Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/35

Rh branched off, and these again divided into the western and eastern stocks, while at a still later date the eastern became subdivided into Umbrians and Oscans.

When and where these separations took place language of course cannot tell, and scarce dare adventurous thought attempt to grope its conjectural way along. the course of revolutions, the earliest of which undoubtedly took place long before that migration which brought the ancestors of the Italians across the Apennines. On the other hand, the comparison of languages, when conducted with accuracy and caution, may give us an approximate idea of the degree of culture which the people had reached when these separations took place, and so furnish us with the beginnings of history, which is nothing but the development of civilization. For language, especially in the period of its formation, is the true image and organ of the degree of civilization attained; its archives preserve evidence of the great revolutions in arts and in manners, and from its rolls the future will not fail to draw information as to those times regarding which the voice of direct tradition is dumb.

During the period when the Indo-Germanic nations that are now separated still formed one stock speaking the same language, they had attained a certain stage of culture, and they had a vocabulary corresponding to it. This vocabulary the several nations carried along with them, in its conventionally established use, as a common dowry, and a foundation for further structures of their own. In it we find not merely the simplest terms denoting existence, actions, perceptions, such as sum, do, pater, the original echo of the impression which the external world made on the mind of man, but also a number of words indicative of culture (not only as respects their roots, but in a form stamped upon them by custom) which are the common property of the Indo-Germanic family, and which cannot be explained either on the principle of an uniform development in the several languages, or on the supposition of their having subsequently borrowed one from another. In this way we possess evidence of the development of pastoral life at that remote epoch in the unalterably fixed names of domestic animals; the Sanscrit gâus is the Latin bos, the Greek 🇬🇷; avis is the Latin ovis, Greek 🇬🇷; Sanscrit açvas, Latin equus, Greek 🇬🇷; Sanscrit hansas, Latin anser, Greek 🇬🇷; Sanscrit atis, Latin anas, Greek 🇬🇷; in like manner pecus, sus,