Institutio Oratoria

I merely mention these as instances: I do not wish anyone to think that I have added a fresh problem to a subject into which the obstinacy of pedants has already introduced confusion. The faults which arise in the course of actual speaking require greater penetration on the part of the critic, since it is impossible to cite examples from writing, except in cases where they occur in poetry, as when the diphthong is divided into two syllables in Europai and Asiai [*](The archaic genitive as used by epic poets.) ; or when the opposite fault occurs, called synaeresis or synaloephe by the Greeks and complexio by ourselves: as an example I may quote the line of Publius Varro:

1. turn te flagranti deiectum fulmine Plaethon. [*]( Ph oe thon for Phaëthon. )

If this were prose, it would be possible to give the letters their true syllabic value. I may mention as further anomalies peculiar to poetry the lengthening of a short syllable as in Italiam fato profugus, [*](Aen. i. 6. ) or the shortening of a long such as unĭius ob noxam et furias; [*](Aen. i. 45. ) but in poetry we cannot label these as actual faults.

Errors in sound on the other hand can be detected by the ear alone; although in Latin, as regards the addition or omission of the aspirate, the question may be raised whether this is an error when it occurs in writing; for there is some doubt whether h is a letter or merely a breathing, practice having frequently varied in different ages.

Older authors used it but rarely even before vowels, saying aedus or ircus, while its conjunction with consonants was for a long time avoided, as in words such as

The spellings vehementer, comprehendere and mihi have lasted to our own day: and among early writers, especially of tragedy, we actually find mehe for me in the older MSS.

It is still more difficult to detect errors of tenor or tone (I note that old writers spell the word tonor, as derived from the Greek τόνος ), or of accent, styled prosody by the Greeks, such as the substitution of the acute accent for the grave or the grave for the acute: such an example would be the placing of the acute accent on the first syllable of Camillus,

or the substitution of the grave for the circumflex in Cethegus, an error which results in the alteration of the quantity of the middle syllable, since it means making the first syllable acute; or again the substitution of the circumflex for the grave on the second syllable of Appi, where the contraction of two syllables into one circumflexed syllable involves a double error.

This, however, occurs far more frequently in Greek words such as Atrei, which in our young days was pronounced by the most learned of our elders with an acute accent on the first syllable, necessitating a grave accent on the second; the same remark applies to Nerei and Terei. Such has been the tradition as regards accents. [*]( The Roman accent was a stress, while the Greek was a pitch accent, though by the Christian era tending to change into stress. Roman grammarians borrow the Greek terminology and speak of accents in terms of pitch. The explanation of this is probably that the Roman stress accent was accompanied by an elevation of the pitch. Here the acute accent certainly implies stress; the grave implies a drop in pitch and the absence of stress. The circumflex means that the voice rises slightly and then falls slightly, but implies stress. See Lindsay, Latin Language, pp. 148–153. )