The History of Rome, Book I: The Period Anterior to the Abolition of the MonarchyMommsen, Theodor
History
The History of Rome, Book I: The Period Anterior to the Abolition of the Monarchy
Mommsen, Theodor
Rome -- History
passive formed by the addition of -r takes its place; and further
that the majority of the tenses are formed by composition with the
roots -es and -fu, while the richer terminational system of the
Greeks along with the augment enables them in great part to dispense
with auxiliary verbs. While the Italian languages, like the Aeolic
dialect, gave up the dual, they retained universally the ablative
which the Greeks lost, and in great part also the locative. The
rigorous logic of the Italians appears to have taken offence at
the splitting of the idea of plurality into that of duality and
of multitude; while they have continued with much precision to
express the relations of words by inflections. A feature peculiarly
Italian, and unknown even to the Sanscrit, is the mode of imparting
a substantive character to the verb by gerunds and supines,--a
process carried out more completely here than in any other language.
Relation of the Italians to the Greeks
These examples selected from a great abundance of analogous phenomena
suffice to establish the individuality of the Italian stock as
distinguished from the other members of the Indo-Germanic family,
and at the same time show it to be linguistically the nearest
relative, as it is geographically the next neighbour, of the Greek.
The Greek and the Italian are brothers; the Celt, the German, and
the Slavonian are their cousins. The essential unity of all the
Italian as of all the Greek dialects and stocks must have dawned
early and clearly on the consciousness of the two great nations
themselves; for we find in the Roman language a very ancient word
of enigmatical origin, -Graius-or -Graicus-, which is applied to
every Greek, and in like manner amongst the Greeks the analogous
appellation --Opikos-- which is applied to all the Latin and
Samnite stocks known to the Greeks in earlier times, but never to
the Iapygians or Etruscans.
Relation of the Latins to the Umbro-Samnites
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