Robert Seymour Conway

“ IOVILAE, or Jovilae, a latinized form of iůvilas, the name given by the Oscan-speaking Campanians in the 5th, 4th and 3rd centuries B.C. to an interesting class of monuments, not yet fully understood. They all bear crests or heraldic emblems proper to some family or group of families, and inscriptions directing the annual performance of certain ceremonies on fixed days. While some of them are dedicated to Jupiter (in a special capacity, which our present knowledge of Oscan is insufficient to determine) , others were certainly found attached to graves. ”

“ It is to be noted carefully that all the changes which have been described are changes of Sound, taking place in the spoken language, often long before the epoch in which the language was written down. When a language comes to be written down, and fixed spelling is established,—a thing which has happened to the languages of all civilised peoples,—and still more when the language comes to be printed, we generally find that the sounds actually existing in speech are only roughly represented in writing or printing. This is particularly true of English. The spelling of Latin was much more exact ”

“ The chief record of the dialect or patois we owe to the goddess Angitia, whose chief temple and grove stood at the south-west corner of Lake Fucinus, near the inlet to the emissarius of Claudius (restored by Prince Torlonia) , and the modern village of Luco. She (or they, for the name is in the plural in the Latin inscription next cited) was widely worshipped in the central highlands (Sulmo, C.I.L. ix. 3074, Furfo Vestinorum, ibid. 3515) as a goddess of healing, especially skilled to cure serpent bites by charms and the herbs of the Marsian woods. ”

“ AURUNCI, the name given by the Romans to a tribe which in historical times occupied only a strip of coast on either side of the Mons Massicus between the Volturnus and the Liris, although it must at an earlier period have extended over a considerably wider area. ”

“ The truth is that few things add more interest even to the elements of a language than the good salt of a little etymology. But since it has become generally known that the derivations given in the current dictionaries and in many commentaries are based on pious theories framed long before the advent of scientific method, the best teachers are apt to be shy of etymology altogether.
This book is meant to be easily understood by anyone who has learnt enough to find his way about Latin authors with the help of a dictionary. ”

“ Paelignian and this group of inscriptions generally form a most important fink in the chain of the Italic dialects, as without them the transition from Oscan to Umbrian would be completely lost. The unique collection of inscriptions and antiquities of Pentima and the museum at Sulmona were both created by the late Professor Antonio de Nino, whose brilliant gifts and unsparing devotion to the antiquities of his native district rescued every single Paelignian monument that we possess. ”

“ SAMNITES, the name given by the Romans to the warlike tribes inhabiting the mountainous centre of the S. half of Italy. The word Samnites was not the name, so far as we know, used by the Samnites themselves, which would seem rather to have been (the Oscan form of) the word which in Latin appears as Sabini (see below) . The ending of Samnites seems to be connected with the name by which they were known to the Greeks' of the Carnpanian coast, which by the time of Polybius had become Σαυνῖται ”

“ Where the current of air is only modified by receiving a vibration from the tongue we get the Liquids, r when the tip of the tongue is vibrated, and l when the sides of the tongue are vibrated; to produce l the front of the tongue is generally set fast against the teeth or palate. Eng. and Lat. r and l are both made with Voice. In modern English the Vibration of r has become very weak, and at the end of a syllable it is hardly heard at all unless a vowel follows. ”

“ None of the groups of sounds occurring in the rest of the inscription, nor any of the endings of words so far as they may be guessed, present any reason for doubting this hypothesis; and the glosses already mentioned can one and all be easily connected with Greek or Latin words (e.g. μοῖτον, mutuum) ; in fact it would be difficult to rebut the contention that they should all be regarded as mere borrowings. (R. S. C.)
The towns of the Siculi, like those of the Sicani, formed no political union, but were under independent rulers. ”

“ VOLSCI, an ancient Italian people, well known in the history of the first century of the Roman Republic. They then inhabited the partly hilly, partly marshy district of the S. of Latium, bounded by the Aurunci and Samnites on the S., the Hernici on the E., and stretching roughly from Norba and Cora in the N. to Antium in the S. They were among the most dangerous enemies of Rome, and frequently allied with the Aequi, whereas the Hernici from 486 B.C. onwards were the allies of Rome. ”

“ The inscriptions we possess are enough to show that the dialect spoken by these tribes was substantially the same from the northern boundary of the Frentani to some place in the upper Aternus valley not far from Amiternum (mod. Aquila) , and that this dialect closely resembled the Oscan of Lucania and Samnium, though presenting some peculiarities of its own, which warrant, perhaps, the use of the name North Oscan. The clearest of these is the use of post positions, as in Vestine Poimunie-n, " in templo Pomonali "; pritrom-e, i.e. in proximum, " on to what lies before you." ”

“ Strictly speaking Phonetic Laws have no exceptions: that is to say, a phonetic change affects equally the same sound in all words existing in the language at the time, provided that the sound is under the same conditions in all the words. ”

“ The assumption that Latin was properly the language of the Latian plain and of the Plebs at Rome, which the conquering patrician nobles learnt from their subjects, and substituted for their own kindred but different Safine idiom, renders easier to understand the borrowing of a number of words into Latin from some dialect (presumably Sabine) where the velars had been labialized; for example, the very common word bos, which in pure Latin should have been *vos. ”

“ But besides the help which etymology thus gives to interpreting Latin authors, there are many interesting questions which a student meets directly he begins to compare English with Latin, or indeed with any Romance language, but to which the answers have been only recently found, such as the nature of what is called ‘Gender’ (§§ 205–11) , or of the Impersonal Passive (§§ 311–2) . And many well-known stumbling-blocks in Latin usage become natural and interesting as soon as their history is understood; for example the poetical use of the Distributive Numerals (centēnus and the like, § 238) ”

“ MARRUCINI, an ancient tribe which occupied a small strip of territory round about Teate (mod. Chieti) , on the east coast of Italy. It is first mentioned in history as a member of a confederacy with which the Romans came into conflict in the second Samnite War, 325 B.C., and it entered the Roman Alliance as a separate unit at the end of that war (see further Paeligni) . ”

“ English-speaking students especially have much to gain from the study of Latin Etymology. Their own language is so largely based on Latin that their understanding of it is deepened and enlivened by knowing the history of Latin words and idioms; and all the time they are increasing their enjoyment, and consequently their profit, in reading Latin authors. ”

“ Syntax.—It may be said generally that there are very few if any peculiarities in the syntax of the Oscan and Umbrian inscriptions as compared with Latin usage, though a large number of familiar Latin idioms appear, such as the abl. absolute; the abl. of circumstance, the genitive in judicial phrases, the use of the neut. adj. as an abstract substantive, e.g. Oscan ualaemom touticom, “optimum publicum,” i.e. “optima rei publicae ratio.” In verbal forms the same use of the gerundive combined with the noun to represent the total verbal action, e.g. Umb. ocrer pehaner paca, “arcis piandae causa” ”

“ Now people once used to suppose that such changes came quite by haphazard; but we know now that in each language at any given time the different sounds were being changed in certain definite ways, and in no others. By finding out these ways of change we can often discover the earlier form of a word, and its earlier meaning also; and when we have done this, we say we have found its Derivation.
§ 2. School-boys and others often wonder what means there are of finding out the derivations of words. ”

“ The Samnites are thus shown to be intimately related to the patrician class at Rome (see Rome: history, ad init.) , so that it was against their own stock that the Romans had to fight their hardest struggle for the lordship of Italy, a struggle which might never have arisen but for the geographical accident by which the Etruscan and Greek settlements of Campania divided into two halves the Safine settlements in central Italy. ”

“ When the tongue is at rest and the lips are not moved during the passage of Voice through the mouth, the result is a colourless or “neutral” vowel, very common in unaccented syllables in English, e.g. in the second syllable of such words as suitable, different, memory. This vowel is conveniently denoted by ə, a symbol called ‘schwa,’ from the name of the sound in Hebrew.
§ 30. The vowels are the simplest kind of Sonants. By a Sonant we mean a sound which can by itself be pronounced as a syllable. By a Consonant we mean a sound which cannot be heard unless it is combined with a Sonant. ”

“ Not even the transcription of their alphabet has reached the stage of certainty, for even in this small number of inscriptions the alphabet seems to vary. The chief doubt is about the value of ⩛ and ⟇ (or ⟑ and ⩚) which appear beside the symbol Ά on the same inscriptions; and of the dots in the middle of the line which are certainly not interpuncts. They may conceivably have some connexion with the dots in Venetic inscriptions, which R. S. Conway has endeavoured to explain (see Veneti) . ”

“ By Kindred Languages we mean those which have descended from a common ancestor. Thus what are called Romance languages, Corsican, Sardinian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian and Roumanian, are kindred languages because they have all descended from Latin. ”

“ The earliest begin, according to the generally accepted dating, from the nth century B.C. The remains at Este begin a very little later, but no inscriptions appear upon them until we reach the pottery of the 6th century B.C. It remains therefore to be determined whether this Venetic language was the proper speech of the people who, as it is generally supposed, brought with them the early Iron culture into Italy from north of the Alps in the nth century B.C., or whether it was the language of the people of the soil whom they conquered. ”

“ A syllable of course is long when it contains either a long vowel or a diphthong, or a vowel followed by a consonant which has another consonant following it. Thus in a word like perditus the first syllable is long although the -e- in it is itself a short vowel.
(5) In words which contain two or more syllables before the Accented syllable, there is generally a weaker accent on one of these preceding syllables; in that part of the word this secondary accent is placed just as the chief accent would have been if that part had been a separate word ”

“ Precisely analogous changes happened with Italic ō and ŭ; the resulting vowel being denoted in Oscan alphabet both by u and by uͦ (Vͦ) , in Umbrian alphabet by u, in Latin alphabet by o.
It is well to add here one or two other characteristics in which Oscan alone is more primitive, not merely than Latin, but even than Umbrian.
(a) Oscan retains s between vowels, whereas in both Latin and Umbrian it became r. In Oscan it seems to have become voiced, as it is represented by z in Latin alphabet, e.g. gen. pl. fem. egmazum, “rerum”; ezum, in Oscan alphabet esom, pres. infin. “esse.” ”

“ The proper name for the sound of h is therefore what it is called in Greek, namely a ‘rough breathing’; and it is unfortunate that it has popularly come to be called “the aspirate,” since this word is used in Phonetics, as we have seen, to mean something different. ”

“ The language of the inscription of Velitrae offers at first sight a difficulty from this point of view, in the conversion which it shows of q to p; but it is to be observed that the Ethnicon of Velitrae is Veliternus, and that the people are called on the inscription itself Velestrom (genitive plural) ; so that there is nothing to prevent our assuming that we have here a settlement of Sabines among the Volscian hills, with their language to some extent (e.g. in the matter of the diphthongs and palatals) corrupted by that of the people round about them ”

“ The progress of study has, however, grouped them under more specific names, such as the “ North Oscan” group (see Paeligni) and the “ Latinian ” group (see Latin Language) , and the only content now left for the term Sabellic consists of a group of 8 or 9 inscriptions to which it certainly cannot be applied with truth. They are probably, if not certainly, the most ancient inscriptions in existence on Italian soil. ”

“ They can only be found when beside the word which we wish to explain there exists some other word or words either in the same language or in another kindred language, with which the word can be compared. By comparing two or more kindred words we can generally find out something about the earlier form of each of them. When we compare Lat. gero, haurio with their participles gestus, haustus (and when we have learnt that in Latin -s- between vowels became -r-) , we see that their earlier forms were *geso, [1] *hausio ”

“ In Latin the Accented syllable was pronounced with greater Stress, but it is possible that there was some raising of the Tone also in the language of polite society. But in the everyday speech of the camps from which all the Romance languages outside Italy arose, the Stress accent was very strong. ”

“ In seeking for an explanation we may perhaps trust, at least in part, the evidence of the Ethnicon itself. The name Volsci belongs to what may be called the -CO- group of tribal names in the centre, and mainly on the west coast, of Italy, all of whom were subdued by the Romani before the end of the 4th century B.C.; and many of whom were conquered by the Samnites about a century or more earlier. They are, from south to north, Osci, Aurunci, Hernici, Marruci, Falisci ”