Franciscan, Antonio Boyer, of Nice, it had a square basement about twenty-four feet high, above which rose a circular structure sixty feet high, divided into two stages, with marble columns ranging one above another. Between these columns were niches once adorned with statues, and the whole was capped by a cupola surmounted, probably by a statue of Victory, or of Augustus. In the basement were two doors, and above the north door was the tablet inscribed with the dedication to Augustus. The upper portion, converted into a tower in the Middle Ages, was destroyed in 1705 by order of Louis XIV. Mines of gunpowder were exploded under it.
The church, erected in 1777, and the houses of La Turbie are built out of the stones pillaged from this monument. In the church is a copy of the S. Michael of Raphael, given by the Musée S. Germain in exchange for a statue and the fragments of the inscription, from the Trophy of Augustus.[1] It is worth while to sit on the rock and look at this ruin—the ruin of an immense monument set up to honour a mortal deified, and to whom sacrifices were offered, who gathered into his own hands all the authority and power of the known world for his own selfish glorification—and think, that at the same time He was born who made Himself of no reputation and took on Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of man—who humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. The Trophy of Augustus is a heap of ruins, but the Catholic Church, the trophy of Him who was born under Caesar Augustus, is everywhere, and imperishable.
- ↑ A fine head, dug out from the ruins, and supposed to be that of Drusus, is now in the Copenhagen museum.
