I was once asked (in a KFC in Nice, wearing swimmng trunks and a t-shirt) "Monsieur, avez vous des pantalons?" I wish I'd had this pic with me to demonstrate the historical precedent.
My Latin falls over on inscriptions like this which may have irregular spellings and abbreviations. But I think Comnisca is the dude's name and he's the son of Vedelli. oh and he's riding a horse in battle - this is a gravestone.
Another gravestone this time for a prosperous couple who's heirs wanted them remembered just the way they were.
This one caught my eye mainly for the very weird proportions of the portrayal of a human head. It's like the sculptor wasn't used to doing full heads in profile - a bit like some AI art generators these days.
I just love this guy's face. It could be Edward G Robinson, who was of Romanian origin, or any number of squashed-nosed thugs in a 1930s gangster movie.
After seeing the cathedral, we noticed there was an Archeology Museum next door, but didn't have time to see it properly till the next day.
The lady on the ticket desk was very kind about my attempt at pronouncing Archeology in French (I got it wrong, but here's a hint, the 'ch' is hard like a 'k' as in the original Greek and of course English) and I don't know whether this was connected, but she also gave us half-price tickets (I suspect it was because we were entering after lunch, rather than because of the shock of an English person actually trying to speak French). The normal price is only 7 euros so well worth it even if they don't take pity on you.
There was so much in there. I only really started taking pictures in the funerary stone section, but there's a lot of local Iron Age, Bronze Age and Roman artefacts there, showing what a busy place this was over the centuries at the centre of Western European travel and commerce.
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The inscription is a fun puzzle. I think you're right about the name, and F for filius as usual. I'm not sure about all the abbreviations either, but EQ must stand for eques, a knight, as we can see, from the Ala [Gallorum] Indiana. That's a wing of auxiliary horsemen from Gaul, named after the first commander Julius Indus, according to Wikipedia. Roman soldiers came from all over the empire, but not all the way from India.
yeah, afterwards I had a little look around and of course it's been the subject of study and shows up with a full transcription and translation here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26604036
Do rich people still get themselves carved in stone? Artistic masons may not get as much trade these days.
Good on you for trying your French. I'm trying again to learn it and some of the pronunciation is subtly different to what you would expect in English.
More likely to be NFTs these days. I think a stone head of Bezos or Musk would be a bit creepy.
What I realised most about my French is that I learned it in the 1980s and things have changed, not only in the way that English is better known than back then, but also because more is expected of you as an adult than as a child. It's good brain practice to have a go.
I bet there are some billionaires with gold busts of themselves in their palaces.
I have been doing Duolingo for the last few months and have definitely picked up some of the basics of French. My German is not bad, but that and English have a lot of differences compared to how French works. As you say it is a good mental exercise.