has been and is still being done in this μeld; it is also unfair to M. himself, because itcan backμre: nobody can really be certain that some etymologies have not beenoverlooked (see, e.g., the cases in Manilius of Bootes [1.316 and 318] and lacteusorbis [1.751–4]).

Beyond these reservations, however, I consider that the SEL will soon μnd itsrightful place on the Latinist’s desk as an indispensable supplement to the Lexicon.

University of Thessaloniki STRATIS KYRIAKIDISskyr@otenet.gr

PRAENOMINA

Po ccetti (P.) (ed.) Les Prénoms de l’Italie antique. Journée d’études,Lyon, 26 janvier 2004. (Ricerche sulle lingue di frammentariaattestazione 5.) Pp. 150. Pisa and Rome: Fabrizio Serra Editore, 2008.Paper, €48. ISBN: 978-88-6227-048-9.doi:10.1017/S0009840X09990606

All students of Latin are familiar with the Roman system of tria nomina: praenomen,nomen, cognomen, and with the fact that in classical Latin only a few μrst namesremained in active use. Two books, the products of the Helsinki school of onomastics,stand out as unchallenged repositories of knowledge: O. Salomies, Die römischenVornamen (1987) and M. Kajava, Roman Female Praenomina (1994). The Romanpraenomina can be fully understood only against the Italic and Etruscan background,and it is to this theme that the present collection is devoted. It contains seven papersall in French, dealing with subjects general and particular.

We begin auspiciously with a feat of akribeia: O. Salomies (pp. 15–38) assemblesthe praenomina attested for the Oscans, Sabellians (‘North-Oscans’) and Umbrians(109 entries). In his Vornamen they were dispersed among various separate registers:here we have a conveniently uniμed list with copious addenda of new attestations; 27names are new (though often recovered only from abbreviations). One of themdeserves a comment. On three silver dishes found in Sicily and dated to the thirdcentury B.C.E. there appears the name of the owner: ( ) . This isclearly a praenomen, a diminutive from the common Papus; hence the Latin formwould be Papulus. It so happens that this form is indeed attested – in the lateVenantius Fortunatus, where after eight centuries of onomastic void it would appeartransformed into a cognomen or a nomen unicum (a frequent development). Yet thisassociation is tenuous; in late antique and Merovingian Gaul several persons of thatname are known, among them bishops and a saint. This is the context for Venantius(and for not an Oscan praenomen). Perhaps we should follow P. Lejay (RPh 18 [1894],53–4), and regard the Gaulic Papulus as a latinate diminutive of Greek ecclesiasticalpapas. E. Dupraz (pp. 111–32) continues the Sabellian theme, the gradual replacementof the native praenomina by the Latin forms in the territories of the Vestini, Paeligniand Marrucini. In the inscriptions of the third and second centuries there appear 17di¶erent μrst names, of which 13 are Oscan: 34 individuals, with Vibius, Saluius andPacius accounting for 21 of them. Lucius, Titus and Gaius (21 instances) can beconsidered as either Oscan or Roman. There are only two examples of a purelyRoman name: Publius. Both the pace of Romanisation and the persistence of thelocal onomastic tradition are palpable when we turn a few pages and a hundred years:in the last century of the republic we have 28 di¶erent μrst names, of them still 17

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Oscan belonging to 53 persons, with Vibius and Saluius again predominating (33instances). Lucius, Titus and Gaius hold sway (154 persons), and the exclusivelyRoman names are now more numerous than the Oscan (seven names, 110 persons,Publius leading with 26 cases).

But it is the Etruscan that has exerted the greatest in·uence on Roman onomastics,as authoritatively demonstrated by W. Schulze (Zur Geschichte lateinischerEigennamen, 1904). A good number of Roman names are formally diminutives; hencethe piece by G. van Heems (‘Diminutifs, sobriquets et hypocoristiques étrusques’,pp. 69–109) is of vivid interest also to Latinists. It collects 172 instances ofdiminutives derived from nomina propria; they display the endings in -za (115examples; most popular arnza), -iu (arnt/z-iu), -cu (velicu), -ile (artile), andsporadically -la and -tu. They apply to children and, interestingly, to slaves andfreedmen (cf. Latin puer, archaic -por as in Marcipor, ‘boy’, referring to slaves), andalso in the same family may serve to distinguish the homonymous father and son. ButVan Heems stresses that these names did not formally function as praenomina. In1957 B. Hasselrot observed that in modern Italian the dialects of Toscana employ thediminutives most frequently (Études sur la formation diminutive dans les languesromanes, p. 232); the Tuscan diminutives may indeed owe something of theire¹orescence to the diminutive richness of the Etruscan so brilliantly presented byVan Heems.

P. Poccetti (pp. 133–50) deals with ‘Re·ets des contacts des langues dans lesprénoms de la Campanie ancienne’. The languages are Italic (Umbrian and Oscan),Greek, Etruscan and Latin. A plethora of examples; to adduce two: the Etruscanpraenomen Venel (later shortened to Vel) lived on in Oscan as Venlis (and sim.), and asthe gentilicia Oscan F , and Latin Venilius, Venoleius, Vinullius. ContrariwiseMamarkos/Mamerkos was borrowed by the Etruscans from the Sabellians in theNorth, and in the form Mamarce became one of the most popular Etruscan names.The Etruscans transmitted it in turn to the Latins and to the Oscans in Campaniafrom where the name spread to the whole of southern Italy, and even to the Greeks.To this intriguing history Poccetti devotes several erudite pages.

Two particular problems: D. Briquel (pp. 39–50) wonders whether the name Serviusof king Servius Tullius denoted a slave origin, as suggested by Dionysius ofHalicarnassus (4.1.3). Not at all – in any case if we follow emperor Claudius andidentify Servius Tullius and Macstarna, a sodalis of the Etruscan ‘condottieri’ Caelesand Aulus Vibenna. Quite convincing; but how Macstarna acquired his Roman namesremains a mystery. J. Hadas-Lebel (pp. 61–7) provides a new interpretation of theUmbrian praenominal abbreviation Vois, occurring in the name Vois. Propartie (CILXI 5389; E. Vetter, Handbuch der italischen Dialekte I [1953], no. 236). The full formwill be *Voisis; from this form derives the gentilicium Voisiena, and also the Etr.family name vuisi(e). The Umbrian name was latinised as Volsiena, but we should notpostulate an original Italic *Volsios. Umbrian *Voisis is rather a variant of thepraenomen vuvçis, which in turn is generally regarded as a development from*Loukios. Thus Voisis would correspond to Lat. Lucius. Perhaps.

F. Poli (pp. 51–9) re-publishes (with new readings) several Etruscan inscriptionsfrom the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. One of them, on an urn, displays therare feminine gentilicium vetnei combined with the hitherto unattested matronymiconvicsnal (the gentilicium vicsna is on record), and followed by the indication seγ, ‘μlia’.

There are few things that are more personal and engaging than names, and yetstudents of history and letters are too often negligently incurious. The present volume

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testiμes to the continuing revival and vigour of Etruscan and Italic studies; and to theinsight onomastics o¶ers into the link between societal and linguistic structures.

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill JERZY LINDERSKIjlinders@email.unc.edu

TODAY WE HAVE NAMING OF PARTS

Cairns (F.) Generic Composition in Greek and Roman Poetry.Revised edition. Pp. x + 336. Ann Arbor: Michigan Classical Press,2007 (μrst edition 1972). Cased, £45. ISBN: 978-0-9799713-1-0.doi:10.1017/S0009840X09990618

Genre continues to loom large in the study of Classical and especially Latin poetry,notably in the work of Conte, Hinds and most recently Harrison. In this context, it isinteresting and timely to revisit C.’s 1972 monograph in this very lightly revisededition, although it is radically di¶erent from these recent trends in both approachand, ironically, subject-matter. C.’s focus was and is not on the large-scale ‘genres ofform’, such as epic, elegy and lyric, but on so-called ‘genres of content’, such aspropemptikon, kômos and genethliakon. Partly – but only partly – as a result of thisdi¶erence of focus, most recent scholarship on genre deals with the dynamic, ludicproblematisation and transgression of generic boundaries, and hence of theirassociated ideological ethos. C.’s emphasis is on adherence to generic rules, and anydivergence thence is not a playful transgression but a ‘sophistication’ by which a poetmay express his originality and skill while still remaining μrmly within theconventional framework which would be recognisable to and comprehensible by hisaudience. This self-consciously conservative book is unquestionably a useful tool inelucidating a number of the often-puzzling conventional features of Greek and Latinpoetry. However, even for those who are not in search of code models or genericenrichment, problems in methodology and the limitations of this particular type ofgeneric approach mean that caution must be employed, and one comes to theconclusion that neither the book nor its genres are quite as important to theinterpretation of Classical poetry as they consider themselves to be.

The basis of C.’s approach derives from the taxonomy of and prescriptions forvarious rhetorical genres in Late Antique handbooks, particularly that by MenanderRhetor. From these, C. provides catalogues of the topoi and formal featuresappropriate to propemptika, epibatêria, prosphônêtika and numerous other ‘genres ofcontent’. C. argues that these genres can be traced back to the Homeric epics andarchaic lyric, even if they were not named until the development of rhetorical theory.Using these criteria, a wide range of poems – most by Sappho, Theocritus, Horace,Propertius, Tibullus and Ovid – can be categorised within the genres, and‘sophistications’ identiμed, whereby the generic conventions are varied todemonstrate skill and originality. Five particular areas of sophistication are thendiscussed in individual chapters: ‘inversion’, as in Horace’s propemptikon to Maeviushoping that he sinks; ‘reaction’, in which someone responds to a conventional genericsituation; ‘inclusion’, in which a di¶erent (or sometimes the same) genre issubordinated to the primary genre within a single poem; and μnally theself-explanatory ‘speaker variation’ and ‘addressee variation’. Awareness of certaingeneric expectations, of topoi which contemporary readers would anticipate or besurprised by, certainly serves to demystify a number of puzzling poems, to revise

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