Il nome della 'porta della città' nel latino arcaico e l'epiteto di Iuno Sororia

Lat. porta ‘city gate’ had in archaic Latin probably the different meaning of ‘door of a house’ (cf. tab. 2.3), that also occurs in the Sabellic languages (osc. púrta-). Because of the deep juridical difference between the two types of 'door', and since it is unlikely that this difference was not reflected in the language, this raises the problem of the archaic denomination of the ‘city gate’, which in the Sabellic languages was called veru (pl.). This last term must be traced back to a PIE root *swer-/wer-/ser- and to a proto-Italic form *swerom, from which possibly derived lat. *s(w)orom ‘city gate’ as well as the adjective *s(w)oro-sio-s > sorŏrius attested in the epithet of Iuno Sororia ‘Iuno of the city gate’ and in the name of the tigillum sororium ‘gate beam’. Between the 5th and 3rd centuries BC *s(w)orom disappeared, replaced by porta, and sorŏrius 'of the city gate' came to be confused with sorōrius 'of the sister', giving birth to the legend of Horatius’ killing of his sister and to a reinterpretation of the epithets of Iuno and the tigillum.