The Romanization of Roman Britain by F. (Francis John) Haverfield
page 12 of 72 (16%)
page 12 of 72 (16%)
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Hungary (the Siebenbürgen Saxons are an exception), which Professor R.F.
Kaindl has so well and minutely described. The present day mass emigration of the lower classes is something quite distinct.] The process is hard to follow in detail, since datable evidence is scanty. In general, however, the instances of really native fashions or speech which are recorded from this or that province belong to the early Empire. To that age we can assign not only the Celtic, Iberian, and Punic inscriptions which we find occasionally in Gaul, Spain, and Africa, but also the use of the native titles like Vergobret or Suffete, and the retention of native personal names and of that class of Latin _nomina_, like Lovessius, which are formed out of native names. In the middle Empire such things are rarer. Exceptions naturally meet us here and there. Punic was in almost official use in towns like Gigthis in the Syrtis region in the second century, and Punic-speaking clergy, it appears, were needed in some of the villages of fourth-century Africa. Celtic is stated to have been in use at the same epoch among the Treveri of eastern Gaul--presumably in the great woodlands of the Ardennes, the Eifel and the Hunsrück.[1] Basque was obviously in use throughout the Roman period in the valleys of the Pyrenees. So in Asia Minor, where Greek was the dominant tongue, six or seven other dialects, Galatian, Phrygian, Lycaonian, and others, lived on till a very late date, especially (as it seems) on the uncivilized pastoral areas of the Imperial domain-lands.[2] Some of these are survivals, noted at the time as exceptional, and counting in the scales of history for no more than the survival of Greek in a few modern villages of southern Italy or the Wendish oasis seventy miles from Berlin. Others are more serious facts. But they do not alter the main position. In most regions of the west the Latin tongue obviously prevailed. It was, indeed, powerful enough to lead the Christian Church to insist on its use, and not, as in Syria and |
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