From: dgkilday57
Message: 60945
Date: 2008-10-16
>I never thought of that. Latin <re:s> is securely Indo-European, so
> --- On Mon, 10/13/08, dgkilday57 <dgkilday57@...> wrote:
>
> > [...]
> >
> > The basic sense of <rasna> is 'public', not
> > specifically 'Etruscan'. The signs reading
> > <tular rasnal> can
> > hardly mean 'border of Etruscan (land)' when the
> > border was in fact
> > the Tiber and there is no corresponding Umbrian sign.
> > Instead the
> > signs must mean 'border of public (land)', this
> > being 'ager
> > publicus' open to public grazing, in contrast with
> > private
> > agricultural land. Likewise Rix rejects the sense
> > 'Etruscan
> > confederation' for <mech rasna>, taking 'res
> > publica' as the sense,
> > and this is borne out by the Tabula Cortonensis, which
> > dates to post-
> > Hannibalic times when there was no meaningful Etruscan
> > confederation; <zilath mechl rasnal> must be
> > something like 'praetor
> > rei publicae', the highest civil magistrate at Cortona,
> > which was by
> > that time already allied with Rome.
> >
> > From <rasna> 'public' one may reasonably
> > extract an Etr. noun
> > *ras 'people', but the only thing this has in
> > common with Etru:s-
> > and Turs- is an /r/ followed eventually by an /s/.
> > [...]
>
> Wow, that's an explanation.
> Now, regarding rasna < *ras-;
> could we postulate a link
> between *ras- and res
> --forming a tautological res publica?
>