passage disembarked at Porto Ferrajo, the capital of Elba, on the 4th of May.
The great Roman road, the Via Aurelia, left the capital of the world by the Janiculan Gate, made for Pisa, Lucca, followed the coast the whole way, passed above where is now Monaco, over a spur of the Maritime Alps by Nice, Antibes, Cannes, came to a little town in the lap of the Gulf of Fréjus, and thence turned abruptly away from the coast and made direct for Aix and Aries. Thence roads radiated: one, leading up the left bank of the Rhone, took troops and commerce to the Rhine. Thence also the Domitian Way conveyed both by Narbonne into Spain.
This bay was the last harbour on the Mediterranean for troops that were to march into the heart of Gaul, to Britain, or to the Rhine. Hitherto the road, hugging the coast, offered innumerable facilities for provisioning soldiery and supplying them with munitions of war. But from the Bay of Fréjus this advantage ceased. Julius Cæsar saw the great strategical importance of the harbour, and he resolved to make of it an important haven, a naval station, and an emporium for stores. Marseilles he did not choose. It was a commercial town, a Greek town, and he was out of temper with it for having sided with Pompey against him. Accordingly he settled here some veterans of his favourite Tenth Legion, to become the nucleus of a colony. But Caesar overlooked what was a most important point—his port Forum Julii was planted at the mouth of the Argens, and the river brought down a vast amount of fluviatile deposit, mud and sand, and inevitably in a few years would silt up his port. It had a further disadvantage—it was a fever trap. To the south the town had a wide
