Hirpus appears in a comment on Apollo’s role as sancti custos Soractis, “the guardian of holy
Soracte” (Verg. Aen. XI.785-788), which relates the origin of the priests called the Hirpi Sorani.
Soractis mons est Hirpinorum in Flaminia conlocatus. in hoc autem monte cum aliquando Diti patri sacrum persolueretur – nam diis manibus consecratus est – subito uenientes lupi exta de igni rapuerunt. quos cum diu […] sequerentur, delati sunt ad quandam speluncam, halitum ex se pestiferum emittentem, adeo ut iuxta stantes
O’Hara 1996:91 speaks of the adjective Hernicus as a Sabine word, something which is not implied
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by either Vergil or Servius.
Strabo, who provides most of the Sacred Springs narratives, does not say anything about the origin
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of the Hernici, and only mentions them in passing when discussing Latium (Strabo V.3.4). Conway 1897:355.
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Mommsen 1850:348 n.6.
necaret: et exinde est orta pestilentia, quia fuerant lupos secuti. de qua responsum est, posse eam sedari, si lupos imitarentur, id est rapto uiuerent. quod postquam factum est, dicti sunt ipsi populi Hirpi Sorani: nam lupi Sabinorum lingua uocantur hirpi. 739
Mount Soracte is situated in Flaminia in the territory of the Hirpini. Once when a sacrifice was offered up in honour of Dis Pater – for it is sacred to the spirits of the underworld – some wolves suddenly came walking and snatched the innards out of the fire. When they had followed them for a long time, they were led into a cave which emitted noxious vapour, to such a degree that it killed those standing beside it, and from it rose plague, because they had followed the wolves. When they asked about the plague, the response was that it could be stopped if they lived like wolves, that is, by making their living through robbery. After they had done this, these people were called Hirpi
Sorani, because wolves are called hirpi in the language of the Sabines.
Serv. ad Aen. XI.785 This story is not found elsewhere, but hirpus appears as a gloss already in Augustan times. Then it was glossed, not as Sabine, but as Samnite, in relation to the wolf that guided the Hirpini to their new home. 740
Irpini appellati nomine lupi, quem irpum dicunt Samnites
The Hirpini are named after the word for the wolf, which the Samnites call irpus.
Paulus ex F. 93L ἵρπον γὰρ καλοῦσιν οἱ Σαυνῖται τὸν λύκον
For the Samnites call the wolf hirpos.
Strabo V.4.12 The Hirpini were a Samnite tribe in the southern reaches of the Apennines. The Hirpi Sorani were a priesthood based by Mount Soracte (Strabo V.29; Plin. HN VII.2.19). They are often connected to wolves in modern scholarship, but there are no clear ancient indications of this. The topic of Servius’ story is unclear, as it does not seem to discuss a priesthood or a 741
people, but rather a band of outcasts.
In the above passage, Servius confuses two distinct groups. Servius obviously knows where Mount Soracte was located, as he mentions Flaminia, but appears to think this is where the Hirpini live. The immediate area around Soracte was inhabited by Faliscans, while the Hirpini lived over 200 kilometres further south. The similarity of the names may have 742
Italics indicate words only found in DS ad Aen. XI.785.
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Salmon 1989:235 argues that this wolf is the same as Romulus’, but see Dench 1995:210 n.137 for
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criticism.
e.g. Mauss 2000:338; Rissanen 2012:118.
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Rissanen 2012:124. Ribezzo 1930:91 calls hirpus “fal. sabin.” Bakkum 2009:211 includes Hirpi as a
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confused him, but it is clear that in general his understanding of non-Roman tribes of Italy is sketchy at best. In his comment on Aen. XI.787, Servius even calls the priests of Soracte
Hirpini.
When encountering a gloss that is not widely attested outside the context of glosses, it is worth asking whether we have conclusive evidence that this is in fact a real word. Hirpus does not appear in any Latin or Sabellic texts. However, its authenticity can be validated by 743
(h)irpex ‘hoe’:
Irpices genus rastrorum ferreorum, quod plures habet dentes ad exstirpandas herbas in agris.
Irpices are a type of iron hoe which has several teeth for pulling out weeds in farmland.
Paulus ex F. 93L While it may have been lost in the epitomising, no etymology is suggested, despite hirpus being mentioned in the entry directly following irpex. This may mean that hirpex was no longer semantically transparent, due to temporal and geographical distance. However, hirpus ‘wolf ’ makes the meaning obvious, as it refers to the ‘teeth’ of the hoe, like a wolf ’s teeth, cf. lupatum
frenum ‘jagged bit’ (Hor. Carm. I.7.7). There are also two proper nouns apparently derived from hirpus, Faliscan írpios (LDAF Cap 389) and Latin Hirpius. 744
Hirpus is a cognate of hircus and fircus < Proto-Italic *hirkw-os (see §2.2.2), but de Vaan
rejects this connection on semantic grounds: “‘wolf ’ and ‘goat’ are no good friends”. The 745
formal similarities of hircus and hirpus cannot be the only thing we take into account when making this reconstruction, but the semantics are not as detrimental as de Vaan make them out to be. A shift from ‘goat’ to ‘wolf ’ is not unlikely. Taboo replacement is common in communities whose livelihood is threatened by predators. Examples of replacements of 746
inherited words for ‘wolf ’ can be found in languages ranging from South Caucasian
Poccetti, Poli and Santini 2001:131 nevertheless lists it as such, alongside hirpex, which is not a word
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for an animal, as they claim.
Schulze [1904] 1991:234. Bakkum 2009:208, 265 suggests that this gentilicium is connected to the
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Hirpi Sorani, which in light of the close proximity to Mount Soracte is possible. Plin. HN VII.2.19 states: “familiae sunt perpaucae quae uocantur Hirpi”, “There are few families [- - -] named the Hirpi”, but this may not be a reference to a family name but the name of the priesthood, as it goes on to describe the sacrifices to Apollo at Mount Soracte.
EDLI:286.
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On different types of taboo, see Alinei 1997:12n.2; Emeneau 1948:57, 60, 62-63; Smal-Stocki
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1950:490. On the Luperci as a remnant of a Roman wolf taboo, see Nilsson 1956:133; Ogilvie 1965:51. The metathesis of the Indo-European root *u̯l ̥kw- in Greek λύκος and Latin lupus (with
Sabellic reflex of the labiovelar) has been explained by taboo, cf. Ukrainian vedmidь vs. Russian medvedь bear’ (Smal-Stocki 1950:490; EDLI:353).
languages, where the word has been widely replaced by IE loans, to Scandinavian languages, where ulv < PIE *u̯l ̥kw-os has largely been displaced by varg ‘outcast, thief, killer’ < PIE
*u̯erg̑h-, ‘strangle’ (cf. English worry ‘attack, maim’, often used of wolves). It is common to 747
use names of less dangerous animals as replacement words, where the perceived magic power of the friendly animal’s name will change the nature of the predator, e.g. Ukrainian pesyk ‘doggie’ for the wolf and Old Irish mathgamain ‘good calf ’, ’deer’ for the bear. Such taboo 748
replacement would account well for the semantics of hirpus. It is a case of a wolf in goat’s clothing.
The issues of hirpus and fircus are instead formal. Firstly, it is uncommon to find two words in one language derived from the same protoform without some split (as with deus and
diuus, both from *deiu̯o-s). Secondly, hirpus and fircus show different outcomes of this
protoform. Hirpus does not display the initial f- for expected h- as in fircus, fedus and fasena. It also displays a Sabellic labial outcome of the labiovelar, while fircus displays a Latino-Faliscan velar outcome. As hirpus is the only Sabine gloss with a labial outcome, it has become crucial for some scholars who believe that Latin words with this reflex, primarily lupus ‘wolf ’, are Sabine loans. While it is possible that a language has two words for the same animal, particularly if one takes taboo replacement into account, it is suspicious that the one word which supports lupus as Sabine means exactly the same thing.
Some scholars suggest that instead of rejecting the passage outright, Sabinorum in the Servius passage should be changed to Samnitium, assuming either corruption or a misunderstanding on Servius’ part, just as in herna. However, the confusion between 749
Sabines, Faliscans and Oscan-speakers is found throughout the passage, and this change would not make the passage more coherent in terms of geography. The only reason for changing Sabinorum to Samnitium is to make it fall in line with glosses in Paul and Strabo. An author’s ignorance cannot be used as grounds for emendations. That should only be done if the error has been introduced in transmission.
It is obvious in the case of hirpus and herna, both supposed bases for ethnics, that Servius’ sense of geography of the multiethnic Italy of the first millennium BCE is very poor. He stretches the territory of the Hirpini two-hundred kilometres northwards and thinks they spoke Sabine, and associates the Hernici with the Sabines, two groups have no previous
OED s.v. worry 3a. See Tuite and Schulze 1998:372 for South Caucasian examples. In Swedish, varg
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has completely displaced ulv, which now only appears in onomastics and archaisms. In Norwegian and Danish, the two words coexist. Falk and Torp 1906:428; SAOB s.v. varg. See LIV:688 on *u̯erg̑h-.
O’Reilly and O’Donovan 1864:352; d’Arbois de Jubainville 1899:166; Smal-Stocki 1950:492; Alinei
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1997:13; Matasović 2009:259; eDIL s.v. mathgamain, math, gamain, gamuin. e.g. Vetter 1953:368; Salmon 1989:225.
connection. These two examples indicate that Servius has a tendency to reinterpret words as Sabine. As the gap between multiethnic Italy and ancient scholars grew, the understanding of small ethnic groups became worse, to the extent where their names seemed meaningless. However, through the writings of both ancient scholars and poets, the Sabines were still vivid figures to the writers of late antiquity. Claiming that a word which appears in an ethnic adjective is Sabine grounds it much better in an inherited Roman world-view than mentioning the Samnites or the Marsi.