PELASGIAN ELEMENT. 41 ship; they were defiled by none of their vices. Saturn, Janus, Sylvanus, Faunus, and other Etruscan deities, were grave, venerable, pure, and delighted in the simple occupations of rural life. It was only general features of resemblance which enabled the poets in later ages to identify Saturn with Kronos, Sylvanus with Pan, the prophetic Camena of the Janiculum with the muses of Parnassus. The point, however, most important for the present consideration is that their language was likewise permanently affected. The ethnical affinities which have been here briefly stated, and which may be considered as satisfactorily established by the investigations of Niebuhr, Müller, Lepsius, Donaldson, and others, are a guide to the affinities of the Latin language, and point out the elements of which it is composed. These elements, then, are Umbrian, Oscan, Etruscan, Sabine, and Pelasgian; but, as has been stated, the Etruscan language was a compound of Oscan and Pelasgian, and the Sabine was the link between the Umbrian and Oscan, therefore the elements of the Latin are reduced to three, namely, Umbrian, Oscan and Pelasgian. These may again be classified under two heads, the one which has, the other which has not, a resemblance to the Greek. All Latin words which resemble Greek are Pelasgian,3 all which do not are Oscan and Umbrian. From the first of these classes must of course be excepted those words-such, for example, as Triclinium, &c.—which are directly derived from the Greek, the origin of which dates partly from the time when Rome began to have intercourse with the Greek colonies of Magna Græcia, partly since Greek exercised an influence on Roman literature. It is clear from the testimony of Horace that the enriching of the language by the adoption of 1 Heyne, Exc. Virg. Æn. iii. 2 The religion of Rome furnishes many other traces of Etruscan influence: er. gr., the ceremonies of the augurs and haruspices were Etruscan, and the lituus, or augur's staff, may be seen on old Etruscan monuments. The Tuscan Fortune, Nortia, the etymology of whose name (ne-verto) coincides with that of the Greek 'Arponos (the unchangeable), had the nails, the emblem of necessity, as her device; and hence the consul marked the commencement of the year by driving a nail. The Roman Hymen, the god of marriage, was Talassius; a fact which illustrates one of the incidents in the tradition which Livy (book i. c. ix.) adopts respecting the rape of the Sabine virgins. The name Talassius was evidently derived from the Tuscan name Thalna, or Talana, by which was designated the Juno Pronuba of the Romans, and the 'H τελειά of the Greeks. 3 Owing to the existence of the Pelasgian element in Latin, as well as in Greek, an affinity can be traced between these languages and the Sanscrit in no fewer than 339 Greek and 319 Latin words. such foreign words was defended and encouraged by the literary men of the Augustan age: Si forte necesse est Indiciis monstrare recentibus abdita rerum Hor. Ep. ad Pis. 48. THE UMBRIAN LANGUAGE. 43 CHAPTER II. THE EUGUBINE TABLES-EXISTENCE OF OSCAN IN ITALY-BANTINE TABLE-PERUGIAN INSCRIPTION-ETRUSCAN ALPHABET AND WORDS-CHANT OF FRATRES ARVALESSALAN HYMN-OTHER MONUMENTS OF OLD LATIN-LATIN AND GREEK ALPHABETS COMPARED. THE UMBRIAN LANGUAGE. IN the neighborhood of Ugubio,' at the foot of the Apennines (the ancient Iguvium), were discovered, in A. D. 1444, seven tables, commonly called the Eugubine Tables. They were in good preservation, and contained prayers and rules for religious ceremonies. Some of them were engraved in the Etruscan or Umbrian characters, others in Latin letters. Lepsius2 has determined, from philological considerations, that the date of them must be as early as from A. U. C. 400,3 and that the letters were engraved about two centuries later. A comparison of the two shows, in the Umbrian character, the letter s standing in the place occupied byr in the Latin, and k in the place of g, because the Etruscan alphabet, with which the Umbrian is the same, did not contain the medial letters B, G, D. An analogous substitute is seen in the transition from the old to the more modern Latin. The names Furius and Caius, for example, were originally written Fusius and Gaius. His also introduced between two vowels, as stahito for stato, in the same way that in Latin aheneus is derived from aes. It also appears that the termination of the masculine singular was c: thus, orto ortus; whilst that of the plural was or; e. g., subator = subacti; screhitor = scripti. This mode of inflexion illustrates the form amaminor for amamini, which was itself a participle used for amamini estis, an idiom analogous to the Greek τετυμμένοι εισι. = The following extract, with the translation by Donaldson,' together with a few words which present the greatest resemblance to the Latin, will suffice to give a general notion of the relation which the Umbrian bears to it : 'See Donaldson's Varron., c. iii. 3 B. C. 354. 2 Leps. de Tab. Eng., p. 86. 4 Varronianus, c. iii. Teio subokau suboko, Dei Grabovi, okriper Fisiu, totaper Jiovina, erer nomne-per, erar, nomne-per; fos sei, paker sei, okre Fisei, Tote Jiovine, erer nomne, erar nomne: Tab. VI. (Lepsius.) Te invocavi invoco, Jupiter Grabovi, pro monte Fisio, pro urbe Iguvina, pro illius nomine, pro hujus nomine, bonus sis, propitius sis, monti Fisio, urbi Iguvinæ, illius nomine, hujus nomine. The remains which have come down to us of this language belong, in fact, to a composite idiom made up of the Sabine and Oscan. Although its literature has entirely perished, inscriptions fortunately still survive; but as they must have been engraved long subsequently to the settlement of the Sabellians in Southern Italy, the language in which they are written must necessarily be compounded of those spoken both by the conquerors and the conquered. Although Livy makes mention of an Oscan dramatic literature, for he tells us that the "Fabula Atellana" of the Oscans were introduced when a pestilence raged at Rome, together with other theatrical entertainments, he only speaks of the Oscan language in one passage. This, however, is an important one, because it proves that Oscan was the vernacular tongue of 1 See Grotefend, Rud. Ling. Umbr. Hanov. 1835; and Lassen. Beitrage zur Eug. Tafeln. Rhein. Mus. 1833. 2 Liv. vii. 11. 3 A. U. c. 361; B. c. 393. 4 Liv. x. 20. THE OSCAN LANGUAGE. 45 the Samnites at that period. He relates that Volumnius sent spies into the Samnite camp who understood Oscan: "Gnaros Oscæ linguæ exploratum quid agatur mittit." It is clear that the reason why the Oscan language prevailed amongst this people is, that the dominant orders in Samnium were Sabines. But there is evidence of the existence of Oscan in Italy at a still later period. Niebuhr1 asserts that in the Social War the Marsi spoke Oscan, although in writing they used the Latin characters. Some denarii still exist struck by the confederate Italian Government established in that war at Corfinium, on which the word Italia is inscribed, whilst others bear the word Viteliu. The latter is the old Oscan orthography, the former the Latin. One class of these coins, therefore, was struck for the use of the Sabine, the other of the Marsian allies. It is said also that Oscan was spoken even after the establishment of the empire. The principal monument of the Sabello-Oscan is a brass plate which was discovered A. D. 1793. As the word Bansæ occurs in the 23d line of the inscription, it has been supposed to refer to the town of Bantia, which was situated not far from the spot where the tablet was found, and it is therefore called the Bantine. Table. In consequence of the perfect state of the central portion, much of this inscription has been interpreted with tolerable certainty and correctness. The affinity may be traced between. most of the words and their corresponding Latin; and it is perfectly clear that the variations from the Latin follow certain definite rules, and that the grammatical inflexions were the same as in the oldest Latin. A copy of the Table may be found in the collection of Orellius, and also in Donaldson's "Varronianus."3 The following are a few specimens of words in which a resemblance to the Latin will be readily recognized, and also, in some instances, the relation of the Oscan to the other ancient languages |