The q-Celtic languages spoken in parts of Ireland, Isle of Man, and the Highlands of Scotland are usually supposed by archaeologists to have spread westward from Central Europe with the men of the leaf-shaped (bronze) sword about 1000 B.C. The view of Zimmer and Kuno Meyer that the q languages reached Ireland via France without touching Britain is now held to be less probable. The p-Celtic languages are almost universally {19} associated with the invaders of Britain in the pre-Roman Iron Age (the La Tene period). That these men occupied south-east Britain to a considerable extent there can be no doubt, and it is highly probable that their physical type is far more characteristic of the English plain to-day than of any part of Wales, save probably the Severn valley. Yet it is Wales that talks the p-Celtic language, which may have reached it in Roman times, while the Severn valley and the English plain have taken to English speech. Thus we see how inadvisable it is to speak of language-groups as race-groups. The Baltic or Lettic and the Celtic languages are in essentials survivals of antiquity, of great interest and value as preserving elements which would otherwise have been lost by process of time, but of uncertain future, for no man can say to what extent they are likely to be spoken a few centuries hence. It is otherwise with the Romance, Teutonic, and Slavonic families of languages; they are the definite possessions of the peoples of various regions for centuries to come, and it will be well for us to try to realize how this has come to pass. Whatever their origins, the Classical tongues spread southward into the Mediterranean. Greek was propagated far and wide by trade and by the movements of which Alexander's march to India was a sign as well as a factor. Rome gathered up into itself the general heritage of antiquity for better and for worse, and associated it with the Latin language, which became a lingua franca in some sort within the bounds of the Roman dominion, so that it influenced deeply not only the language of Gaul but also that of Britain (the p-Celtic language). The power of Latin was so great that only insensibly did the more modern languages, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Provençal, and French, arise out of it, leaving ancient forms like Walloon, Romansch, Ladin, and Frioul in remoter spots. Their rise was an event of the Middle Ages, though the habit of using Latin for scholarly purposes persisted far longer. In earlier times languages evidently {20} were more fluid. Walloon is practically French with Latin and Celtic elements rather stronger than they are in Parisian, and we have little doubt of the Latinization and subsequent Gallicization of a previously Celtic-speaking people. But since the Middle Ages language frontiers have hardly moved. This fixation of language has several factors.