The Basque language presents, with respect to all the other known Palaeohispanic languages, a curious paradox: namely, that without having left any reliable written text in antiquity, it is the only one of them to have survived, surprisingly, the effective Romanisation of the Iberian Peninsula. The first texts of any length in the Basque language date from the 16th century, although certain collections of sayings and songs compiled in that century are clearly older. The indirect testimonies of t...