Licence: In copyright
Credit: A companion to Latin studies. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
851/940 page 807
![its Oscan name Vttelhi, that is Italia, proved a successful rival to Rome, were of the same family as Latin itself, though in externals perhaps not very closely resembling it. But, besides these, there were various other languages in the peninsula, hke poor relations hanging about its gates. Of most of these we know very little and, as they have for later times no great historical importance, it will not be necessary to dwell long upon them. Of these the first is Messapian, the language of the people who lived in the heel of Italy. It is only recently that the inscriptions of this language have been carefully .'examined and the numerous forgeries weeded out. It has sometimes been conjectured that the Messa- pians and the lapygians were two separate peoples with different languages. Of difference in language, however, there is no satisfactory evidence. Owing to the similarity of tribal and place names it is conjectured that the language and people alike came across the Adriatic from Illyria. Hero- dotus, on the other hand, has a legend (vii 170) that the aborigines of Crete, except the inhabitants of Praesos and Polichne, abandoned the island, and after various adventures were shipwrecked upon the heel of Italy, where they henceforth remained. In recent years three fragments of the unknown tongue spoken by the Eteocretans have been discovered at Praesos or in its neighbourhood, but, even allowing for the lapse of many centuries between the date suggested by the legend and the fragments discovered in Crete, the forms do not suggest close connexion. Of Messapian we know very little, though several of the inscriptions are of considerable length; one is of 15, another of 19 lines. It is, however, clear that original 0 sounds changed to d, that 0 sounds remained, that the voiced aspirates bh, dh lost the aspiration and appear as b, d, that the genitive of original o stems appears as -ihi with the stem vowel retained before the ending and that there is a genitive in -as corresponding to the -os of consonant stems in Greek. An example of the language is PAA^TA^ | MOAAATOEHIAI | BIAIAETOETA | HIPAAE^APROATA. This is translated by the commentators as * Ettheta daughter of Plazet Moldatthes set up [this] to Aphrodite'. The form bilia with the sense of the Latin filia suggests the modern Albanian bil't 'daughter'; hipa-des is supposed to be a compound from the same root as ti^tj/xi, Latin jacio. 1200. In the north-eastern corner of Italy are found a considerable number of other inscriptions, written in a bold and distinctive alphabet, which, from the district where they are found, are called venetic Venetic. According to some scholars, these also are the records of an Illyrian people which had forced its way thus far; according to Professor Conway, they resemble most closely the Eteocretan. Both theories have difficulties; the first, because we know so little of Illyrian that we cannot tell with certainty even if it was the ancestor of the modern Albanian or not; the second, because as yet we know so little of Eteocretan that some scholars are in doubt whether it is an Indogermanic language at](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24750694_0851.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
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