Page:The Making of Latin.djvu/17

Rh War, in 197 B.C. Then France, of which the oldest dialect (Provencal) dates from the establishment of the provincia Narbonensis in 121 B.C. Latest of all began Roumanian which was started by the conquest of Dacia by the Emperor Trajan: this was completed in 107 A.D. and was commemorated by the great Column of Trajan which is still standing in Rome.

The relation between Latin and all these languages is sometimes expressed by using the word proethnic which means ‘before the separation of the nations’; Latin is ‘pro-ethnic Romance.’

§ . In just the same way nearly all the languages of Europe, and some of the languages of India and Persia, have descended from a language which we call Indo-European. But unluckily we have no direct record of this language: we can only infer what it was by comparing the different branches of language which sprang from it, Indo-Persian, Armenian, Greek, Italic, Keltic, Germanic and Balto-Slavonic (p. 127).

§ . The oldest branch of Indo-Persian is Sanskrit, the sacred language of the Brahmins of India; and their most sacred document is the Rig-Veda or ‘Book of Hymns,’ the oldest parts of which are judged to be as old as 1500 B.C.

§ . By Greek we generally mean Attic, the language of ancient Athens: but the other dialects, Tonic, Doric, and Aeolic, often had more primitive forms. Attic spread over all the coasts of the Mediterranean, and by the conquests of Alexander the Great, who died in 328 B.C., over the whole of Asia Minor and even further Hast. This wide-spread language was