L A T L A T 327
England as (I trust) shall never be put out." He "received the flame as it were embracing it. After he had stroked his face with his hands, and (as it were) bathed them a little in the fire, he soon died (as it appeared) with very little pain or none."
Two volumes of Latimer's sermons were published in 1549.
Various volumes of his remains appeared after his death, edited by
Bernher and Thomas Some. A complete edition of his works,
edited for the Parker Society by the Rev. George Elwes Corrie,
appeared in two volumes, 1844-45. His Sermon on the Plough,
and Seven Sermons preached before Edward VI., the best known of
his sermons, were reprinted by Arber, 1869. In addition to
memoirs attached to editions of his sermons, there are Lives by
Gilpin (1755) and Demaus (1869). The principal contemporary
authorities are Foxe's Book of Martyrs, Stow's Chronicles and
Annals, and his own Sermons. (T. F. H.)
LATIN LANGUAGE
THE Latin language first appears in history as the language spoken in the plain of Latium (q.v.). In the 3d century B.C., at which date it first becomes known to us from extant inscriptions and contemporary history, its range as a vernacular was still limited to this district, although the arms of Rome had carried some knowledge of it to the utmost boundaries of the peninsula of Italy.
Languages of Italy.
Of the dialects commonly spoken outside the limits of Latium, two appear to have been entirely distinct in char- acter from the rest. In the extreme south-east, inscriptions have been found in considerable numbers, written in a language known as Iapygian or Messapian; but no pro gress has as yet been made in their interpretation, and it is quite impossible to determine with certainty even to what stock the language may have belonged. There are indications which seem to point in the direction of some kinship with the Albanian, but these are far too slight and untrustworthy to be accepted with any confidence. In Etruria, and at one time in Campania and in the plain of the Po, a language was spoken the affinities of which have not yet been determined satisfactorily (cf. vol. viii. pp. 638-39).
The other dialects of the Italian peninsula may be divided into two main groups, the Umbro-Sabellian and the Latin. The former is the more extensive in range in the earlier historic times, and includes Umbrian and Oscan or Samnite, still known to us by inscriptions, and (according to tradition) the language of the Sabines, the Marsians, and the Volscians, of which but scanty traces remain. The latter probably had in prehistoric times a much wider range than that to which we find it afterwards confined. There are no facts to contradict the hypothesis, to which a consideration of the geographical relations of the several tribes seems to point, that at one time, not only Latium, but also Campania, Lucania, Italia proper, and the eastern half of Sicily, were inhabited by tribes belonging to the Latin race. But these regions were early subjected to Hellenizing influences, or conquered by Sabellian invaders, and the only dialect closely akin to the Latin of which any specimens are preserved in inscriptions is that of Falerii in southern Etruria.
Common features of the Italian languages.
The Umbro-Sabellian and the Latin share many characteristics which enable us to unite them as members of a common Italian group: but what is the exact position to be assigned to this group in the Indo-European stock is a question which cannot be regarded as finally determined. Some scholars of eminence, as Schleicher, maintain that its closest affinities are with the Celtic group, mainly on the strength of the agreement of both in the loss of aspirates and retention of spirants, in the form adopted for the expression of the middle or reflexive voice in verbs, and in the dative plural, and on other less significant points. But the more common opinion is that its connexion is closest with the Hellenic group, and that we may safely assume the existence of a common Italo-Hellenic nationality. Hence in vol. xi. pp. 130-131 an attempt was made to reconstruct the main outlines of the language spoken by the ancestors of both Greeks and Romans, and to point out what phonetic changes and what developments of inflexion must have already taken place. Starting from the basis there laid down, we may now proceed to notice the following leading features, as marking the course of the Italian group of languages after their separation from the Hellenic group. Even for scholars who do not accept this genealogical classification of languages such a survey will not be without its value as a statement of the facts which every theory has to take into account.
1. The vowels remained on the whole unaltered in Latin up to the time of the earliest inscriptions. After that date there was a rapid development of a tendency, of which traces are to be found even earlier, of the degradation of the diphthongs to simple vowels. But in the earlier records we find, e.g., still praidad=praeda (C. I. R., 63), utei = uti (ib., 196), virtutei = virtute (ib., 34), ploirume = plurimi (ib., 32), Leucesius = Lucetius (Carm. Saliar.), abdoucit = abducit (C. I. R., 30). Of these diphthongs ai is found almost exclusively in the inscriptions older than the 7th century of Rome, in words afterwards spelt with ae; ei is found representing an ē or an ī as late as the time of Augustus; oi occurs regularly for oe or ū up to the time of the Gracchi, and occasionally later; eu is apparently found in the place of a later ū only in the one form quoted, although it is probable that in many cases ou represents a still earlier eu, as is shown by Marti Loucetio (C. I. Rhen., 929) by the side of Marti Leucetio (ib. 930), and by the transliteration of Lucius by (
Greek characters); ou is found regularly for ū, with rare exceptions, up to the time of the Social War.
Umbrian in this respect shows evidence of a much more rapid decay of the vowel-system, and had reached, at the time at which we learn to know it, a stage of monotony to which Latin only attained several centuries later: e.g. , vīnū = O. Lat. veinōd, kvēstur = O. Lat. quaistor, ētu = O. Lat. eito, āsē = Lat. ārae, tōru = Lat. tauros.
On the other hand, Oscan was much more faithful than the con temporary classical Latin to the complex diphthong-system, coming in this respect very near to archaic Latin : e.g., Fluus-ai = Florae, deicum (infinitive, answering to dicere), touticom=tūticum (i.e., publicum).
The change of o to u, u to i, and e to i takes place later. Within the history of the Latin language the u retains its full sound, not weakened like the Greek v to ü.
2. In respect of the consonants the principal change is in the aspirates. While a comparison of Greek shows that they must have retained their character as sonant aspirates up to the time of the separation, none of the Italian languages have preserved them in this form. In Latin the guttural aspirate becomes g in the middle of a word (comp. &yx< and ango, flx"> and lingo) and before ? (comp. gra-tu-s and x<^P ts > grnndo and x<*A.aa); with a parasitic T fre-
- quently appended (angui-s and x " J )> which sometimes leads to
the loss of the g (breri-s and &paxv-s). At the beginning it becomes h (hiemps and x i ^"> holus and x^ "^) or/ (/c? and xoh-os,for-mus and 6fp-p.6-s), the two representative letters sometimes alternating dialectically (hacdus and facdits, our goat ; fostis and hostis, our I guest}. The dental aspirate became medially d (mcdius and /ueWos for /j.(d-i/os), or sometimes b (uber and ovQap, rubcr and t-pv6-p6-s ; | comp. also terbum and word, barba and beard), initially only f (fores j and Ovpa, fcrus and 07j/>). The labial aspirate passes medially into b (ambo and frptpia ; comp. navibu-s and vavtyiv, containing the same element bhi, although the terminations are not identical), initially into f (fd-ri and 0r),ui, fero and <t>tp<a), and rarely into h (perhaps dialectically in horda by the side offorda, and by dissimilation in mi-hi for mi-bi). Hence it appears that in Latin any one of the three original aspirates may be represented by f; we may compare our lauijh (Germ. lachen), dwarf (Germ, zwerg), Middle Eng. dwerth, the Russian Feodor for Theodore, and the change in Greek from p-h (pronounced separately) to ph=f.
The spirants (y, u; s), the loss of which is so marked a feature in the Greek consonant-system, are retained with but few important exceptions. The most important of these is the rhotacism whereby
