THE LUSITANIAN OBLIQUE CASES REVISITED: NEW LIGHT ON THE DATIVE ENDINGS Blanca María Prósper Universidad de Salamanca Abstract Te recent publication of a new Lusitanian inscription uncovered in Plasencia (Cáceres) is bound to have an enormous impact on Lusitanian studies, since it has confrmed the cor- rectness of the doubtful reading labbo in the rock inscription of Cabeço das Fráguas. Tis ‘new’ divine name has far-reaching consequences for Lusitanian nominal infection, specif- ically the morphs of the dative and locative endings. In accordance with this, new conclu- sions can be drawn regarding the dialectal attribution of Lusitanian in the Indo-European language family that defnitely separate it from Celtic and approach it to Italic Keywords: Indo-European language reconstruction, Lusitanian language, Latin epigra- phy, Ancient religion, Proto-History of the Iberian Peninsula 1. CABEÇO DAS FRÁGUAS (POUSAFOLES, GUARDA, PORTUGAL) T he rock inscription of Cabeço das Fráguas is written in the indigenous language of Lusitania and the Latin alphabet. It depicts a suovetaurilia or threefold animal sacrifce (see Prósper 1999). Te pragmatic side is entirely lost on us: while the text could be commemorating a particular occasion, it could alternatively be leaving to posterity a schematic prescription concerning the man- ner in which this kind of sacrifce was expected to be performed (see Koch 2010). Given the comparatively late date of this kind of text in this particular area, this may have constituted a token of good will on the part of the Roman rulers. Te inscription, like those of Portalegre and Lamas de Moledo, was in the open air for everybody to admire. In this way, it deliberately ignored the fact that most people were illiterate and, supposing they ever learned to read and write, would switch to Latin over time. At the same time, however, this gave them a reason to be proud of their religion and of whatever was left or their abruptly subdued civilization