[gothic-l] The Praeneste fibula

[Padraic Brown]

On Tue, 7 Nov 2000, Anthony Appleyard wrote:

>  jdm314 at aol.com wrote (Subject: Re:  first person n runes; Thiudaworda; etc):-
>> ... as in the (now considered fraudulent) Praenestine Fibula
>> "Markos med Numasioi fhefheked" (vel sim.) "Marcus made me for Numerius"
>
>I saw this inscription quoted as "Manios me fhefhaked Numasioi".
>What grounds are there forthinking that it is fraudulent?

Encyclopedia Britannica makes no indication that it [manios:
med:fhefhaked:numasioi] is fake. This I found at sci.lang:

**********
Subject: Re: New Comparative Latin Grammar
Date: 12/10/1999
Author: Peter T. Daniels <grammatim at worldnet.att.net>

Steinar Midtskogen wrote:
>
> [Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]
>
> > 1. the Praeneste fibula is a fake;
>
> How is it known?

The first suspicions were philological, but microscopic examination
showed that the letters had been incised far more recently than the
age of the fibula itself. (I think it involved amount of corrosion
and patina and such.)

There's a summary in Gordon's Introduction to Latin Epigraphy, with
references to the primary literature (Eric Hamp made a major
contribution to the discussion).
--
Peter T. Daniels     grammatim at worldnet.att.net
**********

The philological suspicion seems to be the reduplicated perfect of
facere. -os is a good nom. s.; med is a good acc. s. pron.; -s- (later
-r-) is a known sound change (like honos, honoris); and -oi is a good
dat. s.; the -d is a good verbal ending, but I don't recall offhand
how it worked with respect to -t except that one was derived from an
old primary ending and the other a secondary. These you can find in
any good Latin grammar. The fh seems strange to me, though, but beyond
this I can't really comment.

Padraic.


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