The Italic Dialects

Published in 1897, this two-volume work by Robert Seymour Conway (1864-1933), classical scholar and comparative philologist, later Hulme Professor of Latin at the University of Manchester, aims to shed light on the origins of the Latin language and Roman institutions by careful examination of the dialects and customs of Rome's neighbours. The work is laid out in geographical order, beginning with Southern Oscan in Sicily and moving north through Volscian and Latinian to conclude with Umbrian and Picenum, so that the influence of one dialect on its neighbours can be traced. This first volume collects all the surviving remains of these minor Italic dialects, gleaned primarily from epigraphic sources (such as Oscan inscriptions at Pompeii and elsewhere), but also from the evidence of coins, glosses and other references in later writers, and geographical and proper names from the dialect areas.