A History of Roman Literature | Page 7

at first confined within a narrow and somewhat isolated range
of territory. The Umbrian stock, including the Samnite or Oscan, the
Volscian and the Marsian, had a more extended area. At one time it
possessed the district afterwards known as Etruria, as well as the
Sabellian and Umbrian territories. Of the numerous dialects spoken by
this race, two only are in some degree known to us (chiefly from
inscriptions) the Umbrian and the Oscan. These show a close affinity
with one another, and a decided, though more distant, relationship with
the Latin. All three belong to a well-marked division of the
Indo-European speech, to which the name of Italic is given. Its nearest
congener is the Hellenic, the next most distant being the Celtic. The
Hellenic and Italic may thus be called sister languages, the Celtic
standing in the position of cousin to both, though, on the whole, more

akin to the Italic. [2]
The Etruscan language is still a riddle to philologists, and until it is
satisfactorily investigated the ethnological position of the people that
spoke it must be a matter of dispute. The few words and forms which
have been deciphered lend support to the otherwise more probable
theory that they were an Indo-Germanic race only remotely allied to the
Italians, in respect of whom they maintained to quite a late period many
distinctive traits. [3] But though the Romans were long familiar with
the literature and customs of Etruria, and adopted many Etruscan words
into their language, neither of these causes influenced the literary
development of the Romans in any appreciable degree. Italian
philology and ethnology have been much complicated by reference to
the Etruscan element. It is best to regard it, like the Iapygian, as
altogether outside the pale of genuine Italic ethnography.
The main points of correspondence between the Italic dialects as a
whole, by which they are distinguished from the Greek, are as
follow:--Firstly, they all retain the spirants S, J (pronounced Y), and V,
_e.g. sub, vespera, janitrices_, beside _upo, espera, einateres_. Again,
the Italian u is nearer the original sound than the Greek. The Greeks
sounded u like ii, and expressed the Latin u for the most part by ou. On
the other hand the Italians lost the aspirated letters _th, ph, ch_, which
remain in Greek, and frequently omitted the simple aspirate. They lost
also the dual both in nouns and verbs, and all but a few fragmentary
forms of the middle verb. In inflexion they retain the sign of the
ablative (_d_), and, at least in Latin, the dat. plur. in bus. They express
the passive by the letter r, a weakened form of the reflexive, the
principle of which is reproduced in more than one of the Romance
languages.
On the other hand, Latin differs from the other Italian dialects in
numerous points. In pronouns and elsewhere Latin q becomes p in
Umbrian and Oscan _(pis = quis)._ Again, Oscan had two vowels more
than Latin and was much more conservative of diphthongal sounds; it
also used double consonants, which old Latin did not. The Oscan and
Umbrian alphabets were taken from the Etruscan, the Latin from the

Greek; hence the former lacked O Q X, and used [Symbol] or [Symbol]
(san or soft _z_) for z (_zeta = ds_). They possessed the spirant F
which they expressed by [Symbol] and used the symbol [Symbol] to
denote V or W. They preserved the old genitive in as or ar (Lat. _ai,
ae_) and the locative, both which were rarely found in Latin; also the
Indo-European future in so (_didest, herest_) and the infin. in um (_e.g.
ezum = esse_).
The old Latin alphabet was taken from the Dorian alphabet of Cumae, a
colony from Chaleis, and consisted of twenty-one letters, A B C D E F
Z H I K L M N O P Q R S T V X, to which the original added three
more, O or [Symbol] (_th_), [Symbol] (_ph_), and [Symbol] (_ch_).
These were retained in Latin as numerals though not as letters, [Symbol]
in the form of C=100, [Symbol] or M as 1000, and [Symbol] or L as
50.
Of these letters Z fell out of use at an early period, its power being
expressed by S (_Saguntum = Zákunthos_) or SS (_massa = máza_). Its
rejection was followed by the introduction, of G. Plutarch ascribes this
change to Sp. Carvilius about 231 B.C., but it is found on inscriptions
nearly fifty years earlier. [4] In many words C was written for G down
to a late period, _e.g._ CN. was the recognised abbreviation for
Gnaeus.
In Cicero's time Z was taken into use again as well as the Greek Y, and
the Greek combinations TH, PH, CH, chiefly for purposes of
transliteration. The Emperor