L’iscrizione venetica di Monte Manicola

The article consists of the analysis of the only inscription in Venetic writing and language found outside of the so-called Venetorum angulus. Thanks to the autopsy, the comment is completed by some photographs of the object. The inscription was written on a small but quite heavy lead object and was published for the first time by Adriano La Regina in 1989 without an adequate study of the text. The text has been reissued yielding significant corrections with respect to the editio princeps. The Venetic text has also been commented from a linguistic point of view. It is a short “titulus loquens” carved on an object which can be interpreted as a sort of movable weapon (similar to the librilia that were used by Caesar, Tacitus and Paulus ex Festo). Some new entries enrich the Venetic lexicon; their etymologies have been explained from a comparative point of view, in order to understand the meaning of hapax legomena such as artos (nom.) “device”, fato (abl.) “oracle”, sefladukas (fem.gen.) “fortune-teller, witchcraft”. From the phonological point of view, the peculiar realisation of the Latin Decius (more likely reinterpreted as a Venetic patronymic) as Ven. tekiio- is considered as an evidence of the non-obstruent character of the Venetic /d/.