who saw its great military importance, built a permanent camp there and made it a central entrepôt for food and munitions of war. And when in 52 B.C. the general rising of the tribes under Vercingetorix threatened to scour the Romans out of Gaul and to destroy the whole fabric of Cæsar’s ambition, he sent his favourite lieutenant, Labienus, to seize Lutetia where the Northern army of the Gauls was centred. Labienus crossed the Seine at Melun, fixed his camp on a spot near the position of the church of St. Germain l’Auxerrois, and began the first of the historic sieges for which Paris is so famous. But the Gaulish commander burnt the bridges, fired the city and took up his position on the slopes of the hill of Lutetius (St. Genevieve) in the south, and aimed at crushing his enemy between his own forces and an army advancing from the north. Labienus having learnt that Cæsar was in a tight place, owing to a check at Clermont and the defection of the Eduans, by a masterly piece of engineering recrossed the Seine by night at the Point du Jour, and when the Gauls awoke in the morning they beheld the Roman legions in battle array on the plain of Grenelle beneath. They made a desperate attempt to drive them against the river, but they lost their leader and were almost annihilated by the superior arms and strategy of the Romans. Labienus was able to join his master at Sens, and the irrevocable subjugation of the Gauls soon followed. With the tolerant and enlightened conquerors came the Roman peace, Roman law, Roman roads, the Roman schoolmaster; and a more humane religion abolished the Druidical sacrifices. Lutetia was rebuilt and became a prosperous and, next to Lyons, the most important of Gallo-Roman cities. It lay equidistant from Germany and Britain and at the issue of valleys which led to the upper and lower Rhine. The quarries of Mount Lutetius produced an admirable building stone, kind to work and hardening well under exposure to the air. Its white colour may have won for Paris the name of Leucotia, or the White City, by which it is sometimes called by ancient writers. Cæsar had done his work well, for so completely were the Gauls Romanised, that by the fifth or sixth century their very language had disappeared.[7]
But towards the end of the third century three lowly wayfarers were journeying from Rome along the great southern road to Paris, charged by the Pope with a mission fraught with greater issues to Gaul than the Cæsars and all their legions. Let us recall somewhat of the appearance of the city which Dionysius, Rusticus and Eleutherius saw as they neared its suburbs and came down what is now known as the Rue St. Jacques. After passing the arches of the aqueduct, two of which exist to this day, that crossed the valley of Arcueil and brought the waters of Rungis,[8] Paray and Montjean to the baths of the imperial palace, they would discern on the hill of Lutetius to their right the Roman camp, garrison and cemetery. Lower down on its eastern slopes they would catch a glimpse of a great amphitheatre, capable of accommodating 10,000 spectators, part of which was laid bare in 1869 by some excavations made for the Campagnie des Omnibus between the Rues Monge and Linné. Unhappily, the public subscription initiated by the Académie des Inscriptions to purchase the property proved inadequate, and the Company retained possession of the land. In 1883, however, other excavations were undertaken in the Rue de Navarre, which resulted in the discovery of the old aqueduct that drained the amphitheatre, and some other remains, which have been preserved and made into a public park.
On their left, where now stands the Lycée St. Louis, would be the theatre of Lutetia, and further on the imposing and magnificent palace of the Cæsars, with its gardens sloping down to the Seine. The turbulent little stream of the Bièvre flowed by the foot of Mons Lutetius on the east, entering the main river opposite the eastern limit of the civitas of Lutetia, gleaming white before them and girdled by Aurelian’s wall[9] and the waters of the Seine. A narrow eel-shaped island, subsequently known as the Isle de Galilée,[10] lay between the Isle of the Cité and the southern bank; two islands, the Isles de Notre Dame and des Vaches, divided by a narrow channel to the east, and two small islets, the Isles des Juifs and de Bussy, to the west. Another islet, the Isle de Louviers, lay near the northern bank beyond the two eastern islands. Crossing a wooden bridge, where now stands the Petit Pont, they would enter the forum (Place du Parvis Notre Dame) under a triumphal arch. Here would be the very foyer of the city; a little way to the left the governor’s palace and the basilica, or hall of justice;[11] to the right the temple of Jupiter. As they crossed the island they would find it linked to the northern bank by another wooden bridge, replaced by the present Pont Notre Dame.[12] In the distance to the north stood Mons Martis (Montmartre) crowned with the temples of Mars and Mercury, four of whose columns are preserved in the church of St. Pierre; and to the west the aqueduct from Passy bringing its waters to the mineral baths located on the site of the present Palais Royal. A road, now the Rue St. Martin, led to the north; to the east lay the marshy land which is still known as the quarter of the Marais.
Denis and his companions preached and taught the new faith unceasingly and met martyrs’ deaths. By the mediæval hagiographers St. Denis is invariably confused with Dionysius, the Areopagite, said to have been converted by St. Paul and sent on his mission to France by Pope Clement. In the Golden Legend he is famed to have converted much people to the faith, and “did do make many churches,” and at length was brought before the judge who “did do smite off the heads of the three fellows by the temple of Mercury. And anon the body of St. Denis raised himself up and bare his head between his arms, as the angels led him two leagues from the place which is said the hill of the martyrs unto the place where he now resteth by his election and the purveyance of God, when was heard so great and sweet a melody of angels that many that heard it believed in our Lord.” In an interesting picture, No. 995 in Room X. of the Louvre, said to have been painted for Jean sans Peur, Duke of Burgundy, by Malouel, and finished at his death in 1415 by Bellechose, St. Denis in bishop’s robes is seen kneeling before the block; the headsman raises his axe; one of the saint’s companions has already met his fate, the other awaits it resignedly. To the left, St. Denis in prison is receiving the Sacred Host from the hands of Christ.