43. Of unquestionable genuineness and the greatest value are the _Scipionum Elogia_, inscribed on stone coffins, found in the monument of the Scipios outside the Capene gate (_C.I.L._[1] i. 32). The earliest of the family whose epitaph has been preserved is L. Cornelius Scipio Barbatus (consul 298 B.C.), the latest C. Cornelius Scipio Hispanus (praetor in 139 B.C.); but there are good reasons for believing with Ritschl that the epitaph of the first was not contemporary, but was somewhat later than that of his son (consul 259 B.C.). This last may therefore be taken as the earliest specimen of any length of Latin and it was written at Rome; it runs as follows:--
honcoino . ploirume . cosentiont . r[_omai_] duonoro . optumo . fuise . uiro [_virorum_] luciom . scipione . filios . barbati _co_]nsol . censor . aidilis . hic . fuet a [_pud vos_] _he_]c . cepit . corsica . aleriaque . urbe[_m_] _de_]det . tempestatebus . aide . mereto[_d votam_].
The archaisms in this inscription are--(1) the retention of _o_ for _u_ in the inflexion of both nouns and verbs; (2) the diphthongs _oi_ (= later _u_) and _ai_ (= later _ae_); (3) -_et_ for -_it_, _hec_ for _hic_, and -_ebus_ for -_ibus_; (4) _duon_- for _bon_; and (5) the dropping of a final _m_ in every case except in _Luciom_, a variation which is a marked characteristic of the language of this period.
44. The oldest specimen of the Latin language preserved to us in any literary source is to be found in two fragments of the Carmina Saliaria (Varro, _De ling. Lat._ vii. 26, 27), and one in Terentianus Scaurus, but they are unfortunately so corrupt as to give us little real information (see B. Maurenbrecher, _Carminum Saliarium reliquiae_, Leipzig, 1894; G. Hempl, _American Philol. Assoc. Transactions_, xxxi., 1900, 184). Rather better evidence is supplied in the _Carmen Fratrum Arvalium_, which was found in 1778 engraved on one of the numerous tablets recording the transactions of the college of the Arval brothers, dug up on the site of their grove by the Tiber, 5 m. from the city of Rome; but this also has been so corrupted in its oral tradition that even its general meaning is by no means clear (_C.I.L._^1 i. 28; Jordan, _Krit. Beiträge_, pp. 203-211).