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Scipionic Forgeries
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
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Latin ‘plvs.’—To begin somewhat remotely, I am not satisfied with the current explanation of Lat. plus. As regards pleores, to pass over Cuny's mistaken derivation in MSL. 16. 322, the explanation from plēyōses is correct— IE. plēyo. (in Arm. li, ‘full’): plēyos–:: Sk. návya: compv. návyas, cf. pánya: pányas and távya: távyas. IE. plēyes also appears, not only in Sanskrit as prắyas and (from plēyen) in πλε(í)–ων (after suplv. πλεῖ–στος: Av. fraē–šta), but, by a quite rigorous phonetic, in O.Norse fleiri, from a primate flaiz-an <flā–(y)iz– <plē–yes–; cf. Lappish sājet ‘sow,’ borrowed from a North Germanic verb-stem sā–ya <IE. sē–ye/o This leaves the o-grade stem IE. plōis high and dry, for Lat. ploes–, if admitted, will come from plōyes (cf. aes <ayes). Like minus, and in point of usage even more strikingly than minus, plus is a neuter substantive. I start for plus, as Brugmann once did (cf. IF. II. 93), from IE. plewes (cf. Lat. iūs <iewes: iouestod), root p(e)leu in πολū After plūs came plūres plūrimus as from minus came minores minimus. The evidence of Festus' plisima | plurima is not evidence for plōis. It is not possible, under the same circumstances, for IE. ói to have yielded Latin ū and ī. Accordingly, if we do not merely correct plisima to plusima, after Varro LL. 7. 27, we may restore haplographic or haplologic pl[us]is(s)ima (double superlative like postremissimus). Or in view of the equation πλεȋ–στος – Av. fraē–šta I would reconstruct plisima from plei-soma—subsequently changed, after plūs, to plūrima.
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References
page 163 note 1 A solitary deflected o-grade comparative seems to me quite inadmissible. Of course Greek λώιον has ω, but not a gradation ō. The hiatus in ωι categorically forbids the derivation of λώιον from (ω)lēō, in spite of Boisacq's easy complacence. The truth still remains that λώιον and, in my opinion, Arm. lau ‘better’ belong with λαύω To judge by the strong grade comparative λώιον, the root was an ō/ᾰ(e) root, with secondary ā in λālα, etc.
page 163 note 2 In his Laws, 3. 7, Cicero wrote ludorum, and Cicero had learned the XII. Tables by heart as a boy. Archaisms were often intended to make inscriptions more solemn. Thus we account for the inconsistent forms of the inscription of the Faliscan Cooks (Diehl, No. 102), doubtless a guild of long standing. Ground for objective suspicion touching the age of this inscription is furnished by the three forms of P (see Zvetaieff's, apograph, Inscr. Ital., p. 72Google Scholar). Besides, the language, with all its vagaries, is Latin and not Faliscan. Of inconsistencies I note the following: (1) gonlegium X comuiuia(G/C), (2) dederunt X coiraueront (u/o, cf. neuter huc for hoc), (3) ueitam X comuiuia (ei/ī), (4) ququei X quolundam (qu/quo for co), (5) aetatei X sai[pi]sume (ai/ae), (6) aciptum (i for e), (7) nom. pl. Falesce X ququei. We also have (8) oi for ū in loidos and coiraueront; cf. loidos (but murum) and coirauerunt in No. 179 (108 B.C.). There is nothing on the ‘titulus’ of No. 102 that is older than the like portions of No. 179 (e.g. nom. pl. magistreis on both). The permanence of the guild of Faliscan cooks need not surprise us, nor the antiquarian felicities and infelicities of their diction (Dogberryese)
page 164 note 1 Hesychian λίζει παίζει (λιζ<ligy) belongs with Goth. leikan ‘hop.’
page 164 note 2 In the interplay between the roots ale (áλείο) and mel a stage mal arose, cf. μάλευρον after áλευρον. But α<ο present seem to have been productive in Gothic.
page 164 note 3 Buecheler also brought into this group the riddlesome Umbr. disleral insust (=inritum fecerit), wherein e may come from IE. ě ē or ei, but not from oi. Perhaps, if I may venture on a conjecture, that accounts for only part of the word, –lera– is to be connected with OHG. lāri (<lèryo–, inanis): λῆρος (inania verba). [Varro decided for delerus as against delerus, see Funaioli, , Gram. Rom. Frag., p. 295Google Scholar.] It suits the context well enought if disleral insust be defined by ‘to vitiate a sacrifice by idle talk, muttering.’ Perhaps –leral insust is from lerali ‘inane’ + a form of inquit. [It is not impossible that, as we use Ital. bravo, the Umbrains had picked up λῆρος from Greek traders.] As for the Campanian proper name Loisios, its oi may represent u in the Greek name Λύσιος; see Lindsay, LL. p. 36, Marouzeau in MSL. 17. 272, adding Cloetemestra and Moesia.
page 165 note 1 Going back some thirty years I may record the merry tale of a municipal campaign in which it was brought out, to the great delight of the public, that a certain candidate had got a local artist to execute an order for a dozen ancestors, appropriately aged and costumed, all painted to resemble the daguerreotype of one actual grandfather.
page 166 note 1 On r<umores> instead of the usual R<o–ma(n)i> see below.
page 166 note 2 Little reliance can be placed on the shape of P as a criterion for dating. See on the three P's found in the inscription of the Faliscan Cooks (p. 163, n. 2).
page 169 note 1 On e for IE. i see Lindsay l.c. p. 194. A man hunting for evidence of archaic spellings might extract from Festus as evidence for e/i ab-emito amecus acetare demoe (δῆμοι) foreculae indepisci; and, per contra, i for e: iousite lepista.
page 169 note 2 I here record as an astonishing instance of the range of proclisis the German usage of 'ne for eine, e.g. in a line of war poetry:
Da oben fliegt 'ne Taube.
The reduction of hēc (hīc) to hic is like the reduction of Eng. one to a.
page 169 note 3 Owing to my own defective copy I once had to have a cardplate containing the name Brockenbrough re-engraved—to restore the second r.