Famous Cities XX. — Bordeaux

Long have I censured my unduteous silence in that of thee, my country famed for thy wine, thy rivers, thy famous men, the virtue and the wit of thy inhabitants and for the Senate of thy nobles, I did not tell among the foremost; as though, well knowing thee a little town, I shrank from touching praises undeserved. For this no shame is mine; for mine is neither a barbarous land upon the banks of Rhine, nor icy home on frozen Haemus. Bordeaux is my native soil, where are skies temperate and mild, and well-watered land generously lavish: where is long spring, and winters growing warm with the new-born sun, and tidal rivers whose flood foams beneath vine-clad hills, mimicking the sea's ebb and flow. Her goodly walls four-square raise lofty towers so high that their tops pierce the soaring clouds. Within her, thou mayest marvel at streets clearly laid out, at houses regularly plotted out, at spacious boulevards which uphold their name, as also gates facing in direct line the crossways opposite; and, where the channel of thy spring-fed stream divides the town, soon as old Ocean has filled it with his flowing tide, thou shalt behold "a whole sea gliding onward with its fleets." - What shall I say of that fountain, o'erlaid with Parian marble, which foams in the strait of its Euripus? How deep the water! How swelling the stream I How great the volume as it plunges in its headlong course through the twice six sluices in its long-drawn brink, and never fails to meet the people's countless purposes? This would'st thou long to reach with thy hosts. King of the Medes, when streams were consumed and rivers failed; from this fount to carry waters through strange cities, thou who through them all wast wont to drink Choaspes alone!

Hail, fountain of source unknown, holy, gracious, unfailing, crystal-clear, azure, deep, murmurous, shady, and unsullied! Hail, guardian deity of our city, of whom we may drink health-giving draughts, named by the Celts Divona, — a fountain added to the roll divine! Not Aponus in taste, not Nemausus in azure sheen is more clear, nor Timavus' sea-like flood more brimming-full.

Let this last task conclude the muster of famous cities. And as illustrious Rome leads at one end of the rank, so at this end let Bordeaux establish her place, leaving the precedence unsettled. This is my own country; but Rome stands above all countries. I love Bordeaux, Rome I venerate; in this I am a citizen, in both a consul; here was my cradle, there my curule chair.