Back in 1989/90 I attended a course of
seminars devoted to the ancient languages of Italy, run by Anna Morpurgo Davies
and Rudi Wachter in Oxford. AFAIR (my notes are gone, alas), Wachter didn't
mention the Fälschung question on that occasion. I was reluctant myself to
accept that the fibula was a hoax -- it was so brilliant in linguistic
terms. On the other hand it was, I think, precisely the perfection of the
inscription that made some scholars suspect it was too spectacularly
archaic to be authentic (the non-rhotacised -s-, the dative in -oi, the
unraised a, etc. -- all in a single sentence of four words, as if someone had
attempted to prove the existence of several early forms with one fell swoop).
Many specialists, including Arthur Gordon
and Larissa Bonfante, have for a long time questioned the authenticity of the
inscription, and now the forgery hypothesis has apparently been confirmed by
laboratory tests. Guarducci (1981) attributes the forgery to F. Martinetti, an
unscrupulous 19th-c. Roman antiquarian working in collusion with W. Helbig, who "fefaked" that
linguistically perfect sentence and used the success of the hoax to strengthen
his own scholarly reputation.
19-th century Italian forgers were very
talented people. There are several well-known "Etruscan" fakes from the same
period, all of them real masterpieces.
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, December 22, 2000 9:48 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] Praenestine fibula
>it seems that the opinion of experts is now unanimous --
the inscription is
a forgery.
Alas, were scholars ever
unanimous?
Meiser (1998) says: An der Echtheit der Inschr. bestehen
Zweifel, Faelschung
ist jedoch nicht erwiesen.
("There are doubts about
the genuineness of the inscription, but forgery is
not
proven")
Likewise R Wachter (1987) Altlat. Inschriften
I have not
had the chance to see the philological arguments for forgery.
Could someone
explain them to me? The form fefaked as a reduplicated
perfect from
facio seems fine to me - the medial f retained from the
present, as in fallo,
fefelli, zero grade as expected, ending as attested
elsewhere. The
spelling >VH< for /f/ is attested elsewhere - eg Venetic
VHA.XS.TO
(actually theta - o) for faxsto. Wherein lies the
philological
problem?
Peter