Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day. William Walton
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much restored. In the walls of the arena are two rectangular, barred entrances, and one lower, arched one, from which we may imagine the gladiators or the wild beasts emerging. The floor of the arena is left in a roughly gravelled condition; at present, nothing more formidable is to be encountered there than three very little French boys making mud-pies in the puddle formed by last night's rain. A fourth, still smaller, is at some distance, absorbed in some dry engineering of his own at the foot of the old wall. Seated in the steep little green park which rises above the terraced seats, crowned with trees and shrubberies, and vocal with a prodigious twittering of birds, are three or four idle, bare-headed young women in "shirt-waists," one with a lover, and an old gentleman with a red ribbon reading his morning newspaper. The traveller can place himself on one of the benches in this pleasant little greenery, look down on the infantile engineers below, and make appropriate reflections.
A still more important architectural feature of the ancient city was the great aqueduct which supplied the baths of the palace on the river, its fountains and those of the populous quarter around it. The waters of three or four small streams to the south of the capital were united and conveyed in a channel, lined with cement, 19,100 mètres in length, which traversed the slopes of the hills on the eastern side of the Bièvre, and remains of which have been found at various points. To cross the valley and the stream, an aqueduct was constructed on arches at the locality which took the name of Arcueil, and where some of the masonry is still preserved in modern construction, "this aqueduct being some four hundred mètres long and fifty (?) high." It is computed that a supply of twenty-four cubic mètres of water was furnished every twenty-four hours. Remains of other and smaller aqueducts have been discovered at various points in the city. At Passy, surrounding the present Trocadéro, there were springs of mineral waters, which were conveyed to the city by terra-cotta pipes, passing along the banks of the Seine. In 1781, in the gardens of the Palais-Royal, were discovered the remains of great basins which are supposed to have been the piscines of the hygienic baths. Remains of Roman aqueducts have been found at various other localities in France, at Nîmes, at Lyons, at Metz, etc., and that over the Gard is still standing in part.
Among the bridges constructed by the Gauls, Cæsar mentions that of Melun on the Seine; one on the Allier, near Vichy; that of Genabum (Orléans), and that of Lutetia, over the larger arm of the Seine, on the site of the present Pont Notre-Dame. Of that over the Allier and of the Parisian one, some of the ancient piles have been found in the bed of the rivers.
Remains of the ancient wall of fortification of the capital have also been brought to light, at various localities and at different dates. The excavations in the Parvis-Notre-Dame in 1847 discovered a section of the Roman wall twenty-six mètres in length, as well as the substructure of the porch and the front portion of the nave of the original basilica, constructed by Childebert and dedicated to the Virgin. These latter foundations, some thirty-two mètres in front of the present cathedral, demonstrate by their position, and by the probable width of the primitive edifice in proportion to its length, that they were constructed to the west and inside of the enclosing wall of the city, a portion of which had been found under the choir of the cathedral. The basilica constructed by the son of Clovis probably rose on the site of the altars consecrated to the Roman or Gaulish gods, Jupiter, Vulcan, Esus, and others, and which, before the construction of the city wall, were visible from all sides. The enclosing wall, on the contrary, fenced in the basilica, since it was necessary to protect this part of the city, as well as all others. The somewhat unimposing aspect of Notre-Dame, which was founded in 1163, may be ascribed in part to the raising of the level of all the surrounding soil, for, as the histories tell us, so late as 1748, it was reached only by ascending a flight of thirteen steps, whereas now it is on the ordinary street-level.
This wall of defence was not commenced till about 406, when the barbarians began to invade Gaul, and was apparently constructed in great haste, if we may judge by the manner in which materials were borrowed from surrounding buildings of all kinds. It is described as being something over three and a half mètres in thickness at its base, which was constructed in rough stone, frequently of small size, and sloping to a height of two mètres. On this was erected a wall of dressed stones, each successive layer set back, like a step, so that at the top it was only some two mètres in width. It might be thought that this manner of building offered considerable facilities to an escalading enemy.
On the largest stone of those discovered in 1711 under the choir of Notre-Dame was deciphered an inscription which recorded the erection of this altar to Jupiter, "very great, very beneficent," in the reign of Tiberius Cæsar, by the corporation of nautæ, or mariners, apparently the most powerful in the city, and the prows of the ships at the foot of the arches in the ancient palace of Thermes are supposed to have been connected with the same guild, though this architectural ornament is by no means uncommon in ancient art. It is from these Nautæ Parisiaci that the modern city derives its arms—a vessel with distended sails. (If any doubting tourist inquire concerning the maritime commerce of Paris, he will be proudly referred to the barges which may be seen at all the quais, and, even more, to the little steamers from London which contrive to get under the bridges.) In some of the modern records this ancient corporation is given great importance—with many sans doutes and il paraîts—in the history of the city, both before and during the sway of the Romans. Cæsar found it "fully organized," though it was founded on the Roman corporation of the Nautæ Tyberis, navigators of the Tiber, composed of senators, magistrates, and knights, which transported grain and other merchandise from the port of Ostia to the capital; and it was the original of the later maison de la marchandise de l'eau, de l'hôtel de Ville et du conseil municipal of Paris. The activity of the Lutetian shippers and navigators covered the territory bathed by the Seine, the Marne, and the Oise, all of them quite navigable. The ruins of the Gallo-Roman buildings discovered in the Cité in 1844, at the opening of the Rue de Constantine, were the remains of a market or forum for the sale of provisions; and the corporation had, near the port, an office or bureau for the regulation of this river commerce. Opposite the port, on the northern side of the Seine, they controlled also another point of landing, at the Grève, where, later, was established the prévôté de l'eau, which developed into the Parisian municipality. The port on the Cité, on the larger arm of the Seine, received in the Middle Ages the name of Saint Landri, this bishop having had an oratory, and perhaps his residence, in the neighborhood. Under the Later Empire, in the reign of Posthumus, the northern suburb having increased in size and importance, a market was placed at the Champeaux, on the site of the present Halles Centrales, and the port of the Grève became, as it has remained ever since, a point of landing for merchandise coming from the upper Seine. The port on the southern side of the river, near the great road from Genabum, was established on the site of the mediæval Quai de la Tournelle, the great tower which replaced that of the southern wall of fortification of the city built by Philippe-Auguste. This quai still serves at the present day as a landing-place for the barges.
In the reigns of Louis the Fat and Louis VII, the successors of the Nautæ Parisiaci were known as mercatores aquæ parisiaci, and they were the origin of the municipal body charged with the policing of the river navigation and commerce. Later in the Middle Ages, this small species of Hanseatic League had a commercial station at Marsons-sur-Seine, and its maritime jurisdiction extended as far as the city of Mantes, situated on the western limits of the territory of the Parisii. The sources of the Seine, near the farm of the Vergerots in the commune of Saint-Germain-la-Feuille, were held in great veneration in Gallo-Roman times, and a temple, the remains of which have been found, was erected in their honor. In 1867 the Municipal Council of Paris set up a monument "to the sources of the river which has given its name to the department of the Seine, and to which Paris owes its ancient prosperity."
The overrunning of Gaul by the barbarians, the latest historians tell us, did not present the imposing spectacle of a great invasion in which armed hosts of valiant and robust warriors trod down the effeminate and corrupted civilization of the Romans, pillaged and ravaged the seats of refinement and luxury in city and country, slew and carried into captivity without respect for age or sex.