Re: My version

dgkilday57:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Trond Engen <trond@...> wrote:
>
>>> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hmm, <aequus> and the tribal name <Aequi>, <Aequicoli> have not to my
>>>> knowledge been satisfactorily explained, but I do not see how to tie
>>>> them in with <aes>. On the other hand Lehmann did write something
>>>> about how <aeger> could be related to <aes>, something about smiths
>>>> getting sick from the fumes. I'll have to look that one up.
>>
>> Why can't those tribal names simply mean "the equals", "the equally
>> honoured"?
>
> Possibly <Aequi:> does refer to a nominally egalitarian warrior class.
> Plenty of tribal names refer to the warrior class rather than the people
> at large. In fact, that is more plausible than what I suggested about
> 'Plain-Dwellers'.
>
>>> [...] As for the tribal names, perhaps the early annalists used
>>> <Aequicoli:> 'Plain-Dwellers' as a catch-all term for certain plain-
>>> dwellers south of Rome, with this term reinterpreted later as a
>>> diminutive, 'the Little Aequi', and <Aequi:> following as the
>>> preferred generic term for these people in later annalists like Livy.
>>> There may be a problem with that explanation, however, and the whole
>>> derivation needs some additional work.
>
> <Aequi:coli:> is scanned with a long antepenult, so it cannot have
> arisen as I suggested, or given rise to <Aequi:> that way.

How about the *kol- "be tall" of <collis> and <collum> < *kol-n-,
<columen> and <columna>, giving something like "the evenly standing" or,
with some semantic load, "the equal free men" or "the free men of the
Aequi"? That would relate it (on a root level, but still) to the
Germanic family of Ger. <Held>.

Just in case this, for some reason obscure to me, might solve the
problem of the long antepenult that makes the first element a locative.
But why does it have to be long? It isn't an artefact of Virgil's meter
or something -- Vergil taking benefit of the existence of <Aequi:>?

> Pliny refers to <Aequiculani>, and this term also requires explanation.

If the antepenult is long, could this be the original compound? <Aequi:>
+ *eculani "horse-(or foles-)men"? Either way, one explanation for both
compounds would be preferable.

--
Trond Engen