It's a comfort to see that experts'
translations can also look quite amateurish. The fragment I quoted certainly
consists of four clauses:
1. ... iom
arsna$ bionti
2. iom cu$taico$
arsna$ cuati
3. ia$ osia$
uertato$ue temeiue robi$eti
4.
$aum tecametina$ tatus $omei
enitousei
The meaning of clause 1 depends on how one
analyses bionti. I thought at first it was the habitual present
of 'to be' ("occur, there are") but *bHijonti 'they beat' makes
sense here, and is parallelled by robi$eti (=
*pro- + *bHi:-s-e-ti, a sigmatic future) in
clause 3. However, the primary meaning of *bHei(x)- in
most IE branches is 'hit, beat, kill' rather than 'reap, gather (harvest)'.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Celtic languages typically use reflexes of
*met- to express the latter sense.
tecametina$ is
Acc.pl. of a word clearly derived from *dekam-, cf. the Acc.sg.
tecametam in line 10, which Meid translates 'tithe'.
'Amount' for tecametina seems too vague. I'd be inclined
to reserve the more concrete technical meaning 'tithe, tenth part (in tax
collecting)' for *dekametina and to translate
*dekameta simply as '(one) tenth' (Gaulish
decametos means '10th', and there is a perfect parallel in
Slavic: dese,tina 'tithe', dese,ta 'tenth').
The ending -tus in tatus looks plural to me,
as in Gaulish.
The phrase $omei
eni-tousei contains the Loc.sg. of $os
tousos (toutos?) -- a masculine noun.
The meaning 'tribe' (= *teutos) seems plausible. So
how about this version, with arsna as some sort of
animal:
... when they
kill arsnas,
when the custaicos brings
arsnas in,
which he should kill either outside or
within the enclosure
of them a tenth part they shall turn over
as a tribute for the tribe
I'll try to order the book. Celtiberian is not my
forte.
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2000 4:52 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Artemis and the Bear (long)
Chris wrote:
One thing that you need to take note of is that
Meid's interpretation is hotly debated by scholars and not universally accepted
at all. That having been said, here is the translation of the particular
section:
"For whom they sow arable land, to him - when they
cut the crops - when the custaicos brings in the crops, whatever he
should cut outside or inside (the enclosure) - of these, he shall give the
amounts constituting the tribe."
...