A History of Roman Literature | Page 8

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 _?_ 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 Pompeiii (gen. sing.) for Pompeii, after the Oscan manner. He also brought the superlative simus into use. Augustus, following in his steps, paid great attention to orthography. His inscriptions are a valuable source of evidence for ascertaining the correctest spelling of the time. During and after the time of Claudius affected archaisms crept in, and the value both of inscriptions and MSS. is impaired, on the one hand, by the pedantic endeavour to bring spelling into accord with archaic use or etymology, and, on the other, by the increasing frequency of debased and provincial forms, which find place even in authoritative documents. In spite of the obscurity of the subject several principles of orthography have been definitely established, especially with regard to the older Latin, which will guide future editors. And the labours of Ritschl, Corssen, and many others, cannot fail to bring to light the most important laws of variability which have affected the spelling of Latin words, so far as the variation has not depended on mere caprice. [9]
With these preliminary remarks we may turn to the chief monuments