Institutio Oratoria

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,