Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/231

Rh their appearance along with the others; although certainly Dorism early penetrated into these Ionic colonies themselves, and their dialect was very fluctuating. While all the facts thus combine to attest the stirring traffic of the Latins with the Greeks of the western main generally, and especially with the Sicilians, there is scarcely found a single evidence any intercourse with other peoples; in particular it is very remarkable that—if we leave out of account a few local names—there is an utter absence of any evidence from language as to ancient intercourse between the Latins and the nations speaking the Aramaic tongue.

If we further inquire how this traffic was carried on, whether by Italian merchants abroad or by foreign merchants in Italy, the former supposition has all the probabilities in its favour, at least so far as Latium is concerned. It is scarcely conceivable that those Latin terms denoting the substitute for money and the commercial loan could have found their way into general use in the language of the inhabitants of the island of Sicily through the mere resort of Sicilian merchants to Ostia and their acquisition of copper in return for ornaments.

Lastly, in regard to the persons and classes by whom this traffic was carried on in Italy, no special superior class of merchants distinct from and independent of the class of landed proprietors developed itself in Rome. The reason of this surprising phenomenon was, that the wholesale commerce of Latium was from the beginning in the hands of the large landed proprietors—an hypothesis which is not so singular it seems. It was natural that in a country intersected by several navigable rivers the great landholder, who was paid by his tenants their quotas of produce in kind, should come at an early period to possess barks; and there is evidence that such was the case: the transmarine traffic carried on on personal account must therefore have fallen