LATIN LANGUAGE 329
The inscription is as follows: –
Jovei Sat deivos qoi med mitat, nei ted endo cosmis virco sied, asted noisi Ope Toitesiai pacari vois.
Dvenos med feced en raanom einom dzenoine med ruaao stated.
The general style of the writing and the phonetic peculiarities make it pretty certain that this work must have been produced not later than 300 B.C.; the characters employed prove that the writer was familiar with one of the dialects spoken in the hilly country to the east of Rome; but on the whole the language may be taken as Latin. Some points in its interpretation are still open to doubt; 1 but the probable interpretation is –
Jovi Saturno divis qui ( = si quis) me mittet, ne te endo ( = in te) comis virgo sit, ast nisi Opi Tutcsiae pacari vis. Duenus me fecit in manum : enim die noni me mano stato. " If any one brings me to the gods Jupiter and Saturn, let not any maiden be kindly to thee, except unless thou wilt offer a sacri fice to Ops Tutesia. " Duenus made me for the offering to the dead ; therefore on the ninth day place me for the offering for the dead." The noteworthy phenomena here are the retention not only of ci but of the much more archaic oi, apparently taking the place of the former by a dialectic variation ; ci in cinom for a short c , e for i infcccd, q before o, and dz apparently to represent the sound of ffy (=/)
A bronze tablet recently discovered near the Fucine Lake, and some works of art found at Palestrina, belong to the same period. They are undoubtedly Latin, but the Latin has been mixed with other elements so that it would have been quite unintelligible to a native of Rome.
Of the earlier long inscriptions the most important would be the Columna Rostrata, or column of Duilius, erected to commemorate his victory over the Carthaginians in 260 B.C., but for the uncer tainty as to the extent to which it has suffered from the hands of restorers. The shape of the letters plainly shows that the inscrip tion, as we have it, was cut in the time of the empire. Hence Ritschl and Mommsen suppose 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 for G (CESET = ;yessi7), D retained in the ablative (e.g., in altod niarid), o for u in inflexions (priinos, cxfocwnt=*cxfugiunt), single for double consonants (closes = classes), e for i (navcbos = nambus, cxcmct = cxcmit) ; of the.se 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 pracda where we should have expected praida; no final consonants are dropped; and the forms -c-s, -cis, and -i-s for the accusative plural are inter changed capriciously. The doubts hence arising preclude the possibility of using it with confidence as contemporary evidence for the state of the language.
Of unquestionable genuineness and the greatest value are the Scipionum Eloyia, inscribed on stone coffins, found in the monument of the Scipios outside the Capene gate. 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 some what later than that of his son (consul 259 B.C.). The last may therefore be taken as the earliest specimen of any length of Latin as it was written at Rome; it runs as follows: –
honcoino . ploirume . cosentiont . r[omai] duonoro . optumo . fuise . uiro [virorum] luciom . scipione . filios . barbati cojnsol . censor . aidilis . hie . fuet a [pud vos] Jic]c . cepit . Corsica . aleriaque . urbefin. jntgnandod] fZ]det . tempestatebus . aide . mereto[fZ votum].
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 ( = u) and ai ( = ac); (3) -ct for -it, ncc for hie, and -clus for -ibus; (4) the absence of doubled consonants; and (5) duon- for bon-. On the other hand, the dropping of a final m in every case except in Luciom is a sign of the tendency to lighten final syllables, which is a marked characteristic of the language of this period.
In the epitaph on Scipio Barbatus, o nowhere appears where the later language has u, except in the doubtful case of Samnio (? = Samnium). The diphthongs oi and ai, as well as ci, are found in the latest of all the Scipio inscriptions (aid. cur. = aedilis curulis), as well as in the Epistola Consulum ad Teuranos (187 B.C.), and in the almost exactly contemporary decree of L. Æmilius (Hermes, iii. 243 sq.); but in a somewhat earlier epitaph to a Scipio (L. Cornelius Cn. f. Cn. n. Scipio) we have aetate. Of -el for -it and the like there is another example in dedet (C. I. R., 63), comp. dede in (7. I. 11., 62; navebous (-bus) of the Duilian column.
1 Comp. Jordan in Hermes, xvi. 225-60; Bucheler in Rhein. Mus., xxxvi. 235 sq.
Doubled consonants first appear in the decree of yEmilius, though
not regularly (comp. posediscnt by csscnt and possidcre); in the
Epist. ad Tcur. they are still not used. Duonus is not found else
where, except in the Carmen Saliare, but Duclonai for Bcllonae
appears in the Epist. ad Tcur. ; and duellum for bdlum occurs in
Ennius and Plautus, as a legal archaism in Cicero, and as a poetic
variation in Horace, Ovid, and Juvenal.
A number of precious indications of archaisms on the one hand and mutilated forms on the other are supplied by dedicatory tablets of about the same age found in Picenum and Latium. As specimens of the former we may select Maurtc = Marti, praidad=* pracda, Junone = Junoni ; of the latter ^dedrot or dcdro or dcdcri = dcdcrunt, dcde = dcdit, cupa = culat; the omission of a final m is also common.
Beginnings of literary Latin.
Archaisms.
It was a turning point in the history of the Latin language when Roman literature took its rise under the influence of the Greek culture. It is a reasonable conjecture that the much greater corruption of the Umbrian dialect as compared with the Latin, and of the Latin as compared with the Oscan, in regard to the precise representation of sound, was due mainly to the varying degrees of contact with Greek civilization. The inscriptions dating from the 5th century of the city show the greatest arbitrariness in such points as the insertion or omission of final s and m, and of n before s, and in the distinction of e and u, e and i. The language of Plautus shows us the struggle of the two tendencies in the plainest manner. On the one hand we have numerous archaisms not only in form but in quantity. Of the old long vowels in final syllables we have the following still retained, not indeed always, but when it is convenient for the verse: –
-ā in the nom. and voc. of the first declension:
ne epístulā quidem úlla sit in aédibus (Asin., 762).
-būs in dat. and abl. plur. [usually when a pause in the sense affords some justification]:
út ego illic oculís exuram lámpadibūs ardéntibus (Men., 842).
-ōr in nom. of substantives, and comparatives, and also in verbs:
módo, quom dicta in me íngerebas, ódium non uxōr eram (Asin., 927).
tantó mi ægritúdo auetiiṓ est in ánimo (bacchiac) (Ca}}t., 782). pol id quidem experior ita ut praedicas, Palaestiio (Mil., 633). -er in nom. : meus fuit pater Antimachus, ego vocor Lyconides (Aul., 772). -U, not only in the subj. (where it is a contraction for -iet) and in the perf. ind. , but even in the present : potionis aliquid, prius quam percipit insania (Men., 921). et: quod quisque in animo habet aut habiturust, sciunt (Trin., 206). [Ritschl, " in animod habet "]. at: funduni alienum arSt, incultum familiarem deserit (Asin., 874). On the other hand we have much more commonly traces Destruc- of the destructive influence which was beginning to affect tive ten- so powerfully the form of Latin words, especially in their dencies. final syllables. From causes which it is now impossible to discover, the freer accentuation of earlier times, the existence of which was proved incidentally by Yerner in his famous paper on some exceptions to the law of " Laut- verschiebung" (Kuhn s Zeitschrift, xxiii. 97-138), had been given up in favour of a more rigid system, which never allowed the accent to fall on the final syllable. Hence there was a constant struggle between the desire to preserve the older quantity of the final vowel and the tendency to shorten an unaccented syllable. This difficulty of preserv ing the quantity of the final vowel is naturally greatest when the accented syllable is short ; hence we are led to the formula that for Plautus, and therefore for the spoken language of his time " - =~ " . This holds good for all vowels, whether in nouns or in verbs, e.g. : a: satis si futurumst ; rogii me viginti minas (Pseud., 114). c: cave praeterbitas lillas aedis qin n roges (Epid., 433). i: meri bellatores gignuntur, quas hie praegnantis fecit (MIL, 1077). o : novo libcrto opus est quod pappet. dabitur, praebebo cibum (Epid., 727). u : quod manu nequeunt tangere, tantum fas habent, quo manus apstineant (Trin., 288). The last case is a rare one ; the others are very common.
