TI·34.2

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Inscription
Reading in transliteration:	otiui : pala
Reading in original script:
Object:	TI·34 Capriasca (stela) (Inscriptions: TI·34.1, TI·34.2, TI·34.3)
Position:	back
Orientation:	270°
Frame:	(left: straight, middle: top and bottom, right: straight)
Direction of writing:	sinistroverse
Script:	North Italic script (Lepontic alphabet)
Letter height:	15 cm5.906 in <br />
Number of letters:	9
Number of words:	2
Number of lines:	1
Workmanship:	carved
Condition:	complete, damaged
Archaeological culture:	La Tène B, La Tène C
Date of inscription:	4th–mid-2nd c. BC (?)
Type:	funerary
Language:	Celtic
Meaning:	'pala for Otios'
Alternative sigla:	Whatmough 1933 (PID): 268 a Solinas 1995: 27 Ab Motta 2000: 5 A2 Morandi 2004: 32 Ab
Sources:	Morandi 2004: 538 no. 32 Ab

Images

Inscriptions TI·34.3 (above), TI·34.1 (centre) and TI·34.2 (below) from Giussani

Inscriptions TI·34.1 (above) and TI·34.2 (below) from Morandi

Commentary

First published in Giussani 1902: 25–31. Currently untraceable.

Images in Giussani 1902: 26, fig. 1 (drawing), Rhŷs 1914: tav. Ia (photo), Crivelli 1943: 33, fig. 52 (photo = Tibiletti Bruno 1997: fig. 4), Tibiletti Bruno 1990b: 81 (drawing), De Marinis & Motta 1991: 208, fig. 4 (drawing).

Inscribed inside an rectangular frame, which shares one line with the frame of TI·34.1. The letters are well legible; the reading otios goes back to Giussani and has generally not been doubted. Whatmough's appealing suggestion (PID: 85) that otiui is incomplete piuotiui (cf. piuontialui) is rendered implausible by the complete absence of traces to the right of the vertical frame line before omicron. It cannot be entirely excluded that the latter is iota rather than a line closing the frame, but the presence of a vertical frame line at the end makes this unlikely.

Tibiletti Bruno 1970: 374 f. (also 1978: 137 f., 1990b: 89 f., 1997: 1005 f.) argues convincingly that this inscription and TI·34.1 are younger than TI·34.3 on the opposite side, since they and their frames are complete and appear to have been applied when the stone was already fragmentary (also Piana Agostinetti 2004: 157; the opposite position in De Marinis & Motta 1991: 218, Motta 2000: 200, no. 5 and Morandi 2004). Since the present inscription and TI·34.1 were not applied by the same engraver (shape of alpha, upsilon), TI·34.2 is also likely somewhat younger than TI·34.1, added in a non-anthropomorphic frame which utilises one of TI·34.1's frame lines.

The inscription names the deceased only by his individual name (see otiui), cf. the other inscriptions on this stone and possibly some of the inscriptions from Aranno.

See also Motta & Ricci 1908: 28 f., Rhŷs 1913: 14 f., no. 2, Jacobsohn 1927: 31, no. 197b, Tibiletti Bruno 1975: 53.

Corinna Salomon

Bibliography

Crivelli 1943	Aldo Crivelli, Atlante preistorico e storico della Svizzera Italiana. Vol. 1: Dalle origini alla civiltà romana, Bellinzona: Istituto Editoriale Ticinese 1943.
De Marinis & Motta 1991	Raffaele C. De Marinis, Filippo Motta, "Una nuova iscrizione lepontica su pietra da Mezzovico (Lugano)", Sibrium 21 (1990–1991), 201–225.