The bronze age and the Celtic world - Universal History Library

148
THE BRONZE AGE AND THE CELTIC WORLD
ago Dr. Tomaschek collected together, from Greek and Latin sources, all the words
which might be considered as belonging to this group, but most of these are place-names
or names of plants. This is not very satisfactory material for our purpose, for place-names
may have been inherited from the previous inhabitants, while names of plants may be
loan words. Further than this most of the words have been preserved by Greek
writers, and there is no Q in the Greek language. Still I have thought it well to search
through the hsts compiled by Tomaschek, and though the result is, perhaps, not very
convincing, the presence of such words as Kavapos, Ktvdos, Quimedava or KovifieSa^a,
Coila or Cuila, KepKivn, and several others certainly hints that the Thraco-Phrygian
tongues may have been Q dialects."
The arguments from the east, while they do not in any way contradict our
equation, and may even be said to give it some support, are not quite decisive ; at
any rate something more conclusive is desirable. It is useless to look for this in the west,
in Celtic lands, for our documentary evidence scarcely antedates the time of Juhus
Caesar, or, at any rate, such earlier evidence as we possess is both meagre and uncertain.
Finally all the evidence has been the subject of dispute, on almost every item differences
of opinion have been expressed, and we have no sure or unquestioned data on which to
depend. The controversy has also, unhappily, become associated with other differences
of opinion.
It will be well, then, to leave for a time the consideration of the Celtic evidence,
and to endeavour to test our equation without reference to the linguistic data of the west.
There remains, then, only one other area in which to search for our confirmatory test,
the Italian peninsula.
Professor Conway" has given us to understand that the Osco-Umbrian dialects,
which were P languages, were spoken throughout Italy from Umbria southwards, and
doubtless, if we may judge from the statement of Herodotus already quoted, as far north
as the foot-hiUs of the Alps, before the Gauls had invaded the valley of the Po. The
only exceptions to this spread of these dialects were Etruria, or the greater portion of it,
and a part of Latium, in which Latin dialects of the Q type were spoken. These Latin
dialects, Conway tells us, were spoken by the Latini, the Marsi, the ^Equi, the Hernici,
" Tomaschek (1894).
" Conway {1897).