Name: Fragment
Author: Sabidius

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Sabidius is known only as the author of a commentary on twelve verses of the Salian hymn, cited by the Verona scholia on Vergil. The single surviving passage, printed by Funaioli with many supplements to the damaged text, describes how a Roman commander took the auspices before battle, sitting in his tent while the sacred chickens were released, and the formulas he pronounced to the assembled army. The text follows Hyginus Funaioli’s Grammaticae Romanae Fragmenta (Leipzig 1907), without his testimonia, notes and apparatus.

Although badly damaged, the passage is a valuable description of military auspication and preserves formulaic language such as tripudium solistimum. It also shows that the Salian hymns were the object of learned commentary in the late Republic. The fragment is printed here as Funaioli gives it, with his supplements in angle brackets. It is one of the fullest ancient accounts of the procedure, and it shows the commentators on the Salian hymn ranging well beyond the hymn itself into the wider field of Roman augural practice.

About this edition. The Latin text was transcribed for this library from a public-domain printed edition (edition: Hyginus Funaioli, Grammaticae Romanae Fragmenta, Leipzig 1907 (vol. 1, p. 110)), using the scan and text recognition at the Internet Archive; the editor’s notes and critical apparatus are not reproduced. Every word has been analyzed with LatinCy, a neural language model for Latin — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from Lewis & Short’s A Latin Dictionary.

Latin · Myth, Hymn & Religion

Fragment

Sabidius · every word parsed

Sabidius commentar. XII uers. Salior.: ut in exercitu ⟨prius quam acies instrueretur, is, penes que⟩m imp⟨erium auspici⟩umque erat, in tabernaculo in sella ⟨se⟩dens auspicabatur, coram exercitu pullis e cauea liberatis ⟨positisque in lo⟩cum circum sellam suam ⟨dicebat⟩, obnuntiato a⟨ugurium bon⟩um ⟨sinisterum solisti⟩mum, quisqu⟨is uestrum uiderit⟩, tripudi⟨atum nunt⟩iato. silentio deinde facto residebat et dicebat: equites et pedites nomenque Lati⟨num, contuberna⟩les, cincti armati paludati, ⟨quicumque in haec castra et hoc bellum me ducem uestrum⟩ estis secuti, ⟨nunc tripu⟩d⟨i⟩um sinisterum solistimum quisquis uestrum uider⟨it, nuntiato⟩. deinde il⟨le augurio⟩ nuntiato diceba⟨t iterum: ergo di⟩, uti placet, a legionibus inuocentur faciantque, quod iis imperabitur, ⟨milites⟩ imp⟨eriumque⟩ fidemque m⟨eam seruent. quod con⟩ducat salutareque siet, uiros uoco, proelium ineant. deinde exercitu in aciem educto iterum ⟨ibi auspicaba⟩tur. interim ea mora utebantur, qui testamenta in procinctu facere uolebant.

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Text: Perseus Digital Library, licensed CC BY-SA. Dictionary: Lewis & Short (Perseus, CC BY-SA). Morphology: LatinCy — machine parsing, corrected against the AGDT & PROIEL treebanks and Morpheus.