and coherent civilization of Italy took hold of uncivilized but
intelligent men, while the tolerance of Rome, which coerced no one into
conformity, made its culture the more attractive because it seemed the
less inevitable.

[Footnote 1: The best parallel to the Italian emigration to the
provinces during the late Republic and early Empire is perhaps to be
found in the mediaeval German emigrations to Galicia and parts of
Hungary (the Siebenbuergen Saxons are an exception), which Professor R.F.
Kaindl has so well and minutely described. The present day mass
emigration of the lower classes is something quite distinct.]

The process is hard to follow in detail, since datable evidence is
scanty. In general, however, the instances of really native fashions or
speech which are recorded from this or that province belong to the early
Empire. To that age we can assign not only the Celtic, Iberian, and
Punic inscriptions which we find occasionally in Gaul, Spain, and
Africa, but also the use of the native titles like Vergobret or Suffete,
and the retention of native personal names and of that class of Latin
_nomina_, like Lovessius, which are formed out of native names. In the
middle Empire such things are rarer. Exceptions naturally meet us here
and there. Punic was in almost official use in towns like Gigthis in the
Syrtis region in the second century, and Punic-speaking clergy, it
appears, were needed in some of the villages of fourth-century Africa.
Celtic is stated to have been in use at the same epoch among the Treveri
of eastern Gaul--presumably in the great woodlands of the Ardennes, the
Eifel and the Hunsrueck.[1] Basque was obviously in use throughout the
Roman period in the valleys of the Pyrenees. So in Asia Minor, where
Greek was the dominant tongue, six or seven other dialects, Galatian,
Phrygian, Lycaonian, and others, lived on till a very late date,
especially (as it seems) on the uncivilized pastoral areas of the
Imperial domain-lands.[2] Some of these are survivals, noted at the time
as exceptional, and counting in the scales of history for no more than
the survival of Greek in a few modern villages of southern Italy or the
Wendish oasis seventy miles from Berlin. Others are more serious facts.
But they do not alter the main position. In most regions of the west the
Latin tongue obviously prevailed. It was, indeed, powerful enough to
lead the Christian Church to insist on its use, and not, as in Syria and
Egypt