260. The Republic. R O 
as it is considerably less barbarous than some of the frag¬ 
ments of the laws of Nuna and Servius Tullius, preserved 
by Festus, and wants several of the characteristics by which 
they are distinguished. As the oldest monument extant 
of the Latin language, it is nevertheless curious and interest¬ 
ing, particularly from the number of words, in so brief a 
composition, which are obviously of Greek original. In 
the second line we have ein, which is clearly the Greek 
preposition ev ; in the third limen from \v[ay], the same as 
aoiis-o;, pestis,— sali, sal , by metathesis, from aXc,, —sta, 
from lo-Tvj/Ai,—and Berber analagous to the Lacedaemonian 
Herher, derived from ’Apij;, Mars. The reader will also 
remark the use of the letter s where r was afterwards em¬ 
ployed, as Lases for Lares ; a peculiarity which remains 
m almost all the monuments of a posterior date, down to 
the time of Appius Claudius Caecus; and he will no doubt 
be struck with the regularity of the verbs, juvatc and 
juvato, as contrasted with advocapit for advocate, ox jam 
duo capit, as Herman has rendered it. 
The remains of the ancient laws, and particularly the 
Decemviral constitutions which we have already given, ex¬ 
hibit a number of archaisms, eminently deserving of notice 
from the incidental light they reflect on some of the more re¬ 
condite analogies of the language, and from their furnishing 
us with the means of comparing and estimating the nature 
and extent of the changes afterwards introduced. In some 
respects, indeed, the diction of these ancient laws possesses 
a richness of intonation, not to be found in the Latin of a 
more modern and polished age. This arises from the fre¬ 
quent use of diphthongs, which were afterwards resolved, 
the subjunctive, or prepositive letter being dropped at the 
pleasure of the writer. Thus omneis ceiveis became, op¬ 
tionally, either omnes elves, or omuls clvis. Horace, in 
his courtly epistle to Augustus, ridicules the people for 
their attachment to the Laws of the Twelve Tables, which, 
he says, they were ready to swear had been dictated by the 
muses from the Alban mount 5 but it is impossible to read 
tire sonorous and majestic lines of Lucretius, the nearest 
approach which Latin has made to the lofty cadence and 
deep-toned rythm of the Greek, without a feeling of regret 
that the Doric music of the ancient language should have 
been sacrificed to the caprice of an age of fastidious re¬ 
finement. 
But after making due allowance for all these distinguishing 
peculiarities, of which Lucretius alone knew how to take 
advantage, it cannot be denied, that, at this period, the 
language was full of anomalies, extremely perplexing to us 
who have no other guide to its interpretation but analogy, 
and which it was reserved for the illustrious writers who 
succeeded in a great measure to remove. The chief of these 
consisted in the irregularity and uncertainty of the tenses of 
the verb, which in these older monuments, appear to follow 
no general law, though afterwards reduced, we know not 
how, to a system of so much perfection. So prevalent is 
this anomaly, that the meaning must be almost invariably 
determined from the position of the tense, in relation to other 
words of the clause or sentence, and not from its form. The 
same observation does not apply to the flexions of nouns, 
which are generally more regular, though it seems impos¬ 
sible to account for the letter d being affixed, in a great 
variety of instances, to such cases as end with a vowel; 
thus parlcidad, plebed, frauded; more especially as the 
same thing frequently occurs in the imperative active verbs— 
datod, removetod, sumitod, cstod, for example. Quips 
for quls, is more easily explained, being a compound of 
quel and the original form . ipse, which is probably a ver¬ 
bal derivative from err a, dico. Endo, for in, seems to be 
ey r,o, and Im is the regular accusative for Is, as is evident 
from the adverb interim. The forms of the substantive 
verb, which is composed of the debris of three different 
verbs, are also deserving of careful examination by. the scien¬ 
tific philologist: but we must leaVe these minute criticisms, 
and content ourselves with more general and cursory views 
of the progress of the language to the perfection and svm- 
M E. The Republic. 
metry which in a latter age it was destined to attain. From 
the promulgation of the Decemviral Laws, till the time 
of Scipio Barbatus, who was consul in the 456th year of 
Rome, an interval of more than a century and a half, not 
a vestige of written monument has been preserved: the next 
specimen of the language that we meet with being the 
epitaph on the tomb-stone of this distinguished Roman, 
discovered so late as the year 1780. It is incribedon a plain 
but handsome sarcophagus, formed of the stone which the 
Italians call peperino, has no other ornaments but triglyphs, 
and is the oldest sepulchral monument to which an approxi¬ 
mate date Lan be assigned. “ Cornelius Lucius Scipio 
Barbatus, Graiuod patre prognatus, forlis vir sapiensque, 
quojus forma virtutei parisuma fuit. Consol Censor Aidilis 
quei fuit apud vos ; Taurasia, Cisauna, Samnio cepit; subicit 
omne Loucana opsidesque abdoucit.” War having been 
declared on the Lucanians in the year of Rome 464, it 
follows, that the date of this inscription must be posterior to 
that event. 
About thirty years after the death of Scipio Barbatus, and 
during the first punic war, a pillar, afterwards so celebrated 
by the name of the Columna Rostrata, was erected to the 
consul C. Duillius Nepos, in commemoration of the great 
naval victory gained by him over the Carthaginians, and 
with an inscription engraved on the pedestal, setting forth 
the services of the successful commander. A short time 
before the breaking out of the third punic war, the shaft of 
this column was entirely demolished by lightning (tota ad 
knum fulmipe discussa est); but the pedestal happily 
remained uninjured. In this dilapidated state it continued 
till about the reign of Claudius, when the inscription, which 
had been effaced, was repaired, or rather engraved anew, 
and the orthography probably retouched. We meet with 
nO further notice of the Columna Rostrata till the year 
1565, when the part of the pedestal containing the inscrip¬ 
tion was disinterred from among the mins in the vicinity of 
the Capitol; but it had sustained so much injury, that many 
of the words were totally obliterated, and others so much 
effaced, as to be nearly, if not altogether, illegible. These 
by combining the conjectures of Lipsius, Giaceonius, ^Gau¬ 
ges de Goze, and Funccius, Schcell has, we think, succeeded 
in restoring; but as our present object is to exhibit the state 
of the Latin' language at the different epochs of which 
authentic memorials have been preserved, we shall content 
ourselves with transcribing, as specimens, a few of the 
words which have been completely deciphered. And here 
we remark, that in this interesting monument (in the parts 
of it which are confessedly antique) we discover nearly all 
the peculiarities which we had occasion to notice, when 
speaking of the laws of the Twelve Tables. Thus, w'e have 
exemet, cepet, ornavet, for exemit, cepit, ornavit; puc- 
nandod, marid, dictatorcd, for pugnando, mari, dictatore ; 
Cartacinienseis, lecioneis, for Carthageniensis, legiones; 
exfociont, for effugiunt; navebos for navibus; olorum for 
illorum; Poenicas for Punicas; sumqs, numel, close, for 
summas, nummi, classe; capltom, captom, poplom, for 
capitum, captum, populum, &c. Hence it appears, that 
the short e stdl continued in use for the short i; the short 0 
for the short u ; the diphthong el for the long i; and the 
diphthong oe for the long u ; that in ablatives of the first, 
second and third declensions, the terminal d was retained; 
that double letters had not yet been introduced ; but that, 
by fhe comparative regularity observed in the flexions of 
nouns and verbs, a considerable improvement had taken 
place in the general structure of the language. 
We have now arrived at the period when the Latin lan¬ 
guage passed, as it were, per saltum, from the rude and 
fluctuating stale of a mere spoken dialect, in which it had so 
long continued, and assumed the character and consistency 
of a written language; and when purified from the bar¬ 
barisms by which it had hitherto been disfigured, and refined 
by its application to the works of genius supplied by a 
foreign, but kindred literature, it acquired that severe majesty 
and lofty rythm, which harmonize so perfectly with the 
Roman 
