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Login to view. marginalia in my blog. In general, not much new, while I explain why I'm inclined to consider "portas" a verb, not a noun. I also wrote about how I connect all the lines together.
Initially, portas might appear to me to be a noun (“gates”), but its interpretation as a verb seems more consistent with the syntax of the line. Thereby, this yields two verbs in the line. They are in the second person singular, in different tenses:
dabas — imperfect indicative (“you were adding / you had added”)
portas — present indicative (“you carry / you place”)
One of the meanings of porto, portare overlaps with ponere (“to put”) or dirigere (“to apply”), which fits the context well. The resulting structure is therefore:
[you had added …] — [now you place …]
In Latin, nouns typically precede the verb; thus anchiton and ola belong with dabas. I interpret ola not as a dialectal form, but as olea (accusative plural of oleum) with a letter e omitted, a phenomenon also visible in the marginalia (cf. mi[l]ch in line 4).
Thus: anchiton ol[e]a dabas — “you added oils to the anchiton”.
Borrowed words often remain undeclined, which explains the unchanged form anchiton.
The verb portas governs teer/tar and cere. The latter is almost certainly cerae, with the common medieval shortening of -ae to -e. The presence of the Germanic teer instead of Latin pix (picem) may seem unusual, but given that the first and fourth lines are written in a German dialect, it is not implausible.
Rendered fully into Latin, the phrase becomes:
picem cer[a]e portas — “you put pitch to wax” or "you put pitch-wax"
This mixture is known as maltha, defined in Latin sources as:
Maltha — pix cerae permixta
(“Maltha — pitch mixed with wax”)
Maltha was used as cement, mastic, or sealant, particularly valued for its water-repellent and sealing properties. Variations in composition are well attested across time and place. Some included resin, ochre, wax, oil (or fat). Also Maltha sometimes was used as a material for making seals.