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15

Ausonius and the Romans History

Condat with a team of mules. In 1806, local historian Suffrein published a history

of Libourne, which he took to be the former Condat. In Gallic the name means

a place located at a confluence: today around 100 different ‘condats' have been

identified from those times, including what are now Cognac and Angers. Libourne

does not appear on the list. It was on the basis of this meagre evidence that Suf-

frein established Ausonius' villa as being in Saint-Emilion, where Gallo-Roman

artefacts have indeed been found. However, after archaeologists found the foun-

dations of a large Roman villa near Saint-André / Montagne, Suffrein's thesis was

dismissed as pure fabrication. Researchers still argue about which excavations

can be attributed to Ausonius, who owned estates in Bordeaux and Saintes but

spent a large part of his life in Milan and Trier. Whether Suffrein (whose thesis

sought primarily to demonstrate the importance of Libourne as far back as Ro-

man times) was influenced by Jean Cantenat, who renamed his estate with the

unpronounceable name of Rocblancan as “Ausone” in around 1781, or was instead

inspired by the research findings of local historians and amateur archaeologists,

is something we will probably never know. One thing is certain: during this pe-

riod, various other estates in the region (Pétrus, Conseillante and Beauséjour)

also gained finer-sounding (and thus more tempting) names. This small digres-

sion should not be viewed as an accusation of the falsification of history, but is

rather simply designed to illustrate how fact and fiction are often intertwined in

Bordeaux.

Since the most important Atlantic port in southern France came to be in Bor-

deaux, the ocean is still shaping its destiny today, and Bordeaux became the

northernmost part of south-western France to continue successfully growing

fine red wine – for Bordeaux is on the Atlantic, and not on the Mediterranean or

even the Amazon despite many opinions to the contrary! True Bordeaux locals

never go out without a cap and an umbrella, not to mention the local women

who are constantly on the alert and generally under cover, always holding onto

their skirts when walking through the city: if Billy Wilder had filmed ‘Some Like

It Hot' in Bordeaux rather than New York in 1959, Marilyn Monroe's lovely knees

could have been exposed without the need for subway grating. Here the west

wind howls, bringing rain, gales and legendary summer storms, the weather is

sometimes so capricious that the mercury gets the hiccups, and without check-

ing the weather report it is impossible to know whether you should be pulling on

a T-shirt or a woollen jumper, in the height of summer or the depths of winter.

‘A true Bordelais', as I was told with a raised finger by none other than Jacques

Chaban-Delmas, ‘never goes out walking without an umbrella'. I did it anyway

and turned up at an appointment to interview the city's legendary former may-

or soaked to the skin, dripping on the polished and waxed parquet floor of the

city hall like fresh laundry throughout our conversation. On 4 August 2003, the

thermometer here shot up to an exuberant 40.7 degrees Celsius, but on 8 August