L'autel narbonnais du Numen Augusti sous l'œil d'Élie Vinet

Élie Vinet (1509-1587), a distinguished philologist and antiquarian from Aquitaine, was, throughout his career at the Collège de Guyenne, a tireless investigator of his native region’s archaeology and of the epigraphy on local monuments.

Upon the discovery of the Numen Augusti altar in Narbonne (1566), Vinet was asked to decipher its inscriptions. He then published the results of this work in a well-documented and very modern epigraphic memoir, the 1572 Narbonensium Votum et Arae Dedicatio. Drawing inspiration from the sylloges of Italian antiquaries, Vinet was keen to offer his readers a carefully reconstructed version of the two votive inscriptions appearing on the Narbonne altar. This work included a diplomatic inscription and abundant remarks organized by lemmata.

The Narbonensium Votum et Arae Dedicatio, the inaugural production of Simon Millanges’ Bordeaux printing house, is at once a remarkable work of antiquarian scholarship, and an edition designed to showcase humanist knowledge in Aquitaine as well as the dynamic vigour of its scholarly networks.