In single cases, where the relationship of words is only of the kind last exemplified, it would not be safe to draw inferences to the effect of their being respectively due to this or that element in the composition of the nation.
But where there is such a similarity as to show either that the word has advanced nearly to its mature state before the Greek and Latin forms began to divaricate, or that the Latin form may have been derived from the Greek in an early stage of the history of the language, or _vice versâ_, then it seems just to refer the resemblance of terms to the existence of a powerful common element in the two peoples.
And further, if we shall find that the words standing in close kindred are capable of classification with reference to their sense, then, when we have once constituted a class of such words, it may be justifiable to add fresh words to it on the strength of a more remote affinity, in virtue of the presumption already created. For instance, if the names of the commonest objects and operations of inanimate nature are generally in close correspondence, we may infer a relation between other words which are in the same class as to meaning, though they may be not so nearly alike, with more confidence than if the reasoning as to this latter section were not supported by the former. On this principle I proceed in the collections of words given below.
Of course the utmost care must be taken to exclude those words which have been copied from Greek into Latin, after the literary ages of Rome had begun, and according to the practice which Horace has described and recommended[531].
Niebuhr was, I believe, the first person to draw from philological sources a conclusion as to the character and habits of the Pelasgians. He proceeded upon the threefold assertion, (1) that the words common to the two tongues are presumably Pelasgian, (2) that they for the most part refer to tillage and the gentler ways of life, and (3) that we may hence conclude that the Pelasgians were a people given to peace and husbandry. And conversely, that the words which widely differ in the two tongues are not Pelasgian, and that the pursuits which they indicate must have been more peculiarly characteristic of some other race, that contributed to make up the composition of the Roman nation. The principles thus assumed by Niebuhr[532] appear, when placed under due limitation, to be sound; and the only question is, whether they are supported by the facts of the case. If in a given language we find the words indicative of a certain turn of life to have been derived from a particular race, which forms part of the nation speaking that language, while other words, referable to other habits and pursuits, have been supplied by other races also numbered among its constituent parts, it is just to read the characters of those races respectively through the character of the words that they contribute to the common tongue. For the question is really one of forces which may have been adjusted with as much accuracy, as if they had been purely mechanical. The ordinary reason why a word of Pelasgian origin prevails over a word of Hellenic origin with the same signification, or the reverse, is that it is in more or in less common use: and the commonness of use is likely to be determined by the degree in which the employment or state of life, with which the word is connected, may belong to the one race or the other.