Drives From a French Farm: Ii

BIBRACTE.

IN the first of these papers I described some of the outside appearances of what is going forward on the summit of Mount Beuvray, where a determined and enthusiastic antiquary has spent several summers, and many bank-notes also, in the study of Gaulish antiquity. During my stay at his encampment, one night, when it was late enough for us to be sure of uninterrupted hours, — when the workmen were asleep in their narrow huts, or had descended to their families in the valley, and all picnic parties had returned to the places whence they came, — I begged M. Bulliot to give me a succinct account of the great Bibracte controversy. It was, of course, more interesting to me, as I heard it at midnight in the camp itself, surrounded by Celtic remains just recently disinterred, and on the summit of that hill of refuge whose fortifications I had followed through forest and broom, than it is likely to be to readers beyond the broad Atlantic ; but it is one of the best privileges of literature to bring many minds into unison with that of the writer, and an author may, without presumption, count upon interesting others if only he has been really interested himself.

Any intelligent person, however little of an antiquarian, would have felt interested in my place. My host had given, year after year, such genuine and undeniable proofs of devotion to his great enterprise, that it was not possible to listen to him without attention. Labors pursued solely for the increase of the world’s knowledge, without any selfish aim beyond the noble desire to see one’s name attached to a discovery, — labors pursued, too, in all but unbroken silence, without self-assertion, without the least evidence of vanity, in patient persistence against calumny, against unceasing efforts to make them appear futile and of no account, — labors such as these give weight to a man’s words. And I did not come altogether unprepared. I had heard the other side first, especially the constant reassertion of the falsehood that M. Bulliot had found nothing on the Beuvray, except the walls of a few cottages. For even now, when antiquities have been found upon the Beuvray literally by cart-loads, it is still repeated in the neighborhood that nothing has been discovered there.

The point of the controversy is, whether the Celtic Bibracte of Cæsar was situated at the top of Mount Beuvray or on the site afterwards occupied by Augustodunum, the modern Autun.

This controversy has raged in the neighborhood for many years, and if the reader will only imagine a similar controversy in his own neighborhood, causing every man to imply, more or less politely, that his neighbor was something lower than an idiot, he will at once realize the chronic local disturbance which has resulted from it. The quarrel has become of national importance since the Emperor Napoleon took a part in it, and sided with M. Bulliot. His Majesty has received many an envenomed letter on the subject since the publication of the Vie de Cesar, but as he never reads any letters himself except such as are at the same time very short, and written in a big, legible hand, with sufficient spaces between the lines, it is likely that one of his secretaries received the brunt of these attacks.

The passage in the Emperor’s Life of Cæsar which clearly committed him to M. Bulliot’s party is the following note (Vol. II. p. 59), which stands opposite to one of the beautiful maps with which the work is enriched. Even the map itself committed him, for there the line of march of the Roman army is so traced, that, by an inevitable deduction (supposing this line of march to be the true one) Bibrate cannot have been at Autun. But in the map preceding this one, the “ General Map of the Campaign of the Year 696,” Bibracte is positively fixed upon the Beuvray. Here is the note in question : —

“ It is generally admitted that Bibracte stood upon the site of Autun, on account of the inscription found in this latter city in the seventeenth century, and preserved in the cabinet of antiquities at the Imperial Library. Another opinion, which identifies Bibracte with the Mount Beuvray (a hill of great extent. thirteen kilometres to the west of Autun) had, however, found, long ago, a few supporters. It may be observed, in the first place, that the Gauls selected for the sites of their cities, when they were able to do so. places difficult of access ; in hilly countries they chose steep heights (as, for example, Gergovia, Alesia, Uxellodunum, etc.) ; in flat countries they chose lands surrounded by marshes (as Avaricum). The Ædni, consequently, would not have built their principal town on the site of Autun, situated at the foot of the hills. It used to be thought that a table-land as high as that of the Mount Beuvray (its summit is 810 metres above the sea) could not have been occupied by a great city. And yet the existence of eight or ten roads, which lead to this tableland, abandoned for so many centuries, and of which some are in quite a surprising state of preservation, ought to have led to an opposite conclusion. Let us add that recent excavations leave no doubt about the matter. They have brought to light, over an extent of 240 acres, foundations of Gaulish walls, some round and some square, mosaics, foundations of Gallo-Roman walls, gateways, chiselled stones, heaps of tiles, amphoræ in prodigious quantities, a semicircular theatre, etc. In short, everything leads us to place Bibracte on the Mount Beuvray ; the striking resemblance between the two names, the designation of ϕρούριον, which Strabo gives to Bibracte, and even the vague and persistent tradition which, reigning amongst the inhabitants of the district, makes the Mount Beuvray a venerated centre.”

The fatality in this controversy is, that not one ancient author uses a phrase or an expression which can really be held to settle it. For instance, there is that word ϕρούριον, of Strabo, which had a general sense, citadel, garrison town, and a special sense, hill-fort. If Strabo used it in this special sense, the point in dispute would be settled beyond question, but there is nothing to prove that he did so, and Augustodunum might have been a ϕρούριον, according to the non-specialized meaning of the word. So with Julius Cæsar himself, though he visited Bibracte in person, and mentioned it in his Commentaries, there is not a syllable of natural description relative to its site. A modern writer would hardly, under any circumstances, fail to give us. at least, a few words of such description as might serve to identify a locality, but Cæsar does not tell us whether Bibracte was on a hill, or near a river, or in the midst of a level plain.

It has been observed, however, that Strabo used the word πόλις to designate such a town as Chalons, for instance, reserving ϕρούριον, for the Gaulish fortresses; and with reference to the silence of Cæsar concerning the landscape about Bibracte, it may be added that he gives at least a measurement, — that of the distance of Bibracte from his line of march when pursuing the Helvetii.

Into all the discussion about that line of march it is impossible for me to enter. The dispute is simply interminable. and can have little interest for readers who are not familiar with the localities. But it is worth mentioning, as an additional instance of the curious way in which modern investigation often finds the solution of a difficulty to be dependent upon something with which it has apparently no connection whatever. Only the other day the place where Cæsar landed on the coast of Britain was settled by some observations on the tide, made by order of the Admiralty at the request of the Society of Antiquaries.¹ just in the same way, if it could be ascertained beyond a doubt what was the line of march pursued by Cæsar as he followed the Helvetii, it would be easy to choose between Autun and the Beuvray as the site of the Bibracte of the Gauls, for Cæsar tells us that this stronghold of Bibracte was at a distance of eighteen Roman miles from his line of march, which he quitted to seek provisions there. And Cæsar expressly says that the distance was not greater (non amplicus millibus passuum XVIII, aberat). Now if the line of march given in the Emperor’s Life of Cæsar be the true one, it settles the question, for the Beuvray is separated from it by the distance given by Cæsar, whereas Autun is not eighteen Roman miles off, but thirtyfour, or thereabouts.

Since the excavations, there is, of course, rather more light on the question, but as no inscriptions have been found, there is nothing absolutely decisive. The excavations on Mount Beuvray prove undeniably that a great Gaulish city existed there, and this city was most probably Bibracte ; but if any one denies that this was Bibracte, he cannot be compelled to renounce his opinion. On the other hand, no Gaulish remains are ever found at Autun, and the recent construction of a railway which entirely traverses the site of the Roman city, and which has necessitated a deep cutting in the heart of it, has brought the strongest negative evidence. No vestige of anything anterior to the Roman period has been discovered there. The streets of the Roman town were as regular as the squares of a chess-board, the square blocks of buildings measuring one hundred and seven metres on each side. If a Gaulish city had existed there before, it is believed by the advocates of the Beuvray theory that some trace of Gaulish construction would have been found in the railway cutting, and that kind of construction is recognizable at a glance by any one who has had the opportunity of studying it.

It is unnecessary, in a paper of this kind, to pursue this quarrel of antiquaries any further. The question cannot be discussed in full detail in less than a volume, and the volume would be one that only an antiquary, and an antiquary acquainted with the localities, would have the patience to read through. The present writer has made himself acquainted with the arguments on both sides, and has come to the conclusion that the Emperor and M. Bulliot are most probably right in putting the Gaulish city on the hill-top, but that all that is clearly proved is the existence of an important Celtic oppidum there. After all, since the Emperor had to fix Bibracte somewhere, he did right to place it on the most probable site, even if the evidence in favor of that site were not absolutely conclusive. I believe that the city of Bibracte was situated on the summit of the Beuvray, but I know that the hill was a Celtic place of strength. The evidence of this latter fact is abundant and incontestable, and of itself it goes a long way towards proving the rest. For if we admit the Emperor’s supposition, that Gaul in the time of Cæsar, — the whole of Gaul, — did not contain more than eight millions of inhabitants, how improbable it is that two towns of importance would be so near each other as the Beuvray and Augustodunum ! Even in the France of the present day, with its forty millions, towns of any consequence are considerably isolated : Autun is sixty kilometres from Chalons and a hundred from Nevers, and the distances between the great Celtic strongholds were much greater.

The personal history of M. Bulliot’s discoveries is as follows : He began, of course, by reading what other men, his predecessors, had had to say upon the subject. First of these was Guy Coquille, author of a history of the Nivernais, which he wrote in the time of Henry III. of France, and Guy Coquille settled the question in twenty lines, placing Bibracte on the Beuvray. In the seventeenth century the question was taken up again by Adrien de Valois, a geographer, who also placed Bibracte on the Beuvray ; and again, in the same century, another geographer, D’Anville, investigated the subject, and at first shared the views of Coquille and De Valois, but afterwards, for want of sufficient evidence (the evidence at that time, before the excavations, being very meagre, comparatively), came to the conclusion that Autun had succeeded Bibracte on the same site. Since then, different learned men have treated the matter in various ways, some suggesting Beaune as the ancient Bibracte, but the majority holding for Autun. However, the celebrated M. Dupin, almost alone in his generation, held the view of Coquille and De Valois. But D’Anville’s final opinion was generally received and taught in the schools of Autun, and printed in all geographies and guide-books all the world over.

M. Bulliot at first received and held this opinion, like every other native of Autun, believing himself an inhabitant of the Bibracte of the Gauls. His archæological studies began with the Roman defensive system, on which he wrote a book. At that time he knew nothing whatever about the Beuvray, but visited it in search of Roman encampments, Finding there not merely the traces of a camp, but the fortifications of an important city, M. Bulliot came to the conclusion that be had before him one of the most remarkable facts in the archaeology of the country, and proposed to the Eduen Society to make a survey of the fortifications, of which he generously offered to discharge half the expense. The mountain was carefully surveyed accordingly, and a map of the fortifications published.

M. Bulliot now (1856) began to study the whole question over again, with this new light to help him, and the consequence was that he became convinced that old Guy Coquille had been right, and that the ancient city had been on the mountain’s crest.

The next thing was to dig and see if there were any remains of it.

M. Garenne began, and the Viscount D’Aboville, who is proprietor of the mountain, went on with some excavations in the centre of the oppidum. M. Bulliot began with the extremities near the fortifications, intending to circumscribe his researches by first ascertaining where the ground was unproductive, and hoping to find the Gaulish buildings in a better state of preservation away from the centre, which would naturally have been most inhabited by the Romans after their conquest. At the same time M. Bulliot directed the excavations of M. D’Aboville.

Now it came to pass that, whilst M. Bulliot was directing the Viscount’s workmen, an old friend of his, the Archbishop of Rheims, visited the mountain.

The Archbishop was an utter unbeliever in the Beuvray theory ; he had even written and published passages which treated it as incompatible with common sense. But his mind was open to conviction, and when he saw the diggings he went away with a deep interest in the question, and an interest of an entirely new kind. Some time afterwards he was at the camp of Châlons, and happening one evening to be dining there with the Emperor, when the conversation turned on those questions of Gallo-Roman antiquity which at that time occupied much of Napoleon’s attention, the Archbishop told his Majesty what he had seen on the Beuvray, and went so far as to entreat him to make further excavations there at his own cost. The Emperor did not forget this, and shortly afterwards M. Bulliot was somewhat astonished in his studious solitude by a letter commanding his attendance at the Tuileries. He went there with a map ot the mountain, and during a long audience explained to the Emperor the reasons why it was probable that further excavations would repay their expense. The Emperor was convinced, fell in heartily with M. Bulliot’s views, and from that time has made an annual allowance for the prosecution of the work.

No labor was lost. From the very first the excavators were rewarded with the most interesting discoveries. Although with the exception of the fortifications (which externally presented merely the appearance of earthworks) there was nothing to indicate man’s presence, unless it were the quantities of broken pottery that were everywhere mixed with the ploughed earth, and the numbers of ancient coins that the laborers had picked up, century after century, no sooner had M. Bulliot seriously commenced his researches than he came upon a Gaulish wall built as Cæsar tells us that the walls of Avaricum were built.

If the Emperor’s Life of Cæsar should happen to be accessible to the reader, he will find a plan of Avaricum on the eighteenth plate of the second volume, and in the left-hand corner of this plate he will find a section, plan, and elevation of a Gaulish town wall. The construction of these walls may, however, easily be understood without an illustration. In all double walls, ancient or modern, that are well built, there are stones which English masons call throughs, because they pass through the wall in its entire thickness, and serve to bind the smaller stones together. In a Gaulish town wall these throughs were exceedingly abundant, but they were of wood. It the reader has visited Paris he must have noticed the wood-yards, where wood is stored for fuel, and he can scarcely fail to have been struck with the huge walls which are built up with the logs, every log having its sawn end outwards. Now if he will only imagine stones between these logs, so that each log would be separated from its neighbor by a distance of about two feet, he has exactly the outward appearance of a Gaulish town wall. Only the stone wall was a mere outward coating, like the iron armor on a plated frigate. Behind this stone armor the spaces between the logs were filled with earth. There were also longitudinal beams in the interior of the wall running at right angles to the throughs, and laid upon them. These beams were forty feet long, and were nailed to the throughs with long iron nails. All this is correctly set forth in the Emperor’s book, but it may be necessary to warn the reader that some translators of Cresar have misunderstood his explanation of Gaulish building, and have made him say that the walls were forty feet thick, because the beams were forty feet long. These long beams were not the throughs ; their office was to hold the throughs together, and they ran at right angles to them, in the interior of the wall. The thickness of the wall, that is, the length of the throughs, was nearer fourteen feet than forty.

This bit of detail about Gaulish construction is a necessary preface to what I have now to relate. When M. Bulliot excavated the fortifications of Bibracte he found the wall constructed precisely as Cæsar had described that of Avaricum. The wood, of course, had decayed, but the holes remained where the throughs had been, and there were ligneous fragments in abundance. The great iron nails also, which had fastenedthe longitudinal beams to the throughs, were still standing. The reader will please to remember that I write as an eyewitness, having myself been present during a portion of the excavations, and having examined the structure of the wall as it was brought once more to the light of day.

Then they found a ditch eleven metres wide and five deep, and in the ditch quantities of fragments of ornaments,— bracelets of glass and schist, specimens of polished stone, broken hand-mills (for grinding corn and wheat); and near the gates in the walls heaps of cinders and calcined wood led to the belief that wooden towers of defence had existed there, — those wooden towers which are known to have been an essential part of the defensive system of the Gauls.

It was discovered also that one of the many streams which flow from the springs of the Beuvray had been artificially detained in five basins made with béton and impermeable clay.

The first entrance of the city which was thoroughly explored presented this curious feature. The walls themselves turned inwards, forming the two sides of a passage about forty yards long and twenty yards wide. And the ditch of each wall turned in also, so that the passage between the ditches was only five yards.

A matter of more general interest than the fortifications is the construction of the houses. The Gauls were very poorly lodged, and it seems to me, after examining their houses (where the earth had just been cleared away from them, and everything was still in the best possible state of preservation), that their notions of domestic architecture were not nearly so much advanced as their ideas of military defence. A people that knew how to build a town wall eighty feet high, capable of resisting battering-rams, and at the same time so arranged as to be fire-proof, notwithstanding the immense quantity of wood employed in its construction, a people whose system of fortification was admired by so consummate a general as Cæsar, might have been expected to construct something better for its domestic uses than the wigwam of a North American Indian. Yet the best and richest mansions of Bibracte were merely large round huts with low walls of stone and wood and mud ; and as for the dwellings of the poor, they resembled in size, and most probably in cleanliness, nothing so much as a pigsty. Amongst the houses excavated in 1869 two or three small staircases were discovered ; but these do not seem to imply the existence of a second story: they were probably nothing but a means of access to habitations below the level of the soil. To keep the walls from falling there were upright posts of wood ; and M. Bulliot has become so accustomed to the Gaulish system of construction, that I have heard him tell his workmen beforehand the exact spots where they would find remains of these posts, or at all events the holes where they had been. Sometimes the wood was found in a recognizable state of preservation ; more commonly the soil in the postholes presented traces of wood carbonized. It may be well to explain how the post-holes are recognizable where all is filled with soil. The floors of the houses were hard, and are still much harder than the soil which has accumulated above them. When the workmen come down to a floor they stop, and simply clear away the soft earth which encumbers it. The floor being cleared, several soft spots are found at regular intervals where the pick meets little resistance. These soft spots are cleared out, and indications of wood are invariably found in them. They are the post-holes. Will the reader believe that M. Bulliot’s enemies sometimes go so far as to say that he makes these holes on purpose ?

The places occupied by the beams and throughs in the town wall are indicated in the same way, but here the antiquary has the advantage of finding the long nails in their places, often with wood still sticking to them.

In the way of Roman or Gallo-Roman work, some aqueducts and a theatre have been discovered, and in the theatre the remains of a mosaic. Many of the houses show evidence of Roman teaching and influence.

Immense quantities of pottery have been found. I was myself present when the workmen came upon a whole bed of large amphoræ in fine preservation. They lay there by dozens, one upon another. It was a place which had been used as a cemetery, and these amphoræ contained cinders. There are also plates and a great variety of vases, often very beautifully ornamented. I stood by the side of a workman when he came upon a little vase of exquisite design, scarcely thicker than a visiting-card, and so fragile that the wonder was how any fragment of it could have been preserved. Great numbers of these vases have been ingeniously restored by a clever artist at Autun, and to the uninitiated it seems at first surprising how a vase can be restored from such meagre data ; but when the design is a simple one, repeated all round the circumference, it is sufficient to have a very small segment of it to reconstruct the whole. The precious little vase above mentioned was, however, perfect or nearly so.

Many of the houses at Bibracte were covered with tiles, probably at a comparatively late period. These tiles are found in great abundance, in some places literally in heaps.

M. Bulliot is very deeply interested in everything that helps to illustrate the condition of the arts in ancient Gaul. Many ornaments have been found at Bibracte, some of elegant workmanship, with enamel. An enameller’s shop has also been discovered, and I was present when his bellows were found. The tube of the bellows, being in earthenware, was perfectly preserved, and on the floor of the shop many bits of enamel were picked up. It is curious that this art should have been so far advanced amongst a people who were so backward in domestic architecture. Amongst other ornaments a brooch was found, exactly of the kind known in Scotland as the brooch of Lorn ; but this was a solitary instance. Just at the close of 1869 some curious specimens of sheet-iron, pierced in patterns, turned up amongst masses of rubbish.

The number of coins which occur is remarkable, but their variety is not equal to their number. The workmen receive a bonus of fifty centimes for every coin found, and consequently they hand them over very faithfully, it being impossible to sell such coins in the neighborhood for half a franc each. One workman showed me fifteen in his purse, which he had found all together, — rather a good find for him, — seven francs and a half !

The diggings of 1869 have been so fruitful that M. Bulliot intends to improve his camp next year by the addition of a stone edifice, which if not very luxurious will no doubt be as good as the houses of ancient Bibracte, and a true antiquary has scarcely a right to be more luxurious than that. Still, so far as my experience of M. Bulliot’s hospitality goes, I venture to predict that the food and drink in new Bibracte will be a great deal better than it ever could have been in the Gaulish city. Had the Gauls coffee, and cognac, and kirsch ? Had they tobacco ? Old Bibracte may have been very grand in Caesar’s time, with its miles of barbarian fortifications ; but I prefer the little camp which we jestingly call Bibracte to-day, — the little camp of wooden huts and canvas tents, with its daily messenger from the valleys, bringing modern food and newspapers. The landscapes around are not less fair than they were in Cæsar’s time, the horizons not less vast. Still flows the Arroux in her rocky bed, and still spreads the broad Loire on her plains of shifting sand. The sunsets are as fiery as when their reverberations crimsoned the Celtic citadel, and the valleys lie as peacefully in the blue mist as they did when their tranquillity was guarded from these fortress heights.

Philip Gilbert Hamerton.