The earlier treatment of Language 513 



the hands of the Romans things were worse even than they had been 

 in the hands of Plato and his Greek successors. The lack of success 

 on the part of Varro and later Roman writers may have been partly 

 due to the fact that, from the etymological point of view, Latin is a 

 much more difficult language than Greek. It is many stages further 

 removed from the parent language than Greek is ; it is by no means 

 so closely connected with Greek as the ancients imagined, and they 

 had no knowledge of the Celtic languages from which, on some sides 

 at least, much greater light on the history of the Latin language 

 might have been obtained. Roman civilisation was a late develop- 

 ment compared with Greek, and its records dating earlier than 

 300 B.C. a period when the best of Greek literature was already in 

 existence are very few and scanty. Varro it is true was much more 

 of an antiquary than Plato, but his extant works seem to show that 

 he was rather a " dungeon of learning " than an original thinker. 



A scientific knowledge of language can be obtained only by com- 

 parison of different languages of the same family and the contrasting 

 of their characteristics with those of another family or other families. 

 It never occurred to the Greeks that any foreign language was worthy 

 of serious study. Herodotus and other travellers and antiquaries 

 indeed picked up individual words from various languages, either 

 as being necessary in communication with the inhabitants of the 

 countries where they sojourned, or because of some point which 

 interested them personally. Plato and others noticed the similarity 

 of some Phrygian words to Greek, but no systematic comparison 

 seems ever to have been instituted. 



In the Middle Ages the treatment of language was in a sense 

 more historical. The Middle Ages started with the hypothesis, 

 derived from the book of Genesis, that in the early world all men 

 were of one language and of one speech. Though on the same 

 authority they believed that the plain of Shinar had seen that 

 confusion of tongues whence sprang all the languages upon earth, 

 they seem to have considered that the words of each separate 

 language were nevertheless derived from this original tongue. And 

 as Hebrew was the language of the Chosen People, it was naturally 

 assumed that this original tongue was Hebrew. Hence we find 

 Dante declaring in his treatise on the Vulgar Tongue 1 that the first 

 word man uttered in Paradise must have been El, the Hebrew name 

 of his Maker, while as a result of the fall of Adam, the first utter- 

 ance of every child now born into this world of sin and misery is heu, 

 Alas ! After the splendidly engraved bronze plates containing, as 

 we now know, ritual regulations for certain cults, were discovered in 

 1444 at the town of Gubbio, in Umbria, they were declared, by 



1 Dante, de Vulgari Eloquio, i. 4. 

 D. 33 



