_Laertes_ or president, now called landamman or ministral, together with
twelve _Lucumones_[K] or jurors, determine all causes, both civil and
criminal:[L] and Livy,[M] although he erroneously pretends that they
retained none of their ancient customs, yet allows that they continued
the use of their language, though somewhat adulterated by a mixture with
that of the Aborigines.

I must here interrupt the thread of this narration by observing, that
the only way to account for the present use of a different language in
the centre and most craggy parts of the Grey League, is by allowing that
the Tuscans, who, from the delicacy of their constitutions and habits,
were little able, and less inclined, to encounter the hardships of so
severe a climate and so barren a soil, never attempted to mix with the
original and more sturdy inhabitants of that unfavoured spot; but left
them and their language, which could only be a Celtic idiom, in the
primitive state in which they found them.[N]

But to proceed;--several Roman families, dreading the fury of the
Carthaginians under Hannibal, and perhaps, since during the rage of the
civil wars, and the subsequent oppressive reigns, interior commotions
and foreign invasions, forsook the Latium and Campania, and resorted for
a peaceful enjoyment of their liberty, some into the islands where
Venice now stands, and many into the mountains of the Grisons, where
they chiefly fixed their residence in the Engadine,[O] as appears not
only from the testimonies of authors,[P] but also from the names of
several places and families which are evidently of Roman derivation.[Q]

The inhabitants these emigrants found in that place of refuge could not
but be a mixture of the Tuscans and original Lepontii; and the two
languages which met upon this occasion must, at the very first, have had