Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

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

And this same letter s, which has disappeared from these words, has itself in some cases taken the place of another letter. For our ancestors used to say mertare and pultare. [*]( For mersare and pulsare. ) They also said fordeum and faedi, using f instead of the aspirate as being a kindred letter. For the Greeks unlike us aspirate f like their own phi, as Cicero bears witness in the pro Fundanio, where he laughs at a witness who is unable to pronounce the first letter of that name.

In some cases again we have substituted b for other letters, as with Burrus, Bruges, and Belena. [*](i.e. Pyrrus, Phryges, Helena. ) The same letter too has turned duellum into bellum, and as a result some have ventured to call the Duelii Belii.

What of stlocus and stlites? What of the connexion between t and d, a connexion

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which makes it less surprising that on some of the older buildings of Rome and certain famous temples we should find the names Alexanter and Cassantra? What again of the interchange of o and u, of which examples may be found in Hecoba, notrix, Culcides and Pulixena, or to take purely Latin words dederont and probaueront? So too Odysseus, which the Aeolian dialect turned into Ulysseus, has been transformed by us into Ulixes.

Similarly e in certain cases held the place that is now occupied by i, as in Menerua, leber, magester, and Dioue victore in place of Dioui victori. It is sufficient for me to give a mere indication as regards these points, for I am not teaching, but merely advising those who have got to teach. The next subject to which attention must be given is that of syllables, of which I will speak briefly, when I come to deal with orthography. Following this the teacher concerned will note the number and nature of the parts of speech, although there is some dispute as to their number.

Earlier writers, among them Aristotle himself and Theodectes, hold that there are but three, verbs, nouns and convictions. Their view was that the force of language resided in the verbs, and the matter in the nouns (for the one is what we speak, the other that which we speak about), while the duty of the convinctions was to provide a link between the nouns and the verbs. I know that conjunction is the term in general use. But conviction seems to me to be the more accurate translation of the Greek .