Ethnicity and Language in the Ancient Mediterranean 25the pre-Indo-Europeans could build bridges (gephura), used bread ovens (klibanos)and
practiced weaving (see Barber 1991: 278 ff., for cognates and borrowings in the Greek
terminology for weaving).
The religious traditions of the pre-Indo-European communities in southeastern Europe
must have impressed the Indo-European intruders, because a number of key concepts
of their religious life entered the ancient Greek lexicon (e.g.,bretas“wooden image of
a divinity,”megaron“the oracular chamber in the temple,” andthiasos“ritual proces-
sion”). If the indigenous population in the Balkan region had been simply replaced by
the Indo-European migrants, then hardly any such expressions would have been adopted.
Moreover, terms such asthiasosand especiallymegaronnot only retained their original,
pre-Greek importance but became even more significant in the religious life of the Greeks
in the classical period.
It is noteworthy that people in antiquity were aware of language shift and fusion pro-
cesses of the languages involved. In the works of ancient authors, we find accounts of
the relationship between older and more recent populations. The earliest such accounts
are found in Herodotus’Histories, written in the second half of the fifth centuryBC.
Herodotus elaborates on the process of acculturation among the pre-Greek population,
known to contemporaries as the Pelasgians, and their assimilation into the Greek speech
community. With special reference to the situation in the region of Attica, Herodotus
explains: “If therefore all the Pelasgians (spoke) this way, then the Attic people (toAttikon
ethnos), being Pelasgic, must have changed their language too at the time when they
became part of the Hellenes” (Histories1.57.3). Herodotus’ comments reflect an aware-
ness of linguistic change, but they also demonstrate the shortcomings of an analysis that
was not equipped to define that change precisely. To better understand the implications
of shifting language patterns and the discourse on ethnicity, we must turn to the Romans
and their neighbors, especially the Etruscans.
Ethnicity and Language Shift
in the Roman Empire
Romanization made steady progress among the various peoples in Italy, proceeding at a
specific pace under varying local conditions of contact. The spread of Latin among the
Faliscans, ethnically closely akin with the Romans, developed swiftly, more swiftly than
among the Venetians, Oscans, or Messapians (Marchesini 2009). Their languages van-
ished almost entirely, leaving traces only in local place-names or scattered loanwords
in Latin. There was one exception to this general observation, and this is Etruscan
(Facchetti 2000). The process of assimilation of the Etruscan language into the Latin
speech community was prolonged, as is evidenced by the abundance of bilingual inscrip-
tions (in Etruscan and Latin) that are recorded over a span of several centuries into
the first centuryBCE(Hadas-Lebel 2004). Toward the end of Roman rule in Italy,
the Etruscan population had completely assimilated into the Latin speech community,
although there is evidence from the early fifth centuryADthat Etruscan was still pre-
served for some ritualistic purposes. And yet, Latin did not simply overform Etruscan