Photo by Dennis Scherdt
I find it likely that the Oscan formula kúnsíf deívúz ‘the divine ones approving’, which occurs in the inscription coming from the sanctuary of Pietrabbondante, has a parallel in the phrase aisos pacris ‘may the gods be propitious’ (with pacris being the nominative plural masculine of an unattested Marrucinian adjective whose nominative singular may be reconstructed as *pacer on the basis of Umbrian form pacer; for both forms, pacris and pacer, I refer to Untermann 2000, pp. 509-510, s.v. aisos) at the beginning of the Marrucinian Bronze of Rapino. If this is the case, then the latter formula would represent a more archaic version of the same Oscan phrase, since, unlike Latin, the Sabellian languages tend to employ derivatives of the o-stem *aiso– (on which see Untermann 2000, pp. 68-70, s.v. aisos) rather than those from the same root as Latin deus to refer to deities and ritual.
Bibliography
Aldo Prosdocimi, L’umbro, in Popoli e Civiltà dell’Italia antica, VI: Lingue e dialetti, pp. 585-787, 1978
Jürgen Untermann, Wörterbuch des Oskisch-Umbrischen, Heidelberg