Palmer, The Latin Language, p. 66-67
"
Among other religious formulae preserved by later authors we may
mention the prayers contained in Cato's instructions to the farmers
(de ag. cult. 132. 1 and 134. 3). The rites described belong to the
oldest stratum in Roman religion and among the prayers the most
striking in phraseology are those addressed to Jupiter Dapalis and
Janus when making an offering of a strues, a fertum, or wine. For
example 'postea Iano vinum dato sic: "Iane pater uti te strue
ommovenda bonas preces precatus sum, eiusdem rei ergo macte vino
inferio esto." postea Iovi sic: "Iuppiter, macte isto ferto esto,
macte vino inferio esto."' There is little doubt that we have here
'unquestionably genuine old Roman prayers, taken from the books of the
pontifices and preserved in their original state word for word'(Ward
Fowler, Religious Experience of the Roman People, p. 182). A
constantly recurring technical term in these prayers is the mysterious
word macte. The meaning of this term; doubtless of great antiquity,
was only vaguely understood even in the Republican period and had
degenerated into a mere exclamation of congratulation, e.g. macte
virtute 'bravo!'. Popular etymology connected macte, mactus with
magnus and it was explained as magis auctus. This explanation still
enjoys some vogue today, mactus being regarded as the participle of a
verb *mago. However, the series of words mactus, mactare, magmentum
when put in parallel with aptus, aptare, ammentum from apio suggest
that the basic verb is *macio. Other morphological parallels such as
lacio from lax, opio from ops make it likely that macio is similarly
connected with a noun *max of which macula 'spot' is the diminutive.
The meaning 'sprinkle' thus elucidated for macio, mactus, mactare as
verbs applying to a concrete ritual act is borne out by the contexts
in which these words are attested. For instance Servius on Aen. 9.641
writes:
Macte, magis aucte, adfecte gloria. Et est sermo tractus a sacris:
quotiens enim aut tus aut vinum super victimam fundebatur, dicebant
'mactus est taurus vino vel ture'.
There is nothing surprising in the semantic development of a word
denoting originally a special ritual act into the more generalized
meanings to 'sacrifice', 'worship', 'bless'. Of the numerous examples
from many languages it suffices to mention one from Latin immolare
originally 'to sprinkle sacrificial meal on the victim'. But perhaps
the most striking parallel is provided by our English word 'bless',
which may be used in some contexts to translate macte and mactare.
Bless goes back (see O.E.D. sub voc.) to Teutonic *blôdisôjan a
derivative of *blôdo 'blood'. Originally meaning 'to sprinkle with
sacrificial blood', it had so far progressed in meaning that at the
time of the English conversion it was chosen to render Lat. benedicere
with all its associations of 'worship, praise, bless God, invoke
blessings, bless a deity', etc. In view of the use of macte in rites
addressed to Ianus the remarks of O.E.D. on the original meaning of
OE. bloedsian are of particular interest:
Original meaning (prob.) to make 'sacred' or 'holy' with blood; to
consecrate by some sacrificial rite which was held to render a thing
inviolable from profane use of men and evil influence of men or demons
(the streaking of the lintel and door-post with blood, Exod. xii. 23,
to mark them as holy to the Lord and inviolable by the destroying
angel, was apparently the kind of idea expressed by bloedsian in
pre-Christian times).
There is thus general agreement that the ceremonial sprinkling
described as mactare was likewise a rite which transferred the victim
from the sphere of the profane to the sacred. Thus a pig so treated is
described by Varro as mola mactatus (Men. 2, Bue.), 'blessed with
(consecrating) meal'.
"
Benveniste, Indo-European Language and Society, p. 482, thinks macte
may be a verbal adjective *mag-to-, parallel to *mag-no- (in magnus).
On the other hand, I think that this is an old 3sg perf. pass. in the
original impersonal sense: "There has been mak'd!", whatever *mak- means?
In the following, I will assume that IE *pa- = IE *ma- = IE *ba-. This
is of course unusual, I think Piotr would call it; I'll defend it by
saying that this not really IE, it's pre-IE, because:
1) vocalisme a, mot populaire
2) there's a nice pre-IE fit for it in Latin baculum, Basque makilla
"staff", Latin pax "peace", Christian Latin pax "kiss" (ie.
"blessing") and *some* of the jumble in
http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/HbHpHg.html
http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/KuhnText/08pauk-stechen.html
which would make the blessed macula, Palmer's hypothetical *max, in
reality pax, the result of being hit with a staff?
Benveniste notes that the denominative verb is originally used as
mactare deum extis, ie exalt the god by means of sacrifices. Noting
that the two non-derivative forms of the word that are known are
mactus and macte, I propose that the Germanic preterito-presentic
modal verb Germ mag, mochte is from *(mi-k) mak, *(mi-s?) mak-to, lit.
me a blessing(permission), (to-)me a blessing(permission)-there-was.
Further, I suspect the same is the case for all preterito-presentic
Germanic verbs: the present is a noun (or adjective inflected for
person), the preterite is a t-adjective (t-adjectives are not
essentially ppp's, they just work there). Eg shall/soll etc with only
nominal IE cognates and a proposed Vasconic cognate (Vennemann:
Solduri "sworn brotherhood among the Aquitani"), eg. *(mi-k) skol,
(mi-s sk.l-tó, lit. (me) debt/guilt, (to-me) debt/guilt-there-was.
So, Latin mac-te is "a blessing(permission-to-go-ahead) has happened
(to you)". The esto of macte esto marks a step on the way from macte >
macte est > mactus est, the latter being a normal 3sg perf pass of a
verb *mac- if such a verb had existed.
Hope I'm making somewhat sense.
Torsten