The middle of the peninsula was inhabited, as far back as trustworthy
tradition reaches, by two peoples or rather two branches of the
same people, whose position in the Indo-Germanic family admits of
being determined with greater precision than that of the Iapygian
nation. We may with propriety call this people the Italian, since
upon it rests the historical significance of the peninsula. It is
divided into the two branch-stocks of the Latins and the Umbrians;
the latter including their southern offshoots, the Marsians and
Samnites, and the colonies sent forth by the Samnites in historical
times. The philological analysis of the idioms of these stocks
has shown that they together constitute a link in the Indo-Germanic
chain of languages, and that the epoch in which they still formed
an unity is a comparatively late one. In their system of sounds
there appears the peculiar spirant -f, in the use of which they
agree with the Etruscans, but decidedly differ from all Hellenic
and Helleno-barbaric races as well as from the Sanscrit itself.
The aspirates, again, which are retained by the Greeks throughout,
and the harsher of them also by the Etruscans, were originally
foreign to the Italians, and are represented among them by one of
their elements--either by the media, or by the breathing alone -f
or -h. The finer spirants, -s, -w, -j, which the Greeks dispense
with as much as possible, have been retained in the Italian languages
almost unimpaired, and have been in some instances still further
developed. The throwing back of the accent and the consequent
destruction of terminations are common to the Italians with some
Greek stocks and with the Etruscans; but among the Italians this
was done to a greater extent than among the former, and to a lesser
extent than among the latter. The excessive disorder of the
terminations in the Umbrian certainly had no foundation in the