38 Br Daniel Wilson on the Intrusion of 



naturally developed, points to a social condition prevailing 

 among the ancient tribes of Central Italy, and especially 

 among the Sabines, more easily explicable by the analogies 

 of modern Celtic clanship as it existed in Scotland down to 

 the middle of the eighteenth century, than by any other 

 source which history discloses to us. 



Assuming, with Pritchard, Newman, and other able philolo- 

 gical critics, the Kelticity of the Umbrians, and the Kelto- 

 Italian character of both the Umbrians and Sabines, we are 

 left in no doubt as to the antiquity of the Keltic ethnological 

 element in Sc cithern Europe. Among the primitive native 

 Italian populations, the Umbrians were, at the earliest times, 

 the cultivators of the soil and the builders of cities ; and their 

 ancient capital, Ameria, was one of the oldest cities of Italy. 

 Pliny assigns the date of its foundation 381 years before that 

 of Rome. Specimens of the language of this people have been 

 preserved to us in the celebrated Eugubine Inscriptions, dis- 

 covered at Gobbio, the ancient Iguvium, and the relation of 

 this language to the Latin has been satisfactorily assigned by 

 Grotefend and others. But without attempting to determine 

 how far the famous Sabines and Latins, or the less important 

 tribes of Piceni, Vestini, Frentani, and Marsi, which clustered 

 around their ancient areas on the east, approximated to the 

 Umbrian type, it is sufficient for our present purpose to know 

 that " the primitive Latin must have Keltized itself by im- 

 bibing Umbrian," (Newman's " Regal Rome,'") and that the 

 Keltic element of the Latin is derived, being isolated and 

 fragmentary, and only traceable to its etymological family 

 groups by a reference to the surviving Celtic dialects. We 

 are hence left in no doubt that that appearance of the Kelts 

 or Gauls in Central Italy, B.C. 389, which Dr Arnold has cha- 

 racterized as their " beginning for the first time to take their 

 part in the great drama of the nations,'" was by no mean 

 their earliest intrusion into Southern Europe. Dr Latham, 

 who is little disposed to extend the Keltic area further than 

 the strictest evidence will sanction, and even denies the Kel- 

 ticity of the element mingling with the Iberian stock to con- 

 stitute the Celtiberi of Spain [Ethnology of Europe, p. 37), in 

 restricting the original area of this ancient race, remarks, " I 



