greater precision than that of the Iapygian nation. We may with propriety call this people the Italian, since upon it rests the historical significance of the peninsula. It is divided into the two branch-stocks of the Latins and the Umbrians, including under the latter their northern[errata 1] offshoots, the Marsians and Samnites, and the colonies sent forth by the Samuites even in historical times. The philological analysis of the idioms of these stocks has shown that they together form a link in the Indo-Germanic chain of languages, and that the epoch in which they still formed an unity is a comparatively late one. In their system of sounds there appears the peculiar spirant f, in the use of which they agree with the Etruscans, but decidedly differ from all Hellenic or Helleno-barbaric races, as well as from the Sanscrit itself. The aspirates, again, which are retained by the Greeks throughout, and the harsher of them also by the Etruscans, were originally foreign to the Italians, and are represented among them by one of their elements—either by the media, or by the breathing alone f or h. The finer spirants, s, w, j, which the Greeks dispense with as much as possible, have been retained in the Italian languages almost unimpaired, and have been in some instances still further developed. The throwing back of the accent and the consequent destruction of terminations are common to the Italians with some Greek stocks, and with the Etruscans; but among the Italians this was done to a greater extent than among the former, and to a lesser extent than among the latter. The excessive disorder of the terminations in the Umbrian certainly had no foundation in the original spirit of the language, but was a corruption of later date, which showed itself in a similar although weaker tendency also in Rome. Accordingly, in the Italian languages, short vowels are regularly dropped in the final sound; long ones, frequently: the concluding consonants, on the other hand, have been tenaciously retained in the Latin, and still more so in the Samnite; while the Umbrian drops even these. Connected with this is the fact that the middle voice has left but slight traces in the Italian languages, and a peculiar passive formed by the addition of r takes its place; and further that the majority of the tenses are formed by composition with the roots es and fu, while the richer terminational system of the Greeks along with the augment enables them for the most part to dispense with auxiliary
Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/32
12
THE EARLIEST MIGRATIONS
[Book I.
