1 The Etymology of Latin lībra Michael Weiss Department of Linguistics, Cornell University SCS, Greek and Latin Linguistics Panel, January 5, 2021 1. A common system of measurement terms was a feature of the Italic cultural koine that extended from Central Italy to Sicily. 1.1. The origin of the names of measurement terms, most notably, the unit (Lat. lībra, Gk. λίτρα) and its duodecimal subdivision (Lat. uncia, Gk. ὀγκία) have been variously seen as Latin, Greek, or Sicel. 1.1.2. In fact, by paying careful attention to the dates of attestation and the relative and absolute chronology of sound changes, I have shown that uncia cannot be of Latin or Sicel origin, but instead is a specifically Siciliote Greek form derived from Gk. ὄγκος ‘mass, volume’. 1 2. The unit lībra, on the other hand, must be of Italic origin because the correspondence -b- ~ -t-, as has long been seen, points to divergent reflexes of a PIE voiced aspirate *d h (Schulze 1895). 2.1. The Lat. b is the regular reflex of *d h by the RUbL rule (Weiss 2020:84). In Sicel the voiced aspirates became voiced stops (Mendolito γεπεδ ‘had’ ~ Osc. 3s perf. subj. hipid), but voiced stops were subsequently devoiced before sonorant consonants. Hence *līd h rā >*līdrā > *lītrā (Willi 2008:22). 2.2. The Greek spelling λίτρα with ι resolves another uncertainty. 2 2.2.1. First, we need to establish the quantity of the ι. Scholars unanimously treat it as long, but in fact the evidence is not clear cut. It is of course difficult to determine the quantity of the vowel ι before two consonants. The best piece of evidence is the Hellenistic spelling of the word with ει. The earliest instance of this spelling that I have been able to find is from a Roman tax law from Ephesus dating to 75 BCE (Ephesos 4*5). This text consistently uses ει to spell ῑ both in words of Latin origin (Σατ]ορνείνωι ‘Saturnīnō’, εἰδῶν ‘īduum’) and in words of Greek origin (Βειθυνίας, Μειλήτῳ). 3 In this inscription we find at l. 79 λείτρων and this spelling is quite common in later Greek documents. The metrical evidence is ambiguous but consistent with a long vowel. Below are the metrical instances of λίτρα and its derivatives up until the 1 st cent. BCE. Unfortunately, none of the examples is conclusive. 1 See Weiss ftcm. 2 The form λιτρας is attested on an inscription from Megara Hyblaea dated to the early VIth BCE as a form of payment. Guarducci 1986-8:16 states without argument that this must have been a metal bar. The coin known as the λίτρα was not minted before the 5 th century (Macaluso 2008:59-62), though coinage on Sicily is attested from the end of the VIth century. On the semantic development of this word in Greek see Lejeune 1991. 3 Ephesos 4*5. https://inscriptions.packhum.org/text/247711?&bookid=490&location=1677.