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Scipionic Forgeries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Edwin W. Fay
Affiliation:
University of Texas

Extract

Latin ‘plvs.’—To begin somewhat remotely, I am not satisfied with the current explanation of Lat. plus. As regards pleores, to pass over Cuny's mistaken derivation in MSL. 16. 322, the explanation from plēyōses is correct— IE. plēyo. (in Arm. li, ‘full’): plēyos–:: Sk. návya: compv. návyas, cf. pánya: pányas and távya: távyas. IE. plēyes also appears, not only in Sanskrit as prắyas and (from plēyen) in πλε(í)–ων (after suplv. πλεῖ–στος: Av. fraē–šta), but, by a quite rigorous phonetic, in O.Norse fleiri, from a primate flaiz-an <flā–(y)iz– <plē–yes–; cf. Lappish sājet ‘sow,’ borrowed from a North Germanic verb-stem sā–ya <IE. sē–ye/o This leaves the o-grade stem IE. plōis high and dry, for Lat. ploes–, if admitted, will come from plōyes (cf. aes <ayes). Like minus, and in point of usage even more strikingly than minus, plus is a neuter substantive. I start for plus, as Brugmann once did (cf. IF. II. 93), from IE. plewes (cf. Lat. iūs <iewes: iouestod), root p(e)leu in πολū After plūs came plūres plūrimus as from minus came minores minimus. The evidence of Festus' plisima | plurima is not evidence for plōis. It is not possible, under the same circumstances, for IE. ói to have yielded Latin ū and ī. Accordingly, if we do not merely correct plisima to plusima, after Varro LL. 7. 27, we may restore haplographic or haplologic pl[us]is(s)ima (double superlative like postremissimus). Or in view of the equation πλεȋ–στος – Av. fraē–šta I would reconstruct plisima from plei-soma—subsequently changed, after plūs, to plūrima.

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Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1920

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