The Inscription that Wasn't There:
The Roman Temple at Vienne and CIL XII.1845

James C. Anderson, Jr. (University of Georgia)

The surviving temple at Roman Vienna (modern Vienne, near Lyon) presents a puzzle that is surprisingly common among the Roman monuments of France.  The building itself has weathered the ravages of time and misuse surprisingly intact; its architecture, though battered and often restored, is not just readable in the remains, but invites description and analysis.  In size and in plan it is most comparable to the much better known Roman temple at Nemausus (modern Nîmes) often called the “Maison Carrée,”  though the two buildings are by no means carbon copies of one another.  Sadly, these two temples are also altogether too alike in the lack of a readable dedicatory inscription that (presumably) appeared in the frieze course of each.  In both cases, what survives appears to be no more than a pattern of clamp holes that might represent the attachment patterns for the tynes of bronze letters.  A variety of possible texts has been proposed for each.

The editors of volume 12 of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum permitted a hypothetical restored text to appear in their entry for CIL XII. 3156 (the dedication of the Maison Carrée), and that text remains a focus of controversy to this day.  Faced with the extremely similar situation on the frieze course of the temple at Vienne, the same editors chose not to enshrine any one hypothetical text for the sequence of clamp holes that appears there, and the entry (CIL XII. 1845) contains only a drawing of the temple’s frieze course.  The reasons for this decision will be investigated in this paper, and various possible texts that have been proposed will be discussed.

Turning from the lack of clear inscriptional evidence, the paper will then investigate the temple at Vienne from an architectural perspective.  Its plan, dimensions, architectural decoration, and materials – together with the independent evidence available to us for the history of Roman Vienna – will be combined in an attempt to place the temple in the architectural history of, first, Roman Vienne and, then, Roman Gaul.  The surviving architectural decoration reveals at least two building phases for the surviving building; historical evidence suggests even more.  While such a chronology for the building cannot yield an absolute date, it does help to establish its building sequences within the known architectural, topographical and historical context of the town.  Further comparison to and contrast with the architecture and topography of the temple at Nîmes will help to confirm a possible, even probable, architectural hisory for the inscription-less temple at Vienne.