PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. THIS work, as it originally appeared, was a first attempt to discuss the comparative philology of the Latin Language on the broad basis of general Ethnography, and to show historically how the classical idiom of ancient Rome resulted from the absorption or centralisation of the other dialects spoken in the Peninsula. My motto was: licet omnia Italica pro Romanis habeam; and I did not content myself with a survey of the Italian races, but endeavoured to prove that the elements of this cisalpine population might be recognised in the Scythia of Herodotus, either in juxta-position or in some degree of fusion; and thus, that they might be traced back to the primary settlements of the Indo-Germanic family. In maintaining the composite structure of the Latin language, I assert also that the different elements, of which it is made up, are to be found in the fragmentary languages which have come down to us. When Lepsius proposed (de Tabulis Eugubinis, pp. 102, 105) to defend the thesis: Latinam linguam non esse mixtam, he must have had in view, either an opposition to the doctrine that Latin may be divided into a Greek and non-Greek part, which Lassen calls one-sided and erroneous, for we might as well speak of the German and non-German, or the Indian and non-Indian parts of Latin (Rhein. Mus. 1833, p. 361); or else a confutation of one of those untenable theories, which represent this language as an imperfectly combined assemblage of heterogeneous ingredients. Admitting that in Italy, as in other peninsulas and islands of Europe, there must have been a Celtic substratum, this book undertakes to prove that the old Italian tribes were either Sclavonians, LowGermans, or that well-fused compound of these two, the Lithuanians. Thus all the elements were homogeneous, and a perfect combination or absorption of idioms was a natural result of the political centralisation occasioned by the conquests of the Imperial City on the Tiber. In order to arrive at this conclusion, it was necessary to examine all the details of Italian ethnography; and I am quite sure that, if Niebuhr thought a long series of essays on the old tribes of the Peninsula a proper introduction to his researches in Roman history, a similar investigation, supported by an analysis of the linguistic fragments, must be a still more indispensable preliminary to a treatise on Latin philology. To complete the ethnographical portion of this work, I have drawn up a map of ancient Italy, which may also serve as a specimen of the best method, as it appears to me, of representing in a geographical form the results of philological and historical researches respecting the origin and changes of population in a particular district. Maps like those of Berghaus do indeed exhibit the area and boundaries of a nation or language at a given time; but the only ethnographical map, which can really assist the student's memory, is one which shows to the eye the origin and affinities of the different elements in the population of a country. To effect this, I have not only given, if I may say so, a section of the various strata, but I have so chosen the colours, as to indicate their structure and relationship. As I believe that the Greeks and Celts-like the Teutones and Cimbri of history-were scions ultimately of the same stock, I have represented them by cognate colours-red and pink; and then, taking yellow to mark the Sclavonians and blue to indicate the Gothic tribes, the fusion of these races in the Lithuanian or Latin is shown to the eye by a stratum of green, which is a mixture of blue and yellow. The former edition of this book, though complete with reference to its immediate object, was merely a review of existing knowledge, extended by suggestions and materials for further researches. The present republication endeavours to fill up the outline, which was thus presented. It will be found, therefore, that there is much more of enlargement than of alteration in the book as it now appears. Scarcely any chapter is without considerable and important additions, and I have thought it right to insert four new chapters, containing a full discussion of some subjects, which received only an incidental notice in the former edition. In fact, I have not intentionally omitted an examination of any important or difficult question connected with the ethnography of ancient Italy, or with the higher departments of Latin etymology and grammar1. With regard to the great 1 In regard to all discussions in the present Volume, which bear immediately on the practical study of the Latin language, I should wish this work to be considered as a sequel to the Latin Grammar and Exercises which were published a few months since. Teachers will, I hope, find that I have fully explained and justified my departure from the traditionary, and, as it appears to me, erroneous method so long pursued in our classical schools. philological problem,-the origin of the Etruscans and the nature of their language,-I think that I have so far extended and confirmed the theory, which I laid before the British Association in 1851, that it may now claim formal recognition as a discovery resting firmly on inductive evidence. of In reprinting this volume, I have felt much distrust my ability to do all that I wished with the book; but I have no want of confidence in the soundness of the principles, which support it, or in the certainty of the results, to which it leads; and I believe that, whatever may be its defects, this work will contribute, in some degree, to facilitate and promote an important branch of those studies, to which I have devoted the best years of my life. J. W. D. BURY ST. EDMUND'S, |