Praenestine brooch

(Fibŭla Praenestīna). The name given to a brooch (fibula) found at Praenesté in 1886, and believed by Bücheler to be as old as the sixth century B.C. A short inscription on it is the oldest specimen of Latin known to be in existence. It runs as follows: MANIOS MED VHE VHAKED NVMASIOI Manius me fe- facid (fecit) Numasio

The writing is retrograde (i. e. from right to left), and the characters are Greek. It is interesting in several ways: (1) as showing -d as an accusative ending in use at so early a period of the language;

(2) as exhibiting the attempt to represent the sound of Latin f in non-Latin characters;

(3) as giving the reduplicated perfect in fefacid;

(4) as separating the reduplicated syllable from the body of the verb (cf. C. I. A. 321);

(5) as affording an example of the actual use of the dative in -oi, which had been postulated on the authority of Marius Victorinus (17, 20) and the analogy of the Greek dative, but had been questioned by Jordan (Kritische Beiträge, p. 241); and

(6) as exploding a general belief that the retrograde writing in Latin had been used only in devotiones or sacred formulas where an element of secrecy was involved. See the Wochenschrift für klass. Philologie (Jan. 26, 1887); Wölfflin, Archiv für lat. Lexicographie und Grammatik (1887 pt. i. p. 143); the Rheinisches Museum, vol. xlii. p. 317; Darbishire in the (English) Journal of Philology (1886-87, pp. 196 foll.); the Transactions of the Oxford Philological Society (1887-89); Cortese, Latini Sermonis Vetustioris Exempla (Turin, 1892); Lindsay, The Latin Language, pp. 305, 504 (Oxford, 1894); and Egbert, Latin Inscriptions, p. 65 (New York, 1896).