The Arena At Arles, With Its Great
Magnitude, Is Less Complete Than That Of Nimes; It Has
Suffered Even More The Assaults Of Time And Of The
Children Of Time, And It Has Been Less Repaired.
The
seats are almost wholly wanting; but the external walls
minus the topmost tier of arches, are massively, rug-
gedly, complete; and the vaulted corridors seem as
solid as the day they were built.
The whole thing is
superbly vast, and as monumental, for place of light
amusement - what is called in America a "variety-
show" - as it entered only into the Roman mind to
make such establishments. The _podium_ is much higher
than at Nimes, and many of the great white slabs that
faced it have been recovered and put into their places.
The proconsular box has been more or less recon-
structed, and the great converging passages of approach
to it are still majestically distinct: so that, as I sat
there in the moon-charmed stillness, leaning my elbows
on the battered parapet of the ring, it was not im-
possible - to listen to the murmurs and shudders, the
thick voice of the circus, that died away fifteen hun-
dred years ago.
The theatre has a voice as well, but it lingers on
the ear of time with a different music. The Roman
theatre at Arles seemed to me one of the most charm-
ing and touching ruins I had ever beheld; I took a
particular fancy to it. It is less than a skeleton, - the
arena may be called a skeleton; for it consists only of
half a dozen bones.
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