Ordo Urbium Nobilium

ROME. First among cities, home of the gods, golden Rome.

Constantinople and Carthage. Carthage rises in deference to Constantinople before her, yet not yielding by a whole step, because she disdains to be called third, though she dares not hope for the second place — which belonged to both. Ancient opulence sets the one before; recent fortune the other: the one has been, the other comes on, and, excelling in new merits, outshines the old honour, and compels Elissa (Dido's Carthage) to yield to Constantine. Carthage, now full of shame, accuses the gods, if even now she should yield, scarcely having endured Rome before her. Let ancient fortune compose your swellings of pride. Go, equals, mindful at last that by the divine power of the gods you have changed your narrow estates and your names: you, when you were Byzantine Lygos; you, when you were Punic Byrsa.

Antioch and Alexandria. Third, the home of the Phoebean laurel, Antioch — if the colony of Alexander were willing to be set fourth: there is one place for both. And the frenzy of ambition drives these into a contest of vices: both are turbulent with their common throng, and ill-sound with the tumult of a mad people. The one is proud because it is fortified by the Nile and insinuated deep into out-of-the-way places, fertile and safe; the other, because, a rival, it is set against the faithless Persians. And do you too go equals, and exalt the name of the Macedonians: great Alexander founded you; the other names Seleucus, whose inborn sign was an anchor, such as is wont to be branded, the sure mark of his race; for through the whole series of his offspring the native image ran.

Trier. Warlike Gaul has long been eager to be celebrated, and the seat of the city of the Treveri (Trier), which, nearest the Rhine, rests secure as in the bosom of peace amid war, because it nourishes the forces of the empire, clothes them, and arms them. Its broad walls run out over the extended hill: the bounteous Moselle glides past with its tranquil stream, carrying the far-off commerce of every kind of land.

MILAN. And at Milan all things are wonderful: the abundance of goods, the numberless and cultivated houses, the eloquent talents of its men and their glad manners; then the aspect of the place, enlarged by a double wall, and the people's delight, the circus and the wedge-banked mass of the enclosed theatre; the temples and the palatine citadels and the rich mint, and the quarter celebrated under the honour of the Herculean bath; and all the peristyles adorned with marble statues, and the walls girt round with a rampart's border, in the form of a circumvallation: all of which, as it were rivals in the great forms of their works, stand pre-eminent; nor does the neighbourhood of Rome, though joined to it, press it down.

CAPUA. Nor, by Pollux, shall I keep silent of Capua, powerful in farmland and cultivation and store, in delights, in wealth, and in former fame — fortune varying her turns; she who, relying on prosperity, knew not how to keep measure: now subject to Rome a rival, now mindful of her faith; before faithless, doubting whether to spurn or to court the senate, having dared to hope for the curule chairs under Campanian auspices, and, with one of her own as consul, to raise up the rule of a divided world. Nay, she even attacked the mistress of affairs and the parent of Latium in war, not relying on toga-clad leaders. Sworn to the arms of Hannibal and deceived, mad, she passed into the slavery of an enemy under the show of a master. Soon — as, driven to their downfall by common vices, the Carthaginians fell through luxury, Campania through arrogance (alas, pride never allotted a stable seat!) — she, powerful and strong in wealth, once a second Rome, who could comb her summits with equal cones, cast back, scarcely now holds even the eighth place.

AQUILEIA. This was not your place: yet, deservedly increased by a recent honour, ninth among famous cities, Aquileia, you shall be celebrated — an Italian colony set against the Illyrian mountains, most famed for its walls and its harbour; but more does this stand out, that at the very last hour it chose you, for whom, the lustrum being completed, Maximus paid his late atonements — Maximus, once a sutler under the name of an armour-bearer. Happy you, who, a glad spectatress of so great a triumph, punished the Rutupine (British) brigand by Ausonian (Roman) war.

ARLES. Spread, twofold Arles, kindly hostess, your harbours — little Gallic Rome, Arles, whom Martial Narbo and whom wealthy Vienne, with its Alpine settlers, dwell beside; you, so cut through by the flow of the headlong Rhone that you make a mid-street with a bridge of boats, through which you receive the commerce of the Roman world and do not hold it back, and you enrich other peoples and walls, which Gaul enjoys, and Aquitaine with its broad bosom.

Seville. Cordoba. Tarragona. Braga. Dear to me, after these you shall be recorded, an Iberian name, Hispalis (Seville), past which a sea-going river glides, to whom all Spain submits its fasces. Not Cordoba, not Tarragona, powerful in your citadel, contends with you; nor rich Braga, which boasts itself in the bay of the sea.

Athens. Now let us also record Athens with her earth-born fathers, the citadel once of the contest of Pallas and of Consus (Poseidon), to which first fell the tree of the peace-bringing olive; whose pure glory is the Attic eloquence of its tongue, whence, through the peoples of Ionia and the Achaean name, the Greek band, transferred, poured itself into a hundred cities.

Catania. Syracuse. Who would be silent about Catania? Who about fourfold Syracuse? The one famed for the piety of the brothers who were scorched (by Etna); the other embracing the marvels of the fountain and the river, where, passing beneath the salt shallows of the Ionian sea, they unite their sweet waters in a seat agreeable to them, mingling the kisses of their uncorrupted streams.

Toulouse. Never shall I keep silent about Toulouse, the nurse of my own; whom a vast circuit surrounds with brick walls, and along whose side glides the Garonne with its fair stream — cultivated by countless peoples, near the snowy borders of the Pyrenees and the pine-clad Cévennes, between the Aquitanian races and the Iberian name; which, though it has lately poured forth from itself four cities, feels no losses of its exhausted populace, embracing in its bosom all the settlers it has begotten.

NARBO. Nor shall you be kept silent, Martial Narbo, by whose name the Province, once spread over an immense realm, held many settlers by the right of rule — where the Allobroges insinuate themselves onto the Greek coasts, and the Alpine peaks shut out the Italian bounds; where the Iberians are divided off by the Pyrenean snows; where the Rhone is swept headlong from its parent Lake Leman, and the Cévennes press more inward on the Aquitanian fields — right up to the Tectosages and the rustic names of the Belcae: all this was Narbo. You, first Gaul of the toga-clad name, raise up the fasces with a Latin proconsul. Why should I record your harbours and mountains and lakes? Why your peoples of various distinction in dress and in face? And that you once had a temple of Parian marble of so great a mass, as great as Tarquinius would not once have scorned, nor Catulus a second time, nor that last one, Caesar, who set up the golden summits of the Capitol? You the merchandise of the Eastern sea and the Iberian waters enrich; you the fleets of the Libyan and Sicilian deep, and whatever is brought in its varied course along the rivers, along the straits: from the whole world the convoy sails to you.

BORDEAUX. For long now I condemn the impious silences, that you, O my homeland, distinguished for Bacchus and for rivers and for men, for the morals and talents of your people and the senate of your nobles, I do not record among the first — as if, conscious of a small city, I hesitated to touch undeserved praises. There is no shame for us in this; for neither is my home on the barbarous shore of the Rhine, nor in the icy northern Haemus: Bordeaux is my native soil — where the clemency of the sky is mild, and great the indulgence of the well-watered land; a long spring, and winters warm with a new sun, and tide-flowing rivers, beneath whose vine-clad ridges the streams seethe, imitating the courses of the sea. The fourfold aspect of the walls, so steep with their high towers that their summits enter the airy clouds; you would marvel at the streets divided within, the disposition of the houses, and that they keep the name of broad avenues; then the gates corresponding, set straight against the crossroads; and through the midst of the city the channel of a fountain-river, which, when father Ocean has filled it with his returning tide, you will behold the whole expanse glide in with fleets. Why should I record the fountain, covered with Parian marble, seething with the surge of a Euripus? How great the wave of the deep! How great the swell in the stream! With how great a force it rushes headlong, in its course through the twice six mouths of the extended margin, never exhausted for the countless uses of the people! This, Median king, you would have wished to fall to your camp, when, the courses being consumed, the rivers failed you — to carry the waters of this fountain through foreign cities, you who were wont to drink the one Choaspes through all of them. Hail, fountain of unknown source, sacred, kindly, perennial, glassy, grey-green, deep, sounding, clear of mud, shaded. Hail, genius of the city, to be drunk with a healing draught, Divona in the tongue of the Celts, fountain added to the gods! Not Aponus is purer in drinking, not Nemausus in its glassy light, not Timavus fuller in its sea-like stream. Here let my last labour have gathered the famous cities; and, as renowned Rome is the head of the list, so by this head let Bordeaux confirm its seat at the doubtful summit. This is my homeland: but Rome surpasses all homelands. I love Bordeaux, I revere Rome; I am a citizen in this, a consul in both; here my cradle, there the curule chair.