Much work has been done on Sabine glosses, particularly their classification. The Sabine glosses are approached either as remnants of an otherwise unattested Italic language, or as dialectal words from Sabine Latin or Latinised Sabine. Due to this some scholars are 105
Regina inscription: RIB 1065 <https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions/1065>
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[accessed 22 December 2017]; Mullen 2012:1-2. Runic graffiti in Hagia Sophia: Knirk 1999:26-27. Mommsen 1850:348; Wallace 2007:xi.
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A similar example is Samaritan, originally an ethnic that due to the parable in Luke 10.33 has
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become a term for a helpful or charitable person. This has led to the use of the alternative ethnics when referring to the people, e.g. German Samaritan but Samariter in Luther’s Bible, Swedish samarier in the most recent Bible translation (<http://www.bibeln.se/las/2k/luk#q=Luk+10%3A33> [accessed 22 December 2017]) but samarit in older translations and in speech (SAOB s.v. samarit).
Remnants of language: von Planta 1892:23; Buck 1906:100; Buck 1928:3; Bruno 1961:501; Baldi
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2002:134; Dench 2005b:91. Latin dialect: Mommsen 1850:24; Conway in Sonnenschein 1897:339 n. 2; Evans 1939:16-17; Palmer 1954:38. Bakkum 2009 uses the term “Sabine” in multiple different ways throughout his book. At ibid:115, 163, he claims Sabine is Sabellic, but at ibid:212 he brands it “marginal Latin”.
hesitant whether to classify Sabine as Latino-Faliscan or Osco-Umbrian/Sabellic. Palmer is 106
only convinced of its Osco-Umbrian status by the names Pompilius and Clausus, while von Planta brands it a “Zwischendialekt”. Buck, Baldi, Stuart-Smith and Wallace mention Sabine among the “minor” dialects/languages. Some scholars have argued that Sabine was close to 107
Umbrian, while others argue that the Sabines spoke something akin to Oscan. Negri argues 108
that Sabine shares features of both Sabellic and Latin, and is its own branch of Italic (see §3.2.1). 109
In all these discussions, there is an assumption of unity. Often, glosses are listed with 110
little or no context. No regard is paid to the textual environment of the glosses or the historical conditions of the sources, both of which can include crucial information. If we assume that all Sabine glosses are from one language, simply on the grounds that they are glossed that way, we are also assuming that every single ancient author who glosses a term as Sabine, from Varro in the first century BCE to Ioannes Lydus in the sixth century CE, means the same thing with ‘Sabine’. It is evident that later ancient scholars read their predecessors, but this does not mean that they knew their mind. It is also clear that we are not dealing with self-effacing copying of older sources. The same word is sometimes glossed differently by different authors – fedus is Sabine in Varro but old Latin in Festus and Scaurus, hirpus is Oscan in Strabo but Sabine in Servius (see §§2.2.3, 5.2.3). We cannot assume consensus on what ‘Sabine’ is across a time-period of over 600 years.
This assumption that the Sabine glosses are from a single language will on occasion lead scholars to posit sound-changes specific to Sabine, e.g. /f/ for Latin /h/, or /l/ for Latin /d/ (see §§2.2.2, 2.2.6). Calling these changes sound-laws would be a gross exaggeration – they are at most tendencies. Most are not even that, but features attested only in one or two words. This is not enough material for positing a sound-law. Another, related issue is the arbitrary inclusion and exclusion of words. Tilly sees the dialectal form horda (RR II.5.6) as
Most authors writing before the decipherment of South Picene (see Marinetti 1985:199-121) use
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the term ‘Osco-Umbrian’ for this branch, rather than the current ‘Sabellic’ or ‘Sabellian’ (see above). The only difference between the terms is that ‘Sabellic’ includes South Picene as well as Oscan and Umbrian. For a comprehensive discussion on the changing terminology of these language branches, see Rix 2002:1-2.
von Planta 1892:23; Schrijnen 1922:224; Buck 1928:2-3; Palmer 1954:38; Baldi 2002:29; Stuart-
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Smith 2004:116; Wallace 2004:812.
Sabine connection to Umbrian: Coleman 1986:124; Adiego Lajara 1992:21; Baldi 2002:181;
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Stuart-Smith 2004:75, 116; Bispham 2007:116; Poccetti 2013:217. Sabine connection to Oscan: Schrijnen 1922:224-225; Kent 1951a:296n; Collart 1954b:231; Salmon 1967:113; Becker 1996:343.
Negri 1992:256-257; Negri 1993:205.
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Often this is only implicit, but e.g. Negri 1986-1989:138 states it explicitly.
Sabine, as f/h variation occurs in some Sabine glosses. Conway identified a startling 111
number of basic Latin words, such as olere, lingua and mulier, as Sabine after positing a Sabine sound-change *d > l. A change -di ̯- > /s/ has been suggested based on the supposedly 112
Sabine Clausus (Latin Claudius) and the gloss basus (CGL V.170.28) (never glossed as Sabine), interpreted as cognate with badius ‘reddish-brown’ (see §5.5.1). However, this change cannot 113
be seen in the Sabine gloss trimodia, which does not prevent Negri from treating -di ̯- > /s/ in Sabine as fact (see §5.5.1). If any gloss of any language can be used to prove a Sabine 114
sound-law, and Sabine glosses can be excluded if they do not adhere to such a sound-law, Sabine becomes a useless term.
The Sabine language has been used as a way of dealing with phonetic inconsistencies within Latin, such as the early Sabellic loans bufo, rufus, scrofa, bos and lupus, and Conway’s ‘Sabine l’ words. In such cases, the Sabine assignation is nothing more than an convenient 115
explanation. Sabine becomes a dust-bin language, where Sabellic features of Latin can be 116
stowed away, making Latin a neat, regular language. Palmer even describes the Latin outcome of the medial aspirate as “purely Roman”, using a word signifying geography and ethnicity rather than language. Although recent scholarship has left this mentality of language purity 117
behind, the Latin words with Sabellic features are often approached as a problem to be solved. Something that all Sabine glosses do share is Latin terminations. This had led scholars to argue that by the time of Varro, the Sabines spoke Latin, or Sabine had been sufficiently latinised to essentially be Latin). However, the existence of Latin terminations in 118
manuscripts does not necessarily mean that these appeared in the original (now long-lost) versions of the texts. The terminations may have been added by a scribe to make the text more comprehensible. Scribes evidently struggled with unfamiliar case forms, as in the Celtic forms at LL VIII.64, read as alacco, alaucus by Goetz and Schoell, Alacco, Alaccus by Dahlmann
Tilly 1973b:253.
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Conway 1893:165, 167; Conway 1897:361.
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von Planta 1892:412; Radke 1972:436; Coleman 1986:116; Negri 1986-1989:139; Keaney
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1991:206-207; Negri 1992:250; Negri 1993:201. Negri 1992:256; Negri 1993:204.
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Osthoff 1894:279; EM s.v. lupus; Palmer 1954:37; Radke 1972:438; Cornell and Matthews 1982:18;
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Negri 1992:230; Negri 1993:197; Coleman 2001:89-90; Poccetti, Poli and Santini 2001:363; Negri 2013:188. Other scholars stop at calling the loans Sabellic: Ernout 1909:67-68; Schrijnen 1922:228; Poucet 1985:80; Meiser 1998:105.
See Baldi 2002:182-183 for an exhaustive list of Sabellic-looking words in Latin.
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Palmer 1954:37. The term lingua Romana occurs occasionally in Imperial literature, but it denotes a
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widening of the term rather than a specification compared to lingua Latina; see Adams 2003b:194-196. Mommsen 1850:348; Conway 1897:351; Buck 1906:100; Schrijnen 1922:227; Evans 1939:16-17.
and Weisgerber, alauda, alaudas by Kent and alauda, alausa by Ernout. At the same time we 119
should keep in mind that there is no positive evidence to suggest that the terminations of Sabine glosses were added by later scribes rather than the authors. Some glosses are undoubtedly corrupt, such as the Sabine etymologies for porcus (LL V.97) and sol (LL V.68), but attempts to reconstruct them often become an exercise in excavating the text for ‘authentic’ Sabine forms, free from corrupting Latin influence (see §2.2.1).