Taking
a Guided Tour of Volubilis - Day 248 - May 31, 2022
Youssef and
Jabriel picked us up from our riad in Fez (after another grand breakfast) and
we swung inland to Volubilis, still another Moroccan UNESCO site. We would be
walking the lands of the former home of Isidris I, and before that, the far
southwestern seat off the Roman Empire, famed for its fertile olive groves. The
city embraces over 20 centuries of human history. Even before the Romans set up
shop, it was the capital of Mauretania under the Berber king Juba I, and later
his Romanized son King Juba II, who was raised by Julius and Octavius Caesar
and married to the daughter of Queen Cleopatra and Mark Antony. An impressive
pedigree.
The Ruins of
Volubilis outside of Fez MoroccoMorocco has built a modern and stunning museum
on the premises loaded with examples of the city’s art and sculptures and
interactive displays that illustrate its history and rediscovery beginning in
1915 when Morocco was still under French rule. You could write whole books
about this place and so I am devoting an entire Vagabond Dispatch to the city.
Redouane was
the guide in charge of us as we stepped out of the air conditioned car Jabriel
was driving into the 100º heat. He was young, energetic, knowledgeable and
fluent in English, which was good news for us. He quickly took us beyond the
museum and among the city’s ruins.
“Yella, yella,”
he said with his broad smile. Arabic for let’s get moving. Above us the
cloudless sky and sun’s cyclopean orb baked us and the crumbling arches of the
city’s ancient marble, friezes and mosaics. We wound through the remains of
public buildings that included a basilica, temple, triumphal arch, baths, a
circuit of walls over one and a half miles long and great houses with mosaic
floors that still looked beautiful, if battered. Not another soul was in
sight.
Cyn and Redouane walk toward Volubilis’ basilica
It’s not every
day that you get to wander a land where centurions, artists, builders and
kings, Roman craftsmen, merchants and bureaucrats once trod. At the
height of the empire 20,000 “Volubilitani” walked these cobblestone streets. I
imagined the horse and mule carts clattering through the city, the bustling
markets, probably much like those in the Medinas of Fez — without the air
conditioning. It all provided a sobering perspective on the human race and I
was humbled.
Here we were at
the southwestern rim of an empire that stretched from the valleys of Morocco to
the ancient city of Babylon. It reminded me that we are all blips in the human
drama. Kingdoms, kings and queens come and go - Caesar, Alexander, Xerxes,
Cleopatra, Isidris, Juba — and I thought of Percy Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias”:
“I met a
traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two
vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the
desert. . . .
… And on the
pedestal, these words appear:
‘My name is
Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my
Works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside
remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal
Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and
level sands stretch far away.”
All of us, one way or another, become Ozymandias.
The excavations
that began more than 100 years ago have revealed several neighborhoods and
inscriptions that together give some idea of the city’s storied past. The Roman
Empire annexed the Kingdom of Mauretania in 42 AD and Volubilis' status was
quickly elevated to a municipality. A city wall was built to enclose an area of
100 acres and a great Triumphal Arch was erected that testifies to the later
Christianization of the population. By the time the Roman government and army
evacuated in 285 AD (a period as long as the United States has existed), the
city was teaming with Syrians, Phoenicians, Arabs, Jews and Spanish immigrants,
but then the city began to decline until Idriss I arrived seven centuries later
and made what was then known as Walila his capital.
Volubilis’ main road.
All around us
lay ruins with a few spare Mediterranean cypress and olive trees that tossed
some shade our way. The wooden, metal and clay tiles that once covered these
buildings are long gone, but we could still see the outline of roads, walls,
indoor gardens and fountains where water once flowed through sprawling and
complex underground cisterns and plumbing systems. In one great house the
remnants of a stunning mosaic bath (and one carved phallus) remained despite
the hammering they had taken over the centuries. Beyond the walls lay acres of
olive orchards, a reason for the region’s long importance as a trade center. We
passed an ancient olive press, where the fruit was smashed by man and beast
into oil that was as good as gold then (and now).
Little more
than the stone steps and marble archways of the city’s basilica remained, a
grand Roman palace where municipal courts adjudicated criminal trials, debated
politics and held public ceremonies. And at the perimeter of the city, the
great arch stood, a testament to the durability of marble, if not empire.
Back in our
car, returning to Fez, I had to marvel at the complexity and richness of this
city built so long ago. Despite the passage of all that time, I realized we are
not very different here in the 21st century than the people who walked the
streets of Volubilis, or the Medinas of Tangier and Fez centuries ago, except we have
more technology, more ways to do both good and evil the way the Internet,
nuclear power and combustion engines do. When will we learn to make plowshares
of swords and leave it at that? The human dramas continue. Pain and goodness
ebb and flow even as our numbers grow and we add complexity at an exponential
rate to the human condition. Mostly goodness prevails within the human race.
More often than not we humans have one another’s backs despite what my Alma
Mater CNN might have to say, or Fox News, as each plays out the daily news
cycle again and again. Otherwise we would long ago wiped ourselves off the
planet. Even so, as we headed back to Fez and prepared for departure the next
day, I couldn’t shake one thought from my mind: why do we seem to so often
repeat the mistakes of the past?
This is
Dispatch XXXI in a series about a Vagabond’s Adventures - journalist and
National Geographic Explorer Chip Walter and his wife Cyndy’s effort to capture
their experience exploring all seven continents, all seven seas and 100+
countries, never traveling by jet.
If you’ve
enjoyed this journey, please take a look at Chip’s other adventures (and misadventures) … and don’t
forget to check the Vagabond Journal and our
Travel Recommendations to help you plan YOUR
next adventure.
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Resource: https://vagabond-adventure.com/library/visiting-the-ruins-of-volubilis-ancient-rome-speaks
