It would seem that Arles has been an important city for over two thousand five hundred years. History can give no authentic records of its beginnings, but, as is generally the case with ancient towns in a similar predicament, legend has taken in hand the task of supplying details, and Arles has its legend, which bears on the face of it some elements of probability. Massilia (now Marseilles) has evidence to show that even long before the Phoceans founded their towns in Gaul, Phoenician seamen, the pioneers of navigation, had discovered its natural harbour, round which the town of to-day is built. Interesting relics of these early traders are still in existence; and their successors, the Phoceans, who undoubtedly were on the scene as early as 600 B.C., must have found on their arrival that the advantages of the position had been fully appreciated by the earlier settlers, who had built there a town of considerable importance, but which was then in a declining state.

The inhabitants of Southern Gaul, a Celtic race, had even at that time their capital at Arles, and the semi-historical legend runs that King Nannos, or Nan, was giving a betrothal feast to which all his warriors were invited, in order that his daughter might choose her husband from among them—presumably the custom at this period.

When the feast was in full swing a stranger appeared upon the scene, a handsome young Greek adventurer from Phocea. The Celtic King welcomed him with an unsuspicious cordiality, and invited him to join the festive board, which he did, much to the chagrin of the assembled company. The King’s daughter fell in love with him at first sight and singled him out for high honour, bestowing upon him her heart and hand, to the discomfiture of the native warriors, although her father recognised in her action the guidance of his country’s gods. The lucky Greek received in dowry with his bride the lands lying around the spot where he first landed.

He had not, however, a sufficient following of his countrymen with him to populate his newly-acquired territory, so he had recourse to sending his galleys back to his native land to gather in recruits. The newcomers

brought with them fire from their sacred hearths, a priestess and a statue of Diana from Ephesus, where they called on their way, in compliance to the commands of their oracles; and settled down in the strange country, mixing and intermarrying freely with the native Gauls. The colony grew and flourished; the quiet of their mercantile existence varied occasionally by wars and skirmishes with surrounding tribes, whose jealousy and cupidity was aroused by the rapidly growing prosperity of the new colony.

But some centuries later the Massilians were compelled to call in the assistance of Rome to repel the increasing attacks made upon them and their colonies by the vast hordes of Teutons, Ambrones, and other Northern barbarians. The celebrated campaign of Marius was successful, and gave the conquerors themselves a taste for colonising. The flourishing state of Arles and Marseilles no doubt incited the Empire builders to covet the favourable positions occupied by the Greek settlers.

CÆsar, emulating and surpassing Marius in his campaigning zeal, conquered all Gaul, and under him the first Roman colonies took a firm hold upon the fertile regions in the valley of the Rhone. Arles became a maritime town, which rivalled Marseilles itself. The Celtic inhabitants, mixed strongly with the Phoenician element, were possessed of arts and crafts almost as highly developed as those of the conquering Romans. The city grew in importance until its population numbered 100,000. Traders from all parts of the world flocked to its markets, everything being brought to the city either by river-boats up and down the Rhone, or across the lagoons on rafts, or overland on the backs of mules and horses. The city could offer to its citizens every luxury known to the age.

The great amphitheatre, built or commenced during the reign of Claudius Tiberius Nero, at the time when the power of Rome was at its zenith, could accommodate nearly 27,000 spectators to witness the wild beast and gladiatorial shows so popular in Rome at that period. It was constructed in the early days of amphitheatres, and is perhaps one of the oldest extant, and gives, together with the Arena at NÎmes, a more vivid impression of the Empire’s strength and grandeur than any other Roman monument in France. Although on a much smaller scale than the mighty Coliseum at Rome (which was built at a much later date and replaced earlier buildings in that city, could accommodate 100,000 spectators, and was over 615 feet in length and 510 feet in width, as compared with the Arena at Arles, 450 feet long and 351 feet wide), it gives some notion of the important part the amphitheatre played in the life of the Roman capital.

The amphitheatre at Arles, unlike that of NÎmes, was, if the evidence of the height of the wall of the Podium enclosing the Arena is trustworthy, used for the great fights of lions, tigers, elephants, and other animals, as well as for combats between the gladiators—elaborate and extravagant spectacles that riveted the attention and ministered to the enjoyment of the Roman world for a period extending over seven hundred years. The immense arenas at Arles and NÎmes are proof of the prosperity of these two colonies. Many of the Greek traditions of the Arlesiens were lost sight of and contemned by the

conquerors, but the refined and intellectual amusements of the Greeks made a slight appeal to the tastes of the warrior race, who overthrew them, and who built a theatre in Arles, in the first century, under the strong influence of the Greek element in the colony, an influence that had made itself felt also in the architecture of the Arena.

Arles has preserved much of this Greek influence up to the present day; for beauty cannot die—it influences succeeding ages and fashions all their work, and the sculptures found in Arles are in this respect superior to those of NÎmes and other Roman provincial towns.

The Venus of Arles, which now rests in the Louvre, compared with that of NÎmes, gives a forcible illustration of the different characteristics of Greco-Roman from the more purely Roman art; a subtle difference to explain, but easily recognised when face to face with the actual work. The Venus, that should have been one of the most cherished glories of a city, whose womenfolk have inherited the beauty of their Phocean ancestors, is lost to it. Discovered in 1651 by two citizens in the courtyard of their house, built on the site of the theatre, it was sold to the town authorities for £60, and they, anxious to curry favour with the “Grand Monarch,” presented it to him in 1683. Louis had the statue restored and placed among his treasures in the Palace at Versailles, whence it was removed in the last century to where it now stands in the Louvre.

The Amphitheatre at Arles is built upon slightly rising ground, and the practical builders took every advantage of the rocky foundations to save themselves any unnecessary building, so that the lower galleries of the edifice only exist on a part of its circumference. The modern buildings that have sprung up and surrounded it prevent as good a view of the ensemble as is possible at NÎmes. The interior galleries have stone lintels instead of the Roman arch as in those of the latter. The simplicity of the mouldings and carvings of the capitals is more akin to the Greek than to the later Roman style of architectural decoration, and although the building is not nearly so imposing as the NÎmes Arena, or even that vast relic of the Empire at El-Djem in Tunisia, it has many features that are distinct from either.

From the Rue Voltaire one looks up the broad flight of steps which lead to the north end of this mass of masonry and sees superimposed stages of arches; the

lower series divided by simple square Doric pillars, the upper by Corinthian columns, only a few of which still possess their capitals. They are weather-worn and greatly damaged, and it is only by picking out more or less perfect bits, here and there, that evidence of its original beauty can be obtained. Internally, great galleries run round the inside walls, and lead out by flights of steps and passages on to three great ranges of seats. The original seating arrangements have undergone much change, but the traces of the disposition of the Cavea can easily be made out with a little trouble.

The high wall of the Podium is cased with smooth marble, upon the face of which there is a cornice that in former times supported an extra gallery, when the performance was not of a character too dangerous to the spectators. The upper galleries, reserved for the common people and slaves, have been roughly used, for during the eighth century, when the city was threatened by an invasion of the Saracens, a large number of the inhabitants took up their abode within the great ellipse; the arches were built up, and four towers erected at the north and south, east and west, turning the place into a vast fortress. Streets were formed in all directions by the two hundred buildings that grew up, and a marketplace and church were erected. Right on, until about a hundred years ago, when it was cleared by the Mayor and municipality, this town remained a squalid blot upon the city. Two of the four towers still remain.

After the removal of the “town” from the heart of the arena, it was utilised again for the amusements of the people. The first step towards re-establishing spectacles was the annual ceremony of branding the bulls, which was half in the nature of a “bullfight”; and later in the last century bullfights, very much after the fashion of those of Portugal, were staged both here and at NÎmes—the bull being played with in a harmless way without being killed or tortured as in Spain. But this has not proved sufficiently exciting for the Southern blood, and to-day tauromachy in its most aggravated forms obtains in the arenas of Provence: horses and bulls pour out the red heart-blood upon the sanded arena, as did the gladiators, martyrs, and savage beasts of old; and if the Greeks have transmitted their beauty to the womenfolk of Arles, the Romans have been no less successful in implanting in their ancient colony some of their characteristic love of what, to put it mildly, might be called exciting pastimes.

The world of to-day looks back with horror on the Roman holidays, which strangely enough grew out of a religious celebration in honour of the dead. The despised barbarians of the old world burnt victims on the funeral pyre; the proud Romans, exulting in their superiority over the untutored savages, outdid them in barbarity.

The rapid development of the show of dying agony went on from the earliest times, when slaves were first immolated upon the tombs of the illustrious dead, until the time when the Gothic King Theodoric took Arles—one long record of the wanton pouring out of human blood. From an offering to appease the gods, it grew to be a slaughter for the gratification of an insatiable lust for bloodshed in the body politic.

The first gladiatorial fighters appear upon the scene about two hundred years before the Christian era, and the strange funeral custom became so fashionable that it was a common thing for a son to celebrate his father’s funeral with a fight in which hundreds of forced combatants took part and fought to the death. Julius CÆsar gave such encouragement to the “sport” that peaceful citizens and political opponents grew alarmed at the rapid growth of the gladiatorial fraternity, who were a standing menace to their city. But, in spite of the endeavours of the more enlightened emperors, the passion for the arena increased, as hundreds of records show. Slaves, prisoners of war, fair-haired Saxons and tattooed Britons, swarthy Moors and Oriental Turks, criminals and Christians, were exhibited and put to death by one another in front of thousands of spectators, who never tired of these holocausts of blood.

To-day in Spain, and in her now lost colonies, similar appetite exists for the blood of bulls and horses, and all attempts to put down these gory spectacles meet with violent opposition. The great bullrings in Spain and Mexico still preserve something of the atmosphere, attentuated perhaps, that pervaded the arenas of old, and, mild as the exhibitions are by comparison with the

ancient pastimes, they have enough horror to sicken the strong nerves of Northern people.

One cannot wander about the great corridors, or up and down the giant stairways of seats of the Arenas at Arles and NÎmes, without being haunted by the ghosts of the distant past. Here, on the front seats once reserved for magistrates, senators, and patricians, one can picture the richly-robed crowds who patronised the ring. There sat the guilds and corporations whose names were inscribed upon the places reserved for them, as can still be seen upon the Arena at NÎmes. Higher up were the plebeians, the common people, the hundred and one unclassed folk who followed lowly occupations; highest of all, standing outlined against the sky, the dense crowd of slaves, with straining eyes, stretched necks, and bated breath, gazed down upon the combatants, who looked like specks in the distant oval.

A more pleasant train of thought is set in motion by the ruined Theatre which lies quite near. Dating from about the same time, it betrays even more of the Grecian influence than does the Arena. It is only, however, by a close attention to the fragments that lie in a small railed enclosure at the foot of the Tower of St. Roland, that one can form any just estimate of the beauty which this example of Greek architecture possessed. The theatre is in ruins, and the two columns of African and Carrara marble which still stand amidst the beautiful fragments of bruised masonry have an interest which, in the light of historical knowledge, is of pathetic loveliness. The ruins are enclosed by houses on three sides, the fourth being bounded by the gardens of the town. The authorities have men at work, keeping the relic from suffering more damage by the continual wearing of the elements, and the Cavea, or auditorium, is being renovated, so that, when the restorations in hand are completed, this part of the construction will regain somewhat of its former appearance.

The theatre at Arles is essentially different from that at Orange: the latter being entirely Roman in style and construction, and adapted for the performances which, under the Romans, degenerated into such demoralising obscenities. So degrading did the spectacles become even in Greek Arles that, during a wave of religious enthusiasm, which swept over the town in the first Christian centuries, a band of the townspeople nearly demolished the theatre, breaking up the statues, altars, columns, and leaving it unfit for further performances.

The theatres of the Greeks, which played an important part in the life of the people, had developed from simple wooden constructions, liable to damage by fire, into places highly embellished with sculpture and marble columns, carefully studied so as to render the acoustic properties nearly perfect. The arrangement universally adopted throughout the Ionian Isles and Asia Minor is well exemplified in the Arles theatre. The large orchestra, floored with beautiful marble, parts of which still remain, was not intended for the audience. This huge semicircle, which corresponds to the stalls and pit of the modern theatre, was reserved entirely for the musicians and chorus, two parallel flights of steps leading up from it to the narrow stage, making communication easy between the two divisions of the stage.

This theatre differs from the native Greek theatre in regard to the site chosen. It was the invariable custom to select a sloping hillside upon which the Cavea could be easily constructed, but here, at Arles, the Roman practice has been adopted with a Greek theatre, and the great semicircular seats of the auditorium are built up on an arcade which rises up from the level ground. At Orange, oddly enough, the position is reversed, and a purely Roman theatre is built upon a site such as the Greeks would have considered perfect. Round the outside of the Cavea of the theatre at Arles there was a beautifully chiselled frieze, fragments of which are collected together on the site. It is doubtful if the theatre had a colonnade behind the top row of seats, as was customary in the native Greek theatre, but the evidences of the large orchestra, the narrow stage, the beautiful proscenium, the refined designs of the mouldings and carvings, are sufficient to stamp this building as Greek.

The persistence of Greek traditions throughout centuries, at Arles, is curious, but shows how strong the element must have been in the city. Its position upon the rocky eminence, surrounded by the miasmatic lagoons, tended, doubtless, to preserve its insularity and the provincialism which it still enjoys. Even the “tour de Roland,” which was erected on the southern side of the theatre during the Middle Ages, has not escaped the classic influence, for the engaged flat columns on its face have a restraint which would seem to have been engendered by the graceful beauty of its surroundings.

In the early seventeenth-century Church of St. Anne, which stands at the northwest corner of the Place de la RÉpublique, or Place Royale as it is now called, there are gathered together many beautiful fragments of the sculptured statues, busts, heads, and tombs that have been found in and around the town. The tombs, both Pagan and early Christian, are of exceptional historic interest, not only to the townsfolk, but to the world at large, for by their curious inscriptions much may be gathered of the occupations followed, and the lives led, by the early inhabitants of the town. To go through them all would require a work devoted to the subject alone, but they are varied enough to show that Arles enjoyed a wide celebrity as a burial-ground.

The Pagan and Christian tombs found in the Alyscamps (Elysian Fields) have been an inexhaustible mine of wealth, not only to collectors and museums, but to the inhabitants of the town and surrounding country. The massive monolithic stone coffins have been turned to use, and in the district one finds them converted into water-troughs, benches, washtubs, and even pig-troughs. The dust of the dead of twenty centuries amounts to very little, and the natives evidently thought it a work of supererogation to carve, with much labour, the limestone rocks into articles of daily use when they had such quantities lying ready to their hands.

The Church of St. Anne forms a very fitting museum for many of the interesting tombs that have been rescued from the hands of ruthless utilitarians, and there they can be studied in peaceful and solemn surroundings. Many of the more imposing of these ancient funeral monuments are now used as altars in the churches of Provence, as in the Church of St. Trophimus, immediately opposite the Museum.

The inscriptions on these tombs form an abbreviated biography of the former occupants of the town. They tell of “NautÆ Arlatenses,” or boatmen, who plied the craft that carried the merchandise up and down the Rhone; the “Fabrii navales,” or naval builders, a body that were held in high esteem by the most exalted in the city; and the naval architects, a grade higher still, professional gentlemen who mixed with intimacy with the “Upper Ten”; the “Utriculare,” a separate body of watermen who plied large rafts, supported by air bladders made of sheep-and-goat skins, over the shallow lagoons to outlying islands and to the port of Fos. From this source we learn of the oil merchants and sail or tarpaulin manufacturers, as well as of the students and scholars who flourished in the Gallic-Greco-Roman city.

One of the most interesting biographical tombs removed from the Alyscamps is that of Julia Tyrannia. It records not only the highly appreciated virtues and accomplishments of this young lady, whose life was cut short at the

age of twenty, but on two panels on one side the musical instruments on which she performed are cut in deep relief: a lyre, a guitar, very much like a modern mandoline, a water-organ with nine pipes, one of the earliest representations of this instrument (there is a similar one carved in the fourth century on the tomb of Theodosius at Constantinople), and a syrinx, or panpipes, in a box. Underneath this latter there is a lamb, which might either typify the gentle disposition of the occupant or that she was of the Christian faith.

There is often great difficulty in distinguishing between the Pagan and Christian tombs, owing to the similarity of the symbols used; but in some cases the newer faith expresses hopes that are lacking in the Pagan inscriptions, as a comparison of these two free translations clearly shows:

And this on the tomb of Concordius, a Christian priest of the fourth century:

The inscriptions on most of the tombs evince that the departed were held in tender regard by their bereft relatives and friends. Some of them are quite touching human documents, manifesting the deep attachment that parents had for their children. Many elaborately carved tombs, with short stumpy figures, lacking entirely any Æsthetic beauty, but full of ingenuity to express symbolically the Christian story and traditions, have been found; and one of the latest additions to the Museum is an early Pagan tomb of great excellence of workmanship, evidently belonging to the first century of the Christian era. The figures carved round it have an entirely different character from those on the Christian tombs of a later date. This was found in La Camargue when the railway to Les Maries was in course of construction.

The Alyscamps, the vast cemetery, where most of these tombs were found, lies to the south of the town on the farther side of the broad “Avenue Victor Hugo.” The antiquity of this burial-ground is indisputable. When it was consecrated for Christian burial by St. Trophimus may well be a matter for dispute, for it is a little uncertain who St. Trophimus really was. He is the apostle of Arles, and legend makes him one of the companions of St. Paul who accompanied him on his travels; but this claim was not put forward until the twelfth century, and after the time when the saint’s bones were transferred from the Alyscamps to the Church of St. Etienne, now famous as the Church of St. Trophimus. Whoever the St. Trophimus may have been, there is very little doubt that the Church of St. Honorat was built by St. Virgil, who probably utilised the site of an ancient Pagan or early Christian temple.

The Alyscamps was well supplied with churches and chapels, at one time possessing as many as nineteen. Even the early Church of St. Honorat, when it was rebuilt, had chapels added to it by the pious, and still more by the aristocratic families of the seventeenth century. The nave of the church is in ruins, although other parts are in tolerable repair. The pillars, which support the roof and separate the nave from the aisles, are enormous columns about thirty feet in circumference. The additions of later times have made the interior plan of the church rather confusing, and the ruinous state of the exterior gives one the impression that a bombardment or an earthquake shock have rendered some assistance in tumbling walls and ceilings to the ground.

All through the Middle Ages the Alyscamps was in high favour as a burial-ground, and bodies from distant parts were brought to it for interment, but its popularity declined somewhat after the removal of the remains of St. Trophimus. At intervals there seemed to be a slight revival, for we find that chapels were added to the original collection of buildings as late as the seventeenth century, although before this period the collector had been busy among the tombs, and Charles IX. (the same monarch who consented to the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s day) gave away many of the more beautiful of the sarcophagi to his friends and intimates.

The vast field of tombs rapidly fell a prey to the vandal hands of collectors, and one can readily understand that

the large trade in stone coffins would make folk timid of patronising a graveyard that was subject to such unholy raids. Much ground of the Alyscamps has been turned over to the plough, and the railway company has erected large repairing shops upon a portion of it near the Church of St. Honorat. A number of the great massive tombs have, however, been collected and placed at the foot of the tall poplars that line either side of the avenue that leads from the ruined gateway of the cemetery to the ancient church. Here and there other monuments and larger vaults break the monotonous regularity of the long series of stone mausoleums, but nothing can rob the Alyscamps of the mournful pathos of its history.

The Cathedral of St. Trophimus, which stands opposite the Museum, was built in the twelfth century, and has a distinguished west portal. The absolute plainness of the surrounding walls enhances the rich effect of the deeply recessed arch which springs from the curious sculptured frieze that forms the lintel of the door. On this porch the characteristic ornamentations of the Greeks, Romans, and Gauls have all been pressed into service without injury to one another, although the spirit that animates the whole is mainly concerned in giving expression to the Christian story.

The interior of the Cathedral is plain and simple after the elaborate work of the porch. The nave is separated from the narrow aisles by clustered pillars, which rise gracefully into lofty ogival vaults. The effect is a trifle gloomy and severe, but age adds its charm to this church, as it does to all the ancient buildings of Provence. The cloisters of St. Trophimus are justly famous, and like those at Montmajour and St. Paul’s at St. Remy, portions of them date from the eleventh century. The capitals of the double columns supporting the arcade in the cloisters at Arles are carved with religious subjects, so that even in the hours of relaxation, when they were taking exercise, the brothers had before their eyes, written in the stone, the story of their faith—right up to date too, for the monster “Tarasque” which St. Martha slew has not been overlooked, and on one of the capitals the sculptor has done his best to perpetuate its terrible visage.

Arles has a past unique in the annals of France. Every great movement that has taken place in the civilised world for the last two and a half thousand years helped to mould and shape the town one sees to-day. Its history of traditions reflects something of every period. The greatest, perhaps, was its connection with the Emperor Constantine, who lived for a period at the Palace, now ruined, which bears his name. His influence and tolerance combined to unite, at Arles, Pagan and Christian arts and religions. Everywhere one sees evidences of the fusion of the Greek and Gaul, the Gallic-Greek with the Roman, and still more the grafting of the new faith on to the old Pagan forms.

The city, proud of its traditions, may not be as happy in its relations with modern life and commerce as it was in the past with contemporary activities. Marseilles has left it centuries behind in the march of progress, and the great clumsy river-boats of the Rhone, that lie moored to the banks at Arles, contrast unfavourably with the ocean liners that crowd the harbours of the great seaport town. The Greek theatre and the Roman amphitheatre, built during the Empire’s greatest prosperity, are surrounded

with the earliest buildings and primitive arts of the revolutionary Christianity.

Everywhere in the town one comes across bits of ancient carvings and sculptures built into modern walls. Even the once palatial residence of the first Christian Emperor, to whom the town owed much of its prosperity, is to-day surrounded by humble buildings that thrust themselves against it with irreverent familiarity.

In the Place Royale there stands a curious obelisk found in the ancient Roman circus—a link with a still older civilisation. This Egyptian column was discovered towards the end of the seventeenth century, but was not placed in its present position till 1829.

It is only natural that Arles, which was probably the first town of any importance in Gaul to receive the Gospel, should be rich in Christian traditions and relics, and, if one can give credence to the legends of the city, it was, in the first century, about thirty years at most after the Crucifixion, closely in touch with the holy men and women, who are reputed to have landed at the point where the desolate little village of Les Saintes Maries still stands. This little town lies not more than twenty miles from Arles, and although most coastlines alter their contour and position in very short periods, geologists and scientists have asserted that the regions of the Camargue have not sensibly changed for twenty centuries. This fact, together with the recent discovery on the Camargue of a tomb of the first century, and the inscription found on the site of the Church of Les Maries, has somewhat revived belief in the ancient legend that King RenÉ popularised when he altered the name of the Church of St. Marie of the Boats, which dated from the sixth century, to Les Maries.

The interest that attaches to Christian Arles is deepened when we dip into the ancient traditions of the town. These old legends of the Saints period and the stones of Arles all speak of them, and keep alive many customs that a too prosaic common sense would soon allow to die.

Its population has diminished sadly since the Roman ramparts hemmed in and fortified the town, but the narrow streets and tightly packed houses seem hardly enough for the present population, which is barely one-third of what it was in its palmy days. Its curious twisting streets form a maze that is puzzling to the stranger, and the four principal places are replete with bewildering entrances and exits. The Place du Forum is small and almost modern, squeezed into the very heart of the town.

All that remains of the ancient forum are two pillars supporting a small entablature, so damaged and shorn of detail as to suggest the art of Egypt. In front of it stands the statue of Mistral, the poet of Provence, who

loved his country, its natural beauty, art, and legends with a passion that only a native can understand. His patriotism swelled so within him that he gave the Nobel prize of £4,000, awarded to him in 1904, to the Museum founded by him in Arles. He sang his country’s praises in hundreds of poems and verses, and many of them in the ProvenÇal dialect. He was an enthusiast, whose ardour increased with advancing years. His statue stands in the busiest, or at least the most characteristic, part of the ancient town.

What there is of life centres in the Forum, noisy with the stamping of the fly-tormented cab horses, who stand round the little square waiting to be hired. Two hotels, four or five cafÉs and bars, two hairdresser’s shops, two newspaper and book shops, and one devoted to the sale of antique curios, make up the Place du Forum. Although the traffic in the town is small, it creates a deafening noise as it passes over the cobble-stoned streets.

So familiar are the inhabitants with classic beauty, daily before their eyes in dying monuments and living womenfolk, that they see no incongruity in the statuettes of the “Venus of Arles” or other classic figures being used by shopkeepers to illustrate the application of belts and surgical appliances and even modern clothing. Extremes meet in Arles; beauty and decay exist side by side; art and dirt ever did go hand in hand; and the loveliest women in the whole of France, perhaps in the world to-day, reek of the most obnoxious odour the nostril ever encountered, the pungent smell of garlic.