What Other Languages Were There?

[Andrew Dalby]

Interesting. Do you have a source for this I can read up on? And did they make it into the Empire? I wouldn't doubt it, but I've no idea.

 

As for Oscan and Umbrian, surely, like Etruscan, those died out before the dawning of the Empire? It's been too long since I looked at the materials, so I could be wrong.

 

Here's a relevant quote from Suetonius:

 

Sometimes plays were shown in all the various City districts, and on several stages, the actors speaking the appropriate local language.

Suetonius, Augustus 43. Translation by Robert Graves.

 

Actually (I've just checked) Graves is over-translating, as he sometimes does. Suetonius doesn't say 'local languages', he says 'all the languages' (omnium linguarum). Now it's not totally clear which languages these would be. No doubt certain Roman districts were full of Greeks or Syrians or north Africans, etc., very much as in a modern international city, and you would put on plays for them. But it seems likely that one of the languages would be Oscan, especially because Oscan was a major language of the theatre in the Republican period.

 

My understanding, from what I've read, is that quite a few local languages -- the ones already named in this thread -- were used for inscriptions up to the early years of the Empire. After that, very few, except the major languages of the East (Greek, Coptic, Aramaic, Nabataean Arabic). Latin was clearly spreading, as the 'lingua franca' of the Empire, very rapidly in the Imperial period.

 

When a language 'died out' is a very difficult question. That means when the last children cease to be brought up to speak it, and, two generations later, when the last old people who currently speak it die. We have no records of exactly those details for the Roman period. It's difficult enough to be sure of such things in the modern world.