IS IT GERGOVIA?

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 88, 15 April 1933, Page 7 (Supplement)

IS IT GERGOVIA?

RUINS, DISCOVERED.

It sounds an incredible thing that the ruins of an important town of ancient Gaul, a town so lirge that the circtim-' ference of its fortifications is more than four miles, and lying within two miles of so important an industrial centre, ae. Clermont-Ferrand, should have remained entirely undiscovered until a year ago, and should now have been revealed through the activities of one man, aided only by the members of his family. It is not as if these ruins were buried deep and had to be excavated. Many of the fifteen hundred huts of rough 6tone, with no mortar or cement to bind them, of which it is composed, are visible above ground, and the surrounding stone fortifications, are in places as much as twelve feet high, with towers and gateways, and a wide passage on the top of the wall. But if they were not covered with earth, these ruins were so overgrown that they were almost invisible except in winter, and the climate of the lii"h plateau of Auvergne is not such as to° tempt antiquarians to explore at that time of the year. Maurice Busset. the hardly middle-aged curator of the Clermont-Ferrand Museum —he was an airman in the war —is the discoverer of this remarkable ruin. He. is convinced that he has come upon Gergovia, the capital of Arvcni, whose great chieftain, Vercingetorix, inflicted such a defeat on Julius Caesar, when the latter tried to besiege him there. Tradition had given the name of Gergovia to another plateau, five miles away, but on it there are no ruins.