The place continued to be the abode of men long afterwards, for Latin
became the speech of some people who lived there, and coins as late as
Tiberius and one of Hadrian (117 A.D.) have been unearthed at Citania;
but with the Roman officers supreme at Braga, and the whole plain
prospering and smiling under the arts of peace and Roman luxury, poor
Citania on its bold hill-top lost its reason for existence, and must
have dwindled, until long before the time of the Goths and Suevians all
men forgot it, and the ages covered it with the mantle of earth,
undisturbed till now.
But whilst I am thus speculating, my little girl guide is getting
restless, and the westerly tending sun tells me that I have long
outstayed the appointed time when I was to return to Taipas. So,
reluctantly, and with my brain full of idle fancies which made me dream
of creatures such as those I have pictured lurking behind the
thick-strewn boulders, and challenging my intrusion upon their
stronghold, I slowly paced the paved lanes again through the lines of
stark ruined walls, and so out upon the precipitous hillside down to
Briteiros, where the carriage awaited me in the grateful shade.
The market people were homeward bound from Taipas now; the women with
their purchases or unsold wares swaying rhythmically upon their heads as
they walked, and the men leading live stock or bent beneath burdens, but
never too heavily laden to prevent them from courteously saluting the
passing stranger. The inn, nearly empty of bathing visitors now that the
summer was past, was feverishly anxious to do its best; and, though
Citania had detained me for hours longer than I had reckoned, Taipas
contrived to offer me a tolerable lunch, the first meal I had eaten in
that long day of delight. Upon a wall of the open courtyard before the
inn is an ancient fountain with a pompous poetical inscription, setting
forth that John I. of Portugal, _Para que a morte mais tropheos não
conte_, “that death should no more trophies boast,” had raised this
miraculous fountain of healing water. But John I. was a mere modern in
these ancient _thermes_; for here the great Hadrian was cured of his
malady, and founded the sumptuous baths, of which extensive remains have
in recent times been discovered, but not explored to any extent. In a
field nearly opposite the inn is an enormous block of granite, upon
which a long Roman inscription tells that this work was erected by the
orders of the Imperial Cæsar Trajan, son of Nerva, conqueror of the
Germans, and much more to similar effect; whilst upon another face of
the block an interminable list of modern Portuguese names of gentlemen
interested in the rehabilitation of the baths in recent times shows the
universal hankering after immortality in company with the great felt by
the little men of the world.