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No less do we find extending back into those times the fundamental ideas on which the development of all Indo-Germanic states ultimately rests; the relative position of husband and wife, the arrangement in clans, the priesthood of the father of the household and the absence of a special sacerdotal class as well as of all distinctions of caste in general, slavery as a legitimate institution, the days of publicly dispensing justice at the new and full moon.
The inscriptions have not yet been, and it is scarcely to be expected that they ever will be, deciphered. The genitive forms, -aihi- and -ihi-, corresponding to the Sanscrit -asya- and the Greek oio , appear to indicate that the dialect belongs to the Indo-Germanic family.
These examples selected from a great abundance of analogous phenomena suffice to establish the individuality of the Italian stock as distinguished from the other members of the Indo-Germanic family, and at the same time show it to be linguistically the nearest relative, as it is geographically the next neighbour, of the Greek.
Moreover, at the time when agriculture originated, the Hellenes and Italians appear to have been united as one national whole not merely with each other, but with other members of the great family; at least, it is a fact, that the most important of those terms of cultivation, while they are foreign to the Asiatic members of the Indo-Germanic family, are used by the Romans and Greeks in common with the Celtic as well as the Germanic, Slavonic, and Lithuanian stocks.
For the present, therefore, it must suffice to indicate the differences between the culture of the Indo-Germanic family in its oldest undivided form, and the culture of that epoch when the Graeco-Italians still lived together.
We shall see at the same time how analogous this is to the development of the various groups of vertebrates that have arisen from the common stem-form of the primitive vertebrate. The ancient Indo-Germanic root-language divided first into two principal stems the Slavo-Germanic and the Aryo-Romanic.
In India, in like manner, the Indo-Germanic settlers were preceded by a dark-coloured population less susceptible of culture.
During the period when the Indo-Germanic nations which are now separated still formed one stock speaking the same language, they attained a certain stage of culture, and they had a vocabulary corresponding to it. This vocabulary the several nations carried along with them, in its conventionally established use, as a common dowry and a foundation for further structures of their own.
For language, especially in the period of its formation, is the true image and organ of the degree of civilization attained; its archives preserve evidence of the great revolutions in arts and in manners, and from its records the future will not fail to draw information as to those times regarding which the voice of direct tradition is dumb. Indo-Germanic Culture
The philological analysis of the idioms of these stocks has shown that they together constitute 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.
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