Just think, indeed, how many changes and revolutions in this respect that fiery Marseilles has gone through since the early days of her Hellenic independence! First came that fatal but perhaps indispensable error of inviting the Roman aid against her Ligurian enemies, which gave the Romans their earliest foothold in Southern Gaul. Then followed the foundation of Aquæ Sextiæ or Aix, the first Roman colony in what was soon to be the favorite province of the new conquerors. After that, in the great civil war, the Greeks of Marseilles were unlucky enough to espouse the losing cause; and, in the great day of Cæsar's triumph, their town was reduced accordingly to the inferior position of a mere Roman dependency. Merged for a while in the all-absorbing empire, Marseilles fell at last before Visigoths and Burgundians in the stormy days of that vast upheaval, during which it is impossible for even the minutest historian to follow in detail the long list of endless conquests and re-conquests, while the wandering tribes ebbed and flowed on one another in wild surging waves of refluent confusion. Ostrogoth and Frank, Saracen and Christian, fought one after another for possession of the mighty city. In the process her Greek and Roman civilization was wholly swept away and not a trace now remains of those glorious basilicas, temples, and arches, which must once, no doubt, have adorned the metropolis of Grecian Gaul far more abundantly than they still adorn mere provincial centers like Arles and Nîmes, Vienne, and Orange. But at the end of it all, when Marseilles emerges once more into the light of day as an integral part of the Kingdom of Provence, it still retains its essentially Greek population, fairer and handsomer than the surrounding dark Ligurian stock; it still boasts its clear-cut Greek beauty of profile, its Hellenic sharpness of wit and quickness of perception. And how interesting in this relation to note, too, that Marseilles kept up, till a comparatively late period in the Middle Ages, her active connection with the Byzantine Empire; and that her chief magistrate was long nominated--in name at least, if not in actual fact--by the shadowy representative of the Cæsars at Constantinople.