Bible Encyclopedias
Veneti

Language

We have nearly ioo inscriptions which record the language spoken by the tribe in pre-Roman days, the bulk of which we owe to the admirable and devoted excavations carried out at Este since 1890 by Prof. A. Prosdocimi and Sign. A. Alfonsi. But a not unimportant number have also come to light at Verona and Padua, and at different points along the great North and South route of the Brenner Pass, especially at Bozen; and there are a few more scanty and scattered monuments in the Carinthian Alps now preserved chiefly in the Museums at Klagenfurt and Vienna (the K.K. Naturhistorisches Museum, Ethnographische Abteilung). All but a few of these Venetic inscriptions were seen and transcribed by the present writer in the spring of 1908, and their texts with a careful collection of the local and personal names of the district made by Miss S. E. Jackson will appear as the first part of "The Pre-Italic Dialects" in the Proceedings of the British Academy. The alphabet of the inscriptions, in all its varieties, is probably (in spite of Pauli, Die Veneter, p. 226, whose judgment seems. somewhat arbitrary) either derived from or at least influenced by some form of the Etruscan alphabet, since it not merely coincides with that alphabet in several characteristic signs, such as the use of the compound symbol vh with the value of f, but lacks the symbols for the mediae B D G. These, or the sounds which had descended from them in Venetic, were represented by using symbols which in the Western Greek alphabets denoted kindred sounds; A(z where we should expect d (zoto," he gave"),, where we should expect b (Oohecos, " Boius"), i (i.e. x) where we should expect g (exo, "ego"). But though we find the symbols in positions where they correspond to the mediae in kindred languages, it is uncertain what the precise variety of sound which they denoted was; thus, for example, Venetic exo, is certainly equivalent to the Latin ego, but we cannot be certain that the sound of the two words was precisely the same. The symbol for 0 is not used to denote d (since that is represented by z). In the inscriptions of Padua and Verona the sign is 0 and seems there to denote some variety of sound closely akin to t; the word which at Padua and Verona is written ekupe 9aris (probably meaning "charioteer") appears as ecupetaris in Latin alphabet in an inscription published by Elia Lattes ("Iscrizioni Inedite Venete ed Etrusche," Rendiconti del R. 1st. Lomb. di Sc. e Lett., Serie II. vol. 34, 1901). The full Venetic alphabet at its best period is preserved for us on several curious and interesting dedicatory objects found at Este, which were offered to the goddess of the place called Rehtia, a name obviously equivalent to Latin Rectia, some of whose prerogatives,. to judge from the long nails which are offered to her, frequently accompanied by small wedges, would seem to have been those of the goddess whom Horace calls Necessitas (Odes, i. 35, 17). The offerings in question are thin bronze plates of whose surface the greater part is covered by alphabetic signs, with an inscription stating that such and such a worshipper makes an offering of the plate to the Goddess Rectia. Besides the letters of the alphabet in their order, these plates contain a kind of catalogue of the most common combination of letters, and although; none of the plates is now completely preserved this characteristic and their general likeness to one another provide enough material to place the alphabet of Este beyond all doubt. It is written from right to left, and the alternate lines curl round so that the letters proceed in the opposite direction and stand with their feet turned towards those in the preceding line. This characteristic, technically known as "serpentine boustrophedon," with the sign for h Olt), points to some connexion with the alphabets of the East Italic ("Sabellic") inscriptions (see Sabellic).

The alphabet of Este then, in what the archaeological remains show to have been the 4th and 3rd centuries B.C., was as follows: 1 a, c, v, ? 'lie' h, 0, >-k, 1, 1 m, n, I p, and u 4 0 or o. Pauli (Die Veneter, p. 229) compares it to the Western Greek alphabet as used in Elis, but it is difficult to point to any especial mark of affinity with this particular branch of the Western alphabet, while there are some marked differences, such as X instead of Elean T, Q instead of Elean (prevailingly) P and R..) 1(instead of I and III instead of the regular Western 8 though the latter symbol is not quoted as occurring in Elis itself (E. S. Roberts, Greek Epigraphy, i. 390).

Even the few words that have already been cited from the inscriptions will have shown that the language belongs to the IndoEuropean group. Unfortunately the inscriptions of Este, although numerous, belong to only two classes, dedications and epitaphs; hence the forms with which they supply us, though attested .by welcome repetition, are somewhat limited in number. The typical beginning for a dedication is mexo....zonasto sahnateh rehtiiah, i.e. " me dedit Rectiae Sanatrici," "so and so gave me to the Healing Goddess Rectia"; and sometimes the form of the verb is simply zoto. The correspondence of these two forms with the Greek middle aorist of the verb (g -Soro), and with the Latin donare is obvious, and the present writer is. convinced, for reasons which it is impossible to state fully here, that the dots which, it will be observed, are placed on either side of the last sound of their syllable, denote the accent of the word; the most striking evidence being the coincidence in position of the dots with the place of the Greek accent on kindred words; for example, the cognomen Lehvos on an inscription of Vicenza is clearly identical with the Latin Laevus and the Greek XaLF6s. These signs are altogether absent from some words, e.g. from the Accusative (presumably a proclitic) and syllables containing the letter I II, whose form would make the dots a cumbrous addition. One other inscription of special linguistic interest should be cited here; it appears to be the artist's inscription of a vase of the 6th century B.C. found recently at Padua voCo kluOearisvhaxsto, where the first name appears to be identical with the Latin Otlw and to explain its aspirate, and the last word appears to be the Venetic equivalent of the Latin fecit, but to be in the middle voice without any augment. If this interpretation be correct - and the use of E7foino-E by Greek artists commends it strongly - the form illustrates in rather a striking way the character of the language as intermediate between Greek and Latin.' In the archaeological aspect the Venetic remains are particularly interesting as representing very fully the culture of what is known as the early Iron Age, the monuments of which were discovered in the excavations at Villanova, and are now admirably exhibited in the Museum at Bologna. The earliest begin, according to the generally accepted dating, from the IIth century B.C. The remains at Este begin a very little later, but no inscriptions appear upon them until we reach the pottery of the 6th century B.C. It remains therefore to be determined whether this Venetic language was the proper speech of the people who, as it is generally supposed, brought with them the early Iron culture into Italy from north of the Alps in the I Ith century B.C., or whether it was the language of the people of the soil whom they conquered. So far as the scanty linguistic evidence at present extends, in the place names and the personal names of the Ligurian and the Venetic districts, it appears to the present writer on the whole to be more in favour of the second view. This probability would become a certainty if we could accept as established the view of Professor Ridgeway and others, which identifies the authors of the early Iron culture with the Umbrians of historical times and ascribes to them the Umbro-Safine language (which with Latin constitutes the Italic division of the IndoEuropean languages), and which almost certainly was the language originally spoken by the patrician class at Rome (see further Sabini). Even now it must be admitted that this view possesses a high degree of probability.

The chief authority on the Venetic inscriptions published up to 1908 is Carl Pauli (Altital. Studien, vol. 3, "Die Veneter," Leipzig, 1891), but so far as the present writer's observation may be trusted the text which Pauli gives of the inscriptions is somewhat defective. Some were reported by Mommsen, Die Inschriften Norditalischen Alphabets (Zurich, 1853); the rest have been recorded in the Notizie degli Scavi as they appeared, by Ghirardini in the volumes for 1880 and 1888, by Prosdocimi in that for 1890. These articles contain careful accounts of the archaeological remains. (R. S. C.)