Burgundy: The Splendid Duchy. Stories and Sketches in South BurgundyAllen, Percy
History
Burgundy: The Splendid Duchy. Stories and Sketches in South Burgundy
Allen, Percy
Burgundy (France) -- Description and travel
In 270 A.D. the schools suffered the general fate, and the scholars,
henceforth, had to be accommodated in separate quarters. Eumenes talked
of restoring the porticos, and repainting the map of the world; but,
probably, the work was never carried out, and the schools remained in
their shattered state, even after the adjoining buildings--the Temple
of Apollo and the Capitol--had been restored to something of their
former glory.
The Capitol was probably the building whose foundations, circular
on plan, have been traced to the garden of the Hospice St. Gabriel,
beside the Ecoles Méniennes, and fronting also upon the great central
street leading from gate to gate. Authorities appear to have differed
considerably on this point; but many Corinthian capitals, fragments of
entablatures, statuettes, groups of goddesses, etc., have been found
on this site, suggesting that it was once occupied by a building of
great importance,[42] decorated as one would expect of such a temple,
and dedicated, as the Capitol was, to the principal divinities of the
official hierarchy. Eumenes, moreover, states that the Capitol was
situate beside the schools. M. de Fontenay, however, thinks that,
possibly, the Capitol may have occupied the other circular site, now
attributed to the Temple of Apollo; and, conversely, that the latter
building should be placed below the schools.
* * * * *
Not far from this centre of Roman civilization, beyond the shady
plantation of plane trees, the Promenade des Marbres, dotted with
seats of Roman stone, and stretching eastward from the statue of
Divitiacus, you will find, if you follow the Faubourg des Marbres, on
the right side of the downward slope, a board with the legend "Caves
Joyaux." Then, turning up the path to the right, passing a hideous
modern cottage devoted principally to "tir," from the walls of which
the counterfeit presentments of dead citizens look out stonily upon
you from the Roman stele, you will come upon a grassy, semi-circular
terrace, planted with lime trees, whose green banks slope down towards
a smaller semi-circle of sward below.
Beyond it lies a broad expanse of allotment garden, in which peasant
women are bending over their crops. Standing among the leaves, that,
on this bright autumn day, are fluttering upon the grass, and looking
down more closely into the semi-circle, one observes irregularities
in the surface of the horseshoe, lines suggestive of terracing;
strangely shaped, hollow, grassy boulders that seem to have shouldered
their way up from below. Here, at the end of the curve, is a mass of
broken stone; there a black shadow below the revealed head of an arch
projecting from the weed-entangled débris.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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