ANCIENT CITY OF COLOGNE

Taranaki Daily News, 5 October 1929, Page 28 (Supplement)

ANCIENT CITY OF COLOGNE

NAMED BY ROME’S MARINES. EXCAVATION DISCOVERIES. A recent oral .questionnaire addressed to 25 persons at random on the street and subway revealed a hazy idea about the city of Cologne, writes Professor R. V. W. Mogoffin, New York, in a recent article in the New York Herald Tribune. The question was: “How did the German city of Cologne, on the Rhine, get its name?” Several frankly admitted that they had not the faintest idea. Nearly all were sure that it had something to do with the perfume called eau de Cologne. One was sure she had read that the Rhine flowed over some fragrant rocks or something above the city and that eau de Cologne was bottled Rhine River water. This leads up, of course, to the intimation that they were all wrong. Cologne (Koeln in German) is nothing but a slightly changed form of the Latin word colonia. Its full name was Colonia Agrippinae. This early city of Übii (oppidium Übiorum), a people mentioned by Julius Caesar, was changed to a colony, and named after Agrippina, who was’ in camp with her husband there for several years. This Agrippina was the grand-daughter of the famous Agrippa, the admiral of Augustus. One of her brothers was the Emperor Carigula, and her son was the Emperor Nero. Cologne is one of the richest of the cities of Western Europe in Roman antiquities. Two Roman’ legions had been stationed on the Rhine for years before their camp and the adjoining settlement were raised to the status of a colonial city, in 50. There is in Cologne a museum which contains many of the multitude of things which have been found accidentally or in archaeologically- ' directed- excavations, - • ■

Lately there have been found on one site a lot of things which have historical importance. These excavations have been conducted on the site of the old Altenburg brewery about a mile and a half outside the old south Roman gate. It has turned out to have been the site of the supply depot for the Roman Rhine flotilla and the • permanent encampment of. the Roman marines from about 20 to. 250. A great- many weapons, hundreds of bricks and tiles bearing the names which give approximately the date when they were kindled and many pieces of bronze were found. The structural remains, however, are the most important part of the new discoveries. The foundations and lower walls of a block of barracks have been uncovered near the centre of the site. At the ends of a long corridor are the rooms which were occupied by the centurions. Off the corridor on both sides are numbers of small rooms which were undoubtedly the sleeping quarters of the soldiers. Stables and storerooms have also been identified. Further, the -whole encampment was heated. The cellars where the furnaces were placed, and many of the hot-air pipes to the various rooms, have been uncovered. A number of cooking stoves have also been discovered here and there. In connection with the excavation, the source of the drinking water for the encampment and colony was also found by tracing up an underground aqueduct for 50 miles to the neighbourhood of Nettersheim, in Eifel. The excavations are thus far only about half completed. South and West Germany are proud of their Roman relics, which are carefully protected. The smaller objects are put in local museums, where they are seen and studied by the German boys in connection with their Latin. Before the war, boys, both of high school and college age, wrote to one another on postcards in Latin, knowing that their mothers and sisters could not . read them. Since the war, however, girls in Germany have also begun to . study Latin. This fact, of course, has put one Latin game, in Germany at least, in the category of archaeology. /