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E. Benelli (ed.), THESAURUS LINGUAE ETRUSCAE. 1. INDICE LESSICALE.

Seconda Edizione. Pisa/Rome: Fabrizio Serra, 2009. Pp. xxxiv + 580. ISBN
8-8622-7147-6/978-8-8622-7147-9. 445.00.
James Clackson
Journal of Roman Studies / Volume 100 / November 2010, pp 275 - 276
DOI: 10.1017/S0075435810000432, Published online: 11 November 2010

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0075435810000432

How to cite this article:
James Clackson (2010). Journal of Roman Studies, 100, pp 275-276 doi:10.1017/S0075435810000432
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I I . L A N G U A G E A N D L I T E R AT U R E

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to Hellenistic and Roman royal portraiture, to the extensive use and display of spolia in late antique
churches and synagogues. Readers of all backgrounds and interests will find the articles in this
volume rewarding and thought-provoking.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
magness@email.unc.edu

Jodi Magness

doi:10.1017/S0075435810000420

II.

L A N G U A G E A N D L I T E R AT U R E

E. BENELLI (ED.), THESAURUS LINGUAE ETRUSCAE. 1. INDICE LESSICALE. Seconda

Edizione. Pisa/Rome: Fabrizio Serra, 2009. Pp. xxxiv + 580. ISBN 8-8622-7147-6/978-8-86227147-9. 445.00.
No visit to Orvieto is complete without time taken wandering around the Etruscan necropolis at
Crocifisso del Tufo. The rows of tombs each with a name carved into the volcanic stone of the lintels
are a memorable sight, and it is hard for anyone with even a passing interest in epigraphy to resist
trying to read the names or taking photographs for later study. Most of the inscriptions contain
the same Etruscan formula, mi followed by a bipartite name in the genitive, and sometimes a word
for tomb, meaning I [am] (the tomb) of NN. The names are not without significance, since two
of the tombs belong to members of a gens Latinie, giving sixth-century attestations for the ethnic.
Going through notes or holiday snaps later in an attempt to track down the readings of these inscriptions can be a frustrating business. The relevant fascicle of Corpus Inscriptionum Etruscarum was
published in 1907 by Pauli and Danielsson, and many of the inscriptions were not known then or
have been re-edited since. Much more useful is the two-volume Etruskische Texte (Tbingen, 1991)
edited by a team headed by Helmut Rix. Here most of the Orvieto necropolis inscriptions (and
nearly all other Etruscan inscriptions) are presented in a splendidly compact and informative style
maddening to the first-time reader, but absolutely worth the trouble if one persists. Etruskische
Texte includes details of earlier publications, availability of published photographs, an ingenious
system for describing the material on which the inscription occurs and the nature of the text, and
an estimate of the date. However, it is also not complete; it contains many errors and it has the
significant drawback of presenting many of Rixs conjectures and corrections in place of the actual
reading. For example, where one sees the praenomen cuerus on an Orvieto tomb, Rix prints ucerus
at Vs 1.12 (note also that Etruskische Texte gives the wrong reference for this inscription; the correct
reference is given as a note to the previous inscription, Vs 1.11), and another clearly legible text
arania lapanas is not recorded.
The new edition of the Thesaurus Linguae Etruscae (the TLE) does better at passing the Orvieto
necropolis test than previous works. It aims for complete coverage of individual words in Etruscan
inscriptions (listed in the order of the Etruscan alphabet), providing references to publications up
until 2006 for every single inscription, and it keeps track of re-readings and re-editions. For each
lemma all the attested epigraphic instances are recorded, including the provenance of the inscriptions and usually enough words of the immediate context are given for the reader to get some sense
of comparable usages; the TLE also includes a reverse index. The form cuerus is recorded with
the correct reference to its first publication, and the full text [mi] arania lapanas, I am the tomb
of Aranth Lapana, is given under the lemma lapanas, together with the information that this text
was published in the Annali della Fondazione per il Museo Claudio Faina in 1990. It is unfortunate,
however, that Rixs conjecture ucerus for cuerus is not mentioned, since there are good grounds
for its acceptance. The praenomen ucer (genitive ucerus) occurs on a couple of other Etruscan
inscriptions, and is also the basis for a gentilicium ucerna, whereas cuer is nowhere else attested.
In other respects too, the TLE might have benefited from adopting more of Rixs innovations.
The transcription of sibilants in Etruscan is notoriously difficult. All Etruscan variants of the Greek
alphabet use two different signs for s-sounds, which must correspond to a phonemic difference
between two sibilants (probably similar to that denoted by the English orthographies of s and sh).
However, in the northern area scribes generally employ sigma where southern scribes use san, and
san where the southerners have sigma. The approach of the Corpus Inscriptionum Etruscarum,
and that followed in the TLE, has been to transliterate san as , wherever it occurs, and sigma as
s, wherever it occurs. This makes life easy for the epigrapher, but more difficult for the analysis of
the language or parallel cases. For example, where the Orvieto inscriptions include the word for

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REVIEWS

tomb, it is normally written with san, ui, in the TLE transcription. TLE has a separate lemma
sui, the same word, but written in inscriptions from Volterra, Perugia, Siena etc. (and once from
Orvieto). In order to trace the comparanda for this word, one has to look it up in two different
entries. Accordingly, in Rixs Etruskische Texte, a different system of transliteration is used, which
renders a sigma from the south and a san from the north both as s, but a san from the south and a
sigma from the north as , thereby allowing all the words meaning tomb to be listed under sui.
Northern writings, i.e. a san where the south has sigma, and a sigma where the south has san, are
further distinguished by having an acute written above them, thereby meaning that is used in some,
but by no means all, of the same cases where the CIE would transcribe . This system is not without
its drawbacks: the very common name Laris, is almost always written with a sigma, whether from
north or south; and in some central areas, particularly Chiusi, sigma and san are often confused, and
the decision of whether to write s or is editorial. The editors of TLE are no doubt right when they
say (xxvii) that Rixs system non si tratta di una traslitterazione, ma comporta una interpretazione
del valore fonetico delle diverse sibilanti che non sempre obiettiva o certa, e che ha creato errori
e incomprensioni nella letteratura pi recente. Even so, an index such as this cannot shrug off the
problem entirely; the reader should somewhere be told to cross-refer ui and sui.
In summary, the new edition of the TLE enriches the research resources for the study of Etruscan,
but, as is inevitable in works such as this, it is not the last word. Although it includes all published
Etruscan inscriptions up until 2006, the visitor to Crocifisso del Tufo will see inscriptions that have
been on display at least since 2003 but are still unpublished, and which do not feature in the TLE.
A second edition of Etruskische Texte is in hand, but more useful is the Etruscan Texts Project, a
searchable online database of Etruscan inscriptions, covering inscriptions published since 1989, set
up by Rex Wallace at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst (etp.classics.umass.edu). With the
Etruscan Texts Project website, Etruscan studies have truly entered the third millennium.
Jesus College, Cambridge
jptc1@cam.ac.uk

James Clackson

doi:10.1017/S0075435810000432

M. DE VAAN, ETYMOLOGICAL DICTIONARY OF LATIN AND THE OTHER ITALIC

LANGUAGES. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Pp. xiv + 826. ISBN 978-90-04-16797-1. 238.00.
As the title makes clear, this book is an etymological dictionary of the inherited Indo-European
vocabulary in Latin and the other Italic languages. It is part of a major Leiden project, an IndoEuropean Etymological Dictionary (IEED; started by Alexander Lubotsky and Robert Beekes in
1991) of which many items have appeared, aiming at eventually producing a new comprehensive
Indo-European Etymological Dictionary, and replacing the dictionary of Jules Pokorny (1959).
In addition to printed volumes (recent ones are volumes by Ranko Matasovi (2009) on ProtoCeltic, and Robert Beekes and Lucien van Beek (2010) on Greek; volumes on Proto-Germanic and
Persian are projected to appear in 2010), the work is published on the projects website as searchable
databases.
The author defines as the scope of the book the Indo-European inherited lexicon of Latin and
the other Italic languages, with two additional sources of loan etymologies: those from Sabellic and
those from unidentifiable pre-Indo-European languages in the Mediterranean. Accordingly, words
that are well-established loans from other languages outside Italy, notably Etruscan and Greek, are
not included in the dictionary. Within the Italic group, three branches (Sabellic, Latino-Faliscan and
Venetic) are distinguished. The author recognizes the existence of a separate Proto-Italo-Celtic stage.
The introduction contains a clear exposition of the used reconstruction of the PIE phonological
system and the most important phonological changes between PIE and Proto-Italic (410), together
with a description of how the entries in the dictionary are organized (1013). Dating is given by
reference to the author or text where the word is first attested. The entries also include a section
on the derivatives of the word and other closely related Latin forms. Sometimes this list can end
up being very long as in the case of pendo, although derivatives are collected only up until Cicero
(Cicero included only in special cases). But as these words and forms are all indexed, it is easy to
find the relevant entry even for a non-specialist less familiar with Latin derivation. The listing of IE
cognates in the entries has benefited from the IEED project. In discussing the etymologies, reference
is made to standard handbooks WH (Walde-Hoffmann 19301954), EM (Ernout-Meillet 1959
[1967]), IEW (Pokornys Indogermaniches etymologisches Wrterbuch 1959), LIV (Lexikon der