VC·1.2

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Inscription
Reading in transliteration:	akisios : arkatokok / materekos : toṣ́o / kote : aṭom : teuoχ / tom : koneu
Reading in original script:	Χ3 d ?
Variant reading:	teuoχtoni[o]n, atoś (Meid 1989)
Object:	VC·1 Vercelli (boundary stone) (Inscriptions: VC·1.1, VC·1.2)
Position:	front, bottom
Orientation:	0°
Direction of writing:	dextroverse
Script:	North Italic script (Lepontic alphabet)
Letter height:	3.2–5.6 cm1.26 in <br />2.205 in <br />
Number of letters:	50
Number of words:	6
Number of lines:	4
Workmanship:	carved
Condition:	complete, damaged
Archaeological culture:	Late Republican [from object]
Date of inscription:	shortly before the middle of 1st century BC [from object]
Type:	dedicatory
Language:	Cisalpine Gaulish
Meaning:	'Akisios the treasurer (?) has given it, the precinct (?) of gods and men, ex voto'
Alternative sigla:	Tibiletti Bruno 1981: 34 RIG: E-2 Solinas 1995: 141 b Morandi 2004: 100 9–12
Sources:	Morandi 2004: 589 f. no. 100

Images

Inscriptions VC·1.1 and VC·1.2 from Morandi

Stela VC·1 Vercelli with inscriptions VC·1.1 and VC·1.2 from Morandi

Commentary

First published in Tibiletti Bruno 1977; already mentioned in Tibiletti Bruno 1976: 106 f.

Images in Baldacci 1978: fig. 1 (photo), Tibiletti Bruno 1977: tav. I and II (photos), Lejeune 1988: 28, fig. 14 (photo) and 29, fig. 15 (drawing).

The alphabetically and linguistically vernacular part of the Vercelli bilingua is inscribed in four lines below the Latin part VC·1.1. Being less detailed and written in smaller letters, it takes up only a third of the space of the Latin part. Though it is evidently secondary, the increasingly economical spacing of the Latin part shows that its addition was planned from the beginning (Tibiletti Bruno 1977: 356). It was carved with a different, more pointed instrument; Baldacci 1978: 336 f. and Tibiletti Bruno 1977: 356 also assume a different hand, but this is doubted by Lejeune 1977: 589, who notes that the carver appears not to have been familiar with writing the Lepontic alphabet and Celtic language, as indicated by the dittographical misspelling arkatoko{k}materekos for arkatokomaterekos (and see below on further possible mistakes). The alphabet also shows some Latin interference in the form of the separator (a single dot) and Latin mu as in the Latin part; rounded sigma and large omicron may also be considered graphically Latinised forms. Lejeune suggests that a Latin-speaking lapicide was tasked with copying both inscriptions, and changed his tool to apply the vernacular text in the small space left to him.

Note that the cluster /nt/ is reflected by in arkatokomaterekos and atom as usual in the Lepontic alphabet, but spelled ⟨nt⟩ in the Latin part (argantocomaterecus). This may indicate that nasal effacement in this position was not executed fully, but that /n/ was only weakened, unless the nasal was restituted in this form by a Latin speaker based on Latin argentum.

arkatokomaterekos: TB 366 f. patronym in -eko-.

Tibiletti Bruno in the first publication (p. 360, 375 f.) read atom teuoχtom as a congruent acc.sg. phrase, followed by a verb koneu: 'Akisios son of Arkatokomateros put up the sacred border' (also Tibiletti Bruno 1978: 157 f.).

The Celtic text is not a translation of the Latin one (or its original), but an abbreviated version, omitting the reference to the four termini and to the border of the campus which identifies the stela as one of them.

Ascribed by Lejeune to the Libicii (as are PV·1 and PV·4), a Gaulish tribe reported to have settled between Ticino and Po (for the sources s. AcS II: 204).

• Bonfante 1979: 207
• Lejeune 1977: 582–610
• Pisani 1979: 49–53
• Tibiletti Bruno 1981: 192–196
• Marinetti 1982: 14 f.
• Lejeune 1988: 26–37 (RIG E-2)
• Meid 1989: 7–16
• Lejeune & Briquel 1991: n. 296
• Prosdocimi 1991: 293-–300
• Lambert 1994: 76–80
• Solinas 1995: 381 f., n. 141
• Motta 1995: 128, 129
• Uhlich 1999: 282, n. 13, 294
• Gambari 2011: 28

Bibliography

AcS	Alfred Holder, Alt-celtischer Sprachschatz, Leipzig: Teubner 1896–1907.
Baldacci 1978	Paolo Baldacci, "Una bilingue latino-gallica di Vercelli", Atti dell'Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei 32 (1977 [1978]), 335–347.
Bonfante 1979	Giuliano Bonfante, "Il Retico, il Leponzio, il Ligure, il Gallico, il Sardo, il Corso", Atti dei Colloqui Lincei ( = Le Iscrizioni Prelatine in Italia; Roma, marzo 1977) 39 (1979).
Gambari 1991	Filippo Maria Gambari, "La stele di Cureggio: una nuova iscrizione epicorica preromana dal Novarese", Sibrium 21 (1990–1991), 227–237.
Gambari 2011	Filippo Maria Gambari, "Le pietre dei signori del fiume: il cippo iscritto e le stele del primo periodo della cultura di Golasecca", in: Filippo Maria Gambari, Raffaella Cerri (eds), L'alba della città. Le prime necropoli del centro protourbano di Castelletto Ticino, Novara: 2011, 19–32.