15 - The languages of Italy

Summary

An astonishing diversity of languages in pre-Roman Italy is attested by contemporary inscriptions, which are found, though rarely in any great quantity, in nearly every region, and range in date over a period of more than 700 years, from the introduction of the alphabet by Greek colonists in the eighth century B.C. to the disappearance in the first century of at least the written forms of the local languages, as a consequence of the general adoption of Latin. As evidence for these languages, the inscriptions, however few, are clearly superior to the rare and often unreliable glosses in ancient authors and to the speculative constructions, based on etymologies of proper names, that are occasionally to be encountered in works of modern scholarship; whatever literature there may have been besides that of Rome has been lost. Identification and classification of the various languages may contribute to the identification of the peoples of ancient Italy and their connexions, while the best evidence for the indigenous institutions of these peoples is often to be found in the inscriptions.

The study of these dead languages through inscriptions necessarily involves consideration of the alphabets in which the inscriptions are written, and the diffusion of writing in itself constitutes an important part of the cultural history of early Italy. The peoples of the far south and of Sicily borrowed the alphabet from the Greek colonies, with which they were in direct contact; the alphabet was also borrowed very early by the Etruscans, and transmitted by them to other parts of Italy.