Quote Originally Posted by athanaric View Post
And both have many similarities to Modern, Middle and Ancient Persian. And Sanskrit. That only proves that they are all Indo-European languages though, belonging to different branches. Greek is a branch of its own (together with some other, now extinct, dialects) and not an Italic language.
The question I am addressing is whether the aboriginal Latins were fundamentally Greek, which was Dionysios of Halicarnassos' main thesis in his history. I find it plausible. And since Dionysios clearly cited Cato the Elder's Origines as one of his key sources, and since I consider Cato the Elder to be one of the greatest Roman intellectuals and historians of Roman/Latin origins, I am reluctant to dismiss Dionysios' thesis.

If we are to retain some open mindedness towards Dionysios' thesis, as representative of Cato, then we might consider that the prisci Latini of old were fundamentally of old Hellenic stock, the core of the Latin tongue based on pre-classical Hellenic speech, later on modified through in melting pot culture of Rome, achieving its canonical form under the early Empire, only to basically give way back to late Classical Greek after the fall of Rome.