South

Picene brímeqlúí and brímeidinais1

Since the publication of Marinetti (1985) there has been considerable interest in
the twenty-three inscriptions from central Italy written in a script and language
now known as ‘South Picene’.2 One of the texts which has received comparatively
little attention is Marinetti’s text TE 7 (re-edited as Sp TE 7 in Rix 2002, and as
Interamnia Praetuttiorum 3 in Crawford et al. 2011).3 The text, found in the
necropolis of Penna Sant’ Andrea in 1973, consists of six lines written along the
length of a limestone stele, which is broken at both top and bottom. While the
inscribed area of the stele clearly finished above the bottom break, the text is
interrupted by the top break and there is no indication of how much has been
lost. Five of the lines in the text appear to have been written boustrophedon,
while the sixth line, which starts at the bottom of the stele, does not obviously
link with the fifth line.

The text is presented in Crawford et al. (2011: 200) as follows (note that
Crawford’s line 1 contains text from both lines 1 and 2 on the stone, with the sign
/ representing the line-break; the tricolon (⁝) is the sign used in the texts for
word breaks):

1 [-?-]rtúr⁝ brímeqlúí⁝ alí /ntiom⁝ okreí⁝ safina[s -?-]

2 [-?-]enips⁝ toúta⁝ tefeí⁝ p/osmúi⁝ praistaínt⁝ a[-?-]

3 [-?- o]psúq⁝ qoras⁝ qdufeniúí

4 brímeidinais⁝ epe[-?-]

Crawford et al. (2011: 201) gives the following translation:

1 I wish to thank Vincent Martzloff, Michael Weiss and two anonymous referees for comments on

an earlier version of this paper. The paper was written with the support of a grant from the AHRC
(AH/K007599/1) for the ‘Greek in Italy’ Project.
2 Crawford et al. (2011) count twenty-four South Picene inscriptions, on the understanding that

the cippus from Cures (Sp RI 1 in Rix 2002) actually contains two separate texts.
3 Henceforth I shall cite texts in Sabellian languages first giving the Rix (2002) reference followed

by the Crawford et al. (2011) reference.

 [-?-] for Brimeclus, belonging to the Alintii, in the citadel of the Sabine
[people (?) -?-] the people for you, for whom they stand out [-?-] he/it made the
stones (=stelai) for Clufennius
[-?-]

Crawford et al.’s reading coincides with that published by La Regina (2010: 260),
except that La Regina does not separate out what is printed as line 4 by Crawford
et al., but makes the text brímeidinais⁝ epe[ follow directly on after qdufeniúí
with no indication of a break. La Regina (2010; 260) rejects the other alternative
orders suggested by Marinetti (1985), including that published in Rix (2002)
(which is defended by Martzloff 2006: 122 n. 65 and 2013: 149 n.1).4 In Rix’s
reading, what is given above as line 4 (the sixth line of text on the stone) is
understood to be the first line of a boustrophedon pair, of which line 3 (the fifth
line on the stone) is the second half. The text would thus run as follows:
A - ?-]rtúr⁝ brímeqlúí⁝ alí /ntiom⁝ okreí⁝ safina[-⁝-?-]enips⁝
toúta⁝ tefeí⁝ p/osmúi⁝ praistaínt⁝ a[-
B brímeidinais⁝ epe[-?- o]psúq⁝ qoras⁝ qdufeniúí
A possible translation of the text as arranged like this might be as follows:
A - [-?-] for Brimeclus, in the citadel of the Alintii, the Sabine people [-?-]
for you, for whom they stand out -?-
B Brimeidinaius [-?-] made the stones (=stelai) for Clufennius

The supposition of two texts, A and B, avoids the rather awkward outcome that
there appear to be two dative masculine names indicating the honorand:
Brimeclus in what is now text A and Clufennius in what is now text B. Rix’s text
also assumes a smaller amount of text has been lost; by this reading it is possible

4 Zavaroni (2001: 222) defends the third alternative reading proposed by Marinetti (1985: 222f.),

which takes what is given in Crawford’s text as line 4 as the starting point, with lines 1, 2 and 3
following in the sequence given above (note Crawford et al.’s note doubting whether it is possible
to discern whether line 4 was inscribed earlier or later than lines 1-4, 2011: 200). An anonymous
reviewer brings to my attention the suggestion made by Alberto Calderini, in his unpublished
doctoral dissertation, that this text makes a non-immediate join with Marinetti’s TE 6 (Sp TE 6 /
Interamnia Praetuttiorum 2). If this is correct, this would argue in favour of taking line 4 first,
with a single line continuing around the top of the stele, with the subsequent boustrophedon
lines not reaching into the area preserved on TE 6.
that safina and toúta agree, and brímeidinais is the subject of the verb o]psúq
‘he made’.

There is currently no easy way to decide between the two readings. Other South
Picene texts do show what appear to be two separate texts on the same stele, for
example Sp AP 2 / Asculum Picenum 2 and Sp CH 1 / Anxanum 1 and the very
fragmentary Sp RI 1 / Cures 1-2. In all these cases, however, the separation
between the different texts is made clearer by means of their layout on different
faces of the stele (as Sp AP 2 / Asculum Picenum 2, which also indicates where to
start reading the text through an arrow sign), or through a more distinct
separation between the two (as in Sp CH 1 / Anxanum 1). There is no indication
anywhere on the surviving text of Sp TE 7 / Interamnia Praetuttiorum 3 that the
presentation favoured by Rix is to be preferred. The fifth line of text (i.e. that
which reads ]psúq⁝ qoras⁝ qdufeniúí) is written closer to the line above it
than to the line below, although this may be in order to avoid the elongated <r>
of the line below, which appears to have been inserted between <b> and <í> as
an afterthought.

All South Picene texts carry some doubts about their interpretation, and this
fragmentary inscription is no exception. Even so, of the twelve complete (or near
complete) words in this text, seven are known from other South Picene texts and
their interpretation is certain (safina ‘Sabine’, toúta ‘people’, tefeí ‘to you’,
posmúi ‘for whom’, praistaínt ‘they stand out’, o]psúq ‘he made’ (elsewhere
opsút) and qoras ‘stones, stelai’). The interpretation of three other words, okreí
‘citadel’, alíntiom ‘of the Alintii’ and the name qdufeniúí ‘Clufennius’ is also
fairly well established. The first word, okreí has a cognate in the Umbrian stem
ukri- / ocri- (nominative singular ukar/ocar) which occurs over 70 times in the
Iguvine Tables, mostly in conjunction with the adjective fisi(u-)/fisi(o-). The
meaning in Umbrian appears to be ‘mount’ or ‘citadel’ and this has been
universally assumed for this South Picene inscription, although Weiss (2013:
353) has recently argued that the term is better understood as ‘city’. There is no
exact correspondence in any Sabellian language to alíntiom, but the word has
been convincing explained by Weiss (1998: 211) as the genitive plural of a
masculine ethnic adjective stem, paralleled by the ethnics / names raeliom (Sp
CH 1 / Anxanum 1) and rutaniom (Sp CH 2 / Interpromium (?) 1).5 Other South
Picene texts also show genitive plurals of what may be ethnic terms: Sp AP 2 /
Asculum Picenum 2 púpúnum ‘of the Picenes’ and Sp TE 6 / Interamnia
Praetuttiorum 2 safinúm nerf ‘the men of the Sabines’.6 Weiss suggests that
alíntiom is an i-stem, formed using a suffix *-ti- onto a putative place-name
*Al(l)ēnom which may also be reflected in the nomen Allenius, attested on a
number of Roman inscriptions, most notably in the form Allenidius from Asculum
Picenum (CIL IX 5185). Alternatively, La Regina (2010: 260-1) explains alíntiom
as a toponym, and compares the name Aletium and the river name Alento. Finally,
qdufeniúí has been accepted to be the name ‘Clufennius’ ever since Rix (1994)
showed that in South Picene the letter transcribed as d could represent the
outcome of l following a stop consonant, giving the Latin nomen Clufennius as a
parallel. The name qdufeniúí has now been analysed in detail by Martzloff
(2013: 147-54), who derives it from an earlier gerundive *klufedno-, which in
turn stems from an earlier compound *ḱlu-dh(h1)- ‘to win fame’, and the name
would originally have meant something like ‘fame-rich’.

However, so far no scholar has come up with convincing explanations for the two
remaining words in this text, brímeqlúí and brímeidinais.7 The morphology of
the first of these words is clear: brímeqlúí, like the name qdufeniúí, is the
dative singular of a masculine stem, and is paralleled in other South Picene texts
(for example titúí, ‘for Titus’, in Sp TE 5 / Interamnia Praetuttiorum 1).8 But the
ending of brímeidinais is more difficult to parallel exactly. The only other South
Picene word ending in –ais is the nominative singular masculine apais in Sp MC
2 / Vrbs Salvia 2, where –ais represents a disyllabic outcome of an original
sequence something like *-a-ios, with regular loss of the short vowel before final
*s. Some scholars have preferred to compare the ending of brímeidinais with
suaís in Sp AP 2 / Asculum Picenum 2, which is dative or ablative plural of the

5 See the discussion of Weiss (1998: 210-3), who also discusses the alternative spellings of the

genitive plural evident in púpúnum and safinúm.

6 See La Regina (1981) on these ethnics.
7 See Untermann (2000) s.vv. for earlier suggestions, to which add Zavaroni (2001: 223).
8 See Weiss (1998: 703-9) for discussion of the outcome of the original dative ending *-ōi in South

Picene.
pronominal adjective.9 According to Weiss (1998: 708), in South Picene
inscriptions which use both vowel signs i and í, the second member of a
diphthong in absolute word-final position is written with í, and second member
of diphthong when followed by a consonant is written with i, and the only
exception is suaís; according to Martzloff (2006: 122) the rule is that i is used in
the diphthong ai in non-final syllables, and í is restricted to ai in the final syllable,
with brímeidinais the only exception, explained by assuming that the engraver’s
eye was caught by the sequence prais- two lines higher in the text.

As for the meanings of these two words, as Crawford’s translation shows, the
general trend has been to take both words as names, either of people or places. If
brímeqlúí is a man’s name, it would also tally closely with other South Picene
texts which feature the name or designation of the person(s) in honour or
memory of whom a stele has been erected. Compare k]aúieh kaúieis puqloh
‘for Gaius son of Gaius’ on Sp AQ 1/ Superaequum 1,10 and titúí ‘for Titus’ on Sp
TE 5 / Interamnia Praetuttiorum 1. The dedication matereíh patereíh ‘to
mother and father’ after the passive verb qolofítúr ‘has been set up’ (Sp AP 2 /
Asculum Picenum 2)11 would provide a nice parallel for the use of the dative
brímeqlúí after the passive verb of which only the ending is preserved: ]rtúr.
The interpretation of brímeqlúí as a place-name springs from consideration of
the word for ‘citadel’ or ‘city’, okreí, which has the ending elsewhere attested for
South Picene dative singulars in the consonant declension (compare nemúneí
(Sp TE 5 / Interamnia Praetuttiorum 1) and the restored pomp[úne]í (Sp AQ 2 /
Aufinum 1)). If okreí is dative, then brímeqlúí must be in apposition to it, and
the first line should be translated ‘for Brimeclum, the citadel /city of the Alintii’.
However, it has also been suggested that okreí is a locative (as in Crawford’s
translation). South Picene locatives normally take the postpostion –en,12 hence

9 Marinetti (1985: 137) proposed alternative translations of the phrase suaís manus with ‘by

their hands’ (i.e. ablative) or ‘for their spirits’ (i.e. dative). Crawford et al. (2011: 193) favoured
the interpretation ‘with their hands’.
10 See Meiser (1987: 116) for the interpretation of this name as in the dative case, followed by

Adiego Lajara (1992: 130), Weiss (1998: 706).

11 See Vine (2006) for the interpretation of this word.
12 After univerbation of this postposition with the locative ending *ey, the resulting sequence *-

eyen gave the result *-ēn by regular sound changes, the result of which is normally written –ín in
the South Picene script.
iepeten esmen ‘in this tomb’ in Sp CH 1 / Anxanum 1), but it is possible that
there is a parallel for the locative form –eí (esmeí) without –en in the
fragmentary Sp RI 1 / Cures 1, and from a comparative point of view, a locative
ending –eí is entirely unobjectionable. If okreí is locative, then brímeqlúí is
unlikely to agree, since the other evidence from Italic suggests that an o-stem
noun would have a locative ending *-ei rather than *-oi, the outcome of which
should probably be –oí in South Picene in any case.

Although it may seem from the above considerations that the evidence is in
favour of seeing brímeqlúí as a man’s name, there are also difficulties with this
approach. Unlike most other recognisable names in the South Picene, there is no
name preserved in Latin, Sabellian or Etruscan which can be directly linked to
brímeqlúí. This may be an element of chance, after all, Clufennius, the Roman
form of qdufeniúí, only turns up in three Latin inscriptions of Imperial date (CIL
III 4793, CIL III 4897 = 11512 and AE 1969/1970, 136), and it may be that the
descendants of the family of this Brimeclus died out before they could make the
inscriptional record. But brímeqlúí also does not look like a Sabellian name. No
name in South Picene is formed with an ending *-klos, and the only name in other
varieties of Sabellian to show this ending is the name of Hercules, loaned from
Greek (cf. Oscan dative hereklúí).

As for brímeidinais, if the structure of the text proposed by Rix is followed, then
it might be possible to interpret this as the nominative singular of a masculine
name, with the same ending as seen in apais in Sp MC 2 / Vrbs Salvia 2.13
However, if brímeqlúí is an unusual for a Sabellian name, brímeidinais is even
more bizarre. One could imagine a concatenation of the suffixes *-id-, *-īno- and
*-ayyo-, for all of which it is possible to find parallels in Sabellian onomastic
formations,14 but it would be very unusual to have such a combination of suffixes
so early (indeed there is no parallel for *-id- or *-īno- in South Picene). Rather
than having a string of suffixes, brímeidinais has more the appearance of a

13 Rix himself saw the word as a possible time adverb (Rix 1986: 591).
14 For the onomastic suffixes *-id- and *-ayyo-, compare e.g. Oscan πακιδιες besides pakis, and

Paelignian anaes beside Paelignian anies. The onomastic use of the suffix *-īno- will be discussed
in more detail below.
compound (Untermann 2000 s.v., Martzloff 2013: 148 n.2). However, although
many Indo-European languages formed personal names through nominal
compounding, as for example Vedic Deváśravās ‘having the fame of a god’ and
Greek Ἡρακλῆς ‘having the fame of Hera’ (Fortson 2010: 38-9), in the Sabellian
languages there is little evidence for the practice. Weiss has argued that the
Oscan names Úpfals and Vibis can be etymologized as old compounds (Weiss
2010), but they are no longer synchronically recognisable as such, and in the
process of compounding was not generally productive in the Italic languages
(Heidermanns 2002). It hardly needs adding that if brímeidinais is dative-
ablative plural and feminine, there is no possible parallel with other South
Picene names, since there is only one possible female name in the corpus (rufra
in Sp CH 1 / Anxanum 1 taken as an adjective by Crawford at al. 2011: 1262).

Perhaps aware of the difficulties with the name theory to explain brímeidinais,
Rix (1986: 591) tentatively proposed that it might be better to take the word as a
time adverb. This suggestion was developed more fully by Eichner (1993: 51
n.20), who saw in both brímeqlúí and brímeidinais the South Picene reflex of
an original superlative adjective *mreχwmo- ‘shortest’, a formation exactly
comparable to Latin brūma ‘the winter solstice, the shortest day in the year’. In
Eichner’s view, *mreχwmo contains a secondary *χw formed by analogy to the
positive adjective *mreχwi- < *mreǵhui- (the ancestor of Latin breuis). In South
Picene a locative *mreχwmei ‘on the shortest (day)’ would have developed first to
*brefmei, then to *brēmei (i.e. *brímeí in South Picene orthography) with
simplification of the consonant cluster and compensatory lengthening of the e.
The word brímeidinais was formed from the univerbation of a phrase *brēmei
d(i)iou ‘on the shortest day’ with an additional suffix *-īno-, and brímeqlúí came
about through the addition of the suffix *-klo- to the same stem, a process also
observed in the Latin temporal noun saeculum. This explanation is doubted by
Martzloff (2013: 148 n.2), who draws attention not only to the somewhat
tortuous phonetic developments envisaged, but also the unlikelihood of having
two temporal expressions in this text, since other South Picene texts do not seem
to contain any indications of time. Martzloff himself sees the etymologies and
meanings of the terms as unclear, suggesting that brímeidinais could be
segmented either as brímei-dinais, with a second element of the compound
connected to the root meaning ‘day’, or alternatively as brím-eidinais with the
second element deriving from original *age-d(n)-īno-, a derivative of the root
meaning ‘drive’, and showing a similar phonetic development to Umbrian eitipes
< *aget-.15

In order to offer a better explanation for the words brímeqlúí and
brímeidinais, I would like to propose a solution that relies upon an engraver’s
error. The emendation of texts written on stone is a hazardous business, but it is
clearly sometimes necessary. Among the South Picene texts there are some clear-
cut cases where the engraver has made a mistake in the carving: tetis for tites
on Sp TE 2 / Interamnia Praetuttiorum 4 (see Crawford et al. 2011: 203) and
petieronis on Sp AP 5 / Falerio 3 for peteronis (if this reading is right, and
there is not damage to the stone, see Crawford et al. 2011: 187). On this same
stele there is evidence for a correction of an initial mistake in the word
brímeidinais, where the <r> is a later insertion between the first and third
letter. I would like to propose that a second error in this word went uncorrected,
and that we should read brímekdinais.16 What is gained by this emendation is
the removal of the word brímeidinais, which has so far defied explanation, and
its replacement with a formation that can be easily understood. There is a clear
derivational path linking brímekdinais and the brímeqlúí: the former is the
phonetic outcome of original *brēmeklīno-, the result of the addition of the *-īno-
suffix to the stem of brímeqlúí. The suffix *-īno- has wide parallels in Latin and
other Italic languages for forming both patronymic and ethnic adjectives (as will
be discussed below). Under this emendation, brímeidinais has to be taken as
the feminine dative-ablative plural, rather than a nominative singular.

15 At Martzloff (2013: 153 n.1), he expands on the phonetic changes and suffixation of the

putative formation *age-dn-īno-, which incorporates a gerundive suffix *-dn-. For criticisms of the
theory that the original gerundive suffix was *-dn-, as proposed by Meiser (1995), see Jasanoff
(2010).
16 It is less likely that the engraver intended to write brímeqdinais, since a graphic confusion

between <q> and <i> is less likely than between <k> and <i>, which both share a vertical stroke,
as an anonymous reviewer points out.
The emended form brímekdinais shows the development of original *l
following a stop to a sound represented by South Picene d, as also seen in the
name qdufeniúí < *kluf- in this same inscription. As already discussed, scholars
after Rix (1994) have generally accepted that, at least in the words qdufeniúí
‘Clufennius’ and kduíú equivalent to Latin clueor ‘I am called’, a South Picene d
could represent the outcome of an original *l following a stop.17 The other South
Picene words which may show the change are pdufem and d[i]kdeintem,18
while in several other forms the change does not seem to have taken place:
múfqlúm, puqloh, praistaklasa and brímeqlúí. If my emendation is correct, it
lends support to Martzloff’s hypothesis (2006: 118), that this change is actually a
process of palatalization, by which /l/ after a velar consonant changes to a
voiced dental spirant /ð/, but only before front vowels and *u.19

We saw above that brímeqlúí is likely to be a name, either of a person or place.
If it is a man’s name, then brímekdinais could represent the feminine form a
patronymic adjective ‘for the (daughters) of Brimeclus’. In Latin, the suffix -īno-
formed patronymics to a few nouns, most notably libertīnus, which according to
Suetonius (Claudius 24) meant ‘son of a freedman (libertus)’ in the time of Appius
Claudius, before widening its sense more generally to ‘freedman’ (Leumann
1977: 326). The patronymic use of the suffix also explains its frequency in
Roman cognomina, so that an Albīnus was originally the son of someone with the
cognomen Albus, and Mamercīnus was the son of someone with the praenomen
Mamercus. The patronymic force of the -īno- suffix is not limited to Latin: the
Sicilian mimographer Sophron uses the term παλλακῖνος to indicate the son of a
παλλακίς ‘concubine’, and it may be that he has adopted the suffix from a local
language. The Oscan and Latin name of the Mamertini, the mercenaries who
overtook the port of Messana in the early third century BCE, is derived from the

17 Zavaroni (2001) rejects Rix’s explanations for these words but his alternative etymologies are

not attractive.
18 Rix connected d[i]kdeintem with the root *klei- (as in Latin clino), although other

explanations for this word have been offered (Martzloff 2006: 118 n. 52).
19 Note that in múfqlúm and brímeqlúí the vowel following l and written ú derives from *o and

*ō respectively, not *u. Michael Weiss suggests (personal communication, 24 August 2015) that
brímeidinais may show the same change as found in Umbrian with *k developing to i before a
dental. He acknowledges that the form dikdeintem argues against this change happening in
South Picene, but notes that dikdeintem is of uncertain etymology and the retention of k could
result from analogy.
Oscan name of Mars, Mamers, and it is easiest to see this as an extension of the
patronymic function: the mercenaries were styled ‘sons of Mars’.20 Furthermore,
cognomina and nomina gentilia in Italic languages, probably originally
patronymic adjectives, indicate that this suffix was a shared inheritance among
the Indo-European languages of Italy. Note for example, the following: Umbrian
miletinar (probably a cognomen, genitive singular feminine, Tab.Ig. VIa 13); and
nurtins (Um 8 / Meuania 2, nomen gentile); Oscan stafidins (cognomen Sa 21 /
Teruentum 5). In many of the Sabellian languages, names formed with this suffix
have been drawn into the normal declension class of gentile names, for example
Vestinian aninies (MV 11 / Interpromium 3), and Oscan atiniis (Po 16 / Pompei
16 and Po 4 / Pompei 21). However, as we have already seen, brímeqlúí would
be an unusual form for a man’s name in the Italic languages (and there is no clear
Greek or other external source from which the name might be borrowed).
Furthermore, the supposition of a name here would require that there are two
separate honorands in this inscription, or an honorand here denoted by two
different names in different places of the text.

An alternative explanation for brímekdinais is that it is an ethnic adjective, and
brímeqlúí denotes a place-name in the dative, in apposition to okreí ‘citadel’ or
‘city’. Again this use of the suffix -īno- is well paralleled in Latin, although the
direct derivation of an ethnic in –īnus from an o-stem place-name is generally
limited to Greek place-names and ethnics, particularly from Sicily and south and
central Italy. Leumann (1977: 326-7) cites amongst other examples Tarentum,
Tarentīni and the Latin and Oscan epithets of Venus, Erycīna and herukinaí (Cm
10 / Herculaneum 1), which derive from her connection with the temple at Eryx
in Sicily. There is however an association between ethnics formed with *-īno- and
places with names formed with *-iom and *-ia, which is not limited to those
areas in closest contact with Greek settlements. Compare for example Latin
Latium, Latīnus; Samnium, Sabīnus;21 Oscan place-name bansae (palatalised from

20 Rix (2002: 153) lists Oscan μαμερτινουμ as an ethnic adjective, presumably following Diodorus

Siculus (21.18) who states that the Mamertines named the town Μαμερτίνη. But this name is not
known in other sources and is more likely to be Diodorus’s back-formation from the name of the
people.
21 See Rix (1957) for the classic account of the relationship between these terms.
original *Bantia) and ethnic bantins; and the Umbrian ethnic ikuvins. This
pattern may have been extended in South Picene to form ethnics in *-īno- more
widely. Another possible explanation involves a more complex scenario, in which
brímekdinais is formed from an unattested place-name, *brímekdia, itself
formed from brímeqlúí.22 The ending of brímekdinais could denote the female
inhabitants, or it could be in agreement with a feminine noun in the missing
portion of the text; one could imagine a sequence such as ‘[set up] by
brímekdin- [hands].’

There is no independent ancient evidence for a place-name corresponding to
brímeqlúí, but this is not surprising, since place-names from the central Adriatic
coast do not survive in anything like the numbers that they survive for other
parts of Italy. Note, for example, that Conway (1897: 256) gives only one certain
native place-name for the territory of the Marrucini (Teate), and the Barrington
Atlas (Talbert 2000) list only a few names in the region between Ancona and
Teate. Several other South Picene texts contain place-names or ethnics, some of
which have correspondences with names known from other sources: spolítiú =
Spoletium, Sp Bo 1 / Interpromium (?) B; ombriíen akren = Umbria, Sp CH 2 /
Interpromium (?) 1; and boúediín, at Sp AQ 3 / Superaequum 2, corresponding
with Pagus Boedinus (only known from one inscription, CIL IX 3311). Other
South Picene words have been interpreted as place-names and ethnics, and
sometimes linked with names known from Classical authors, but their
identification remains disputed. We have already mentioned the otherwise
obscure ethnics raeliom and rutaniom above, and similarly the word haligatú
(or haliβatú), Sp AQ 3 / Superaequum 2, taken by some to be a place-name (Rix
2002: 152, Marzloff 2013: 139 n.4), remains unparalleled. Note also two words
which appear inscribed on helmets, úlúgerna (or úlúβerna) (Sp BA 1 /
Interpromium (?) A) and erimemú (Sp Bo 1 / Interpromium (?) B), were
thought by Janda (1993) to be place-names, but Crawford argues that they are
rather to be understood as personal names (Crawford et al. 2011: 258).

22 Compare the eponymous hero Italos after whom Italia is supposedly named in Greek accounts

(e.g. Aristotle Pol. 7.9.3).

The suffix *-klom of brímeqlúí is probably the same formation that developes to
Latin *-culum, and derives from the Proto-Indo-European suffix *-tlom. In Latin it
is used to denote nouns of instrument, and in particular it is extended to nouns
denoting the place where something happens, for example hibernaculum ‘winter
quarters’, umbraculum ‘a shady spot’, and this usage seems to be shared by
Oscan on the evidence of sakaraklúm ‘temple’. It is unsurprising therefore that
it is found in some Italian place-names, note for example Corniculum in Latium,
and Ocriculum in Umbria, where the first element appears to be the Sabellian
term for ‘citadel’ or ‘city’ discussed above. The first element of brímeqlúí,
however, has no clear link in any ancient language of Italy. La Regina (2010: 260)
connects the Greek epithet of the Hecate and Persephone, Βριμώ, but the use of
the accented í in South Picene tells against this. The sequence brem- does
however occur as an initial element in Celtic place-names (Sims-Williams 2006:
29), connected by some to a verbal root meaning ‘roar’.

In conclusion, the new suggestion of brímekdinais in place of brímeklinais
clarifies the phonetic environment of the South Picene change of *Kl > Kð,
endorsing Martzloff’s suggestion (2006: 118) that this is limited to position
before front vowels and u. It further gives the first example of the Italic
derivational suffix *-īno- in South Picene. It may also help us to decide between
the two different possible readings and interpretations of the text that were
discussed above. As I have already noted, a problem with the reading of
Crawford et al. is the inclusion of two datives of honorands in the first text; if this
suggestion that brímeqlúí is a place-name is accepted, that problem disappears.
The emendation does however cause problems for the Rix reading, in that
brímekdinais is now explained as a feminine dative plural, and thus text B has
no subject. Accordingly, the Crawford reading now seems the more likely of the
two, and I suggest the following adapted translation:23
[-?-] is ?-ed for Brimeclum, of the Alentii, the citadel / city of the Sabine
[people (?) -?-] the people for you, for whom they stand out [-?-] he/it made the
stones (=stelai) for Clufennius
For the female Brimecleans (or By Brimeclean (hands)) [-?-]

23 As indicated in footnote 4 above, it is possible that the final line comes first.
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