Escaping the 21st century

I’m in the beautiful ‘pink’ city of Toulouse in the Midi-Pyrenees region of southwest France, this week, to give a seminar paper, and to meet with various chercheur-enseignants at the Université de Toulouse. Founded in 1229 the University of Toulouse is one of the oldest in Europe, although subsequently split into three.

The city of Toulouse itself has been in existence for around 24 centuries, and now with around a million inhabitants is the fourth-largest, but fastest growing city in France. It is  home to Airbus, houses the European aerospace industry, the Toulouse Space Centre, the manufacture of satellites and various other technological endeavours.

From 118BC for around 500 years, Toulouse was part of a large area of southern France colonised by the Romans, and called Provincia Romana (the modern Provence is said to have come from this name) or Transalpine Gaul. From around 43BC to 33BC it seems that Mark Antony was the person responsible for this province, Rome’s largest.
A bust of Mark Antony’s head, along with those of many other important Romans, is in the collection of antiquities in the Musée Saint-Raymond. His face is so finely detailed that when I stand in front of him, I imagine him sitting for the artist, or walking the streets of Toulouse, and feel myself plunged down the vortex of 2000 years, a hiss of vertigo in my ears, as I escape the 21st century.