1868-1869 for standardizing weights and measures. Sabine was for ten years (1861-1871) president of the Royal Society, and was made K.C.B. in 1869. He died at East Sheen, Surrey, on the 26th of May 1883.
Of Sabine's scientific work two branches in particular deserve very high credit—his determination of the length of the second's pendulum, and his extensive researches connected with terrestrial magnetism. The establishment of a system of magnetic observatories in various parts of British territory all over the globe was accomplished mainly on his representations; and a great part of his life was devoted to their direction, and to the reduction and discussion of the observations. While the majority of his researches bear on one or other of the subjects just mentioned, others deal with such widely different topics as the birds of Greenland, ocean temperatures, the Gulf Stream, barometric measurement of heights, arcs of meridian, glacier transport of rocks, the volcanoes of the Hawaiian Islands, and various points of meteorology.
SABINI, an ancient tribe of Italy, which was more closely in touch with the Romans from the earliest recorded period than any other Italic people. They dwelt in the mountainous country east of the Tiber, and north of the districts inhabited by the Latins and the Aequians in the heart of the Central Apennines. Their boundary, between the southern portion of the Umbrians on the north-west, and of the Picentines on the north-east, was probably not very closely determined. The traditions connect them closely with the beginning of Rome, and with a large number of its early institutions, such as the worship of Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus, and the patrician form of marriage (confarreatio).
Of their language as distinct from that of the Latins no articulate memorial has survived, but we have a large number of single words attributed to them by Latin writers, among which such forms as (1) fircus, Lat. hircus; (2) ausum, Lat. aurum; (3) nouensiles, Lat. nouensides ("gods of the nine seats"); (4) the river name Farfarus, beside pure Lat. Fabaris (Servius, ad Aen. vii. 715); and (5) the traditional name of the Sabine king, Numa Pompilius (contrasted with Lat. Quinctilius), indicate clearly certain peculiarities in Sabine phonology: namely, (1) the representation of the Indo-European palatal aspirate gh by f instead of Lat. h; (2) the retention of s between vowels; (3) the change of medial and initial d to l; (4) the retention of medial f which became in Latin b or d; and (5) the change of Ind.-Eur. q to p. Not less clear is the well attested tradition (e.g. Paul ex Fest. 327 M.) that the Sabines were the parent stock of the Samnites, and this is directly confirmed by the name which the Samnites apparently used for themselves, which, with a Latinized ending, would be Safini (see Samnites and the other articles there cited, dealing with the minor Samnite tribes).
It is one of the most important problems in ancient history to determine what was the ethnological relation of these tribes, whom we may call "Safine," to the people of Rome on the one hand, and the earlier stratum or strata of population in Italy on the other. Much light has been thrown on this group of questions in recent years both from linguistic and from archaeological sources. For the historical and archaeological evidence which connects the Sabines with the patricians of Rome, see Rome, Ancient History. The linguistic side of the matter may be conveniently dealt with here. From this point of view the question to be asked is what language did the Safines speak? Was it most nearly akin to Latin or to Oscan or again to Umbrian and Volscian?
A single monument of 5th- or 4th-century Safine would be of unique value; but in the absence of any such direct evidence we are thrown back on a few cardinal facts: (1) Festus, though he continually cites the Lingua Osca never spoke of Lingua Sabina, but simply of Sabini, and the same is practically true of Varro, who never refers to the language of the Sabines as a living speech, though he does imply (v. 66 and 74) that the dialect used in the district differed somewhat from urban Latin. The speech therefore of the Sabines by Varro's time had become too Latinized to give us more than scanty indications of what it had once been.
(2) The language of the Samnites was that which we now call Oscan (see Osca Lingua). (3) The evidence of the glosses and place-names already referred to confirms tradition by the resemblance which they show to the phonological characteristics of Oscan. On the other hand there are two or three forms called Sabine by Latin writers which do appear to show the sound q unchanged, especially the name of the Sabine god Quirinus, which seems to be at least indirectly connected with the name of the Sabine town Cures. We do not, however, know that the initial sound of this word was originally a Velar q, and Professor Ridgeway ("Who were the Romans," London, 1908, in Proceedings of the British Academy, iii. 19) rightly lays some stress on the fact that the name in Greek form is simply κυρῖνος (not κοιρῖνος: whereas Lat. Quintus is regularly transcribed κοίντος), and suggests that the initial sound may have been slightly modified so as to correspond with the pure Latin word quirites (spearmen). In one or two other examples of an apparent q in Safine names or glosses it is not difficult to show that the sound was originally a pure palatal followed by a suffixal u (e.g. tesqua, "desert places," probably for *ters-c-ua, cf. pas-c-ua, and Greek τερσα-ίνειν, Lat. terra, "dry land," from tersā), so that they would in fact offer no difficulty.
There is further an important piece of evidence which connects together all the Safine tribes and distinguishes them sharply, at least in the 5th and following centuries B.C., from the earlier strata of population in Italy. As this point arises in connexion with so many tribes it is desirable to offer the evidence for it here once for all. It rests upon the different character of the suffixes used by particular tribes and communities to form their ethnic name.
There are only six suffixes so used among the names of ancient Italy.[1] These suffixes are: -ulo-, -io-, -co-, -no-, -ti- (or -ati-), -ensi-.
1. The suffix -ulo- appears only in a few old names, Siculi, Rutuli, Appuli, Poediculi and * Vituli, which would have been the pure Latin form instead of Itali, which was taken over from the Grecized form Ίταλοι.
2. Excluding this small group, the frequency of the occurrence of these suffixes in ancient Italy is shown by the following table:
| Dialectic Area. | -IO-. | -CO-. | -NO-. | -TI-. | -ENSI-. | Totals |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Messapii | 2 | ... | 16 | ... | 2 | 20 |
| Peucetii | 1 | ... | 15 | ... | 3 | 19 |
| Daunii | 1 | ... | 8 | 3 | 2 | 14 |
| Bruttii | 2 | ... | 11 | 2 | 4 | 19 |
| Lucani | 2 | ... | 13 | 3 | 2 | 20 |
| Hirpini | ... | ... | 33 | 1 | 2 | 36 |
| Frentani | ... | ... | 4 | 4 | 2 | 10 |
| Samnites | 1 | (1) | 5 | 4 | 3 | 13 |
| Campani | 3 | (1) | 43 | 5 | 3 | 54 |
| Aurunci | 1 | 2 (1) | 2 | ... | 1 | 5 |
| Volsci | ... | 1 | 29 | 10 | 1 | 42 |
| Hernici | 1 | 1 | 3 | 2 | ... | 6 |
| Marsi | 1 | ... | 3 | 4 | 1 | 9 |
| Aequi | ... | ... | 6 | 2 | ... | 9 |
| Latini | 4 | 1 (2) | 44 | 8 | 20 | 77 |
| Early Rome | 2 | ... | 19 | ... | 6 | 27 |
| Sabini | ... | ... | 13 | 4 | 2 | 19 |
| Etruria (including the Falisci) | 5 | 2 | 34 | 9 | 20 | 70 |
| Marrucini | 1 | (1) | 2 | 1 | ... | 4 |
| Paeligni | ... | ... | 5 | ... | 2 | 7 |
| Vestini | ... | ... | 8 | 4 | 2 | 14 |
| Piceni | ... | (1) | 15 | 5 | 14 | 34 |
| Umbri | ... | ... | 23 | 35 | 15 | 73 |
| Totals | 27 | 7 (7) | 354 | 106 | 107 | 601 |
- The figures in brackets refer to the forms in -CINO-; see below.
3. The names in -io- seem to have been evenly distributed over the Italian area and not to mark any particular tribe or epoch.
4. The suffix -ensi- can be shown to have borne a political significance,
- ↑ This statement with those which follow is based upon the collections of the place-names of ancient Italy, arranged according to their locality, by R. S. Conway in The Italic Dialects (Cambridge, 1897).
