PART 7 – Ch.XLI.6

The great Pelasgian empire

(The Pelasgian language)

PART 7

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XLI. 6. The barbarian Latin language also called “lingua prisca”.

The most ancient Latin language, Isidorus tells us, had also been called by some authors, lingua prisca, meaning old language.

“Lingua prisca” writes he, “was that used by the most ancient inhabitants of Italy, in the times of Ianus and Saturn. This language though had no regular and stable forms, as can been seen in the Carmina saliarae” (Orig. I. IX. 1. 6).

Festus also writes: “Prisci Latinii were those who lived before the founding of Rome”.

It follows that “Lingua prisca”, which had been spoken, according to ancient traditions, in the times of Ianus and Saturn, had not been formed in Italy. It had been the language of the pastoral tribes, Arimic and Latin, spoken in the times of the great Pelasgian empire, and was therefore identical with the ancient barbarian language.

This also results from the facts communicated by Cicero, that the Roman Senate charged on different occasions the soothsayers of the Barbarians to look into and to express an opinion, if the Roman consuls had performed the auspices according to all the rules prescribed by the ancient religion (N. D. II. 4. 10).

Little by little though, under the current of Greek ideas, “lingua prisca” was considered in Italy as an ignoble language, barbarian, unworthy of the Roman people, and therefore eliminated from literary use (Macrobius, Sat. I. 5). Nevertheless, it remained the language of the ancient religious songs, because the texts of these songs were consecrated through an ancient religious custom and could not be changed anymore (Quintilianus, Inst. I. 6; Varro, L. L. VII. 1. 80; Horatio, Ep. 2. 1. 86; Livy, I. 20. 4).

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