to be a large city long after the establishment of Autun, which must date from the time of Augustus, from whom it took its name. There are indeed several examples, both in Gaul and Britain, which attest the frequent mutations of the site of cities to neighbouring localities. The transfer of Gergovia from its original site to that of the modern Clermont-Ferrand, has been long known. Camulodunum, the original British town, stood very probably at a little distance from the Roman station of Colchester, in which it became absorbed. On the other hand, the Roman station of Venta, or Caistor, seems to have been transferred to Norwich, and Granta, or Grantchester, possibly to Cambridge. But in all these cases the name and the town seem to have migrated together. In that of Bibracte, if we are to accept the account given by Napoleon, the name was applied to the new locality, indifferently with that of Augustodunum, while the older site continued, perhaps for centuries, to be occupied as a great and flourishing city.

The difficulty, then, which occurs to us, is that the recent explorations seem, if one may so say, to prove too much. It is well, however, that a corner should be raised of the deep veil which has really settled over Gallo-Roman as well as British-Roman history. It is astonishing how little we actually know of the social condition of those flourishing provinces, throughout the four hundred years that they continued to absorb and assimilate the civilization of Rome. The name of Autun itself suggests the curious and little understood history of the nomenclature of ancient Gaul. At the time of Cæsar's conquest we find the cities throughout the country distinguished each by its native appellation, derived apparently, in most cases, from the circumstances of its position, and forming generally some combination of magus, the town, dunum, the hill, or briva, the bridge. After the Conquest, as we find from Strabo downwards, many of these names were altered by the Romans, and the imperial name of Julius, Augustus, or Cæsar, combined with the Celtic element, as in Cæsaromagus, Juliobona, Augustodunum, Augustonemetum. But at a later period, and when or how the change was introduced we do not know, the capitals of the Gaulish tribes almost universally dropped the earlier name, whether Roman or Celtic, or mixed, and assumed that of the tribe itself. Thus Samarobriva became Ambiani (Amiens), Lutetia became Parisii (Paris), Durocortorum, Remi (Rheims), Avaricum, Bituriges (Bourges). The principal exceptions in the north of Gaul are those cities which, however important in themselves, were never capitals of tribes, and therefore never the places of assembly for fiscal and other purposes under the empire. Such are Rotomagus (Rouen), Autissiodurum (Auxerre), Argentoratum (Strasburg). Lugdunum (Lyon) was the provincial capital of a great

division of the country, but not the place of assembly of a tribe. But in the south of Gaul the tribal organization seems not to have been perpetuated in the same way. This district had been conquered and organized prior to the establishment of the empire, and apparently on the colonial rather than the tribal or federal system; and accordingly the old Celtic appellations of Burdigala, Tolosa, Narbo, Biterræ, Arelas, Vienna, and many others, were never superseded at all, but still exist in forms only slightly altered at the present day. But the imperial organization of northern Gaul, which is marked by the introduction of the tribal name, seems to have been peculiar to this division of the great Gaulish province. We meet with nothing analogous to it in Spain, or Britain, or Germany, or generally throughout the possessions of Rome in the West or the East. And it is to be remembered, when we are referred by modern writers to Gaul as the most complete and vivid type of the Roman provincial organization, that we have in this phenomenon an indication of something peculiar to Gaul, and distinctive of it. This is a subject which it would be interesting to see more fully worked out, if indeed there exist materials for doing so.

But the Emperor's topographical explorations, the subject more immediately before us, shall be further examined on a future occasion. It will be worth while to consider attentively, among other points, the solution he professes to give, upon conclusive authority, of the old questions connected with the invasion of Britain, and see whether the arbiter of modern Europe, who stands at this moment, pacis bellique sequester, between four hundred thousand fighting men, and bids them drop their swords and daggers, can impose peace upon the contending champions of Deal and Hythe, of Boulogne and of Witsand.

C. MERIVALE.

Why, it may be asked, is it that throughout France we find no places distinguished among one another by the qualifications of north, south, east, or west? In England and Germany such distinctive appellations are frequent, and seem to follow a natural law; but in France, while places are distinguished, as with us by such popular additions as on the hill," "on the plain," "on the river," &c., the points of the compass seem never to be introduced at all. Who will discover the reason, deep-seated no doubt in the Celtic idiosyncrasy, for this peculiarity?

66

66

They that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country."

HEBREWS xi. 14.

"Truth is related to Faith as Being is related to Becoming."

PLATO.

III.

THE Personal Myths of Plato, in which he deals with the history of

the individual soul, are better known than the Cosmical Myths which we have hitherto noticed, and have left a deeper impression upon popular thought. They have also more obvious and deeper affinities with the genuine Socratic teaching. It is indeed very significant that no cosmical myth is attributed to Socrates. These broad and venturous speculations are assigned to Timæus, the physical philosopher of Locri; to an anonymous Eleatic stranger; and to Critias, the brilliant and unscrupulous statesman. Socrates applauds,† it is true, "the marvellous success of Timæus upon the stage," in his view of the Cosmos, but it is impossible not to feel that such investigations lie beyond the limits of human morals, within which he purposely confined himself. It is otherwise with the personal myths. These are all delivered by Socrates himself, and all bear upon the questions to which his life was devoted, the eternal principles of justice and duty and truth. This contrast in the treatment of similar forms of exposition is important, and not without interest, as showing under what restrictions Plato felt himself at liberty to bring forward Socrates as the interpreter of his own opinions. Socrates speaks when the doctrine is that out of which his lessons flowed, or in which they could Concluded from p. 211. † Critias, 108 B.

find their essential confirmation, or where the process of inquiry is itself the end: he listens when new topics are opened, harmonious it may be with his practical teaching, but larger in scope and farther removed from life.

Plato's mythical history of the soul is given in several distinct scenes. The slight sketch in the "Meno" is elaborated into a complete picture in the "Republic." Between the two come the descriptions of the Soul in Heaven in the "Phædrus," of the Judgment in the "Gorgias," and of the Unseen World in the "Phædo," which severally bring out special aspects of the one great subject.

In the "Meno," Socrates is preparing the way for his assertion that knowledge is recollection.

"I have heard," he says, "from men and women wise in divine matters a true tale as I think, and a noble one. My informants are those priests and priestesses whose aim it is to be able to render an account of the subjects with which they deal. They are supported also by Pindar and many other poets, by all, I may say, who are truly inspired. Their teaching is that the soul of man is immortal; that it comes to an end of one form of existence, which men call dying, and then is born again, but never perishes. Since, then, the soul is immortal, and has been often born, and has seen the things here on earth and the things in Hades,-all things, in short, there is nothing which it has not learned, so that it is no marvel that it should be possible for it to recall what it certainly knew before about virtue and other topics. For since all nature is akin, and the soul has learned all things, there is no reason why a man who has recalled one fact only, which men call learning, should not by his own power find out everything else, should he be courageous and not lose heart in the search. For seeking and learning is all an act of recollection." *

In the "Phædrus" we read how that true and absolute knowledge is gained, which it is thus the highest object of an earthly life to recall. Socrates has first given a metaphysical proof of the immortality of the soul, after which he describes its nature, under the famous image of a chariot, guided by a charioteer, and drawn by two winged steeds, of which, in the case of man, the one is good, the other not so.† He then employs the image in one of his grandest myths. At a certain time there is a great procession in heaven;‡

"Zeus advances first, driving his winged car, ordering all things and superintending them. A host of deities and spirits follow him, marshalled in eleven bodies, for Hestia remains alone in the dwelling of the gods. Many then and blessed are the spectacles and movements within the sphere of heaven which the gods go through, each fulfilling his own function; and whoever will and can follows them, for envy is a stranger to the divine company. But when they afterwards proceed to a banquet, they advance by what is now a steep course along the inner circumference of the heavenly vault. The chariots of the gods, being well balanced and well driven, advance easily, the others with difficulty; for the vicious horse, unless the charioteer has thoroughly broken it, weighs down the car by his proclivity * Meno, 81 A. + Phædo, 246 A. Compare p. 253 C. Phædrus, 246 E, et seq.

towards the earth. Whereupon the soul is exposed to the extremity of toil and effort. For the souls of the immortals, when they reach the summit, go outside and stand upon the surface of heaven, and as they stand there the revolution of the sphere bears them round, and they contemplate the objects that are beyond it. That super-celestial realm no earthly poet ever yet sang or will sing in worthy strains. It is occupied by the colourless, shapeless, intangible, absolute essence which reason alone can contemplate, and which is the one subject of true knowledge. The divine mind, therefore, when it sees after an interval that which really is, is supremely happy, and gains strength and enjoyment by the contemplation of the True, until the circuit of the revolution is completed, in the course of which it obtains a clear vision of absolute (ideal) justice, temperance, and knowledge; and when it has thus been feasted by the sight of the essential truth of all things, the soul again enters within the vault of heaven and returns home. And there the charioteer gives his steeds ambrosia to eat and nectar to drink. This is the life of the gods. But the fate of the other souls is far otherwise. The soul which follows God closest, and is made most like to Him, lifts the head of its charioteer into the super-celestial realm, and so he is carried round; but still he is constantly disturbed by the steeds which he drives, and gains only with difficulty a clear vision of the absolute truth of things. Another soul rises for a time, and then sinks, and through the violence of its steeds ⚫ obtains only a partial view. The rest follow, all eagerly desirous of reaching the upper region; but being unable to do so, are borne round within the elements of the material Cosmos, struggling and trampling one another down in their efforts to reach the foremost place. And in the tumult and strife many souls are lamed, and many have their wings broken, and all, in spite of their earnest efforts, catch no sight of that which really is, and when they return are forced to feed upon the food of fancy. For the reason why they strive so zealously to see the plain of truth is this, that the food which suits the noblest element of the soul is found in the meadow there, and that it is by the help of this the wings grow by which the soul is lifted from the earth. So the procession ends, and the irrevocable judgment follows. Every soul which has gained a clear vision of truth remains in the society of the gods till the next time of review. The rest, which have been unable to follow their divine guides, or have met with any accident, or have suffered forgetfulness to overpower them, or have lost their wings, are implanted in some human form, varying in character according to the impressions which each soul still retains of its former vision of truth.* Ten thousand years pass before they can regain their former state. The soul of the philosopher alone can recover its wings in three thousand years, if at each time of choice it faithfully chooses the same lot: for at the close of each life follows a period of retribution for a thousand years, after which

Phædrus, 248 D, E. The exact order is very remarkable, and as it does not appear to be noticed by the commentators, it may be worth while to indicate the law which it presents: