LAZAR

latin language. 1. _earliest records of its area._--latin was the language spoken in rome and in the plain of latium in the 6th or 7th century b.c.--the earliest period from which we have any contemporary record of its existence. but it is as yet impossible to determine either, on the one hand, whether the archaic inscription of praeneste (see below), which is assigned with great probability to that epoch, represents exactly the language then spoken in rome; or, on the other, over how much larger an area of the italian peninsula, or even of the lands to the north and west, the same language may at that date have extended. in the 5th century b.c. we find its limits within the peninsula fixed on the north-west and south-west by etruscan (see etruria: _language_); on the east, south-east, and probably north and north-east, by safine (sabine) dialects (of the marsi, paeligni, samnites, sabini and picenum, qq.v.); but on the north we have no direct record of sabine speech, nor of any non-latinian tongue nearer than tuder and asculum or earlier than the 4th century b.c. (see umbria,