Nouvel essai de reconstitution matérielle de l’épitaphe de Sidoine Apollinaire (RICG, VIII, 21)

The author proposes a material reconstruction of the famous epitaph of Sidonius Apollinaris known by a 10th-11th-century manuscript and two stone fragments. His reconstruction is based on the statistics of the dimensions of the letters and spaces between them. The inscription would have been about 0,8 m high and 2,20 m long. The stone was therefore not part of a sarcophagus, but more likely set vertically above the tomb or horizontally on the top of it. He also argues in favour of the authenticity of the date given by the manuscript, which is usually suspected because it is based on the reign of the Eastern emperor Zeno. Nothing definitive can be determined about the place of Sidonius’s tomb, but the two fragments may have been discovered in the vicinity of the vicus christianorum where his predecessors were buried. [Editors]