In Troubadour-Land: A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc

by S. Baring-Gould

[Footnote 1: Lenthéric, 'La Grèce et l'Orient en Provence,' 1878.]

CHAPTER VII.

PAGAN ARLES.

The Arles race a mixture of Greek and Gaulish—The colonisation by the Romans—The type of beauty in Arles—The amphitheatre—A bull-baiting—Provençal bull-baits different from Spanish bull-fights—The theatre—The ancient Greek stage—The destruction of the Arles theatre—Excavation of the orchestra—Discovery of the Venus of Arles—A sick girl—Palace of Constantine.

Before describing Arles I began with the Elysian Fields, the great cemetery of Pagan and Christian Arles, for this seems to have affected the whole town, and with the dust of ages to have smothered the life out of it.

Now let us look at the remains of ancient Arles. But first of all let me observe that the Arles race prides itself on its singular purity of descent. There was, unquestionably, a Gaulish settlement there. The Keltic name Ar-lath, the "moist habitation," tells us as much. So does the legend of Protis and Gyptis, already related. But it was speedily occupied by a large Greek contingent, and the race was formed of Greek and Gaulish blood united. In the year B.C. 46 a Roman colony was planted at Arles. Cæsar, desirous of paying off his debt of gratitude to the officers and soldiers who had served him in his wars, commissioned Claudius Tiberius Nero, one of his quæstors, father and grandfather of the emperors Tiberius, Claudius, and Caligula, to conduct two colonies into Southern Gaul, one was settled at Narbonne and the other at Arles, and this was one of the first military colonies planted beyond Italy.

The office of this Tiberius was to portion out the land among the veteran soldiers, six thousand men of the Sixth Legion occupied the town and country round—such of it, at all events, as was not under water—and thenceforth the city took the name of Arelate Sextanorum. Tacitus gives us a picture of the proceedings on such occasions. After the tribunes and the centurions came a cloud of officials called agrimensores, surveyors, charged with the duty of parcelling out the soil among the new comers. Then followed a hierarchy of civil officers, religious, judicial, administrative, all under the direction of an administrator-general, who was entitled curator coloniæ. From that moment the transformation of the colonial town into a little Rome was a matter of time only. The new comers constructed a capitol, a forum, temples, triumphal arches, aqueducts, markets; besides these, theatres, a circus, baths. In a very few years the aspect of Arles was completely changed. A mercantile city of Græco-Gauls had become Latinised, bureaucratic, and nattered itself that it was like its new parent on the Tiber. It called itself Gallula Roma, Arelas.

[Illustration: An Arelaise. (From a Photograph)]

Consequently, we find in Arles a strong current of Roman blood mingled with the Greek and Gallic, and there has been practically no other admixture. Cut off from the country round by its marshes and lagoons, it has maintained its purity of blood and its characteristic stamp of face. The Arles women are said to be, believe themselves to be, and show to everyone that they believe themselves to be, the handsomest women in France. Their type is quite distinct from that of the inhabitants of Nimes, Marseilles, Aix, and even of the peasantry outside the gates of Arles. What is the more singular is that this peculiarity of type is not noticeable among the men. Among the women it is quite unmistakable. Their straight brows and noses are sometimes Greek, but the Roman arch appears as frequently as the straight nose; they have magnificent dark eyes; black hair which is curled up over their broad straight brows, brought forward about their faces so as to form a dark misty halo round the olive-complexioned features, then tied into a horn at the top of the head, which is bound round with black satin ribbon, that flows down at the back. The face is haughty, noble, somewhat imperious. Queens these Arelaises feel themselves to be, down to the fishwives in the market-place; they walk as queens, as well as the cobble stones will permit, and bear themselves, their black mantillas cast over their arms, in a queen-like manner.

I had a fine opportunity of studying them, for I went to the first bull-fight of the season in the old Roman arena, and all Arles was there, male and female, down to the babies in arms. Between each course all the spectators promenaded under the galleries and on the terrace at the top of the amphitheatre, the women in gala dress of white lace bodices, black mantle, and dark silk skirts; and a very fine sight they were; it was worth the forty centimes I paid for admission to see these majestic women pace along and sweep the little men from their path as they careered round and round the amphitheatre, with cold, stern faces, full of pride of ancestry and conscious beauty.