The Classical Tradition.

Some of us like to take the ancients at face value. We examine their statements critically, but unless their is a reason to reject their testimony, I think it's fair to say we should take them at their word.

Vergil and Livy will have us believe Latium was ultimately founded by Aeneas. There is undoubtely some truth here, memories of Aegean-based colonizations Italy -- memories the archaeological record has sustained. On the other hand, regarding the historical visions of Titus Livius or Publius Vergilius Maro as gospel is like taking Sir Thomas Malory's vision of Arthurian England as gospel.

I've read that certain ancient Latin writers believed Latin was a highly divergent Greek dialect. We cannot accept this at face value, but at the same time, have to admire the Latins for recognizing that Greek and Latin had a lot in common, far more than some other languages they had experienced (e.g., Egyptian, Etruscan). Caesar, I think it was, said Gaullic (or at least, certain dialects of it) was very very easy to learn if you spoke Latin (tho', the converse seems to have not been true, and Gauls had difficulty learning Latin). We know Latin and Celtic are as different as Latin and Greek, but 2000 years ago, the time span was not that great, and yes, it seems a native Latin-speaker could have probably figured out Celtic very quickly.

My point is that, yes, we pay attention to the ancients' testimony (often, it's all we have), we respect their testimony, but we respect it critically, in the light of all other testimony. We'd be nowhere in IE studies without them, and to ignore the ancients is to impoverish the discussions we have here.

Mark.