Note 661 — Chapter XXII · WESTERN COLONIES OF GREECE — IN EPIRUS, ITALY, SICILY, AND GAUL.

See the learned observations upon the early languages of Italy and Sicily, which Müller has prefixed to his work on the Etruscans (Einleitung, i, 12). I transcribe the following summary of his views respecting the early Italian dialects and races: “The notions which we thus obtain respecting the early languages of Italy are as follows: the Sikel, a sister language, nearly allied to the Greek or Pelasgic; the Latin, compounded from the Sikel and from the rougher dialect of the men called Aborigines; the Oscan, akin to the Latin in both its two elements; the language spoken by the Sabine emigrants in their various conquered territories, Oscan; the Sabine proper, a distinct and peculiar language, yet nearly connected with the non-Grecian element in Latin and Oscan, as well as with the language of the oldest Ausonians and Aborigines.”

[N. B. This last statement, respecting the original Sabine language, is very imperfectly made out: it seems equally probable that the Sabellians may have differed from the Oscans no more than the Dorians from the Ionians: see Niebuhr, Röm. Gesch. tom. i, p. 69.]

“Such a comparison of languages presents to us a certain view, which I shall here briefly unfold, of the earliest history of the Italian races. At a period anterior to all records, a single people, akin to the Greeks, dwelling extended from the south of Tuscany down to the straits of Messina, occupies in the upper part of its territory only the valley of the Tiber,—lower down, occupies the mountainous districts also, and in the south, stretches across from sea to sea,—called Sikels, Œnotrians, or Peucetians. Other mountain tribes, powerful, though not widely extended, live in the northern Abruzzo and its neighborhood: in the east, the Sabines, southward from them the cognate Marsi, more to the west the Aborigines, and among them probably the old Ausonians or Oscans. About 1000 years prior to the Christian era, there arises among these tribes—from whom almost all the popular migrations in ancient Italy have proceeded—a movement whereby the Aborigines more northward, the Sikels more southward, are precipitated upon the Sikels of the plains beneath. Many thousands of the great Sikel nation withdraw to their brethren the Œnotrians, and by degrees still farther across the strait to the island of Sicily. Others of them remain stationary in their residences, and form, in conjunction with the Aborigines, the Latin nation,—in conjunction with the Ausonians, the Oscan nation: the latter extends itself over what was afterwards called Samnium and Campania. Still, the population and power of these mountain tribes, especially that of the Sabines, goes on perpetually on the increase: as they pressed onward towards the Tiber, at the period when Rome was only a single town, so they also advanced southwards, and conquered,—first, the mountainous Opica; next, some centuries later, the Opician plain, Campania; lastly, the ancient country of the Œnotrians, afterwards denominated Lucania.”

Compare Niebuhr, Römisch. Geschicht. vol. i, p. 80, 2d edit., and the first chapter of Mr. Donaldson’s Varronianus.