'[86]_ Ecclesiastically, its interest dates of course
from a very early period, from the times of the martyrs of Gaul and the
first Rogations. The Festival of _Les Merveilles_ long commemorated the
restoration of the bodily forms of the Lyonnese martyrs, as their
scattered dust floated past the home of Blandina and Ponticus; and the
dedication of the cathedral to S. Maurice keeps alive the tradition that
Paschasius, bishop of Vienne, was warned by an angel to watch on the
banks of the Rhone, and so rescued the head and trunk of the
soldier-martyr, which had been cast into the river at Agaunum (S.
Maurice in Valais), and had floated down--probably on sounder
hydrostatical principles than the 'Floating Martyr'--through the Lake of
Geneva, and so to Vienne. There are still many very interesting Roman
remains in the city, as the Temple of Augusta and Livia, the Arcade of
the Forum, and the monument seen from the railway to the south of the
town. The temple is being carefully restored, and the large collection
of Roman curiosities which it contained is to be removed to the church
of S.
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