Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/370

 354 HISTORY OF GREECE race out of southern Italy, which wrested the larger portion of Sicily from the preexisting Sikanians. This imperfect account, representing the ideas of Greeks of the fifth century B. C. as to the early population of southern Italy, is borne out by the fullest comparison which can be made between the Greek, Latin, and Oscan language, the first two certainly, and the third probably, sisters of the same Indo-Euro- pean family of languages. While the analogy, structural and radical, between Greek and Latin, establishes completely such community of family and while comparative philology proves that on many points the Latin departs less from the supposed common type and mother-language than the Greek there ex- ists also in the former a non-Grecian element, and non-Grecian classes of words, which appear to imply a confluence of two or more different people with distinct tongues; and the same non-Grecian element, thus traceable in the Latin, seems to pre- sent itself still more largely developed in the scanty remains of the Oscan. 1 Moreover, the Greek colonies in Italy and Sicily TOVTOV 6e uvrip utiiKero K Tu/^f ^fyof, 2t/ce/ldf tivoua avru (Antioclm.s ap. Dionys. H. i, 73 : compare c. 12). Philistus considered Sikelus to be a son of Italus : both he and Hellanikus believed in early migrations from Italy into Sicily, but described the emi- grants differently (Philistus, Frag 2, cd. Didot). 1 See the learned observations upon the early languages of Italy and Sicily, which Moller has prefixed to his work on the Etruscans (Einleitung, i, 12). I transcribe the following summary of his views respecting the early Italian dialects and races : " The notions which we thus obtain respecting the early languages of Italy are as follows : the Sikel, a sister language, nearly allicd.to the Greek or Pelasgic; the Latin, compounded from the Sikcl and from the rougher dialect of the men called Aborigines ; the Oscan, akin to the Latin in both its two elements ; the language spoken by the Sabine emigrants in their various conquered territories, Oscan ; the Sabine proper, a distinct and peculiar language, yet nearly connected with the non-Grecian clement in Latin and Oscan, as well as with the language of the oldest Ausonians and Aborigines." [N. B. This last statement, respecting the original Sabine language, is very imperfectly made out : it seems equally probable that the Sabellians may have differed from the Oscans no more than the Dorians from the lonians: sec Kicbubr, Horn. Gesch. torn, i, p. 69.] " Such a comparison of languages presents to us a certain view, which I shall here briefly unfold, of the earliest history of the Italian races. At a period anterior to all records, a single people, akin to the Greeks, dwelling