Celtic idioms were preserved only in the mountains, or among the peasants.* Education and study insensibly inspired the natives of those countries with the sentiments of Romans; and Italy gave fashions, as well as laws, to her latin proin the life of Agricola, for Britain; and Velleius Paterculus for Pannonia. To them we may add the language of the Inscriptions. [The systematic introduction and universal adoption of the Latin language in these provinces are very questionable. Wherever Romans settled, they used no other, except when compelled by necessity. Both they and the Greeks held barbarian dialects in such contempt, that they rarely endeavoured even to understand them, as may be seen by their strange perversion of names, and the confusion, which pervades all their histories of external tribes encountered by them. Ovid, (Tristia, 5, 7,) while deploring his banishment, complains, that not one of the Geta around him could speak Latin. Yet Tomi had been 150 years subject to Rome, and was the chief place in Lower Mosia. He is ashamed to confess, that in order to converse with others, he was obliged to learn their language, which in his ignorance he called Sarmatic: "Ille ego, Romanus vates (ignoscite Musa!) En pudet et fateor." 66 cum Even so late as 250 years after Caesar's conquest, Irenæus, then Bishop of Lyons, could only communicate in the Celtic tongue with the people of his diocese. (Præf. adv. Hær.) In the countries, which the Romans occupied permanently and in large numbers, they, no doubt, gave a very general currency to their language, coloniis unà etiam linguam," but without any serious care or definite purpose for its extension. More than this does not appear, either in the words of Justus Lipsius or in those of the authorities collected by him and borrowed by Gibbon. In Gaul and in Spain, it thus obtained such prevalence, as to form the basis of the modern languages, now vernacular there, and include a great portion of the subsequent Gothic and Moorish infusions. But it was not so in Britain. The children of the principal families there were instructed in the language of their conquerors. This is the sum of what Tacitus ваув. Monuments, erected there by Romans, of course bear Latin inscriptions. They do not speak the language of the many. The names of rivers, mountains, and places are more enduring and far more instructive inscriptions. Roman tongues, except in the form of castra, colonia, or stratum. By Few among these are stamped by far the greater part are either of Celtic or Gothic origin. On the former much useful information may be found, amid some forced and fanciful etymologies, in Baxter's Glossarium Antiquitatum Britannicarum," published in 1719. English contains little that is derived direct from the Latin. Most of the words, which have flowed into it from that source, have come in by Norman conquest and later intercourse.-ED.] through the medium of French, brought The Celtic was preserved in the mountains of Wales, Cornwall, and Armorica. We may observe, that Apuleius reproaches an African youth, who lived among the populace, with the use of the Punic; whilst he had 18 LANGUAGE. [сн ц vincials. They solicited with more ardour, and obtained with more facility, the freedom and honours of the state; supported the national dignity in letters* and in arms; and, at length, in the person of Trajan, produced an emperor whom the Scipios would not have disowned for their countryman. The situation of the Greeks was very different from that of the Barbarians. The former had been long since civilized and corrupted. They had too much taste to relinquish their language, and too much vanity to adopt any foreign institutions. Still preserving the prejudices, after they had lost the virtues, of their ancestors, they affected to despise the unpolished manners of the Roman conquerors, whilst they were compelled to respect their superior wisdom and power.t Nor was the influence of the Grecian language almost forgot Greek, and neither could nor would speak Latin. (Apol. p. 596.) The greater part of St. Austin's congregations were strangers to the Punic. [The preservation of the Celtic language was not, as Gibbon represents it, a mere rustic casualty, "only in the mountains and among the peasants." It proves a much wider use of that tongue, after the age of Roman sway. As the Gothic tribes advanced, the Celtic pre-occupants of the soil everywhere retired before them, into the farthest extremities of their respective regions, and took their language with them. Thus the ancient Celtiberi of Spain withdrew from the banks of the Ebro to the shores of the Atlantic, where the kingdom of Portugal and province of Gallicia still preserve their memory. The original Gauls, in like manner, yielding to the Franks, collected in Armorica, and the name of Bretagne long recorded their affinity to the first owners of Britain. These, too, giving way to the Saxons, were confined to Cornwall, Wales, the Strathcluyd, and the Highlands of Scotland. So also, at the present day, the largest remnant of the Irish Celts is gathered in the western province of Connaught, where the county of Galway attests their descent alike by its designation and its idiom. It was thus not Roman policy, but Gothic immigration, that drove Europe's earliest form of speech into these mountain-holds; and if the descendants of those, who were thus expelled from their homes, have remained rude amid advancing civi ization, it is the result of their situation, not of their character.-ED.] *Spain alone produced Columella, the Senecas, Lucan, Martial, and Quintilian. [Gibbon overlooks the fact, that many of these and most of the provincials, whose attainments and writings have made their names illustrious, were either educated at Rome, or settled there early in life, and composed their works in the bosom of its society. ED.] There is not, I believe, from Dionysius to Libanius, a single Greek critic who mentions Virgil or Horace. They seem ignorant that the Romans had any good writers. [The Greeks, undoubtedly, considered their own to be the polite language of the age, and Latin as a semibarbarian dialect. Even those, who by their avocations or by imperial patronage, were established at Rome or placed in constant intercourse and sentiments confined to the narrow limits of that once celebrated country. Their empire, by the progress of colonies and conquest, had been diffused from the Adriatic to the Euphrates and the Nile. Asia was covered with Greek cities, and the long reign of the Macedonian kings had introduced a silent revolution into Syria and Egypt. In their pompous courts those princes united the elegance of Athens with the luxury of the east; and the example of the court was imitated, at an humble distance, by the higher ranks of their subjects. Such was the general division of the Roman empire into the Latin and Greek languages. To these we may add a third distinction for the body of the natives in Syria, and especially in Egypt. The use of their ancient dialects, by secluding them from the commerce of mankind, checked the improvements of those barbarians.* ful effeminacy of the former exposed them to the contempt, the sullen ferociousness of the latter excited the aversion, of the conquerors.† Those nations had submitted to the Roman power, but they seldom desired or deserved the freedom of the city; and it was remarked, that more than two hundred and thirty years elapsed, after the ruin of the Ptolemies, before an Egyptian was admitted into the senate of Rome.‡ The sloth It is a just, though trite observation, that victorious Rome was herself subdued by the arts of Greece. Those immortal writers who still command the admiration of modern Europe, soon became the favourite object of study and imitation in Italy and the western provinces. But the elegant amusements of the Romans were not suffered to interfere with their sound maxims of policy. Whilst they acknowledged the charms of the Greek, they asserted the dignity of the Latin tongue, and the exclusive use of the latter was inflexibly maintained in the administration of civil as well as military government. § The two languages exercised, at with Romans, wrote only in their own tongue, as we see in the instances of Polybius, Dionysius Halicarnassus, Epictetus, Plutarch, Pausanias, &c. ED.] * The curious reader may see in Dupin (Bibliothèque Ecclesiastique, tom. 19, p. 1, c. 8,) how much the use of the Syriac and Egyptian languages was still preserved. + See Juvenal, Sat. 3 and 15; Ammian. Marcellin, 22, 16. Dion Cassius, 1. 77, p. 1275. The first instance happened under the reign of Septimius Severus, § See Valerius Maximus, 1.2, c. 2, n. 2. The Emperor VOL. L 50 SLAVES, AND [CH. IL the same time, their separate jurisdiction throughout the empire; the former, as the natural idiom of science; the latter, as the legal dialect of public transactions. Those who united letters with business, were equally conversant with both; and it was almost impossible, in any province, to find a Roman subject, of a liberal education, who was at once a stranger to the Greek and to the Latin language. were It was by such institutions that the nations of the empire insensibly melted away into the Roman name and people. But there still remained, in the centre of every province, and of every family, an unhappy condition of men, who endured the weight, without sharing the benefits, of society. In the free states of antiquity, the domestic slaves exposed to the wanton rigour of despotism. The perfect settlement of the Roman empire was preceded by ages of violence and rapine. The slaves consisted, for the most part, of barbarian captives, taken in thousands by the chance of war, purchased at a vile price,* accustomed to a life of Claudius disfranchised an eminent Grecian for not understanding Latin. He was probably in some public office. Suetonius in Claud. c. 16. *In the camp of Lucullus, an ox sold for a drachma and a slave for four drachmæ, or about three shillings.-Plutarch in Lucull. p. 580. [It was by this practice, that the wars of ancient times were made so murderous and their battles so bloody. The immortal Robertson, in an excellent discourse on the state of the world at the period when Christianity was introduced, has drawn a picture of the fatal effects of slavery, in which are exhibited his profound views and solid judgment. There are passages in it which I shall place in opposition to some of Gibbon's reflections. Truths, which the latter either misconceived or intentionally neglected, are there found developed by one of the first among modern historians. It is necessary to notice them here, in order to bring facts to mind and their consequences. I shall often have occasion to refer to Robertson's discourse. "Captives taken in war," he said, "were, in all probability, the first persons subjected to perpetual servitude, and when the necessities or luxury of mankind increased the demand for slaves, every new war recruited their number by reducing the vanquished to that wretched condition. Hence proceeded the fierce and desperate spirit with which wars were carried on among ancient nations. While chains and slavery were the certain lot of the vanquished, battles were fought and towns defended with a rage and obstinacy which nothing but horror at such a fate could have inspired; but by putting an end to the cruel institution of slavery, Christianity extended its mild influences to the practice of war; and that barbarous art, softened by Christ's humane spirit, ceased to be so destructive. Secure, in every event, of personal liberty, the resis tance of the vanquished became less obstinate, and the triumph of the independence, and impatient to break and to revenge their fetters. Against such internal enemies, whose desperate insurrections had more than once reduced the republic to the brink of destruction, the most severe regulations, and 66 * victor less cruel. Thus humanity was introduced into the exercise of war, and with which it appears to be almost incompatible; and it is to the merciful maxims of Christianity, much more than to any other cause, that we must ascribe the little ferocity and bloodshed, which accompany modern victories."-GUIZOT.] Diodorus Siculus in Eclog. Hist. 1. 34 and 36. Florus, iii. 19, 20. + See a remarkable instance of severity in Cicero in Verrem, v. 3. [How far the term severity" is here correctly used, may be seen in the following account of the transaction to which this note points. While L. Domitius was acting as Prætor in Sicily, a slave killed a wild boar of an extraordinary size. The governor having heard of this man's skilful courage, wished to see him. The unfortunate slave, gratified by such a mark of distinction, obeyed the summons, and hoped to receive commendation and rewards. But Domitius, informed that he killed the animal with a common boar-spear, ordered him immediately to be crucified, on the barbarous plea, that the law forbade slaves to use this or any other weapon. The cruelty of Domitius is perhaps less surprising than the indifference with which it is related by the Roman orator, who was so little affected by it, that he said, "Durum hoc fortasse videatur, neque ego in ullam partem disputo." "This may be thought hard; but I express no opinion on either side." Yet in this very oration, we find the same speaker saying, "Facinus est vincire civem Romanum; scelus verberare; prope parricidium necare; quid dicam in crucem tollere?" "To place a Roman citizen in bonds is an offence; to scourge him is a crime; to kill him is almost a parricide; in what words then shall I reprobate the act of crucifying him?" In his observations on slavery, Gibbon is guilty not only of a culpable indifference, but also of carrying impartiality to such an extreme, as to look like a want of honesty. He strives to extenuate all that was most frightful in the condition of the slaves, and the treatment which they underwent. The most atrocious inflictions, he considers, may be justified by necessity. Then by minute examination, he magnifies the slightest solace of so deplorable a lot; he attributes to "the virtue or the feeling" of rulers, the gradual improvement that had taken place, and leaves unnoticed its most efficient cause; he makes no mention of the influence of Christianity, which first alleviated the misery of the slaves and then assisted in freeing them from their sufferings and their chains. I might collect here the most fearful and heart-rending details of the tyranny exer cised over them by their Roman masters. Volumes have been filled by such recitals, to which it is enough for me to make this general reference. Some of Robertson's other reflections, in the discourse from which I have already taken one extract, will show that Gibbon, while he traced the first mitigation of servitude to a period just subsequent to the introduction of Christianity, could not have failed to perceive the operation of this beneficent cause had he not been pre-determined to |