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Updated: May 21, 2025
The only thing that we can establish as certain in the early history of La'tium is, that its inhabitants were of a mixed race, and the sources from whence they sprung Pelasgic and Oscan; that is, one connected with the Greeks, and the other with some ancient Italian tribe.
The rare -denarii- with -Safinim- and -G. Mutil- in Oscan characters must belong to this period; for, as long as the designation -Italia- was retained by the insurgents, no single canton could, as a sovereign power, coin money with its own name. I. VII. Servian Wall They not merely retain life, liberty, and property, but may be formed into communities with a constitution of their own.
The non-Aryan language here referred to is the Euskarian, now spoken only by the Basques, but which seems in earlier times to have been the language of the Aquitanians and Spaniards, and may possibly have extended much further to the East. Whether it has any connection with the Ligurian and Oscan dialects are questions upon which, of course, I do not presume to offer any opinion.
The Phoenician, the Greek, the Oscan, the Roman, the Lombard, I have seen them all! leaves gay and glittering on the trunk of the universal life scattered in due season and again renewed; till, indeed, the same race that gave its glory to the ancient world bestowed a second youth on the new.
At the same time the accent was, as in Latin and in the more rugged Greek dialects, uniformly thrown back upon the initial syllable. Proper names are formed, substantially, after the general Italian system. So at least it sounded to the Roman ear; "Tuscan and Gallic" were the languages of barbarians, "Oscan and Volscian" were but rustic dialects.
Pompeii began in or before the sixth century B.C. as an Oscan city. For a while, we hardly know when, it was ruled by Etruscans. Later, about 420 B.C., it was occupied by Samnites. Finally, it became Roman; it was refounded in 80 B.C. as a 'colonia' and repeopled by soldiers discharged from the armies of Sulla. In A.D. 79 it reached its end in the disaster to which it owes its fame.
Born at Rudiae in Calabria, and so half Greek, half Oscan, he served while a young man in Sardinia, where he rose to the rank of centurion, and was soon after brought to Rome by Cato. There is something striking in the stern reactionist thus introducing to Rome the man who was more instrumental than any other in overthrowing his hopes and fixing the new culture beyond possibility of recall.
It was owing to anything but devotion towards the revolutionary Roman government, that numerous contingents from the Oscan districts reinforced their armies; but it was well understood there that an oligarchy restored by Sulla would not acquiesce, like the lax Cinnan government, in the independence of these lands as now de facto subsisting; and therefore the primitive rivalry between the Sabellians and the Latins was roused afresh in the struggle against Sulla.
But a reaction set in: the sounds which had coalesced in Oscan, -d and -r, and the sounds which had coalesced in Latin, -g and -k, were again separated, and each was provided with its proper sign; -o and -u, for which from the first the Oscan alphabet had lacked separate signs, and which had been in Latin originally separate but threatened to coalesce, again became distinct, and in Oscan even the -i was resolved into two signs different in sound and in writing; lastly, the writing again came to follow more closely the pronunciation the -s for instance among the Romans being in many cases replaced by -r.
The language used may have been the Oscan, but, considering the fact that a knowledge of that dialect was not universal at Rome, it was more probably the popular or plebeian Latin interspersed with Oscan elements.
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