Émile Espérandieu (1857-1939)

Émile Espérandieu served in the military and was a historian, epigraphist and archaeologist specialising in ancient Rome in North Africa and France. Along with Salomon Reinach and Camille Jullian he oversaw the completion of the final volumes of the Dictionnaire archéologique de la Gaule.

A scholar and connoisseur of Gaul

In 1905, Émile Espérandieu took on the excavations of Mont Auxois on the site of Alesia, before beginning work on the Recueil général des bas-reliefs, statue et bustes de la Gaule romaine in 1908. These 11 volumes, completed in 1938, are still an important reference work today.

He became editor of the Revue épigraphique in 1899. In 1929, he published the catalogue of Inscriptions latines de Gaule narbonaise, an updated version of volume XII of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum and a summary of his epigraphic work.

The curator of the Roman monuments and musées archéologiques in Nîmes, in 1919, Émile Espérandieu was appointed a member of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres.