674 TRAiJSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 



railway route from tiic iSimpluii and Milan via Gradisca and a link to be con- 

 structed to Ljubljan (Laibach) would follow almost exactly this main Roman 

 road-line, the cui'Sus yublicus — by the easiest pass over the Julians, down the 

 Save valley, and thence by Belgrade and Nish. It is approximately marked 

 by a series of Imperial cities, from Aquileja to Siscia, Sirmium, and Naissiis 

 (Nish) — the modern representatives of which should rise to new prosperity. 

 The important point is that the establishment of this united South Slav State 

 would restore to its natural channel main lines of intercourse at present diverted 

 by German and Magyar interests to a long detour via Vienna and Budapest. 

 It would place our connexions with the East in friendly hands. 



0. Suinc Offerings to ihe Veiieiio Goddess Rehtia. 

 By Professor R. S. Conway, Litt.D.'- 



In the last thirty years two types of votive offerings have been found, among 

 others, on the site of the temple of this goddess, whose name meant straight- 

 ness, at Este, the modern town on the site of the ancient Ateste, about fifteeai 

 miles south of Padua. The language of the Inscriptions is of peculiar import- 

 ance in comparative philology, as it is structurally intermediate to Greek and 

 Latin. The tribe of the Veueti are not less interesting from the standpoint of 

 the archasologist, because the remains show that they had lived undisturbed 

 from the beginning of the Early Iron Age down to the invasions of North Italy 

 by the Gauls in the fifth and subsequent centuries B.C. The earliest Venetic 

 inscription yet known is on a vase which Sir Arthur Evans has referred with 

 confidence to the sixth century B.C. 



The two groups of offerings came from the end of the Venetic period proper, 

 i.e. from the period in which the Venetic language was beginning to be super- 

 seded by Latin, a period somewhere witliin the last two centuries B.C., probably 

 between 200 and 100 B.C. The process was probably fairly rapid after the 

 foundation of the Latin colony of Aquileia in 183 B.C., on a site just west of 

 the root of the Istrian peninsula near the mouth of the Sontius, the modern 

 Isunto; it had began about forty years sooner with the planting of Placentia 

 and Cremonia in 218 B.C., and notably furthered by the planting of tlie colony 

 of Bononia in 190 B.C. The first datable Latin inscription of the district is 

 a boundary stone of 141 B.C.," by which time the process was probably not far 

 from complete. The first group consists of what has been probably explained 

 as Votive Nails and Wedges, representing the action of the goddess in the 

 same way as a thunderbolt represented that of Jupiter, or clubs Hercules, or a 

 trident Poseidon. Horace (Odes i. 35, 18) describes the Etruscan goddees of 

 Fate, Nortia, as carrying clavos trabales et cuneos manu aena, and these objects 

 seem to suggest that the Venetic goddess had some kinship with the Etruscan 

 deity, using nails and wedges to build up and pull down at her will. About 

 eighteen or nineteen of the specimens were explicitly dedicated to liehtia, but 

 far the largest number (some 186 out of about 210) have no articulate inscrip- 

 tions, but either single alphabetic signs repeated along their sides or linear 

 ornament with no signs at all. An intermediate group show mock-inscriptions, 

 i.e., confused combinations of letters from the Venetic alphabet which make 

 no words at all, and which include many badly formed letters. In the alpha- 

 betic class far the commonest letter is X (which in Venetic alphabet denotes t), 

 next to that 3 -l and it (e, v and z), are most common, H (h) rarer, and \^ (o), 

 M («)' ^ii*! ^ i")' ■^s'y i'^"^®. The rectilmear character of all the signs seems con- \ 



nected with the goddess's name and functions. 



The second group of objects is one of great value to students of Venetic 

 as they give us a perfectly certain guide to the transcription of the Venetic 



^ To be published in full in Journ. It. Anthroi}- Inst. 

 - C.I.L. V. 2491 inter A.testinos Patavinosque. 



