Institutio Oratoria

Substitution is however sometimes admitted even in prose, as for instance when Cicero speaks of the army of Canopus which is locally styled Canobus, while the number of authors who have been guilty of transposition in writing Trasumennus for Tarsumennus has succeeded in standardising the error. Similar instances may be quoted. If adsentior be regarded as the correct form, we must remember that Sisenna said adsentio, and that many have followed him on the ground of analogy: on the other hand, if adsentio is the correct form, we must remember that adsentior has the support of current usage.

And yet our fat fool, the fashionable schoolmaster, will regard one of these forms as an example of omission or the other as an instance of addition. Again there are words which when used separately are undoubtedly incorrect, but when used in conjunction excite no unfavourable comment.

For instance dua and tre are barbarisms and differ in gender, but the words duapondo and trepondo [*](Two and three pounds in weight.) have persisted in common parlance down to our own day, and Messala shows that the practice is correct.

It may perhaps seem absurd to say that a barbarism, which is an error in a single word, may be made, like a solecism, by errors in connexion with number or gender. But take on the one hand scala (stairs) and scopa (which literally means a twig, but is used in the sense of broom) and on the other hand hordea (barley) and mulsa (mead): here we have substitution, omission and addition of letters, but the blemish consists in the former case merely in the use of singular for plural,

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. )

Still I am well aware that certain learned men and some professed teachers of literature, to ensure that certain words may be kept distinct, sometimes place an acute accent on the last syllable, both when they are teaching and in ordinary speech: as, for instance, in the following passage:

1. quae circus litora, circum piscosos scopulos,

Aen. iv. 254.

where they make the last syllable of circum acute on the ground that, if that syllable were given the grave accent, it might be thought that they meant circus not circuitus. [*](i.e. that circum is the ace. of circus, and not the adverb indicating circuit. ) Similarly when quale is interrogative, they give the final syllable a grave accent, but when using it in a comparison, make it acute. This practice, however, they restrict almost entirely to adverbs and pronouns; in other cases they follow the old usage.

Personally I think that in such phrases as these the circumstances are almost entirely altered by the fact that we join two words together. For when I say circum litora I pronounce the phrase as one word, concealing the fact that it is composed of two, consequently it contains but one acute accent, as though it were a single word. The same thing occurs in the phrase Troiae qui primus ab oris. [*](Aen. i. l: qui coalesces with primus, ab with oris. )

It sometimes happens that the accent is altered by the metre as in pecudes pictaeque volucres [*](Georg. iii. 243. ) ; for I shall read volucres with the acute on the middle syllable, because, although that syllable is short by nature, it is long by position: else the last two syllables would form an iambus, which its position in the hexameter does not allow.

But these same words, if separated, will form no exception to the rule: or if the custom under discussion prevails, the old law

For in every word the acute accent is restricted to three syllables, whether these be the only syllables in the word or the three last, and will fall either on the penultimate or the antepenultimate. The middle of the three syllables of which I speak will be acute or circumflexed, if long, while if it be short, it will have a grave accent and the acute will be thrown back to the preceding syllable, that is to say the antepenultimate.

Every word has an acute accent, but never more than one. Further the acute never falls on the last syllable and therefore in dissyllabic words marks the first syllable. Moreover the acute accent and the circumflex are never found in one and the same word, since the circumflex itself contains an acute accent. Neither the circumflex nor the acute, therefore, will ever be found in the last syllable of a Latin word, with this exception, that monosyllables must either be acute or circumflexed; otherwise we should find words without an acute accent at all.

There are also faults of sound, which we cannot reproduce in writing, as they spring from defects of the voice and tongue. The Greeks who are happier in inventing names than we are call them iotacisms, lambdacisms, [*]( Iotacism = doubling the i sound, e.g. Troiia for Troia; lambdacism = doubling the l. ) ἰσχνότητες (attenuations) and πλατειασμοί (broadenings); they also use the term κοιλοστομία, when the voice seems to proceed from the depths of the mouth.