CHAPTER III.
Table of Contents FRÉJUS.
The freedman of Pliny-Forum Julii-The Port of Agay-The Port of Fréjus-Roman castle-Aqueduct-The lantern of Augustus-The cathedral-Cloisters-Boy and dolphin-Story told by Pliny-The Chaine des Maures-Désaugiers-Dines with the porkbutchers of Paris-Siéyès-Sans phrase-Agricola-His discoveries.
It was strange. The first person I thought of, on arriving at Fréjus, was not Julius Cæsar the founder of this old port-no, nor Agricola, a native of Fréjus, who is so associated with British history, especially with Scottish-no! it was Pliny's sick freedman, about whom that polished orator wrote in his nineteenth letter, in Book V. of his collected epistles. Pliny was a native of Como, he had two villas on the lake. He was a kindly, honourable, somewhat bumptious man-but what great talkers think small matter of themselves? He had a slave, a Greek, named Zosimus, of whom he writes to his friend Paulinus, who had an estate at Fréjus: "He is a person of great worth, diligent in his services, and well skilled in literature; but his chief talent is that of a comedian. He pronounces with great judgment, propriety, and gracefulness; he has a very good hand too upon the lyre, and performs with more skill than is necessary for one of his profession. To this I must add, he reads history, oratory, and poetry. He is endeared to me by ties of long affection, now heightened by the danger in which he is."
Pliny had given Zosimus his liberty, but Zosimus remained attached to his service as freedman. Some years before, this accomplished slave had overstrained his voice, and begun to spit blood. Thereupon Pliny sent him to Egypt, where in the dry air he seemed better, and after a while Zosimus returned to his master, apparently completely restored. Pliny goes on, in his letter: "Having exerted himself again beyond his strength, there was a return of his former malady and a spitting of blood. For this reason, I intend to send him to your farm at Forum Julii (Fréjus), having often heard you mention the exceeding fine air there, and recommend the milk of that place as very salutary in disorders of this nature. I beg you will give directions to your people to receive him into your house, and to supply him with what he shall have occasion for: which will not be much; for he is so temperate as not only to abstain from delicacies, but even to deny himself the necessaries his ill health requires. I shall supply him with all that is needful for his journey. Farewell."
Now, on reaching Fréjus on a balmy day in April, when the air was soft as butter-milk, and the sun was hot, not scorching, my thoughts went at once to poor Zosimus, with his hacking cough, his delicate complexion, come here to inhale the soft air and drink the warm milk. And I thought of him the more from certain experiences of my own relative to Como. I went to that city in January from England, thinking that it lay in a warm nook, and that there I might bask for a few weeks, when recovering from an attack of bronchitis, till I was able to go further south.
I went into an hotel where I had stayed in summer and been comfortable; but-oh!-never shall I forget the horrors of that hotel in January! I was the sole person staying in it. There was no bedroom that had in it a stove. In the salle-à-manger the fire was lighted for half-an-hour at nine in the morning, then let out and not rekindled through the day. The fountain in the square was frozen. An icy wind descended from the Alps. My bedroom was a tomb; brick-floored, stone vaulted. My bed measured two feet across, and the sheet and crimson duvet were so nicely adjusted as exactly to fit the bed, when unoccupied. When I lay in the bed, that duvet was balanced like a logan stone on the ridge of my body shivering under it, and it oscillated as I shivered. Then it slid gently to the floor, and left me with a chill and damp linen sheet over me, the thermometer being below zero, and I-afflicted with a cough.
Next morning I fled-fled to Milan-was stabbed there by the Tramontana, fell ill, escaped to Genoa, and there recovered.
Now, perhaps, the reader will understand how it was that naturally, and at once, my mind turned to poor Zosimus, as I entered Fréjus. His dust is laid there-I doubt not. He had wandered there-some eighteen hundred years ago, and, like me, had inhaled the sweet scent of the flowering beans, looked on the Esterel chain glowing as if red-hot in the sunshine, and had entertained, like me, kindly, affectionate thoughts of that somewhat pedantic, conceited, but eminently worthy Caius Plinius Cæcilius Secundus.
Although Julius Cæsar is said to have formed the port at Forum Julii, and to have given the place his name, it is probable that there was a settlement there earlier. He, however raised it into consideration by the construction of the harbour. The port is there still, within its moles, and guarded by two castles on heights above it, but-alas for the well being of Fréjus, the harbour is filled with sand and soil brought down by the river Argens and washed in by the waves, and is now a level meadow, every portion belonging to a farmer cut off from another portion by a ditch, in which spring the rushes and croak the frogs. Augustus enlarged the port, and after the decisive battle of Actium (B.C. 31) sent thither the galleys captured from Anthony. The sea is now two miles distant.
The mistake of making ports at the mouths of rivers was one constantly made by the Romans. The Greeks knew better-Marseilles has not been choked.
Hard by, at Agay, is a perfect natural harbour. The red porphyry mountains rise in fantastic shapes above it, and plunge in abrupt crags into the deep blue water. It is a little harbour that calls out "Come and rest in me from every wind." Now a lighthouse has been erected at the extremity of one of the natural moles of rock, a coastguard establishment crowns the heights, two or three fishermen's cottages nestle in the lap of the bay-that is all.
On the south of the port of Fréjus is an old castle. There must have existed there originally a nodule of rock, but out of this a platform has been formed artificially of earth gathered from the port, and this platform was converted in Roman times into a fort. On one side may be seen a curious contrivance for resisting the outward pressure of the earth heaped up within. The basement wall has not buttresses thrust forth, but consists of a series of semicircular concave depressions in its face. In Mediæval times a strong castle with circular towers was erected on the ancient basement, that also is now in ruins, the ledges where the old Roman wall ended and the Mediæval wall sprang at half the thickness of the former were, when I saw them, dense with white irises.
[Illustration: Aqueduct of Fréjus.]
Fréjus was supplied in Roman times with an aqueduct, the arches of which, broken and ruinous, still stretch across the plain, and were destined to convey into the town the waters of the Siagnole, from a distance of about fifty miles. The arcade is about forty-five feet high.
Following a path that leads along the ancient mole one reaches a quadrangular tower of Roman masonry with a stone conical roof, which goes by the name of the Lantern of Augustus, and is supposed to have served as lighthouse at the entrance of the harbour, but the height is too insignificant for this purpose, it is not over thirty-five feet, and there is no indication of any contrivance whereby it could have been utilised for the purpose of a pharos. In the Torlonia Museum at Rome is a bas-relief representing the port of Ostia, with its pharos; that is a structure of several stages, each receding as it is superposed on the other, and the topmost sustains the ever-burning fire-quite a different sort of building from this tower at Fréjus.
[Illustration: Lantern of Augustus.]
Fréjus is a cathedral city, though numbering only 3,500 inhabitants, but it is an ancient see, dating from about 374, when it was an important maritime place. Its fortunes had gone down in the Middle Ages, and the citizens and prelates were never in a position to build much of a cathedral. The present church is of the eleventh century, both small and plain. It contains little of interest save a fine painting on gold ground of S. Margaret and other saints, brought from the ancient Monastery of Lerins. The organ gallery is supported on granite pillars, Classic, found among the ruins of the amphitheatre. The baptistery is surrounded by eight porphyry columns with Corinthian capitals taken from a pagan temple.
The carved doors of the cathedral deserve to be seen, they are of rich Rénaissance work. In the north aisle of the cathedral to the west is the tomb of two bishops of the seventeenth century, Bartholomew and Peter de Camelin, kneeling; and at the east end are two alabaster monuments of bishops three centuries earlier. The cloisters are of the usual Provençal type, the arcade resting on double columns, but walls have been erected blocking up the spaces, and the interior yard is turned into the bishop's fowl-house.
But-is not that sufficient? I am not writing a guide book; and I enter into these details here solely because the guide books pass over the cathedral very slightingly, and concern themselves chiefly with the Roman antiquities. Of these latter, besides what I have mentioned, there is the Porte Dorée, one arcade only of what was formerly a noble portico facing the harbour; also a fine amphitheatre, now traversed by a highway, not however as perfect as those of Nimes and Arles. Fragments also remain of the ancient theatre, but they are unimportant.
Hard by the Hôtel de Ville is a...
