From: dgkilday57
Message: 65750
Date: 2010-01-23
><Aequi> and <Aequicoli> cannot be derived from <equus>, but I have no time to edit Wikipedia.
> > > Occam would love me. So much explained from so few entibus!
> > > Whatever extra in the sociology/ethnology department has to be
> > > accepted would have to be assumed to explain the distribution of
> > > *kaN-t-, and further *saxn- (vel sim).
> >
> > The latter also occurs in your favorite IE language as an epithet of
> > Reitia, you know.
>
> How do you like this then:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ver_sacrum
> 'Dumezil recalls that of the two versions of the foundation of Rome, one seems to make reference to a Ver Sacrum and the other states the fact explicitly. This last one says that sacrani come from the town of Reate, today Rieti, expelled the indigenous Ligures and Siculi from the place that would later become the Septimontium.'Reate was a Sabine town, and the local dialect still has a few Sabinisms. If memory serves, Dumezil thought the tradition of Titus Tatius and Sabines at the origin of Rome was invented in the 4th cent. BCE for political purposes. I have never been convinced of this, since Latin has several strata of Sabine (or at any rate P-Italic) loanwords and the oldest very likely antedates 400 BCE. I favor the idea of Sabines being present along with Latin-speakers in the 8th cent., and this second version of the foundation might contain some evidence. But it has been almost a decade and I need to re-read the relevant chapter in Dumezil.