Downhill All the Way by Edward Enfield

Author:Edward Enfield
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Summersdale
Published: 2011-09-19T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

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Not everyone who talks about ‘Provence’ means the same thing as everybody else. If anywhere is in Provence, then clearly Aix-en-Provence must be, and it is in the Region Provence – Alpes Côte d’Azur. In any precise sense I suppose Provence is an abbreviation of this, but people who have been to Nice or Cannes do not usually talk about having been to Provence, although they have; and people who have been to Nîmes tend to say that they have been in Provence, although they have not. Certainly people writing travel books about Provence find it hard to resist including Nîmes because it was so obviously part of the Roman province from which the word ‘Provence’ comes. This was a much bigger affair, extending from Geneva to Aquitaine, and was called the province of Narbonese Gaul, based on Narbonne which is now in Languedoc-Roussillon and not in Provence-Alpes etc. at all. But however that may be Orange is in Provence by any definition and it was the first place where I felt the Roman influence which was to pervade the rest of the journey. This starts as soon as you arrive, because as you enter the city from the north it is quite impossible to miss the triumphal arch as the road runs right round it.

I have always found it a little strange that the Romans should put up arches just for the sake of doing it. To me an arch is something that should either have something else on top, as in a cathedral, or else be a means of getting through a wall. The Romans of course used them for both of these purposes, but they were also much given, as at Orange, to arches which served no practical purpose whatever but just stood there in the open as a sort of grand canvas to be decorated with the details of campaigns and victories. The explanation I believe to be that the Romans were very proud of the arch, as it gave them a feeling of superiority over the Greeks, towards whom they felt a strange mixture of inferiority and contempt. I have no authority for this theory, but when it came to columns the Greeks had the Romans at a disadvantage, because they had developed the Doric, Ionic and Corinthian orders to perfection and however much the Romans fiddled about they could not do any better. Arches, on the other hand, the Greeks of classical times never attempted. Whether this was from ignorance or disinclination is not exactly known, but it left the field open to the Romans who were without doubt the first people in Europe, and possibly the first people anywhere, to appreciate the vast advantages and possibilities of the arch and later of the dome and vault. They did sometimes put up triumphal columns, like Trajan’s column at Rome, but most of all they liked putting up arches.

The one at Orange is something of a connoisseur’s arch. It is thought to be of early date, although it has three archways which is normally a sign of late construction.

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