Oscan.— The remains of this linguage are found' throughout Samnium, Campania, Luca nia, North Apulia and neighboring regions. These- regions were the dwelling-place of the Samnitic stocks, and here we are evidently dealing with the cultured language of the Sam nites. In calling this language Oscan rather than Samnitic we are following the usage of the great Latin writers, as when Livv relates how in one of the Samnite wars the Roman consul sent out spies who were acquainted with the Oscan language. This usage is to he attributed Mainly to the fact that the Oscans of Campa nia the first people speaking the language in question with whom the Romans came in contact. But aside from this, the Oscans were fir more advanced in civilization than the Samnites of 'the mountains, and if, as would appear from the 'highly cultured aspect of the language, an Oscan literature once existed, it must have taken its rise and found its standard of expression in Campania. In this case the designation Oscan would have more than an in cidental foundation. As the Samnite people wa. Rome's only contestant for the hegemony df Italy, so their language was at one time the most widely spoken of all the Italic dialects, and speculations as to the result of a Samnitic victory upon Italy and the world are scarcely less interesting from a linguistic than from an historical standpoint. The Romans knew more of Oscan than, for example, of Umbrian, and the well-known remark to Ennius, himself a native of Calabria, that he had three souls since he could speak Greek, Oscan and Latin, seems to imply that Oscan was regarded as something more than a mere dialect or patois. The 200 odd inscriptions, which, together with the glossei of Roman grammarians and lexi cographeri, represent all that is left as df the Oscan dialect, range in date from the seccmd half of the 4th century B.C. to the second half of the 1st century of our Three alphabets are in use: Latin and Greek. Of the in scriptions four arc of 'considerable length, These are: (1) the Cippus Abellanus, in scribed on: both sides with the terms of an agreement between the, two cities of Nola and Abella. The stone was found in 1685 and is now ?reserved at Nola; (2) the dedicatory in scription of Agnone, a bronze tablet found at AgnOne ;and now in the British Museum; (3) the 'Curse of Vibii, a leaden roll found at Ca rina in 1876. This is an execration, such as are often found in graves where they have' been placed in order to make the' curse, or devotion to the avenging gods of the lower regions, more effective; (4) the Tabula Bantina, a frag ment of a bronze tablet, found near the site of Banda kr 1793. The inscription, of which about one-sixth is preserved, consists of a decree in regard to municipal government. Next in im
portance. to these four are a series of road makers' tablets and dedications found at Pom peii, and the so-called "iovile inscriptions found at Capua. Coins 'with Oscan legends are numerous, and among them are the earliest re mains of the language. Notwithstanding its in feriority to Umbrian in amount of extant ma terial, Oscan is of all the Italic dialects the most important to the philologist. In 'relative antiquity it is to the Italic branch what Gothic is to Germanic and Old Bulgarian to Slavic. Lti conservatism and transparency its vowel-sys tem is rivaled by the Greek alone in the whole Indo-European field.
In Oscan diphthongs are preserved intact in all positions (cf. deo/mats-Latin, divisis; gatuis= legatis, etc.) ; the weakening of vowels in unaccented syllables is, certain possible limitations, unknown, as also in Umbrian (cf. Anterstatai= Interstitav), and the finer nuances of pronunciation are expressed by a highly developed and consistently employed ortho graphical system: The qualitative difference between long and short vowels (except the a vowels), a difference which the Romance lan guages show to have existed in Latin, is more marked in Oscan than elsewhere.. Short e is denoted by the 'e-character, but the long e has become so close in pronunciation as to be rkp resented by the i-character (eL sounds of e and v in modern Greek). So too, long o is regu larly denoted by w, not o, or by to Compare Estuck= Latin,,Esto; liqud =Latin, leoe; . pad= Latin, quad.
Minor Langunges of the Oacan-Umbrian Group.-As already stated, in central Italy, midway between the Umbrians and the Sam. sites, dwelt tile small stems of the Picentea, Vestinians, Matrucinians, Pielignians, Mar sians, Sabines, Volsciana,. 2Eqauans and the Hernici. Of their dialects the Palignian is the best known, being represented by over 20 in scriptions. It shows a striking similarity to Oscan, even in eases where the point in ques tion is a departure from, rather than a. reten tion of, the original. But variations from Oscan, are not wanting. The dialect of the Marru cinians is represented by one well-reserved in scription and a fragment. This, too, is more closely related to Oscan than to any other dia lect, but in the accusative plural Ulf