iety of Aryan or Indo-European
speech, and this was probably the case throughout the whole of Western
and Southern Europe. Further, in the light of comparative philology, it
has now become abundantly clear that the forms of Indo-European speech
which we call Celtic are most closely related to those of the Italic
family, of which family Latin is the best known representative. From
this it follows that we are to look for the centre of dissemination of
Aryan Celtic speech in some district of Europe that could have been the
natural centre of dissemination also for the Italic languages. From this
common centre, through conquest and the commercial intercourse which
followed it, the tribes which spoke the various forms of Celtic and
Italic speech spread into the districts occupied by them in historic
times. The common centre of radiation for Celtic and Italic speech was
probably in the districts of Noricum and Pannonia, the modern Carniola,
Carinthia, etc., and the neighbouring parts of the Danube valley. The
conquering Aryan-speaking Celts and Italians formed a military
aristocracy, and their success in extending the range of their languages
was largely due to their skill in arms, combined, in all probability,
with a talent for administration. This military aristocracy was of
kindred type to that which carried Aryan speech into India and Persia,
Armenia and Greece, not to speak of the original speakers of the Teutonic
and Slavonic tongues. In view of the necessity of discovering a centre,
whence the Indo-European or Aryan languages in general could have
radiated Eastwards, as well as Westwards, the tendency to-day is to
regard these tongues as having been spoken originally in some district
between the Carpathians and the Steppes, in the form of kindred dialects
of a common speech. Some branches of the tribes which spoke these
dialects penetrated into Central Europe, doubtless along the Danube, and,
from the Danube valley, extended their conquests together with their
various forms of Aryan speech into Southern and Western Europe. The
proportion of conquerors to conquered was not uniform in all the
countries where they held sway, so that the amount of Aryan blood in
their resultant population varied greatly. In most cases, the families
of the original conquerors, by their skill in the art of war and a
certain instinct of government, succeeded in making their own tongues the
dominant media of communication in the lands w