From: Francesco Brighenti
Message: 48149
Date: 2007-03-31
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "P&G" <G.and.P@...> wrote:
> Aren't these fuf- words Sabellian, rather than Latin?
> e.g. Oscan fufans, fufens from sum (suppletive, from bhu root)
Yes, you are seemingly on the right track as far as the etymology of
Fufetius is concerned! As I mentioned earlier, Fufetius is often
compared to gentilicia such as the like-sounding Fufidius (whose
origin remains unknown; some Latinists, I may add now, think it may
be from faba 'broad bean'); yet, J.D. Noonan, the author of the
paper at
http://caliber.ucpress.net/doi/abs/10.1525/ca.2006.25.2.327
which I have referred to in a earlier post, suggests that some
political reasons may have prompted Ennius -- the likely source of
Livy's tale about Mettius Fufetius -- to create a fictitious name,
Fufetius, as a *play* on the like-sounding name of the gens Fufidia.
Noonan argues that a name like Fufetius, as also the name Fufetia
given to a legendary early Vestal, must have sounded Sabellic or
Oscan to speakers of Latin, and that a play of words with the Oscan
verbal form *fufed 'he was' must have been understood by people who
could speak both Latin and Oscan. See what Noonan writes in the
excerpts from his article I managed to retrieve via google (ANYBODY
HERE HAS A SUBSCRIPTION TO THE ONLINE EDITION OF _CLASSICAL
ANTIQUITY_ SO AS TO RETRIEVE THE FULL TEXT OF THIS INTERESTING
PAPER??):
"[T]he chief political importance of the tale lies in its predictive
value concerning leaders from that 'other' ethno-linguistic
grouping. Mettius Fufetius is proleptic because he is the first
embodiment of later Oscan-speaking officials' perfidia and fraus. A
whole people, Livy thinks, identifiable both because of its language
and from its magistrates' treacherous acts, betrayed Rome again and
again over the course of 500 years: in the legendary times of the
kings, again during the Samnite Wars, later when Hannibal ravaged
Italy, and on into the years of the Social War, although we must use
sources other than Livy for insight into this last-named era. The
notion of a treacherous Mettius Fufetius in legendary times prepares
the way for accusations of fraus against Oscan-speakers and their
magistrates in second and fifth pentads of Livy's work. [...] [O]ur
concern here has to be with Livy's picture of Sabellic- or or Oscan-
speaking enemies of Rome and their leaders' great, repeated moral
failing: they betrayed their pledges or made their pledges falsely
in order to deceive their Roman enemies and rivals. [...] The
likeliest candidate [for an Oscan word known to speakers of Latin,
and making a pun with 'Fufetius' -- FB], would appear to be *fufed,
the hypothetical, third person singular of the perfect of the
verb 'to be' in Oscan (fufans [imperf.] and fufens [perf.], both
third person plural, are actually attested). Expected *fufed is
formally and semantically close to Latin fuit (cf. inscriptional
fuveit), and the 'valedictory' connotation of sum in the perfect
tense is well known in Latin ('fuimus Troes, fuit Ilium' in Aen.
2.325). Ennius himself provides an early example involving his own
birthplace: 'Nos sumus Romani, qui fuimus ante Rudini' = 'we
originally Oscans [Messapians] from Rudiae now are Romans' (Annales,
Vahlen 1928: fr. 377 = Skutsch 1985: fr. 525). The use of the nonce
gentilician name Fufetius in place of the real nomen gentile
Fufidius might have sounded like a valediction to him, at least to
ears familiar with both Oscan and Latin."
In sum: Fufetius = "Bid you farewell, damn Oscans"! :^)
Best,
Francesco