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Mactare—Macvla?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
The very ingenious and closely reasoned article of Mr. L. R. Palmer (C.Q. XXXII, p. 57) seems to us to deserve examination, the more so as we totally disagree with his views, both from the point of view of etymology and that of Religionsforschung. To put his conclusions briefly, he supposes mactus to be derived from a hypothetical verb macio, signifying ‘bespatter, sprinkle’; mactus then would properly mean ‘sprinkled’(with wine, blood, milk or some other fluid used in sacrifice), and might also be used of the substance which was sprinkled or poured, thus accounting for the double construction of the secondary verb mactare (aliquid alicui or aliquem aliqua re). In particular, Mr. Palmer supposes that macte uirtute alludes to the blood with which the warrior thus addressed is besprinkled, and so to his tabu condition. To the whole of this construction we object, holding that the old derivation from the root MAG is correct (though a verb *mago is as hypothetical as Mr. Palmer's *macio) and that mactus signifies ‘increased’, ‘made greater or stronger’, mactare properly ‘to put someone in the condition of being mactus’, and by an easy transition ‘to sacrifice a victim’ (to a deity, to make him mactus).
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References
page 220 note 1 If, that is, the common dogma is true that a participle in -to- necessarily implies the existence of a corresponding verb. To us, in view of such phenomena as Eng. left-handed, Lat. barbatus, this appears pure assumption.
page 221 note 1 Paulus, epit. Fest., p. 100, 9Google Scholar: inferium uinum id quod in sacrificando infra labrum paterae ponebatur. I.e., he knew it was not wine offered to the inferi, but not seeing the connection of the word with infero (it is indeed a formation of a very rare type, paralleled only by eximius—eximo and its own cousin arferia aqua Fest. Paul., p. 10, 23, from adfero) he sought to find some explanation which should at least make it ‘lower’ than something. Isidore, etym., xx, 3, 7, has the true explanation, quod altario libatur atque offertur, but, if his MSS. are to be trusted, the false form infertum.
page 221 note 2 As in Catullus 101, 8 and a score of other places. Here the false etymology from inferi seems to have confined the word to this use.
page 221 note 3 Aduers. nat., iv, 16, p. 155, 2 Reifferscheid.
page 221 note 4 Arnob., vii, 31, p. 264, 22 sqq.
page 221 note 5 If it is the voc. of a perf. part., such a construction is not found elsewhere till Augustus, and not at all commonly till Silver poetry; if an adv., we have the double oddity of an adv. formed directly from a participle and of the syntax, ill-supported by such phrases as bent est, male est, which are not in the imperative.
page 221 note 6 Cicero, de diuin., i, 17–22, especially 18 (lines 13–14)Google Scholar.
page 222 note 1 So often that even Lewis and Short have heard of it, and that despite the fact that it occurs in Livy; they cite, inter alia, Livy, v, 17, 2Google Scholar; 19, I, s.u. Latinus.
page 223 note 1 Aeschylus, , Agam. 973Google Scholar.