VC·1.2

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Inscription
Reading in transliteration:	akisios : arkatokok / materekos : toṣ́o / kote : aṭom : teuoχ / tom : koneu
Reading in original script:
Variant reading:	teuoχtoni[o]n, atoś
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 1977: 590, fig. 3 (photo) and 591, fig. 4 (drawing), 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. The rare letter chi is carved somewhat awkwardly, and see below on Lejeune's contention that a san in the original was mistaken for mu. 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. Lejeune 1977: 602 takes the spellings in the Vercelli inscriptions as evidence that the non-spelling of /n/ before /t/ in Cisalpine Gaulish inscriptions is an "habitude orthographique" which was borrowed with the alphabet from speakers of Lepontic. Rare chi appears to be used to denote the spiranticised allophone of /g/ before /d/ in teuoχtoni(o)n (while /g/ after /r/ is written with kappa in arkantokomaterekos, cf. Lejeune 1977: 597, 604 f.).

arkatokomaterekos: Tibiletti Bruno 1977: 366 f. patronym in -eko-, Lejeune 1977: 601 f., 610 adjective in -iko- (with lowering of /i/ after /r/) from a toponym.

Tibiletti Bruno 1977: 360, 375 f. reads atom teuoχtom (deuōtum) as a congruent accusative sg. phrase, followed by a verb koneu: 'Akisios son of Arkatokomateros put up (koneu) the sacred (teuoχtom) border (atom)' (also Tibiletti Bruno 1978: 157 f.). Differently Lejeune 1977: 595–598, who corrects Tibiletti's mu – the final /m/ in teuoχtom – to nu and iota and segments a form teuoχtoni[ ]n, which he interprets as either a genitive pl. teuoχtonion 'of gods-and-men' or adjectival accusative sg. teuoχtonikon 'pertaining to gods-and-men'. Observing that both these options show final -/n/ rather than -/m/, he concludes that Tibiletti's accusative sg. atom 'border' must be a misspelling for atoś, the final mu-shaped letter being due to a copying mistake of the lapicide. (In the post-script (p. 609), Lejeune notes that (according to his classification) final -/m/ would identify the language of the text as Lepontic rather than the Gaulish expected at this time and place.) The accusative pl. atoś 'borders' in turn excludes an accusative sg. for the following word, resulting in an interpretation atoś teuoχtonion '[gave] the borders of gods and men'. See the word pages on the linguistic analyses of the forms. The notion that is misspelled san is somewhat problematic, since Lepontic butterfly san does not resemble Latin mu that much; Lejeune's more similar letter variant , which he suggests was written in the original from which the lapicide copied, is in fact most likely to be mu (see Ś); also, regular san is written (if damaged) in tośokote (as admitted by Lejeune p. 597 f.). Remaining at the end is tentatively suggested (p. 600) to be the abbreviation of ex uoto, a Latinism.

The Celtic text is not a translation of the Latin one (or its original), but an alternative version which omits the reference to the four termini and to the border of the campus which identifies the stela as one of them. Lejeune 1977: 591 f., 607 takes the Latin phrase comunem deis et hominibus to be a translation of the Celtic teuoχtonion, comunem being a lexical expression of the semantics inherent in the Celtic dvandva compound. Like Baldacci for the Latin text, he (p. 606) concludes that the space dedicated by Akisios has religious rather than civic significance.

Lejeune 1977: 592: dating to around 100 BC.

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
• 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.