In Emile Benveniste’s Dictionary of Indo-European Concepts and Society (finally available in an affordable English edition, thanks to the very rad Hau Books), I find an intriguing and plausible etymological connection drawn between Latin censeo and Old Persian θatiy. Although censeo eventually became the standard Latin word for “giving an opinion,” at an earlier point in Rome’s history it referred more exclusively to the opinions, statements or judgments of those in authority – a sense preserved in the Republican office of the censorship. By contrast, θatiy may appear to have meant nothing more than “say.”
It is the most common, though not the only, speaking verb in the Bisutun inscription. Each colon of the inscription begins with the fixed expression “Darius the King says,” where θatiy translates “says.” On the basis of this usage, Benveniste suggests that θatiy carried the same connotations of authoritative speech as censeo originally did. He treats both of these verbs, in virtue of their political function, as alethourgic or truth-making – as “speech acts” (though this is not Benveniste’s expression) that make true what they assert.
So far, Benveniste’s analysis offers strong support for the argument I’ve been making in this series of posts. If Darius’ political authority consists in his being able to designate others’ speech as false (drauga), then it is of a piece with this that his chosen verb of speaking should mark out his own speech as true. Benveniste runs into some confusion, though, when he confronts another series of usages that (if his etymology is right) would also raise difficulties for my own reading of the inscription. I have pointed out that, in the summary narrative at the end of the inscription, Darius uses the word “adurujiya,” “he lied, saying…” to describe the claims to kingship set forth by each of his defeated rivals. Earlier on, though, the word he has them use is aθaha.
Benveniste unconvincingly glosses this by saying that “they spoke (untruthfully); however, they claimed to be telling the truth, and their assertion was an emanation of authority.” Well, either they spoke truthfully or not; either they did or did not have real alethourgic authority at the moment they were making these proclamations. Or alternatively one might sever the alethourgic element from Benveniste’s treatment of OP θatiy, leaving attached to it just a notion of de facto authority.
Better still, I think, would be to grant θatiy its full weight here, but then to highlight Darius’ redescription of these speech acts as drauga at the end of the inscription. The switch could then be seen as a narrative choice, one that emphasizes Darius’ now full (at the time of inscribing) and fully-achieved authority over the Persian Empire. Only from this position of actual power is he able to regulate the truth or falsehood of his rivals’ claims; at the moment of conflict, what one had instead were rival claims to truth.