered. Since then five more have been found, which had been built into a wall surrounding the village. From a description of the monument as it existed in the sixteenth century, before it was such a complete wreck as it is at present, written by a Franciscan, Antonio Boyer, of Nice, it had a square basement about twenty-four feet high, above which rose a circular structure sixty feet high, divided into two stages, with marble columns ranging one above another. Between these columns were niches once adorned with statues, and the whole was capped by a cupola surmounted, probably by a statue of Victory, or of Augustus. In the basement were two doors, and above the north door was the tablet inscribed with the dedication to Augustus. The upper portion, converted into a tower in the Middle Ages, was destroyed in 1705 by order of Louis XIV. Mines of gunpowder were exploded under it.

The church, erected in 1777, and the houses of La Turbie are built out of the stones pillaged from this monument. In the church is a copy of the S. Michael of Raphael, given by the Musée S. Germain in exchange for a statue and the fragments of the inscription, from the Trophy of Augustus.[16] It is worth while to sit on the rock and look at this ruin—the ruin of an immense monument set up to honour a mortal deified, and to whom sacrifices were offered, who gathered into his own hands all the authority and power of the known world for his own selfish glorification—and think, that at the same time He was born who made Himself of no reputation and took on Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of man—who humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. The Trophy of Augustus is a heap of ruins, but the Catholic Church, the trophy of Him who was born under Cæsar Augustus, is everywhere, and imperishable.

Sitting on the honeycombed limestone rock, looking on that wreckage, and hearing the bells of all the church towers for miles around break out in musical call to the Angelus, this thought rises and fills the mind: Selfishness has but its day; self-sacrifice establishes an everlasting reign.

Monte Carlo occupies, as already said, a limestone headland, forming the horn of the bay opposite Monaco, but not projecting to anything like its extent into the sea. Between the two is the ravine through which a little stream decants into the harbour. Here is the Church of Ste. Devota.

Devota was a girl brought up from childhood in the Christian faith. When she was quite young she was taken into the house of Eutyches, a senator, and probably a relation. Eutyches was not a Christian, but he was a kindly disposed man, and loathed the idea of persecution. On the publication of the edict of Diocletian in 303 against Christians, he sacrificed along with other senators; but the governor of Corsica, where he lived, hearing that he harboured in his house a little Christian maiden, had her brought forth and ordered that she should be executed. Her feet were tied together, and she was dragged over rough ground till she was cut and bruised through her entire body. Then she was stretched on the rack, and expired. According to the legend, as she died a white dove was seen fluttering over her; it expanded its pure wings, and, soaring, was lost in the deep blue of the sky. The following night a priest rescued the body, placed spices about it, laid it in a boat, and bade a boatman named Gratian carry it away. Then the white dove appeared again, skimming over the water; and so Gratian, following the bird, rowed till he reached Monaco, and there the body was laid. Her festival is on January 27th, and on that day a procession leaves the cathedral at Monaco and descends to the Church of Ste. Devota in the gulley.