VOL. LXVl.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. '■ Q 



Though the name of Romansh, which the whole language bears, seem to be 

 a badge of Roman servitude, yet the conquest of that nation, if ever effected, 

 could not have produced a great alteration in a language which must already have 

 been so similar to their own ; and its general name may as well be attributed to 

 the pacific as to the hostile Romans. But when we consider that a coalition of 

 the 2 main dialects, which differ so far as not to be reciprocally understood, 

 must have been the inevitable consequence of a total reduction ; and that such 

 a coalition is known never to have taken place, we may lay the greater stress on 

 the many passages of ancient authors, in which it is implied that the boasted 

 victories of the Romans over the Rhaeti, for which public honours had been de- 

 creed to L. Munatus, M. Anthony, Drusus, and Augustus, amounted to no 

 more than frequent repulses of those hardy people into their mountains ; out of 

 which their want of sufficient room and sustenance, (which in our days drives 

 considerable numbers of them into the services of foreign powers) compelled 

 them at times to make desperate excursions in quest of necessaries. And we 

 may also from these collected authorities be induced to give the greater credit to 

 the commentator of Lucan, and to the modern historians, who positively assert, 

 that the people living near the sources of the Rhine and the En were never 

 totally subdued by the Roman arms ; but only repelled in their attempts to 

 harass their neighboui's. 



This whole country however, from its central situation, could not but be 

 annumerated to one of the provinces of the empire, and accordingly we find 

 that Rhaetia itself (which by the accounts of ancient geographers appears to have 

 extended its limits beyond the lake of Constance, Augsburg, and Trent, to- 

 wards Germany, and to Como and Verona towards Italy) was formed into a 

 Roman province, governed by a pro-consul or procurator, who resided at Augs- 

 burgh ; and that when, in the year IIQ, the emperor Adrian divided it into 

 Rhaetia prima and secunda, the governor of the former, in which the country 

 now spoken of must have been comprized, took up his residence in 2 castles 

 situated where Coire now stands, while the other continued his seat at Augs- 

 burg. But notwithstanding these appearances, no trace or monument of Roman 

 servitude is to be met with in this district, except the ambiguous name of one 

 mountain, situated on the skirts of these highlands, and generally thought to 

 have been the non plus ultra of the Roman arms on the Italian side. 



From the difficulty those persevering veterans experienced in keeping this 

 stubborn people in awe, Mr. P. infers that such strenuous assertors of their in- 



* A parallel instance of tlie formation of a language by Roman colonies is the idiom of Moldavia ■ 

 which, according to Prince Cantemir's account of that country, has stiU many traces of its Latin 

 origin, and which, though engrafted on tlie Dacian, and since on the Sclavonian dialects of the 

 Celtic, may still be considered as a sister language to that here treating of. — Orig. 

 VOL. XH . C 



