he put himself to death at the gates of the town,
while the fight was still going on.[31] The Bisuntians claim to
themselves the glory acquired by the Sequani, whose chief city Vesontio
was, by the overthrow of Julius Sabinus, who asserted that he was the
grandson of a son of Julius Caesar, and proclaimed himself emperor in
the time of Vespasian. The Sequani proceeded against him of their own
accord, and conquered him in the interest of the reigning emperor; and
he and his wife Peponilla lived hid in a tomb for nine years. Here two
sons were born to them; and when they were all discovered and carried to
Rome, Peponilla prettily told the emperor that she had brought up two
sons in the tomb, in order that there might be other voices to intercede
for her husband's life besides her own. They were, however, put to
death.[32]

To judge from the style of the hotels, Besancon is not visited by many
English travellers; and yet it well repays a visit, providing those who
care for such things with a full average of vaulted passages, and feudal
gateways, and arcaded court-yards, with much less than the average of
evil smell. There are gates of all shapes and times--Louis-Quatorze
towers, and fortifications specially constructed under Vauban's own eye;
while the approach to the town, from the land side, is by a tunnel, cut
through the live rock which forms a solid chord to the arc described by
the course of the river Doubs. This excavation, called appropriately the
_Porte Taillee_, is attributed by the various inhabitants to pretty
nearly all the famous emperors and kings who have lived from Julius
Caesar to Louis XIV.: it owes its origin, no doubt, to the construction
of the aqueduct which formerly brought into the town the waters pouring
out of the rock at Arcier, two leagues from Besancon, and was the work
probably of M. Aurelius and L. Verus. Local antiquaries assign the
aqueduct to Agrippa, the son-in-law of Augustus, apparently for no
better reason than because he built a similar work in Rome. The arch of
triumph[33] at the entrance to the upper town has been an inexhaustible
subject of controversy for many generations of antiquaries, and up to
the time of Dunod was generally attributed to Aurelian: that historian,
however, believed that its sculptures represented the education of
Crispus, the son of Constantine, and that the name Chrysopolis, by which
Besancon was very generally known in early times, was only a corruption
of