Miniatures of French history

THE FOUNDING OF MARSEILLES

(599 B.C.)

It was the women who made Marseilles, and through women did there first come to this land writing and the living record of heroes, and wine, and building with stone, and a knowledge of the gods.

For the Phoceans, a Greek people from under the sunrise, had sent forth (many hundred years—more than five hundred years before the Romans came to make Gaul) a shipload to wander and to find new land. But that ship’s company a matron of Ephesus had gathered together. She was their priestess, and her goddess was at the prow. And that women thus led had come about in this fashion:⁠—

The Phocean men having consulted an oracle, the oracle had told them that they should send to Ephesus, where great Artemis, the sister of the Sun, had her temple and her shrine. So the Phoceans sent an embassy to the shrine of the goddess, and while they were there great Artemis appeared in a dream to Aristarché, a matron of that city, and said to her (standing by the bed with her hands uplifted), “Take one of those statues which are sacred to me, and join you these Phocean men under their captain, Simos, and his son Protis, merchants, and sail with them to the new land.”

The long Phocean ship, narrow and lithe in line like a greyhound, low in wall, shot forward under fifty rowers. She so roamed from headland to headland westward all the summer through, and her lookout peered for harbours that no man had yet taken, and for an open emplacement where the new city might stand. All the while the figure of great Artemis, the sister of the Sun, whom Aristarché served with sacrifice, stood upon their prow, and all their good fortune in the beginning of this thing was from women altogether. So they went on from headland to headland, still finding every place of vantage taken; and still shooting westward by day, anchored through the summer nights under the shelter of some jutting land.

Though they had so sailed for many days through the Mediterranean weather, they had not yet found a place for a city. Round the long bay which the Ligurians see from their high hills above the shore, round the bended knee of the north Italian waters, they found cities and islands and promontories encircling little gulfs, but none that would welcome them, and none standing empty for those who would seek new land.

Until at last, when they had passed and marked far inland to the north the high snows of the Alps, and when they had so divided the waters westward for many days more, they came to a shelter cunningly hidden by a god, but discoverable to sailors who had long known the sea. It was a place where many might pass and never guess an entry, but where one with keen eyes would discover, masked under a turn of rock, the gates of a harbour; and thither the helmsman steered them round with his broad oar astern, right round in a sweep (for the haven is cut backward, looking as it were not to the sea, but back again on to the land). And when they had passed the narrow gates they found themselves in a clear, deep pool with firm rock all about and riding for a hundred ships.

There did they let go the anchor, and came to rest after so long a wandering.

About the shores of this perfect harbour they saw no men, or houses of men, nor tillage of fields, nor temples of the gods, but very barren hills high inshore; and the place seemed theirs altogether.

When, therefore, they had landed, still under the guidance of the priestess Aristarché, and sent messengers up into the bare hill country and the low, spare brush of that land, those messengers came back to tell them that all this part was the country of a Ligurian king, and this king was friendly to strangers, and his name was Nam; nor had this people any knowledge of the sea, nor did they use boats and sails and oars, nor were they jealous of their port.

But first, before he would talk of anything with ambassadors, King Nam must give a feast; for he had a daughter to wed, and by the custom of her people she must choose her mate at this feast and declare him at the board. To this feast the Phoceans were bidden, and their embassy sat, with King Nam at his side, having for their chief men Simos the merchant, their captain, and the young man Protis his son; there also round the board sat the chiefs of the hill men, each from his tribe, for each was a suitor and hoped that King Nam’s daughter would choose him. The name of that princess was Gyptis, nor did she come to the feast where the men were, for she was a virgin.

But when the feast was done and the time for her entry had come, the king sent for the princess and ordered that all should be done according to custom. And she came into the room like one dreaming, and she held in her right hand a chalice full of pure water, which she was to give to whomever she would, or to whomever the gods directed her. And that man to whom she gave it should be her husband.

Gyptis then, going round the board while all watched her, put forward the chalice in her hand and held it out to the young man Protis, the stranger from overseas; and he took it and drank, and the king applauded, saying, “This thing was done by the gods.” For it was a god that had guided the virgin, and great Artemis presided here, though the Ligurians did not know her, for they were barbarians.

Once again, therefore, had the goddess worked by a woman, and the chieftains from the hills did not complain, for they knew her presence.

Protis, rising up and taking the cup, drank from it and confirmed the espousals, and the Ligurian men swore firm friendship with the newcomers, and granted them the shore; and, since a harbour was their desire, King Nam made over this empty harbour to them, where the Phoceans, with great rejoicings and thanks to the goddess, built all that a city should have—a council-house, and a market-place, and walls, and gates, and a place for games, and a stronghold also upon a height behind the harbour, and temples for the gods. But their chief temple they raised to Artemis, and put in it that statue of her which they had brought from very far away, from the Phocean land and from home.

When all this was done, and the city founded and the harbour ordered, and ships sailing out and in, Gyptis and Protis, man and wife, were saluted king and queen of the city; but she queen more than he king, because it was the women that had made Marseilles, and they owed themselves all to the goddess.

Now when Gyptis and Protis had thus taken their thrones to rule over Marseilles from youth to age, they took new names as befitted their new station and the new fortunes of the Phocean land, and in these names they bore record of the great good that had happened. For Protis, the lucky bridegroom, called himself Euxenos, which is in Greek the “well fortuned guest”; but Gyptis, who had brought him so great a dowry, putting off the Ligurian name that her mother had given, put on a Greek name also, and called herself “Aristoxena,” which is in Greek “the best of hostesses.” And she worshipped with him her husband, and with all the Phoceans, at the shrine of Artemis, which Aristarché served, the priestess of the city. And so they ruled until they died.

This is the way in which Marseilles was founded, and thus it was that the women founded Marseilles.