Arelate was an important town at the time of Caesar’s invasion, and subsequently received a Roman colony, and became under the later emperors one of the most flourishing towns on the further side of the Alps. It was pillaged in 270 A.υ., but restored and embellished by Constantine, who made it his principal residence, and founded what is now the suburb of Trinquetaille. After the fall of the Roman empire the city passed into the power of the Visigoths, and rapidly declined. It was plundered in 730 by the Saracens, but in the 10th century became the capital of a kingdom of the same name, formed by Bozon from the two kingdoms of Burgundy. In the 12th century it was a free city, governed by consuls and podestats after the model of the Italian republics, which it also emulated in commerce and navigation. In 1251 it submitted to Charles of Anjou, and from that time onwards followed the fortunes of Provence. A number of ecclesiastical councils have been held here, as in 314,—when the Dona-tists were condemned,—354, 452, and 475. Arles still possesses many monuments of Roman architecture and art, the most remarkable being the ruins of an amphitheatre (arènes), capable of containing 20,000 spectators, which was turned, by Abd-el-Rahman, into a fortress and flanked with four massive towers, of which two are still standing. There are also a theatre, in which, besides the famous Venus of Arles, discovered in 1651, many other remains have been found; an ancient obelisk of a single block, 47 feet high, erected in 1676 in the Place Royale ; and the ruins of two temples, an aqueduct, and a triumphal arch. There is, besides, a Roman cemetery of great beauty, which has been laid out as a public pleasureground, and bears the name of Aylscamps or EHscamps, which hardly conceals the original designation, “Elysii CampiP (See Clair, Monuments d ’ Arles, 1837; Millin, Voy. dans les départ, du Midi de la France', Estrangin, Etudes archéol. sur Arles.)