Institutio Oratoria

No small powers of eloquence also are required to enable the teacher to speak appropriately and fluently on the various points which have just been mentioned. For this reason those who criticise the art of teaching literature as trivial and lacking in substance put themselves out of court. Unless the foundations of oratory are well and truly laid by the teaching of literature, the superstructure will collapse. The study of literature is a necessity for boys and the delight of old age, the sweet companion of our privacy and the sole branch of study which has more solid substance than display.

The elementary stages of the teaching of literature must not therefore be despised as trivial. It is of course an easy task to point out the difference between vowels and consonants, and to subdivide the latter into semivowels and mutes. But as the pupil gradually approaches the inner shrine of the sacred place, he will come to realise the intricacy of the subject, an intricacy calculated not merely to sharpen the wits of a boy, but to exercise even the most profound knowledge and erudition.

It is not every ear that can appreciate the correct sound of the different letters. It is fully as hard as to distinguish the different notes in music. But all teachers of literature will condescend to such minutiae: they will discuss for instance whether certain necessary letters are absent from the alphabet, not indeed when we are writing Greek words (for then we borrow two letters [*](Y and Z.) from them), but in the case of genuine Latin words:

for example in words such as seruus and uulgus we feel the lack of the Aeolic digamma; there is also a sound intermediate between

Again there is the question whether certain letters are not superfluous, not to mention the mark of the aspirate, to which, if it is required at all, there should be a corresponding symbol to indicate the opposite: for instance k, which is also used as an abbreviation for certain nouns, and q, which, though slanted slightly more by us, resembles both in sound and shape the Greek koppa, now used by the Greeks solely as a numerical sign [*](K = Kaeso, Kalendae, 'Karthago, Kaput, Kalumnia, etc. The q -sound can be expressed by c. Koppa (ZZZ) as a numeral = 90. ) : there is also x, the last letter of our own alphabet, which we could dispense with as easily as with psi.

Again the teacher of literature will have to determine whether certain vowels have not been consonantalised. For instance iam and etiam are both spelt with an i, uos and tuos both with a u. Vowels, however, when joined as vowels, either make one long vowel (compare the obsolete method of indicating a long vowel by doubling it as the equivalent of the circumflex), or a diphthong, though some hold that even three vowels can form a single syllable; this however is only possible if one or more assume the role of consonants.

He will also inquire why it is that there are two vowels which may be repeated, while a consonant can only be followed and modified by a different consonant. [*]( The two vowels are i and u. A consonant cannot be duplicated within one syllable. ) But i can follow i (for coniicit is derived from iacit [*]( The derivation is mentioned to show that two i's, not one, are found in the second syllable of coniicit. ) ): so too does u, witness the modern spelling of seruus and uulgus. He should also know that Cicero preferred to write aiio and Maaiiam with a double i; in that case one

A boy therefore must learn both the peculiarities and the common characteristics of letters and must know how they are related to each other. Nor must he be surprised that scabillum is formed from scamnus or that a double-edged axe should be called bipennis from pinnus,

sharp