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| GENERAL INFORMATION | 
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| ARCHITECTURE |
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| A poet's pride | 
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A POET'S PRIDE
The odeums symbolise a certain level of sophistication and are found in cities with a very strong intellectual and cultural life. Thus, Martial, a poet living in Rome at the end of the 1st Century AD was delighted at the idea that his works were read in Vienne : They tell me that my books are the delight of the charming city of Vienne. Everyone there is reading me : old, young, adolescents, and the chaste young woman under the gaze of her stern spouse. I like this better than if the people who drink directly from the waters of the Nile at its very source recited my lines, than if my own Tagus heaped me with Spanish gold, than if Hybla or Mount Hymettus nourished my bees. Thus I am something and I am not deluded by kind words from a flattering tongue. (Martial, Epigrams, Book VII - 88).