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Sir Walter Scott - "The Antiquary, Complete"

Max Brand - "The Rangeland Avenger"

Henry James - "What Maisie Knew"

Roger McGuinn - "Audio: The Squid Jigging Ground"

Publishers Newswire Announced Today its Latest List of Books to Bookmark, for Q4/2008
REDONDO BEACH, Calif. -- Publishers Newswire, an online resource for small publishers, as well as lesser known and first-time book authors, has announced its latest quarterly 'Books to Bookmark' list, for Q4/2008. This list is a round-up of new and interesting books which are often missed due to not originating from big name authors, or major New York book publishing houses.

Book, 'Letters From Heroes', captures triumphs of the men and women who served in World War I and II
GILROY, Calif. -- The hardships, struggles, hopes and triumphs of the men and women who served in World War I and World War II is wonderfully captured in 'Letters From Heroes' (ISBN: 978-1-58909-570-0), by Edward T. Cook, a new book just published by Bookstand Publishing. This poignant collection of real letters from real servicemen allow the reader to see things through the eyes of these soldiers and understand their thoughts about war, training, sickness, the enemy and even their food.

In New Book, Mystery of the 6,000 Year Old Science and Art of Astrology Has Been Solved
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. -- Author of the new book, ASTROMASKS (ISBN: 978-0-615-23386-4), Vijay Rishii Ph.D., announced today that his book reveals the secret code behind the ancient and controversial science of astrology. The author decodes astrology using a new concept of complementary pairs, and gives new meanings to the zodiac signs and their real connection to humans on earth, which has never been done before in the entire history of astrology.

The History of Rome (Volumes 1 5) - Theodor Mommsen

T >> Theodor Mommsen >> The History of Rome (Volumes 1 5)


Not less important for history than the derivation of the alphabet
is the further course of its development on Italian soil: perhaps
it is even of more importance; for by means of it a gleam of light
is thrown upon the inland commerce of Italy, which is involved
in far greater darkness than the commerce with foreigners on its
coasts. In the earliest epoch of Etruscan writing, when the alphabet
was used without material alteration as it had been introduced, its
use appears to have been restricted to the Etruscans on the Po and
in what is now Tuscany. In course of time this alphabet, manifestly
diffusing itself from Atria and Spina, reached southward along
the east coast as far as the Abruzzi, northward to the Veneti and
subsequently even to the Celts at the foot of, among, and indeed
beyond the Alps, so that its last offshoots reached as far as the
Tyrol and Styria. The more recent epoch starts with a reform of
the alphabet, the chief features of which were the introduction of
writing in broken-off lines, the suppression of the -"id:o", which
was no longer distinguished in pronunciation from the -"id:u", and
the introduction of a new letter -"id:f" for which the alphabet as
received by them had no corresponding sign. This reform evidently
arose among the western Etruscans, and while it did not find
reception beyond the Apennines, became naturalized among all the
Sabellian tribes, and especially among the Umbrians. In its further
course the alphabet experienced various fortunes in connection with
the several stocks, the Etruscans on the Arno and around Capua, the
Umbrians and the Samnites; frequently the mediae were entirely or
partially lost, while elsewhere again new vowels and consonants
were developed. But that West-Etruscan reform of the alphabet
was not merely as old as the oldest tombs found in Etruria; it was
considerably older, for the syllabarium just mentioned as found
probably in one of these tombs already presents the reformed
alphabet in an essentially modified and modernized shape; and, as
the reformed alphabet itself is relatively recent as compared with
the primitive one, the mind almost fails in the effort to reach back
to the time when that alphabet came to Italy. While the Etruscans
thus appear as the instruments in diffusing the alphabet in the
north, east, and south of the peninsula, the Latin alphabet on
the other hand was confined to Latium, and maintained its ground,
upon the whole, there with but few alterations; only the letters
-"id:gamma" -"id:kappa" and -"id:zeta" -"id:sigma" gradually
became coincident in sound, the consequence of which was, that in
each case one of the homophonous signs (-"id:kappa" -"id:zeta")
disappeared from writing. In Rome it can be shown that these were
already laid aside before the end of the fourth century of the
city,(15) and the whole monumental and literary tradition that has
reached us knows nothing of them, with a single exception.(16) Now
when we consider that in the oldest abbreviations the distinction
between -"id:gamma" -"id:c" and -"id:kappa" -"id:k" is still
regularly maintained;(17) that the period, accordingly, when the
sounds became in pronunciation coincident, and before that again
the period during which the abbreviations became fixed, lies beyond
the beginning of the Samnite wars; and lastly, that a considerable
interval must necessarily have elapsed between the introduction
of writing and the establishment of a conventional system of
abbreviation; we must, both as regards Etruria and Latium, carry
back the commencement of the art of writing to an epoch which
more closely approximates to the first incidence of the Egyptian
Sirius-period within historical times, the year 1321 B.C., than to
the year 776, with which the chronology of the Olympiads began in
Greece.(18) The high antiquity of the art of writing in Rome is
evinced otherwise by numerous and plain indications. The existence
of documents of the regal period is sufficiently attested; such
was the special treaty between Rome and Gabii, which was concluded
by a king Tarquinius and probably not by the last of that name,
and which, written on the skin of the bullock sacrificed on the
occasion, was preserved in the temple of Sancus on the Quirinal,
which was rich in antiquities and probably escaped the conflagration
of the Gauls; and such was the alliance which king Servius Tullius
concluded with Latium, and which Dionysius saw on a copper tablet
in the temple of Diana on the Aventine. What he saw, however, was
probably a copy restored after the fire with the help of a Latin
exemplar, for it was not likely that engraving on metal was practised
as early as the time of the kings. The charters of foundation of
the imperial period still refer to the charter founding this temple
as the oldest document of the kind in Rome and the common model for
all. But even then they scratched (-exarare-, -scribere-, akin to
-scrobes- (19)) or painted (-linere-, thence -littera-) on leaves
(-folium-), inner bark (-liber-), or wooden tablets (-tabula-,
-album-), afterwards also on leather and linen. The sacred records
of the Samnites as well as of the priesthood of Anagnia were
inscribed on linen rolls, and so were the oldest lists of the Roman
magistrates preserved in the temple of the goddess of recollection
(-Iuno moneta-) on the Capitol. It is scarcely necessary to recall
further proofs in the primitive marking of the pastured cattle
(-scriptura-), in the mode of addressing the senate, "fathers and
enrolled" (-patres conscripti-), and in the great antiquity of
the books of oracles, the clan-registers, and the Alban and Roman
calendars. When Roman tradition speaks of halls in the Forum,
where the boys and girls of quality were taught to read and write,
already in the earliest times of the republic, the statement may
be, but is not necessarily to be deemed, an invention. We have
been deprived of information as to the early Roman history, not in
consequence of the want of a knowledge of writing, or even perhaps
of the lack of documents, but in consequence of the incapacity of
the historians of the succeeding age, which was called to investigate
the history, to work out the materials furnished by the archives,
and of the perversity which led them to desire for the earliest
epoch a delineation of motives and of characters, accounts of
battles and narratives of revolutions, and while engaged in inventing
these, to neglect what the extant written tradition would not have
refused to yield to the serious and self-denying inquirer.


Results


The history of Italian writing thus furnishes in the first place
a confirmation of the weak and indirect influence exercised by the
Hellenic character over the Sabellians as compared with the more
western peoples. The fact that the former received their alphabet
from the Etruscans and not from the Romans is probably to be
explained by supposing that they already possessed it before they
entered upon their migration along the ridge of the Apennines, and
that therefore the Sabines as well as Samnites carried it along
with them from the mother-land to their new abodes. On the other
hand this history of writing contains a salutary warning against the
adoption of the hypothesis, originated by the later Roman culture
in its devotedness to Etruscan mysticism and antiquarian trifling,
and patiently repeated by modern and even very recent inquirers,
that Roman civilization derived its germ and its pith from Etruria.
If this were the truth, some trace of it ought to be more especially
apparent in this field; but on the contrary the germ of the Latin
art of writing was Greek, and its development was so national,
that it did not even adopt the very desirable Etruscan sign for
-"id:f".(20) Indeed, where there is an appearance of borrowing,
as in the numeral signs, it is on the part of the Etruscans, who
took over from the Romans at least the sign for 50.


Corruption of Language and Writing


Lastly it is a significant fact, that among all the Italian stocks
the development of the Greek alphabet primarily consisted in a
process of corruption. Thus the -mediae- disappeared in the whole
of the Etruscan dialects, while the Umbrians lost -"id:gamma" and
-"id:d", the Samnites -"id:d", and the Romans -"id:gamma"; and among
the latter -"id:d" also threatened to amalgamate with -"id:r".
In like manner among the Etruscans -"id:o" and -"id:u" early
coalesced, and even among the Latins we meet with a tendency to
the same corruption. Nearly the converse occurred in the case of
the sibilants; for while the Etruscan retained the three signs
-"id:z", -"id:s", -"id:sh", and the Umbrian rejected the last but
developed two new sibilants in its room, the Samnite and the Faliscan
confined themselves like the Greek to -"id:s" and -"id:z", and the
Roman of later times even to -"id:s" alone. It is plain that the
more delicate distinctions of sound were duly felt by the introducers
of the alphabet, men of culture and masters of two languages;
but after the national writing Became wholly detached from the
Hellenic mother-alphabet, the -mediae- and their -tenues- gradually
came to coincide, and the sibilants and vowels were thrown into
disorder--transpositions or rather destructions of sound, of which
the first in particular is entirely foreign to the Greek. The
destruction of the forms of flexion and derivation went hand in
hand with this corruption of sounds. The cause of this barbarization
was thus, upon the whole, simply the necessary process of
corruption which is continuously eating away every language, where
its progress is not stemmed by literature and reason; only in this
case indications of what has elsewhere passed away without leaving a
trace have been preserved in the writing of sounds. The circumstance
that this barbarizing process affected the Etruscans more strongly
than any other of the Italian stocks adds to the numerous proofs
of their inferior capacity for culture. The fact on the other hand
that, among the Italians, the Umbrians apparently were the most
affected by a similar corruption of language, the Romans less so,
the southern Sabellians least of all, probably finds its explanation,
at least in part, in the more lively intercourse maintained by the
former with the Etruscans, and by the latter with the Greeks.




Notes for Book I Chapter XIV


1. I. II. Indo-Germanic Culture

2. I. II. Indo-Germanic Culture

3. I. XII. Inland Commerce of the Italians

4. I. II. Agriculture

5. I. XII. Priests

6. Originally both the -actus-, "riving," and its still more
frequently occurring duplicate, the -jugerum-, "yoking," were,
like the German "morgen," not measures of surface, but measures of
labour; the latter denoting the day's work, the former the half-day's
work, with reference to the sharp division of the day especially
in Italy by the ploughman's rest at noon.

7. I. XIII. Etrusco-Attic and Latino-Sicilian Commerce

8. I. XII. Nature of the Roman Gods

9. From the same cause all the festival-days are odd, as well those
recurring every month (-kalendae- on the 1st. -nonae- on the 5th
or 7th, -idus- on the 13th or 15th), as also, with but two exceptions,
those of the 45 annual festivals mentioned above (xii. Oldest Table
Of Roman Festivals). This is carried so far, that in the case of
festivals of several days the intervening even days were dropped
out, and so, for example, that of Carmentis was celebrated on Jan.
11, 15, that of the Grove-festival (-Lucaria-) on July 19, 21, and
that of the Ghosts-festival on May 9, 11, and 13.

10. I. XIV. Decimal System

11. The history of the alphabet among the Hellenes turns essentially
on the fact that--assuming the primitive alphabet of 23 letters,
that is to say, the Phoenician alphabet vocalized and enlarged by
the addition of the -"id:u" --proposals of very various kinds were
made to supplement and improve it, and each of these proposals has
a history of its own. The most important of these, which it is
interesting to keep in view as bearing on the history of Italian
writing, are the following:--I. The introduction of special signs
for the sounds --"id:xi" --"id:phi" --"id:chi". This proposal
is so old that all the Greek alphabets--with the single exception
of that of the islands Thera, Melos, and Crete--and all alphabets
derived from the Greek without exception, exhibit its influence.
At first probably the aim was to append the signs --"id:CHI"
= --"id:xi iota", --"id:PHI" = --"id:phi iota", and --"id:PSI"=
--"id:chi iota" to the close of the alphabet, and in this shape it
was adopted on the mainland of Hellas--with the exception of Athens
and Corinth--and also among the Sicilian and Italian Greeks. The
Greeks of Asia Minor on the other hand, and those of the islands of
the Archipelago, and also the Corinthians on the mainland appear,
when this proposal reached them, to have already had in use for the
sound --"id:xi iota" the fifteenth sign of the Phoenician alphabet
--"id:XI" (Samech); accordingly of the three new signs they adopted
the --"id:PHI" for --"id:phi iota", but employed the --"id:CHI"
not for --"id:xi iota", but for --"id:chi iota". The third sign
originally invented for --"id:chi iota" was probably allowed in
most instances to drop; only on the mainland of Asia Minor it was
retained, but received the value of --"id:psi iota". The mode of
writing adopted in Asia Minor was followed also by Athens; only in
its case not merely the --"id:psi iota", but the --"id:xi iota" also,
was not received and in their room the two consonants continued to
be written as before.--II. Equally early, if not still earlier,
an effort was made to obviate the confusion that might so easily
occur between the forms for --"id:iota S" and for --"id:s E"; for
all the Greek alphabets known to us bear traces of the endeavour to
distinguish them otherwise and more precisely. Already in very
early times two such proposals of change must have been made,
each of which found a field for its diffusion. In the one case
they employed for the sibilant--for which the Phoenician alphabet
furnished two signs, the fourteenth ( --"id:/\/\") for --"id:sh" and
the eighteenth (--"id:E") for --"id:s" --not the latter, which was
in sound the more suitable, but the former; and such was in earlier
times the mode of writing in the eastern islands, in Corinth and
Corcyra, and among the Italian Achaeans. In the other case they
substituted for the sign of --"id:i" the simple stroke --"id:I",
which was by far the more usual, and at no very late date became
at least so far general that the broken --"id:iota S" everywhere
disappeared, although individual communities retained the --"id:s"
in the form --"id:/\/\" alongside of the --"I".--III. Of later
date is the substitution of --"id:\/" for --"id:/\" (--"id:lambda")
which might readily be confounded with --"id:GAMMA gamma". This we
meet with in Athens and Boeotia, while Corinth and the communities
dependent on Corinth attained the same object by giving
to the --"id:gamma" the semicircular form --"id:C" instead of the
hook-shape.--IV. The forms for --"id:p" --"id:P (with broken-loop)"
and --"id:r" --"id:P", likewise very liable to be confounded, were
distinguished by transforming the latter into --"id:R"; which more
recent form was not used by the Greeks of Asia Minor, the Cretans,
the Italian Achaeans, and a few other districts, but on the other
hand greatly preponderated both in Greece proper and in Magna
Graecia and Sicily. Still the older form of the --"id:r" --"id:P"
did not so early and so completely disappear there as the older
form of the --"id:l"; this alteration therefore beyond doubt is to
be placed later.--V. The differentiating of the long and short -e
and the long and short -o remained in the earlier times confined
to the Greeks of Asia Minor and of the islands of the Aegean Sea.

All these technical improvements are of a like nature and from a
historical point of view of like value, in so far as each of them
arose at a definite time and at a definite place and thereafter
took its own mode of diffusion and found its special development.
The excellent investigation of Kirchhoff (-Studien zur Geschichte
des griechischen Alphabets-), which has thrown a clear light on
the previously so obscure history of the Hellenic alphabet, and has
also furnished essential data for the earliest relations between the
Hellenes and Italians--establishing, in particular, incontrovertibly
the previously uncertain home of the Etruscan alphabet--is affected
by a certain one-sidedness in so far as it lays proportionally too
great stress on a single one of these proposals. If systems are
here to be distinguished at all, we may not divide the alphabets into
two classes according to the value of the --"id:X" as --"id:zeta"
or as --"id:chi", but we shall have to distinguish the alphabet
of 23 from that of 25 or 26 letters, and perhaps further in this
latter case to distinguish the Ionic of Asia Minor, from which the
later common alphabet proceeded, from the common Greek of earlier
times. In dealing, however, with the different proposals for
the modification of the alphabet the several districts followed
an essentially eclectic course, so that one was received here and
another there; and it is just in this respect that the history of
the Greek alphabet is so instructive, because it shows how particular
groups of the Greek lands exchanged improvements in handicraft
and art, while others exhibited no such reciprocity. As to Italy
in particular we have already called attention to the remarkable
contrast between the Achaean agricultural towns and the Chalcidic
and Doric colonies of a more mercantile character (x. Iono-Dorian
Towns); in the former the primitive forms were throughout retained,
in the latter the improved forms were adopted, even those which
coming from different quarters were somewhat inconsistent, such
as the --"id:C" --"id:gamma" alongside of the --"id:\/" --"id:l".
The Italian alphabets proceed, as Kirchhoff has shown, wholly
from the alphabet of the Italian Greeks and in fact from the
Chalcidico-Doric; but that the Etruscans and Latins received their
alphabet not the one from the other but both directly from the
Greeks, is placed beyond doubt especially by the different form of
the --"id:r". For, while of the four modifications of the alphabet
above described which concern the Italian Greeks (the fifth
was confined to Asia Minor) the first three were already carried
out before the alphabet passed to the Etruscans and Latins, the
differentiation of --"id:p" and --"id:r" had not yet taken place
when it came to Etruria, but on the other hand had at least begun
when the Latins received it; for which reason the Etruscans do
not at all know the form -"id:R" for -"id:r", whereas among the
Faliscans and the Latins, with the single exception of the Dressel
vase (xiv. Note 14 ), the younger form is met with exclusively.

12. I. XIII. Etrusco-Attic and Latino-Sicilian Commerce

13. That the Etruscans always were without the koppa, seems
not doubtful; for not only is no sure trace of it to be met with
elsewhere, but it is wanting in the model alphabet of the Galassi
vase. The attempt to show its presence in the syllabarium of the
latter is at any rate mistaken, for the syllabarium can and does
only take notice of the Etruscan letters that were afterwards
in common use, and to these the koppa notoriously did not belong;
moreover the sign placed at the close cannot well from its position
have any other value than that of the -f, which was in fact the last
letter in the Etruscan alphabet, and which could not be omitted in
a syllabarium exhibiting the variations of that alphabet from its
model. It is certainly surprising that the koppa should be absent
from the Greek alphabet that came to Etruria, when it otherwise
so long maintained its place in the Chalcidico-Doric ; but this
may well have been a local peculiarity of the town whose alphabet
first reached Etruria. Caprice and accident have at all times had
a share in determining whether a sign becoming superfluous shall
be retained or dropped from the alphabet; thus the Attic alphabet
lost the eighteenth Phoenician sign, but retained the others which
had disappeared from the -u.

14. The golden bracelet of Praeneste recently brought to light
(Mitth. der rom. Inst. 1887), far the oldest of the intelligible
monuments of the Latin language and Latin writing, shows the older
form of the -"id:m"; the enigmatic clay vase from the Quirinal
(published by Dressel in the Annali dell Instituto, 1880) shows
the older form of the -"id:r".

15. At this period we shall have to place that recorded form of the
Twelve Tables, which subsequently lay before the Roman philologues,
and of which we possess fragments. Beyond doubt the code was
at its very origin committed to writing; but that those scholars
themselves referred their text not to the original exemplar, but to
an official document written down after the Gallic conflagration,
is proved by the story of the Tables having undergone reproduction
at that time. This enables us easily to explain how their text by
no means exhibited the oldest orthography, which was not unknown to
them; even apart from the consideration that in the case of such
a written document, employed, moreover, for the purpose of being
committed to memory by the young, a philologically exact transmission
cannot possibly be assumed.

16. This is the inscription of the bracelet of Praeneste which
has been mentioned at xiv, note 14. On the other hand even on the
Ficoroni cista -"id:C" has the later form of -"id:K".

17. Thus -"id:C" represents -Gaius-; -"id:CN" -Gnaeus-; while
-"id:K" stands for -Kaeso-. With the more recent abbreviations of
course this is not the case; in these -"id:gamma" is represented
not by -"id:C", but by -"id:G" (-GAL- -Galeria-), --"id:kappa", as
a rule, by -"id:C" (-C- -centum- -COS- -consul; -COL -Collina-), or
before -"id:a" by -"id:K" (-KAR- -karmetalia-; -MERK- -merkatus-).
For they expressed for a time the sound --k before the vowels -e
-i -o and before all consonants by -"id:C", before -a on the other
hand by -"id:K", before -u by the old sign of the koppa -"id:Q".

18. If this view is correct, the origin of the Homeric poems (though
of course not exactly that of the redaction in which we now have
them) must have been far anterior to the age which Herodotus assigns
for the flourishing of Homer (100 before Rome); for the introduction
of the Hellenic alphabet into Italy, as well as the beginning of
intercourse at all between Hellas and Italy, belongs only to the
post-Homeric period.

19. Just as the old Saxon -writan- signifies properly to tear,
thence to write.

20. The enigma as to how the Latins came to employ the Greek sign
corresponding to -v for the -f quite different in sound, has been
solved by the bracelet of Praeneste (xiv. Developments Of Alphabets
in Italy, note) with its -fhefhaked- for -fecit-, and thereby at the
same time the derivation of the Latin alphabet from the Chalcidian
colonies of Lower Italy has been confirmed. For in a Boeotian
inscription belonging to the same alphabet we find in the word
-fhekadamoe-(Gustav Meyer, Griech. Grammatik, sec. 244, ap. fin.)
the same combination of sound, and an aspirated v might certainly
approximate in sound to the Latin -f.

20. -Ratio Tuscanica,: cavum aedium Tuscanicum.-

21. When Varro (ap. Augustin. De Civ. Dei, iv. 31; comp. Plutarch
Num. 8) affirms that the Romans for more than one hundred and
seventy years worshipped the gods without images, he is evidently
thinking of this primitive piece of carving, which, according to
the conventional chronology, was dedicated between 176 and 219, and,
beyond doubt, was the first statue of the gods, the consecration
of which was mentioned in the authorities which Varro had before
him. Comp, above, XIV. Development of Alphabets in Italy.

22. I. XIII. Handicrafts

23. I. XII. Nature of the Roman Gods

24. I. XII. Pontifices




Chapter XV

Art



Artistic Endowment of the Italians


Poetry is impassioned language, and its modulation is melody. While
in this sense no people is without poetry and music, some nations
have received a pre-eminent endowment of poetic gifts. The Italian
nation, however, was not and is not one of these. The Italian is
deficient in the passion of the heart, in the longing to idealize
what is human and to confer humanity on what is lifeless, which
form the very essence of poetic art. His acuteness of perception
and his graceful versatility enabled him to excel in irony and in
the vein of tale-telling which we find in Horace and Boccaccio,
in the humorous pleasantries of love and song which are presented
in Catullus and in the good popular songs of Naples, above all in
the lower comedy and in farce. Italian soil gave birth in ancient
times to burlesque tragedy, and in modern times to mock-heroic
poetry. In rhetoric and histrionic art especially no other nation
equalled or equals the Italians. But in the more perfect kinds of
art they have hardly advanced beyond dexterity of execution, and
no epoch of their literature has produced a true epos or a genuine
drama. The very highest literary works that have been successfully
produced in Italy, divine poems like Dante's Commedia, and historical
treatises such as those of Sallust and Macchiavelli, of Tacitus and
Colletta, are pervaded by a passion more rhetorical than spontaneous.
Even in music, both in ancient and modern times, really creative
talent has been far less conspicuous than the accomplishment which
speedily assumes the character of virtuosoship, and enthrones in
the room of genuine and genial art a hollow and heart-withering
idol. The field of the inward in art--so far as we may in the case
of art distinguish an inward and an outward at all--is not that
which has fallen to the Italian as his special province; the power
of beauty, to have its full effect upon him, must be placed not
ideally before his mind, but sensuously before his eyes. Accordingly
he is thoroughly at home in architecture, painting, and sculpture;
in these he was during the epoch of ancient culture the best disciple
of the Hellenes, and in modern times he has become the master of
all nations.