(ii.) The non-thematic conjugation is almost wholly lost, surviving only in a few forms of very common use, est, “is”; ēst, “eats”; volt, “wills,” &c. (iii.) The complete fusion of the aorist and perfect forms, and in the same tense the fusion of active and middle endings; thus tutudī, earlier *tutudai, is a true middle perfect; dīxī is an s aorist with the same ending attached; dīxit is an aorist active; tutudisti is a conflation of perfect and aorist with a middle personal ending. (iv.) The development of perfects in -uī and -vī, derived partly from true perfects of roots ending in v or u, e.g. mōvī ruī. For the origin of monuī see Exon, Hermathena (1901), xi. 396 sq. (v.) The complete fusion of conjunctive and optative into a single mood, the subjunctive; regam, &c., are conjunctive forms, whereas rexerim, rexissem are certainly and regerem most probably optative; the origin of amem and the like is still doubtful. Notice, however, that true conjunctive forms were often used as futures, regēs, reget, &c., and also the simple thematic conjunctive in forms like erō, rexerō, &c. —In point of its treatment of the Indo-European back-palatal and velar sounds, it belongs to the western or centum group, the name of which is, of course, taken from Latin; that is to say, like German, Celtic and Greek, it did not sibilate original k and g , which in Indo-Iranian, Armenian, Slavonic and Albanian have been converted into various types of sibilants (Ind.-Eur.* km̥tom  = Lat. centum , Gr. (ἑ)-κατόν , Welsh cant , Eng. hund -( red ), but Sans. ṧatam , Zend satəm ); but, on the other hand, in company with just the same three western groups, and in contrast to the eastern, the Italic languages labialized the original velars (Ind.-Eur. * qod  = Lat. quod , Osc. pod , Gr. This appears early in the history of Italic, Celtic, Lettish (probably, and at a still later period) in Germanic, though at a period later than the beginning of the “sound-shifting.” This extinguished the 312, Rheinisches Museum , xliii. 349) needs and deserves to be more closely investigated from a chronological standpoint. At present it is not clear how far it was a really connected process in all the languages. (See further Kretschmer, op. cit. p. 115, K. Brugmann, Kurze vergleichende Grammatik (1902–1904), p. 57, and their citations, especially Meyer-Lübke, Die Betonung im Gallischen (1901).) To these larger affinities may be added some important points in which the Italic group shows marked resemblances to other groups. 5. Italic and Celtic. —It is now universally admitted that the Celtic languages stand in a much closer relation than any other group to the Italic. pánca , Gr. πέντε , Eng. five , Ind.-Eur. * penqe . (vii.) Finally—and perhaps this parallelism is the most important of all from the historical standpoint—both Italic and Celtic are divided into two sub-families which differ, and differ in the same way, in their treatment of the Ind.-Eur. velar tenuis q . In both halves of each group it was labialized to some extent; in one half of each group it was labialized so far as to become p . This is the great line of cleavage (i.) between Latinian (Lat. quod , quandō , quinque ; Falisc. cuando ) and Osco-Umbrian, better called Safine (Osc. pod , Umb. panū - [for * pandō ], Osc.-Umb. pompe -, “five,” in Osc. půmperias “nonae,” Umb. If the view of Latin as mainly the tongue of the -CO- folk prove to be correct (see Rome : History ; Italy : Ancient Languages and Peoples ; Sabini ; Volsci ) we must regard it ( a ) as the southern or earlier half of the Italic group, firmly rooted in Italy in the 12th century B.C. , but ( b ) by no means yet isolated from contact with the northern or later half; such is at least the suggestion of the striking peculiarities in morphology which it shares with not merely Oscan and Umbrian, but also, as we have seen, with Celtic. The progress in time of this isolation ought before long to be traced with some approach to certainty. The History of Latin 9. asti beside Lat. est) that the primary endings in Latin have lost a final - i , partly or wholly by some phonetic change. (ii.) The non-thematic conjugation is almost wholly lost, surviving only in a few forms of very common use, est , “is”; ēst , “eats”; volt , “wills,” &c. (iii.) The complete fusion of the aorist and perfect forms, and in the same tense the fusion of active and middle endings; thus tutudī , earlier * tutudai , is a true middle perfect; dīxī is an s aorist with the same ending attached; dīxit is an aorist active; tutudisti is a conflation of perfect and aorist with a middle personal ending. This participle was taken with sum to form the perfect tenses of the passive, in which, thanks partly to the fusion of perfect and aorist active, a past aorist sense was also evolved. This reacted on the participle itself giving it a prevailingly past colour, but its originally timeless use survives in many places, e.g. in the participle ratus , which has as a rule no past sense, and more definitely still in such passages as Vergil, Georg. i. 206 ( vectis ), Aen. vi. 22 ( ductis ), both of which passages demand a present sense. It is to be noticed also that in the earliest Latin, as in Greek and Sanskrit, the passive meaning, though the commonest, is not universal. numerosus , “numerous”; famosus , “famous”; decollare , “to behead”; imputare , “to take credit for,” &c.; ( c ) restricted to Tacitus himself, e.g. dispergere = divolgare . Generally speaking, Tacitus likes to use a simple verb instead of a compound one, after the fashion of the poets, employs a pluperfect for a perfect, and (like Livy and sometimes Caesar) aims at vividness and variety by retaining the present and perfect subjunctive in indirect speech even after historical tenses. Collective words are followed by a plural far more commonly than in Cicero. The ellipse of a verb is more frequent. The use of the cases approximates to that of the poets, and is even more free.