Piissimus and pientissimus: two nonexistent superlatives of pius?

Abstract

Abstract The combined analysis of epigraphic, literary and grammatical sources allows light to be shed on linguistic problems concerning the two superlatives of pius, piissimus and pientissimus, which have been mostly overlooked by scholars to date. Regarding the first superlative, Cicero says that it does not exist in Latin (CIC. Phil. 13.43.9), whereas the second form is exclusively attested in epigraphy, with no occurrences in ancient literary or scholarly texts. Moreover, the morphology of pientissimus cannot be explained according to Classical Latin rules, since the only verb which is semantically related to pius, piare, belongs to the first conjugation (it also does not fit semantically). In the present paper, we will try to demonstrate that piissimus was generally avoided in the literature of the Classical age based on linguistic purism, though it was probably used in colloquial Latin, and definitely normalized as a standard form in the Post-Classical age, as can be seen in both the literary and epigraphic instances of this word. In the case of pientissimus, this may have initially spread in the epigraphic domain, and subsequently entered so-called Vulgar Latin.