Génitif -aes/-es pour -ae : hellénisme ou vulgarisme ?

The origin of the genitive –aes/-es for –ae is difficult to establish. The most common opinion about this type of genitive, which occurs in epigraphical and, in more reduced proportions, in papyrological sources (not, insofar as I know, in literary texts) especially for women’s personal names (but also in common nouns), is that it comes from the Greek. Beside the influence of Greek, several theories can be found about the origin of this particularity, commonly attested even in Republican Latin names. Indeed, in vulgar Latin, the –es ending genitive (used as dative as well) was frequently used from the 1st c. B.C. This phenomenon can be observed in Rome, in Italy and in the provinces (not only in western provinces, but also in eastern provinces, where the influence of Greek could have been stronger). In the epigraphical texts, this type of genitive occurs frequently in Greek personal names among some social groups (low classes). The origin of the dedicants (native, Greek or Oriental, i.e. Greek-speaking persons) must be taken into account and, for the common nouns, the contextualization is very important. I’ll focus on the inscriptions from Asia Minor and compare them with other regions as Italia X and Pannonia to see : 1° whether –aes/-es are two distinctive phenomena or two variants of the same phenomenon and 2° if this particularity has been used as a typical feature to point out the Greek origin of the person(s) mentioned in the inscription or the bilingual character of the community which has produced the text.