Sabine Baring-Gould

“ Hard by the Hôtel de Ville is a beautiful red porphyry figure of a boy and a dolphin which one would have taken to have been Rénaissance work, but that the Rénaissance artists would hardly have taken the pains to sculpture such intractable material as porphyry for a petty town of the size of Fréjus. ”

“ On the south of the port of Fréjus is an old castle. There must have existed there originally a nodule of rock, but out of this a platform has been formed artificially of earth gathered from the port, and this platform was converted in Roman times into a fort. On one side may be seen a curious contrivance for resisting the outward pressure of the earth heaped up within. ”

“ Following a path that leads along the ancient mole one reaches a quadrangular tower of Roman masonry with a stone conical roof, which goes by the name of the Lantern of Augustus, and is supposed to have served as lighthouse at the entrance of the harbour, but the height is too insignificant for this purpose, it is not over thirty-five feet, and there is no indication of any contrivance whereby it could have been utilised for the purpose of a pharos. ”

“ The freedman of Pliny—Forum Julii—The Port of Agay—The Port of Fréjus—Roman castle—Aqueduct—The lantern of Augustus—The cathedral—Cloisters—Boy and dolphin—Story told by Pliny—The Chaine des Maures—Désaugiers—Dines with the porkbutchers of Paris—Siéyès—Sans phrase—Agricola—His discoveries. It was strange. The first person I thought of, on arriving at Fréjus, was not Julius Cæsar the founder of this old port—no, nor Agricola, a native of Fréjus, who is so associated with British history, especially with Scottish—no! ”