In Julian’s time, the Western Empire was ruled from Milan, the Eastern from Constantinople. His favourite city was far from being a metropolis: Lutetia (now Paris) was just an island in the Seine, plus a few developments on the rive gauche—houses, a palace, an amphitheatre, baths, an aqueduct, and a Champ de Mars on which the Roman troops exercised. There was even the cautious cultivation of vines and fig trees. What Julian loved best were the severe and simple manners of the inhabitants. There was no falsity: in Lutetia, the theatre was either unknown or despised.