A History of Roman Literature | Page 8

Claudius introduced three fresh symbols,
two of which appear more or less frequently on monuments of his time.
They are [Symbol] or [Symbol], the inverted digamma, intended to
represent the consonantal V: [Symbol], or anti-sigma, to represent the
Greek psi, and [Symbol] to represent the Greek upsilon with the sound
of the French u or German _ü_. The second is not found in inscriptions.
Other innovations were the doubling of vowels to denote length, a
device employed by the Oscans and introduced at Rome by the poet
Accius, though Quintilian [5] implies that it was known before his time,
and the doubling of consonants which was adopted from, the Greek by
Ennius. In Greek, however, such doubling generally, though not always,

has a philological justification. [6]
The pronounciation of Latin has recently been the subject of much
discussion. It seems clear that the vowels did not differ greatly, if at all,
from the same as pronounced by the modern Italians. The distinction
between E and I, however, was less clearly marked, at least in the
popular speech. Inscriptions and manuscripts afford abundant instances
of their confusion. Menerva leber magester are mentioned by
Quintilian, [7] and the employment of ei for the i of the dat. pl. of
nouns of the second declension and of nobis vobis, and of e and i
indifferently for the acc. pl. of nouns of the third declension, attest the
similarity of sound. That the spirant J was in all cases pronounced as Y
there is scarcely room for doubt. The pronunciation of V is still
undetermined, though there is a great preponderance of evidence in
favour of the W sound having been the original one. After the first
century A.D. this semi-vowel began to develop into the labiodental
consonant v, the intermediate stage being a labial v, such as one may
often hear in South Germany at the present day, and which to ordinary
ears would seem undistinguishable from w.
There is little to remark about the other letters, except that S, N, and M
became very weak when final and were often entirely lost. S was
rehabilitated in the literary dialect in the time of Cicero, who speaks of
the omission to reckon it as _subrusticum_; but final M is always elided
before a vowel. An illustration of the way in which final M and N were
weakened may be found in the nasalised pronunciation of them in
modern French (_main, faim_). The gutturals C and G have by some
been supposed to have had from the first a soft sibilant sound before E
and I; but from the silence of all the grammarians on the subject, from
the transcriptions of C in Greek by kappa, not sigma or tau, and from
the inscriptions and MSS. of the best ages not confusing CI with TI, we
conclude that at any rate until 200 A.D. C and G were sounded hard
before all vowels. The change operated quickly enough afterwards, and
to a great extent through the influence of the Umbrian which had used d
or _ç_ before E and I for some time.
In spelling much irregularity prevailed, as must always be the case

where there is no sound etymological theory on which to base it. In the
earliest inscriptions we find many inconsistencies. The case-signs m, d,
are sometimes retained, sometimes lost. In the second Scipionic epitaph
we have _oino (unum)_ side by side with Luciom. In the Columna
Rostrata (260 B.C.) we have c for g, single instead of double
consonants, et for it in ornavet, and o for u in terminations, all marks of
ancient spelling, contrasted with _maximos, maxumos; navebos,
navebous; praeda_, and other inconsistent or modern forms. Perhaps a
later restoration may account for these. In the decree of Aemilius,
posedisent and possidere are found. In the Lex Agraria we have
pequnia and pecunia, in _S. C. de Bacchanalibus, senatuos_ and
nominus (gen. sing.), consoluerunt and cosoleretur, &c., showing that
even in legal documents orthography was not fixed. It is the same in the
MSS. of ancient authors. The oldest MSS. of Plautus, Lucretius, and
Virgil, are consistent in a considerable number of forms with
themselves and with each other, but vary in a still larger number. In
antiquity, as at present, there was a conflict between sound and
etymology. A word was pronounced in one way; science suggested that
it ought to be written in another. This accounts for such variations as
_inperium, imperium; atque, adque; exspecto, expecto;_ and the like
(cases like _haud, haut; saxum, saxsum;_ are different). The best
writers could not decide between these conflicting forms. A still greater
fluctuation existed in English spelling in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, [8] but it has since been overcome. Great writers sometimes
introduced spellings of their own. Caesar wrote