on the advice of a committee of Latin scholars, has recommended
for the diphthongs ae and oe the pronunciation of English i (really ai)
in wine and oi in boil, sounds which they undoubtedly had in the
time of Plautus and probably much later, and which for practical
use in teaching have been proved far the best.
VI. The Language as recorded
39. Passing now to a survey of the condition of the language at various epochs and in the different authors, we find the earliest monument of it yet discovered in a donative inscription on a fibula or brooch found in a tomb of the 7th century B.C. at Praeneste. It runs “Manios med fhefhaked Numasioi,” i.e. “Manios made me for Numasios.” The use of f (fh) to denote the sound of Latin f supplied the explanation of the change of the symbol f from its Greek value ( = Eng. w) to its Latin value f, and shows the Chalcidian Greek alphabet in process of adaptation to the needs of Latin (see Writing). The reduplicated perfect, its 3rd sing. ending -ed, the dative masculine in -oi (this is one of the only two recorded examples in Latin), the -s- between vowels (§ 25, 1), and the -a- in what was then (see §§ 9, 10) certainly an unaccented syllable and the accusative med, are all interesting marks of antiquity.[1]
40. The next oldest fragment of continuous Latin is furnished
by a vessel dug up in the valley between the Quirinal and the
Viminal early in 1880. The vessel is of a dark brown clay, and
consists of three small round pots, the sides of which are connected
together. All round this vessel runs an inscription,
in three clauses, two nearly continuous, the third written below;
the writing is from right to left, and is still clearly legible; the
characters include one sign not belonging to the later Latin
alphabet, namely 
for R, while the M has five strokes and the
Q has the form of a Koppa.
The inscription is as follows:—
“iovesat deivos qoi med mitat, nei ted endo cosmis virco sied, asted noisi opetoitesiai pacari vois.
dvenos med feced en manom einom duenoi ne med malo statod.”
The general style of the writing and the phonetic peculiarities make it fairly certain that this work must have been produced not later than 300 B.C. Some points in its interpretation are still open to doubt,[2] but the probable interpretation is—
“Deos iurat ille (or iurant illi) qui me mittat (or mittant) ne in te Virgo (i.e. Proserpina) comis sit, nisi quidem optimo (?) Theseae (?) pacari vis. Duenos me fecit contra Manum, Dueno autem ne per me malum stato ( = imputetur, imponatur).”
“He (or they) who dispatch me binds the gods (by his offering) that Proserpine shall not be kind to thee unless thou wilt make terms with (or “for”) Opetos Thesias (?). Duenos made me against Manus, but let no evil fall to Duenos on my account.”
41. Between these two inscriptions lies in point of date the famous stele discovered in the Forum in 1899 (G. Boni, Notiz. d. scavi, May 1899). The upper half had been cut off in order to make way for a new pavement or black stone blocks (known to archaeologists as the niger lapis) on the site of the comitium, just to the north-east of the Forum in front of the Senate House. The inscription was written lengthwise along the (pyramidal) stele from foot to apex, but with the alternate lines in reverse directions, and one line not on the full face of any one of the four sides, but up a roughly-flattened fifth side made by slightly broadening one of the angles. No single sentence is complete and the mutilated fragments have given rise to a whole literature of conjectural “restorations.”
R. S. Conway examined it in situ in company with F. Skutsch in
1903 (cf. his article in Vollmöller’s Jahresbericht, vi. 453), and the
only words that can be regarded as reasonably certain are regei
(regi) on face 2, kalatorem and iouxmenta on face 3, and iouestod
(iusto) on face 4.[3] The date may be said to be fixed by the variation of
the sign for m between 
and 
(with Ɑ for r) and other alphabetic
indications which suggest the 5th century B.C. It has been suggested
also that the reason for the destruction of the stele and the repavement
may have been either (1) the pollution of the comitium by the
Gallic invasion of 390 B.C., all traces of which, on their departure,
could be best removed by a repaving; or (2) perhaps more probably,
the Augustan restorations (Studniczka, Jahresheft d. Österr. Institut,
1903, vi. 129 ff.).
(R. S. C.)
42. Of the earlier long inscriptions the most important would be the Columna Rostrata, or column of Gaius Duilius (q.v.), erected to commemorate his victory over the Carthaginians in 260 B.C., but for the extent to which it has suffered from the hands of restorers. The shape of the letters plainly shows that the inscription, as we have it, was cut in the time of the empire. Hence Ritschl and Mommsen pointed out that the language was modified at the same time, and that, although many archaisms have been retained, some were falsely introduced, and others replaced by more modern forms. The most noteworthy features in it are—C always written for G (Ceset = gessit), single for double consonants (clases-classes), d retained in the ablative (e.g., in altod marid), o for u in inflexions (primos, exfociont = exfugiunt), e for i (navebos = navibus, exemet = exemit); of these the first is probably an affected archaism, G having been introduced some time before the assumed date of the inscription. On the other hand, we have praeda where we should have expected praida; no final consonants are dropped; and the forms -es, -eis and -is for the accusative plural are interchanged capriciously. The doubts hence arising preclude the possibility of using it with confidence as evidence for the state of the language in the 3rd century B.C.
43. Of unquestionable genuineness and the greatest value are the Scipionum Elogia, inscribed on stone coffins, found in the monument of the Scipios outside the Capene gate (C.I.L.1 i. 32). The earliest of the family whose epitaph has been preserved is L. Cornelius Scipio Barbatus (consul 298 B.C.), the latest C. Cornelius Scipio Hispanus (praetor in 139 B.C.); but there are good reasons for believing with Ritschl that the epitaph of the first was not contemporary, but was somewhat later than that of his son (consul 259 B.C.). This last may therefore be taken as the earliest specimen of any length of Latin and it was written at Rome; it runs as follows:—
honcoino . ploirume . cosentiont . r[omai]
duonoro . optumo . fuise . uiro [virorum]
luciom . scipione . filios . barbati
co]nsol . censor . aidilis . hic . fuet a [pud vos]
he]c . cepit . corsica . aleriaque . urbe[m]
de]det . tempestatebus . aide . mereto[d votam].
The archaisms in this inscription are—(1) the retention of o for u in the inflexion of both nouns and verbs; (2) the diphthongs oi ( = later u) and ai ( = later ae); (3) -et for -it, hec for hic, and -ebus for -ibus; (4) duon- for bon; and (5) the dropping of a final m in every case except in Luciom, a variation which is a marked characteristic of the language of this period.
44. The oldest specimen of the Latin language preserved to us in any literary source is to be found in two fragments of the Carmina Saliaria (Varro, De ling. Lat. vii. 26, 27), and one in Terentianus Scaurus, but they are unfortunately so corrupt as to give us little real information (see B. Maurenbrecher, Carminum Saliarium reliquiae, Leipzig, 1894; G. Hempl, American Philol. Assoc. Transactions, xxxi., 1900, 184). Rather better evidence is supplied in the Carmen Fratrum Arvalium, which was found in 1778 engraved on one of the numerous tablets recording the transactions of the college of the Arval brothers, dug up on the site of their grove by the Tiber, 5 m. from the city of Rome; but this also has been so corrupted in its oral tradition that even its general meaning is by no means clear (C.I.L.1 i. 28; Jordan, Krit. Beiträge, pp. 203-211).
45. The text of the Twelve Tables (451–450 B.C.), if preserved in its integrity, would have been invaluable as a record of antique Latin; but it is known to us only in quotations. R. Schoell, whose edition and commentary (Leipzig, 1866) is the most complete, notes the following traces, among others, of an archaic syntax: (1) both the subject and the object of the verb are often left to be understood from the context, e.g. ni it antestamino, igitur, em capito; (2) the imperative is used even for permissions, “si volet, plus dato,” “if he choose, he may give him more”; (3) the subjunctive is apparently never used in conditional,
- ↑ The inscription was first published by Helbig and Dümmler in Mittheilungen des deutschen archäol. Inst. Rom. ii. 40; since in C.I.L. xiv. 4123 and Conway, Italic Dial. 280, where other references will be found.
- ↑ This inscription was first published by Dressel, Annali dell’ Inst. Archeol. Romano (1880), p. 158, and since then by a multitude of commentators. The view of the inscription as a curse, translating a Greek cursing-formula, which has been generally adopted, was first put forward by R. S. Conway in the American Journal of Philology, x. (1889), 453; see further his commentary Italic Dialects, p. 329, and since then G. Hempl, Trans. Amer. Philol. Assoc. xxxiii. (1902), 150, whose interpretation of iouesat = iurat and Opetoi Tesiai has been here adopted, and who gives other references.
- ↑ The most important writings upon it are those of Domenico Comparetti, Iscriz. arcaica del Foro Romano (Florence-Rome, 1900); Hülsen, Berl. philolog. Wochenschrift (1899), No. 40; and Thurneysen, Rheinisches Museum (Neue Folge), iii. 2. Prof. G. Tropea gives a Cronaca della discussione in a series of very useful articles in the Rivista di storia antica (Messina, 1900 and 1901). Skutsch’s article already cited puts the trustworthy results in an exceedingly brief compass.
