Empires of the Word - Nicholas Ostler [323]
9. Pliny, iii.57, quoting Clitarchus, who was there. Arrian, vii. 15.5-6, is inclined to discount it, ‘given that no other people [than the Romans] was so possessed by hatred of despotism and its very name’.
10. Polybius, Histories, i.l.5.
11. ibid., vi.52.
12. ibid., vi.56.
13. Strabo, vi.1.2.
14. Pliny, Natural History, 29.1.7.-14.
15. Juvenal, vi.455.
16. Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, xvii. 17.
17. Strabo, v.3.6.
18. Tacitus was right to classify the Veneti and Fenni as neither Germans nor Sarmatians (who were Iranian nomads, related to the Scythians). But he goes on to identify the Peucini with the Bastarnae, known to have been Germanic (Strabo, vii.3.17).
19. Tacitus, Germania, xlvi.
20. Ptolemy, Geography, iii.5: ’katékhei dè tèbar;n Sarmatían éthnē mégista hoí te Ouenédai par’ hólon tòn Ouenedikòn kólpon’.
21. Strabo, vii.3.2, vii.5.2.
22. Lambert (1997: 123). These two were found in the regions of Nièvre and Autun in France. The ordinal numbers from the potter’s kiln in La Graufenesque are on p. 131.
23. Polybius, Histories, ii.17; Livy, v.34. Cf. Cunliffe (1997:71).
24. Martial, Epigrams, iv.60.8.
25. Lehmann (1987:76ff.).
26. Isidore, Etymologiae, xiv.6.6: ’Scotia idem et Hibernia proxima Britanniae insula, spatio terrarum angustior, sed situ fecundior. Haec ab Africa in Boream porrigitur. Cuius parles priores Hiberiam et Cantabricum Oceanum intendunt, unde et Hibernia dicta …’
27. Avienus, Ora Maritima, 11. 108-16: ’Ast hinc duobus in sacram, sic insulam / Dixere prisci, solibus cursi rati est. / Haec inter undas multa[m] caespitem iacet,/Eamque late gens Hiernorum colit./Propinqua rursus insula Albionum patet./Tartesiisque in terminos Oestrumnidum/negotiandi mos erat. Carthaginis/Etiam coloni[s] et vulgus inter Herculis/Agitans columnas haec ad[h]ibant aequora.’
28. ibid., II. 98-9: ’ …metallo divites/stanni atque plumbi …’
29. Cunliffe (1997, ch. 8); Cunliffe (2001, esp. ch. 7).
30. They are detailed meticulously, and compared globally, in Gensler (1993).
31. Polybius, Histories, ii.17.
32. Reported in Cary (1954: 180).
33. Gildas, De Excidio Britonum, 6: ‘…ita ut in proverbium et derisum longe lateque efferretur quod Britanni nec in bello fortes nec in pace fideles’.
34. Tacitus, Dialogus de Oratoribus, x. 1-2.
35. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, i, preface.
36. Domitius Ulpianus, Digest, xxxi.1.11.
37. Sidonius Apollinaris, Epistulae, iii.3.
38. Plutarch, Marius, fin.
39. Tacitus, Agricola, xxi.
40. Juvenal, Satires, xv.110-12.
41. Jackson (1994 [1953]: 107-10); Smith (1983).
42. Tomlin (1987).
43. Menéndez Pidal (1968: 19).
44. Harris (1989: 315-16).
45. Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana, prologue 4.
46. Caesarius Arelatensis, Sermones, vi.l-2; viii.l.
47. Eutropius had written in the fourth century: ‘Trajan, having conquered Dacia, had transferred there boundless numbers of people from all over the Roman world to tend the fields and the cities.’ Breviarium ab urbe condita, viii.6.
48. Bourciez (1967: 30, 135-7).
49. The evidence is marshalled in Keys (1999, chs 13-16).
50. Weale et al. (2002).
51. Terrence Kaufman’s calculation, using the standard Swadesh list of two hundred basic word meanings. Thomason and Kaufman (1988: 365).
8 The First Death of Latin
1. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptorum, i, 1.31.14.
2. This is quoted in Wright (1982:109), as at Vienna Nationalbibliothek 795. I have followed Migne (also quoted by Wright) in correcting sene to sine.
3. I am stating here as simple fact the thesis established with great documentary effort by Roger Wright since 1982. The alternative would be to suppose that the pronunciation of Latin had been kept constant for the preceding four centuries, without any special pleading or teaching. The experience in England since the Great Vowel Shift (fifteenth to sixteenth centuries) shows that scholars even of a written language that is quite distinct from their own do not, without copious urging and dispute, exert