Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.

I cannot do better than quote the words of Cicero [*](Or. xxiii. 77. ) on this subject. Hiatus, he says, and the meeting of vowels produce a certain softness of effect, such as to suggest a not unpleasing carelessness on the part of the orator, as though he were more anxious about his matter than his words. But consonants also are liable to conflict at the juncture of words, more especially those letters which are comparatively harsh in sound; as for instance when the final s of one word clashes with x at the opening of the next. Still more unpleasing is the hissing sound produced by the collision between a pair of these consonants, as in the phrase ars studiorum.

This was the reason why Servius, as he

v7-9 p.529

himself has observed, dropped the final s, whenever the next word began with a consonant, a practice for which Luranius takes him to task, while Messala defends him. For he thinks that Lucilius [*]( From the Fourth Book of the Satires. Servius and Luranius cannot be identified. ) did not pronounce the final s in phrases such as, Aeserninus fuit and dignus locoque, while Cicero in his Orator [*](Or. xlviii. 161. ) records that this was the practice with many of the ancients.