But the discovery of one of the most important and interesting vestiges of the Gallo-Roman city was reserved for the latter part of the year 1869, when, in laying out the Rue Monge, on the eastern slopes of Mont Sainte-Geneviève, there was revealed the ancient amphitheatre, with which no Roman city of importance could dispense. Although these important vestiges lay only some twelve mètres below the surface, and though at least two passages in mediæval chronicles were known which alluded to the locality, this contribution to the history of the city was delayed to this late date. Alexandre Neckham, a professor in Paris, writing in 1180, mentions, in the course of four verses, the vast ruins of a Roman amphitheatre, dedicated to Venus, which was situated near the Abbey of Saint-Victor. Adrien de Valois cites a _cartulary_, or registry of a monastery, dated in 1310, in which mention is made of three sections of vineyards situated in the district known as _les Areinnes_. A date for the construction of this amphitheatre was conjectured by M. Adrien de Longpérier, from the bringing together of three of the broken stones of the edifice--selected from the sixteen bearing inscriptions now in the Musée Carnavelet and from twelve others bearing similar inscriptions and evidently from the same source, but which were found in 1847 in the Parvis-Notre-Dame, having been taken in later days to construct the wall of fortification of the city. By placing three of these fragments in order, M. de Longpérier was enabled to decipher the names of two of the Gaulish emperors who lived in the second half of the third century of our era, from which he concluded that it was a portion of the imperial inscription, and that the construction of the amphitheatre accordingly dated from this period. The pride of the Parisians, however, took offence at this interpretation, and it was considered as highly improbable that the Romans "should have delayed for more than two centuries and a half to construct, for the use of the population of a city as important as Lutèce had become, a monument similar to those the ruins of which have been enumerated in more than fifty Gallo-Roman cities,--a figure which shows how much the diversions of the amphitheatre and the theatre were relished by the Gauls." M. Gourdon de Genouillac, in his history of Paris, decides that the structure dates from the second century. [Illustration: REMAINS OF ROMAN AMPHITHEATRE, RUE MONGE, DISCOVERED IN 1869.]