Does Prenestinian fe⋮faked actually exist?

Abstract

Abstract After more than a century since its discovery, the mystery of the Fibula Praenestina has been definitively solved. The artifact and the inscription are both authentic beyond any reasonable doubt. Complex spectrographic analyses published a few years ago have confirmed that the Fibula is not a forgery. However, quite paradoxically, an Early Latin reduplicated perfect fefaked is still implausible from a morphological point of view. This form continues to disturb the Early Latin linguistic framework, which can be reconstructed thanks to the available data at our disposal. The article presents a new reading of the text, which on the one hand confirms the congruity of the preterite morphology (not a reduplicated form of the root *d h ē- / d h ǝ-, but an ancient aorist similar to Faliscan făced / făcet) and on the other gives an account of the abnormal use of punctuation between <whe> and <wha>.