Kuitoi lekatos. Une nouvelle lecture de la pierre de San bernardino di Briona (Novare)

The Gaulish inscription from San Bernardino de Briona (Novara) is often mentioned in order to illustrate the first steps of Romanisation in Cisalpine Gaul. Epigraphical scholarship has tended to consider that this inscription contains a list of nouns among which there is a Roman praenomen, belonging to a local legatus, which is an extremely rare phenomenon. It is argued that this kuitos lekatos received this honorific title for having provided services to Rome. This paper discusses the concept of legatus in the historical context of the inscription and proposes a new reading of the text, based on an autopsy, which changes substantially the traditional one and shows that there is not any syntactical link between the name and the presumed position.