Note 82 — LETTER XXVII.

The most interesting relic of Roman times yet found at Vieux, is a cippus of variegated marble, about five feet high by two feet wide, and bearing inscriptions upon three of its sides. It generally passes in France by the name of the Torigny marble, being preserved at the small town of the latter name, whither it was carried in 1580, the very year when it was dug up. The Abbé Le Beuf has made it the subject of a distinct paper in the Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions. This cippus supported a statue raised in honor of Titus Sennius Sollemnis, a Viducassian by birth, and one of the high priests of the town. The statue was erected to him after his death, in the Viducassian capital, upon a piece of ground granted by the senate for the purpose, in pursuance of a general decree passed by the province of Gaul. The inscriptions set forth the motives that induced the nation to bestow so marked a distinction upon a simple individual; and, in the foremost rank of his merits, they place the games which he had given to his fellow-citizens, during four successive days.