Servius comments on the mention of the Hernica saxa, “Hernician stones” (Verg. Aen. VII.684) in the so-called catalogue of Italic troops:
Sabinorum lingua saxa hernae uocantur. quidam dux magnus Sabinos de suis locis elicuit et habitare secum fecit in saxosis montibus: unde dicta sunt Hernica loca et populi Hernici.
Rocks are called hernae in the language of the Sabines. A great chief led some Sabines from their land and made them live with him in the rocky mountains. This is why it is called the Hernician place and the Hernician people.
Serv. ad Aen. VII.684
Herna also appears in a ninth century glossary, where the lemmata of two adjacent entries
have been accidentally swapped: harenae saxa sabinorum lingua hernae lacus uel pauimentum theatri
IEW:187.
724
Chantraine 2009:1140-1141; Beekes 2010:1559.
Harenae rocks in the language of the Sabines Hernae a reservoir or floor at the theatre
CGL V.364.43-44 Hernae is glossed as Marsian in DVS and in a commentary on the Aeneid held in Verona,
preserved in a fifth century manuscript.
Hernici dicti a saxis, quae Marsi herna dicunt.
The Hernici are named after stones, which the Marsi call herna.
Paulus ex F. 89L Audiendum est, quod sic etiam Marsi lingua sua | [saxa h]ernas vocant, [unde loca] Hernica [et populi Hernici sunt.
You should understand that since also the Marsi call rocks hernae in their language, the place is called Hernica and the people are Hernici.
Schol. Veron. ad Aen. VII.684
Baschera has observed that there are some similarities in wording between the Verona glossing and the Servius glossing, which raises the possibility that Servius used this commentary. 726
This gloss occurs in two forms, herna (Paul) and hernae (Servius, CGL and the Veronese scholia). The latter form is likely a reanalysis of a neuter plural herna as a feminine singular, leading to a new plural hernae. As herna is attested only four times and thus unlikely to be well- established, it would be more susceptible to such reanalysis.
Some have been hesitant to see herna as completely Sabine, as with dirus (§5.2.1). EM only calls it “mot marse”, and Bruno suggests herna is from Marsian or Oscan, not Sabine. 727
Negri includes herna in his section on Sabine vocabulary, but includes the Marsian glossings as if it makes the Sabine assignation uncertain. 728
When it comes to etymology, one possible cognate is mentioned throughout, Avestan
zarštva- ‘stone’. While it means the same thing, and both words could be reflexes of the root 729
*g̑hers-, they have different suffixes. While herna is formed with a *-no- suffix, common in
Latin, Avestan zarštva- is not, so the connection remains uncertain. In Latin, outcomes of the root *g̑hers-, e.g. Latin hirsutus ‘shaggy’, horreo ‘bristle’, refer only to organic things such as
animals, but if Avestan zarštva is derived from the same root, this is not the original semantic range. The Sabine glosses fircus and hirpus are often proposed as derived from this same root,
Baschera 2000:57. See Baschera 1999:35 on dating.
726
EM s.v. herna; Bruno 1961:530.
727
Negri 1992:255.
728
Fick 1870:435; von Planta 1892:439; Petr 1899:134; Charpentier 1909:167; WH s.v. herna; IEW:
729
but this argument does not stand up to scrutiny (see §§2.2.2, 5.2.3). This makes Bruno’s concern for the different outcome of the vowel in herna unnecessary. 730
We cannot say much about the origin of herna. The only diagnostic present is the initial
h-, a feature it shares with the Sabine gloss hirpus. By contrast, other Sabine glosses (fircus, fedus
and fasena) have f-, which must be the result of h- > f- (see §2.2.2). This indicates that herna is not from the same language or dialect as these three f- forms, and that it is likely not Faliscan. The gloss gives us no further clues to whether it is Sabellic or Latin in origin.
In the discussions of herna, three ethnic groups feature: the Hernici, the Sabines and the Marsians. The CGL passage includes only the Sabines, but it is likely that this gloss is derived from a passage mentioning the Hernici. Servius explicitly names the Sabines as the first Hernici. Although neither Paul nor the Veronese commentator elaborates on the relationship between the Marsi and the Hernici, the natural assumption would be that they are suggesting that the latter are descended from the former. Interestingly, herna is never glossed as Hernician. This may be due to the fact that this is an origin myth, in which the Hernici do not yet exist.
The Hernici lived in Latium, south-east of Rome (Strabo V.3.4). They are thought to have been among Rome’s early conquests. Little is known of their language. There is one 731
gloss (samentum ‘pellicula de hostia’ Fronto Epist. IV.4), and Crawford includes fourteen inscriptions under “Hernici”, but only two are longer than a few letters (II Hernici 13/ST He 13; II Hernici 14/ST He 3). Considering this dearth of evidence, there is an uncertainty around their language similar to that surrounding Sabine.
The neighbouring Marsi are more closely associated with the Oscan-speaking south. 732
Four clearly Sabellic inscriptions have been identified as Marsian by Rix (II Marruvium 2/ST VM 4; II Marruvium 1/ST VM 4; II Supinum 1/ST VM 6; II Marsi 1/ST VM 7), but the Marsi are often paired with ‘minor’ tribes such as the Sabines, Volsci and Aequiculi. Most 733
of the Social War coinage found in Marsian territory has monolingual Latin legends. This 734
has been taken to indicate that by this time, the Marsi were Latin-speaking monolinguals, but
Bruno 1961:530.
730
See Beloch 1964:268; Oakley 1993:10; Cornell et al. 2013c:554; OCD s.v. Hernici.
731
The Marsi were allies of Rome during the Second Samnite War (Liv. VIII.29; Diod. Sic. XX.44,
732
101) and the Second Punic War (Liv. XXVIII.45), but stood against Rome in the Social War (Vell. Pat. 2. 21)
e.g. Mommsen 1850:344; Buck 1928:3; Rix 2002:66.
733
Mommsen 1850:344-345; Buck 1906:101; Sydenham 1952:89; Dench 1995:124.
it may equally mean that their language was distinct from Oscan, making the Oscan legend of the coins unintelligible to them.
No extant ancient source other than Servius addresses the origin of the Hernici. Stories of Sabines as the ancestors of other Italic groups are by no means uncommon, and the gloss herna is, like πίκος and hirpus (see §§4.2.1, 5.2.3), the supposed origin of an ethnic. 735
However, this story has none of the hallmarks of a Sacred Springs narrative (see §1.2.3). 736
Nevertheless, the Sabines take the role of a seminal people in this myth. It is thus not strange that Conway interprets Servius’ comments as saying that the Hernici are “a Sabine tribe”. 737
However, the Marsi are only separated from the Hernici by the mountains that gave the latter their name. The Veronese scholia appears to see them as closely related:
[Ana]gniam habitant Marsorum coloni. ‘Hernica’ ergo quasi Marsica.
Colonists of the Marsians inhabit Anagnia. Therefore the ‘Hernican’ country is almost the Marsian.
Schol.Veron. ad Aen. VII.684
When faced with two conflicting stories of this kind, it is a common instinct to want to pick one. Mommsen suggests that the Servian passage is corrupt, and that what is a reference to the Sabines should actually be one to the Marsians, but we cannot decide which glossing is correct by majority rule. When we evaluate the evidence, it becomes apparent that the two 738
earlier glossings are both Marsian, whereas the late antique suggestion is Sabine. This diachronic change in assignation can be seen in Servius’ discussion of hirpus (§5.2.3).