"ith the writer's compliments. 
 
 [For private distribution.'] 
 
 A FEW REMARKS 
 
 ON 
 
 THE PRONUNCIATION OF LATIN 
 
 BY 
 
 H. A. J. MUNRO 
 
As the writer of these pages by no fault of his own, but 
 by the accident of official position, has been called upon to assist 
 in reforming the pronunciation of Latin, he would ask, nay 
 earnestly beg, for criticism and advice from such of his readers 
 as feel an interest in the subject^ 
 
In discussing the pronunciation of a dead language it is well 
 to remember 'the shrewd Sicilian's' Na^e koX fie^vaa airio-relv. And 
 I should probably have gone on to the end of my life in being 
 sober and mistrustful in this matter, if it had not been forced on 
 my attention from many different quarters which I could not dis- 
 regard. Nearly two years ago Mr Cornish of Eton, in his own 
 name and that of several of his colleagues, urged me to print 
 something on the matter. For many reasons I declined at the 
 time to enter on so slippery a course. Soon after some friends here, 
 to whose judgment I could not but defer, among them Dr Lightfoot 
 and our Public Orator, pressed me to try a reform. Thus stimulated 
 I gave some lectures on the subject more than a year ago, and ever 
 since have continued in lecturing to adhere to the system I then 
 traced out. Last term Professor Palmer wrote to me that they 
 were thinking of a reform at Oxford : at his request I sent a 
 pretty full summary of the plan I pursued. This was received with 
 very great courtesy by him and the distinguished Committee ap- 
 pointed to consider the matter. They were not however inclined 
 to go so far as I had gone ; and they have since circulated a private 
 paper stating what course they were disposed to recommend. It is 
 with reference especially to this paper that I print these remarks. 
 Personally I should have been disposed to bow at once to such 
 high authority ; but I have been almost forced to move for the fol- 
 io wmg reasons. On the one hand the Head-Master of Winchester 
 wrote to me a month ago to inform me that 'at a conference of 
 Schoolmasters held at Sherborne this Christmas... it was resolved 
 to ask the Latin Professors of Oxford and Cambridge to issue a 
 joint scheme of Latin pronunciation, to ensure uniformity in any 
 changes contemplated'. On the other hand not only did I think 
 myself, but I found it to be the general opinion of those whom I 
 consulted, such as Dr Lightfoot, Mr John E. Mayor, Mr Jebb, Mr 
 Cornish, that we might with advantage push reform farther than 
 the Oxford paper proposes. Mr Mayor says ' I confess that I would 
 rather keep to our existing pronunciation than accept any com- 
 promise '. Lastly that distinguished scholar and grammarian Mr H. 
 J. Roby has published a paper, in which he declares himself in favour 
 of a complete scheme of reform. It is with great diffidence there- 
 fore that I issue these remarks, for the sole purpose of allowing the 
 questions involved to be considered and discussed. 
 
 1—2 
 
 520364 
 
I wi&h; tbeo to declare my full concurrence in the changes pro- 
 posed in tae Oxford papei ."ai>d. my reasons for going still farther. 
 I hold that reform, whether partial or complete, should be under- 
 taken for its own sake and the sake of the ancient language, not 
 to make ourselves more intelligible to ' other Latin-reading nations \ 
 who are not intelligible to each other without special cultivation, 
 A Frenchman's Latin is at first as unintelligible to an Italian, as 
 ours is, and more absurd; a Spaniard cannot be understood b} 
 Frenchman or Italian ; a Scotchman's brogue, while retaining some- 
 thing of the proper vowel sounds, has most of our own disagreeable 
 peculiarities, is unpleasing and but partially intelligible to us, and 
 cannot be understood by Spaniard, Frenchman or Italian^ 
 
 Are we then (and this is a vital question) to endeavour to observe 
 quantity systematically, to distinguish between long and short, and 
 longer and shorter, syllables ? If this is to be done, we must break 
 alike with all existing pronunciations, Italian as well as English. 
 The tyranny of the accent over quantity is perhaps more marked 
 in the Italian than in our own reading of Latin. We learn from 
 Cicero and Quintilian that rhythm or a due admixture of long and 
 short syllables was important in prose as well as verse ; and for 
 myself, by observing quantity, I seem to feel more keenly the beauty 
 of Cicero's style and Livy's, as well as Virgil's and Horace's. The 
 same I find to be the case with those in whose judgment and 
 knowledge I confide. Mr Mayor writes to me : 'As regards quantity, 
 C. of Shrewsbury, a most experienced and intelligent teacher o^' 
 elementary classics, tells me that since he has made his boys dis- 
 tinguish cano, cdnis and cdnus, lego, legis and lex, legis, and sound 
 all long syllables long, and short short, in whatever positions, he finds 
 them perfect in quantity for verse composition'. 
 
 Though we break however with all existing systems, Italian 
 appears to me to offer many valuable aids which it would be most 
 unwise to neglect. English seems so utterly different in all its tones, 
 its entire vocalisation, from old Latin, that often we cannot find in it 
 even single sounds to give as the representative of a Latin sound. 
 The Italian of literature has been fixed for six centuries ; the more 
 we examine the two, the more we feel that the Romano-Tuscan of 
 to-day is essentially the Latin of the 7th or 8th century ; that ' Siede 
 la terra dove nata fui ' must represent very nearly the 7th century 
 pronunciation of *sedet {il)laterra delibi nata fui'; that race and 
 climate and much else have made the 'lingua Toscana in bocca 
 Romana' to inherit in a higher degree than any other language the 
 refinements of old Latin. Let me not be misunderstood : I feel 
 
 ' I have a sufficient knowledge of the ordinary Scotch method and care for no 
 contradiction however flat. If in Edinburgh or elsewhere any pursue a superfine 
 system, acceptable alike to gods and men, to Spaniard, Italian and ancient Eoman, that 
 is not Scotch, but some ideal which common mortals would fain attain to, but cannot. 
 
most strongly the truth of Dr Ridding's judicious words, when he 
 writes: *the point which would be likely to cause the greatest 
 difficulties, would be very subtle distinctions of shades of vowel 
 sounds. But if any such were proposed, we should have to let 
 boys be rough in it, and they would be rough in it. I feel there 
 is so much to be said in favour of doing a thing as thoroughly as 
 possible, that I would say no more than just this, that a subtle 
 foreign pronunciation will not be realized at school I think'. What 
 I mean is this: our English sounds are so different from what we 
 must suppose the old Latin to have been, that, by looking only to 
 them, we should probably fall into such slipshod ways as to make 
 our new pronunciation hardly better, perhaps more distasteful than 
 our present. I do not propose that every one should learn Italian 
 in order to learn Latin. What I would suggest is that those who 
 know Italian, should make use of their knowledge and should in 
 many points take Italian sounds for the model to be followed ; that 
 those who do not know it, should try to learn from others the 
 sounds required, or such an approximation to them as may be pos- 
 sible in each case. 
 
 In seeking to recover in some degree the old pronunciation, we 
 have many great advantages in Latin, compared with Greek : 1. 
 from the literature developing itself comparatively late, and so not 
 stereotyping the orthography : we see in the first volume of the 
 Corpus inscr. Latin, a map as it were of the language spread open 
 before us, and feel sure that change of spelling meant systematical 
 change of pronunciation : coh'a, coera, cur a ; aiquos, aequos, aecus ; 
 qaeiquomque, quicumque, etc. etc. : 2. from the far less complexity of 
 sounds, diphthongs mostly disappearing and the two chief ones left, 
 ae and au, being easy to pronounce : 3. from the invaluable service the 
 Italians have rendered us in keeping the accent in most cases on the 
 right syllable, evQn while changing its nature. Many of us I fear are 
 quite unconscious of the debt we owe them ; but, had we been left 
 to our own lights, the confusion in Latin might have been as disas- 
 trous as in Greek. In observing quantity we shall still keep the accent 
 in its proper place, but its tyrannical predominance will be abated. 
 
 At first the Latins seem to have been careless enough in matters 
 of grammar and pronunciation. From the time of Ennius onwards 
 this nation of grammarians devoted so much pains and attention to 
 these matters that by the time of Cicero and Virgil the language had 
 attained a perfection as great as that of Attic in its palmiest days. 
 The slurring over of final syllables, once its great weakness, had been 
 so much corrected by careful culture that, if Virgil's antiquarian 
 prejudices had not stood in the way, we may infer from the example 
 of Ovid that elision of long syllables and many short ones would 
 have almost disappeared. Every change in pronunciation seems to 
 have been carefully marked by a change in the spelling. We may 
 thus I think approximate to the true pronunciation. This approxi- 
 
mation, it may be said, will after all be a rude one. Very well : that 
 may be an argument for doing nothing at all ; but not I think, if we 
 try a reform, for doing it imperfectly. With this preface I will pro- 
 ceed to shew where it seems to me we might safely go beyond the 
 Oxford circular in correcting our pronunciation of the different 
 letters : after that I will say a few words about quantity, accent and 
 elision. 
 
 * a should have the sound of a in father : a that of the first a in 
 papa\ As the first a oi papa would seem in English mouths to be 
 sometimes a short a, sometimes a short ^, sometimes a short u, and as 
 it is well to accustom the English to open the mouth and expand the 
 chest, I would add : or still better, a should have the sound of the 
 accentuated, a of the unaccentuated Italian a : amdta, padre, pa- 
 drone. Of course a and every short vowel should be pronounced 
 short, when the syllable in which they occur is only lengthened by 
 position. 
 
 ' e (and ae) should have the sound of a in cake : e of the first a in 
 aerial.' The first a of aerial has to my ear a very vague sound : I 
 would add : or better, let e have the sound of the Italian closed e 
 (e) : e, whether the syllable is short or lengthened by position, and ae 
 that of the Italian open e (e) : arena, ride, but bene, temere : est 
 ('eats'), but est ('is'); lectus (partic), but lectus ('bed'): Caesar, 
 musae, Aealae. Thus in Italian as a rule e represents the long, e 
 represents the short Latin e ; while Latin ae is invariably represented 
 by e : Cesare, s^colo, etc. Diez compares the German lehen, ivegen 
 for the open, legen, heben for the close e. In English perhaps pear 
 will give a notion of open, pain of close e. In Italian they do not 
 distinguish between naturally long and short vowels, when the 
 syllables are long by position ; but we should do so in Latin I think : 
 mens, mentis. In Italian too the open and close sounds are only per- 
 ceived in the accentuated syllables. 
 
 In Lucilius' time the rustics said Cecilius pretor for Caecilius 
 praetor: in two Samothracian inscriptions older than B.C. 100 (the 
 sound of at by that time verging to an opeu e), we find muste piei 
 and muste : in similar inscriptions fjuvarai piei, and mystae : Paeligni 
 ij reproduced in Strabo by Ileki'yvoi: Cicero, Virgil, Festus and 
 Servius all alike give caestus for Kearo^ : by the first century, perhaps 
 sooner, e was very frequently put for ae in words like taeter: we 
 often find teter, erumna, mestiis, presto and the like : soon inscriptions 
 and Mss. began pertinaciously to offer ae for e : praetium, praeces, 
 quaerella, aegestas and the like, the ae clearly representing a short 
 and very open e : sometimes it stands for a long e, as often in 
 plaenus, the liquid before and after making perhaps the e more 
 open {aK7)vr) is always scaena) : and it is from this form plaenus that 
 in Italian, contrary to the usual law of long Latin e, we have jjieno 
 with open e. With such a pedigree then, and with the genuine 
 
Latin ae always represented in Italian by open e, can we hesitate to 
 pronounce the ae with this open e sound ? 
 
 ' I should have the sound of e in he, 2^ of e in behalf : I should 
 prefer : I shall have the sound of the accentuated, i of the unac- 
 centuated Italian i : timidi. 
 
 'o and d should be sounded as at present': in this I cannot 
 acquiesce : what is the present o ? non, bos, pons, honos ? or, nos, hos, 
 domos ? these o's we English utter with totally different sounds : we 
 have scarcely in English or in English-Latin a genuine o, except per- 
 haps before r : roar, mores : then what is our Anglo-Latin o ? how 
 does differ in domum and donuml Here too the close and open 
 Italian o represent respectively the long and short Latin o, on the 
 exact analogy of e. Let us then represent o by the close, 6 by the 
 open Italian o : the name of the painter Benozzo Gozzoli gives a 
 specimen of the two o's. Or I care not if we take the long and short 
 German o : ohne, gold : for our purpose. Here too au has a curious 
 analogy with ae : the Latin au becomes in Italian open o : orOy hde : I 
 would pronounce thus in Latin : plbstrum, Clbdius, corns. Perhaps 
 too the fact that gloria, vittoria and the common termination -orio 
 have in Italian the open o, might shew that the corresponding o in 
 Latin was open by coming between two liquids, or before one: 
 compare plenus above. 
 
 'u should have the sound of o in who, u of u in fruition : or, of 
 accentuated and unaccentuated Italian u respectively: tumulo, tumulto. 
 For that large class of words, comprising all superlatives and many 
 other kinds of nouns and of verbs, Quintilian (i, 4, 8) gives a valuable 
 hint : * there is a middle sound between u and i ; for we do not pro- 
 nounce optimum (pptumum) either as optimum, or as ojytumum' 
 
 ' au should have the sound of ow in owl'; I should prefer the 
 Italian au which gives more of the u, than our owl, cow. 
 
 ' eu should be sounded as at present': for Greek words, adopted 
 into Latin, let Greek authorities tell us what is right : of Latin words 
 there are but two or three, heu, ceu, seu: 1 prefer the Italian eu which 
 gives you more of the e^ than the English you sound of these words 
 does : ' ui as we in we' : here too in Latin we have but two or three 
 small words, cui, hui, phui, huic. 
 
 * oe should have the sound of a in cahe': here too (putting Greek 
 words out of the question), when hateful barbarisms like coelum, 
 coena, moestus are eliminated, oe occurs very rarely in Latin: coepi, 
 poena, moenia, coetus, proelia, besides archaisms coera, moerus etc.,.. 
 where oe, coming from o^, passed into u. If we must have a simple 
 sound, I should take the open e sound which I have given to ae: 
 but I should prefer one like the German 6. Their rarity however 
 makes the sound of oe, eu, ui of less importance. 
 
 ' ei should have the sound of i in idle^ : surely this cannot be right. 
 But this too is a diphthong which has practically disappeared from 
 Latin, owing to the people's dislike to complex sounds: Ave find hei 
 
(more correctly ei): ei (d at.) and rei are sometimes monosyllables, 
 and Horace has Pompei, Voltei, Virgil Penei. But in the older lan- 
 guage there are thousands of ei's, later i or e\ surely we are not to 
 pronounce all these with the English i sound, in defiance alike of 
 euphony and consistency. I should infinitely prefer either the Latin 
 and Italian long e, or long i; i.e. to pronounce omneis either as 
 omnes or omnis. But as the diphthong is important, I would much 
 rather give it the Italian or Latin e sound quickly followed by an 
 Italian or Latin i sound. Then there is an important class of words 
 of which the Oxford paper takes no note: are we to give the English 
 i sound to such farms as eius, Pompeius, Seianusl And here 1 will 
 take together a large class of similar words in ai, ei, oi, in, which 
 have really two ^'s, a vowel and a consonant, and which in old times 
 were often so written, as we see in inscriptions and good Mss. : 
 Quintihan tells us that Cicero preferred ' aiio Maiiamque geminata 
 i scribere'; and we know from Priscian that Caesar in his de analogia 
 spelt Pompeiii (gen.) with three ^'s, and explained how they were 
 all to be pronounced. We English shew in these words our usual 
 undaunted inconsistency: we say Maia but major, Oraius but Troja, 
 ejus but Pompeius; Seius, while we call his son Sejanus. In such 
 words the i has a double force, that of the vowel together with that 
 of the consonant i (our y)\ the Greeks always write Ilo/xTrrJto?, 
 not IIoyLfcTrefo?. In all these cases I conclude we should give the 
 long Latin or Italian a, e, i sound respectively, followed by an En- 
 glish y or Italian j sound: Grd-yus, Md-ya, md-yor, Tro-ya (this 
 word has the open o sound in Italian), e-yus, Pompe-yus, Se-yanus, 
 cu-yus. So with the compounds of iacio: e-yicit, db-yicit, re-yicit; 
 though we should always write them with a single i: eicit etc. : Gdms 
 is a dactyl, Gaius a nonentity. The o or e of proin, proinde, prout, 
 dein, deinde, when not forming a distinct syllable, is elided, does not 
 form a diphthong, and must be treated as cases of elision between 
 two words: in neutiquam e is elided as much as in numquam, nullns'. 
 the Greek eu and yi I refuse to pronounce upon. 
 
 We come now to consonants: the Oxford paper proposes that the 
 consonant i, orj, should have the sound oi y in yard: that consonant 
 u, or V, should be sounded as at present. That we should sound 
 consonant i as our y I am quite agreed: equally persuaded am I that 
 we should give consonant u the nearest sound possible to the vowel 
 u, the sound that is of our English w. This I hold to be called far 
 by the whole inner structure of the language : comp. iuvenis, iunior ; 
 noverat, norat; motus, momen, nuntius, nundinae, etc. etc.: by the fact 
 that the Greeks employe! their ov to form words which must have 
 been utterly barbarous to their ears, in order to reproduce precisely 
 the Roman sounds: OvaXrjv^, dBovevro^j and many others even more 
 repulsive : lastly by clear external evidence. Gellius is fond of quot- 
 ing Cicero's friend Nigidius Figulus, next to Varro the most learned 
 of the Romans. Now the passage about the vowels cited by Gellius 
 
at the end of his 19th book seems to me to shew that the consonant 
 u in Valerius, etc. had the same relation to the vowel, as the i of 
 iecur, etc. had to the vowel %-, and that in both cases they were as 
 near to the vowel sound as they could well be. Still more con- 
 vincing is the curious passage in X 4: unless vos was sounded woSj 
 the story would seem to have no point or meaning. Now Gellius 
 quoting Figulus covers the whole classical period. Why should we 
 then renounce the advantage we have over others in our w, surely 
 a nobler sound, to us at least, than vl 
 
 The circular shrinks from giving c and g uniformly the sound of 
 k and hard g\ and leaves ci and ti (and ? si) before another vowel to 
 be sounded as at present. As for special reasons I have spoken of 
 these points so fully in an Appendix, I will only say that, since ken, 
 kin, get, give are such genuine English sounds, I see no reason for 
 not allowing them in Latin, and many reasons for the contrary; and 
 that our rashios, fashiams and the like are hardly compatible with a 
 reformed system. 
 
 The circular does not touch on other consonants : I wish to make 
 a few remarks on some of them: bs, ht should always be sounded, 
 generally written, ps, pt: lapsus, aps, apsens, apstulit, Araps, urps, 
 opscenus, optulit, suptei^: and generally assimilation should take place 
 in pronunciation, if not in spelling; ace-, not adc-, imm-, imp-, 
 coll- etc. 
 
 d and t we treat with our usual slovenliness, and force them up to 
 the roof of our mouth: we should make them real dentals, as no 
 doubt the Romans made them, and then we see how readily ad at, 
 apud aput, illud illut and the like interchange : / seems from what 
 Quintilian says to have been sounded with a stronger breath than 
 we employ; but I suggest no change: m before q had a nasal sound: 
 quamquam, numquatn: final m was sounded slightly and indistinctly, 
 as is proved by its elision and the testimony of grammarians: quu 
 I avoid, pronouncing cu or quo: cum or quom, ecus or equos: r we 
 should sound more strongly and distinctly than we do at present. 
 
 Of 5 I would say a few words, as it has many interesting analogies 
 in Italian: s between two vowels has in Italian and French a soft 
 z sound like our rose: I would thus sound it between two vowels in 
 Latin : rosa, musa, miser. But words of this kind in Latin are com- 
 paratively very few, and in Italian there are most suggestive excep- 
 tions to s being soft between two vowels: in cosa, riso, etc. and 
 in the adjective termination -oso it is sounded as our s in sad : these 
 words represent causa (caussa), risus (rissus), examples of that very 
 large class of which Quintilian (i 7, 20) speaks : he tells us that 
 Cicero and Virgil wrote cassus, caussae, divissiones. There are vast 
 numbers of such w^ords, in which ss was the original spelling, a lost 
 consonant having been assimilated, and the vowel was always long. 
 The old Latin pronunciation seems to have been to dwell on the long 
 vowel or diphthong, and sound the ss as a single sharp s, as in the 
 
10 
 
 Italian words quoted : cau-ssa, cd-ssus, mi-sit (mt-ssit), missus, 
 iu'ssus, ru-sum {ru-ssum) for rursum, odio-sus {-ssus) etc. etc.: the 
 ss and s seem to have been sounded alike. At the beginning and end 
 of words too, and at the beginning of syllables, and before consonants, 
 s is always sharp in Italian, and should be so in Latin: sol, stella, 
 de-sero, ni-si, quasi, bos, nos, sonus. 
 
 There are 5 letters or unions of letters wholly alien to the old 
 language and brought into it for the sole purpose of reproducing 
 precisely Greek sounds: y, z, ch, j^h, th: we have abundant evidence 
 that y, or Greek v, had some sound between i and u, probably like 
 either French u or German il; and one of these sounds I should wish 
 to give it. Of 2 I do not feel competent to speak. The modern 
 Greeks sound Oy </> as we do, ^ like a strong Scotch guttural: in old 
 Greek and Latin it seems to be generally agreed that the tenues 
 c, p, t were distinctly sounded and an h sound appended. I should 
 not venture to suggest such a pronunciation for Latin ph and th ; but 
 should prefer it for ch, as this would not be a difficult sound, and 
 the Scotch or German guttural is strange to the English tongue. 
 
 gn was sounded as we sound it, not as the Italians and French 
 pronounce it. Though I do not propose to change the sound of ?i 
 before c and g: anceps, ango and the like; it seems to have been 
 nasal, nearer a g sound, and many grammarians wished to write 
 agceps, aggo, aggulus, as the Greeks actually did for similar reasons: 
 ayyeXof;, iy/cpaTrjf;; though oddly enough both Italians and modern 
 Greeks have here a clear n sound. 
 
 In modern Latin pronunciation quantity is systematically neg- 
 lected: attention to it seems to me essential in any reformed 
 method, attention too to the natural length of vowels when long by 
 position. In Latin there is no 7} or co, Lucilius unluckily for us 
 having laughed out of fashion the poet Accius' invention for noting 
 naturally long syllables by doubling them, though we find many 
 traces of this in the older inscriptions: Maarcus, jmastores: so ee for 
 €, I for I, as viximus as well as vivo: ou for u as pouhlicom. Apices 
 were often used afterwards in all ages to mark naturally long sylla- 
 bles: Mdrtis, fecerit: both these usages are noted by Quintilian. We 
 know too that the vowel of the supine and cognate parts of the verb 
 was always long by nature, if the vowel of the present indie, though 
 short was followed by a medial: aactus, leectus (partic), hui /actus, 
 lectus (subst.): Cicero (Orator § 159) tells us also that every vowel 
 when followed by ns or nf became long by nature: Insanus, Infelix, 
 but indoctus: coonsuevit, coonfecit, but composuit And this is borne 
 out by abundant other evidence : we find in Greek KXtj/jltj^ KXr/fiev- 
 T09, OvdXrjvf; OvaXevro^ and the like. Priscian too (ii 63) tells us 
 that gn made the preceding vowel long by nature : I'eegnum, staag- 
 num, henlgnus, mallgnus, ahieegnus, privlgnus: and this is confirmed 
 by our finding in inscriptions more than once the apex of a naturally 
 long vowel attached to regni, regno, and also signa, digni, and in 
 
11 
 
 Greek the form 'Vriyvoi: we must not be misled by the wrong accents 
 Ma/9A:o? for MdpKo<;, Mdyvo<; for Mayvo^, there being conclusive testi- 
 mony for the length of the vowel. The rhythm of prose as well as 
 verse will be improved, if we attend to such points: amaans amaan- 
 tis, doceens doceentis, legeens audieens, but legentis audientis; amaan- 
 dvs, doceendas, but legendus, audiendus: Afoonstrum horreendum 
 Informe ingeens: Insontem Infaandoo indicioo, and the like. An 
 extruded consonant too often leaves a naturall}^ short vowel long : 
 ex, ee', sex, seescenti, seemis; Sextius, Seestius {err] aTKoSearepov nihil 
 novi) ; ees, eest from edo. By comparing Cicero (de orat. ill § 183) 
 with Quintilian (i, 5, 18) we learn that in the time of the former the 
 prose pronunciation was illiiis, unius, etc.: in the time of the latter 
 illliis, unlus, he and subsequent grammarians holding the shorten- 
 ing to be a poetical licence. 
 
 Plautus and Terence, following the usage of common life, never 
 lengthen a short vowel before a mute and liquid : compare on this- 
 point Aristophanes with Euripides, Euripides with Homer r and in; 
 prose we should always keep such syllables short. When in the 
 learned verse such syllables are lengthened, we should still sound 
 the vowel short, and lengthen the syllable by separating distinctly 
 the two consonants : Gnatum ante ora patris, pdt-rem : M Lycum 
 7iig-ris oculis nigroque : similis volucri, nunc vera voluc-ris. 
 
 The Italians, as I have already observed, have done us an in- 
 calculable service by keeping in most cases the accent on the right 
 syllable, though the loss of quantity has changed its nature. It 
 would be well to recal the accent to the right place in the cases 
 where we now neglect to do so ; to draw it forward towards 
 enclitics : armdque, 07nmdve as well as armisque ; tantdne ; to pro- 
 nounce tanton, posthdc, postea, praeterea, adeo (adv.), quiprimus 
 abdris, inter^se, apudmest, etc. 
 
 In respect of elision I would only say that, by comparing Plautus- 
 with Ovid, we may see how much the elaborate cultivation of the 
 language had tended to a more distinct sounding of final syllables ;. 
 and that but for Virgil's powerful influence the elision of long 
 vowels would have almost ceased. Clearly we must not altogether 
 pass over the elided vowel or syll. in m, except perhaps in the 
 case of e in common words, que, neque and the like. 
 
 In conclusion I would repeat that, if we are to reform our pro- 
 nunciation at all, it would be well to do it as thoroughly as we 
 can, and get rid of as many of our Shibboleths as possible ; and 
 would suggest that exact uniformity does not exist among us now,, 
 and need not be looked upon as indispensable in a reformed system.. 
 At all events ' liberavi animam meam '. 
 
 Tkinity College: February 1871. 
 
12 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 An article which has just appeared in the Academy of Feb. 15 by Mr Max 
 Miiller, ' on the pronunciation of c before e, i, y, ae, eu, oe\ and is argued 
 out with his usual power, will help no doubt to make innovation more 
 difficult here. His chief objection to change would seem to be the same 
 as that urged in the Oxford circular, that it could not ' be attempted witli- 
 out intolerable offence to the ears of all the Latin-reading nations'. He 
 speaks of 'fear of ridicule', 'a dislike of the harsh and disagreeable sound 
 of such words as Kikero, fakii\ This difficulty has never struck me as of 
 such very great weight; and my ear has already accustomed itself to look 
 on Kikero, skelus, skio and the like as even more euphonious than their 
 former sounds. Of course I assume that Sisero, Sesar, Sephalus, sinic and 
 the like are still to be English f^)r the new Kikero, Kaesar, kynicus, just as 
 much as for Ki/cepcoi/, Kato-ap, Kec^aA.09, kvvik6<;. Our present English pro- 
 nunciation of Latin appears to afford some arguments to the point. Some 
 centuries ago we pronounced wdth the rest of Europe (I assume now the 
 new and corrected sound of the vowels) cana, cara and the like, as kana, 
 ka/ra: when the revolution took place in our vowel sounds, we said kenay 
 kera, not sena, sera. Now that we propose to reform our vowel sounds in 
 cena, cera, why should we find keMa, kera more offensive than sena, sera ? 
 Our English k is common before all vowels alike and such consonants as 
 it can precede in Latin, and is at least as euphonious as s or tch: kettle and 
 kin are not less mellifluous than settle and sm : Kikero I i^refer to Tchi- 
 tchero] and I doubt whether Kikero is to an Italian more offensive or 
 sti'ange than Sisero, as they too have abundant k {ch) sounds before e and 
 i. Assuredly the many Greek words like Cilicia, Cihyra, scena, citharay 
 Clthaeron I would rather have with their Greek than their Latin sounds. 
 
 Quite the same is my experience with the very numerous cases of -ciy 
 -si, -ti before another vowel: vicies, visio, vitium; species, spatium, ratio, 
 gratia, solacium. Habit here too is all-powerful, whichever direction it 
 takes. The common English pronunciation of Greek words like Avcrias 
 is I believe A7;shta9, IIcAoTrovvr^shtoi, MtAr^shtot and the like, though custom 
 seems to permit a more correct sounding of the a: The pronunciation 
 of the oldest Greek scholars within my recullection, such as the late Bishop 
 Butler and Mr George Burgess, proved that some generations ago Greek 
 was in many points sounded more like Latin than it is now. Bishop 
 Blom field was fond of telling an anecdote about a Freshman examined by 
 Porson. The Freshman talked of ^eXshtoi/ : Person intimated a preference 
 for /SiX-Tlov. The Freshman j)olitely allowed the Professor to please him- 
 self; but had all his life been accustomed to belshion and intended to stick 
 to it, I think it not very unlikely that before his degree he became 
 reconciled to /SeXriov, and that if the will were present, it would take us 
 less time to exchange rayshio for ratio, speeshiees for spekies. 
 
 Nay if we keep within the limits of the Oxford paper, we shall be 
 forced to many awkward inconsistencies. Suppose we are comparing the 
 successive forms of words which we see collected in the first volume of the 
 
13 
 
 new Corpus Inscript., such as coir a, coera, cura ; Cailius and Caelius; 
 Coilius and Coelius, Caicilius and Caecilius, we must pronounce Koira, 
 sera, kura ; Kailius and Selius ; Koilius and Selhis ; Kaisilius and Sesilius. 
 The more ancient i^ulcer and Gracci will be pulser and Graksi, the more 
 I'ecent pulcher and Gracchi will be pulker and Grakki: coepi and 6•oe/?^ 
 will be A;oe/?^ and se/){. And so with an indefinite number of terminations : 
 haca and bacae will be haka and basae, siccus and sicci will be sikkus and 
 sz/(:5i. Long-suffering as we are on such points with our present system, 
 a partially improved method would perhaps render them intolerable. The 
 Italian shuns such inconsistencies by substituting ch { = k) for c : secco, 
 secchi, and lungo, lunghe. 
 
 It is doubtful whether our improved y sound of j will not by contrast 
 make such inconsistencies appear even more flagrant. Habit makes us 
 acquiesce in our English way of pronouncing such words as ioci, iugi, 
 coniugibus and the like: but will not yosi, yuji\ conyujibus be somewhat 
 uncouth 1 The Italians practically reverse this process, and give our j 
 sound to the consonantal i and our k and hard g sound to the c and g, by 
 writing giuochi, gioghi. This gi in fact is the almost universal substitute 
 for the Latin j, aiutare {adiutare) being quite exceptional. 
 
 But though to my present feeling to reform the pronunciation of j for 
 instance and leave that of c unchanged would almost be worse than to do 
 nothing, the important point is to know what is right or probably right. 
 However firmly one may have held the common belief that the sound of the 
 Latin c was in all cases the same as k or our k, the fact of such an autho- 
 rity as Mr Max Miiller calling it in question, must make one hesitate. 
 Still a variety of considerations compels me to retain my former belief. 
 
 He points out with much force that it does not follow, because Greeks 
 and others in transferring Latin words into their own langua.ge always 
 represented c by k, that therefore the sound of the two letters was always 
 identical. And yet the fact that Greek and barbarian, Goth and German 
 alike, do reproduce the Latin c by ^ is such a prima facie argiiment of 
 identity or near resemblance, that strong counter evidence is needed to 
 rebut it. Hahn's Grammar and Dictionary shew that the Albanian has 
 sounds representing most of the modern corruptions of the Latin c, such as 
 various o- and t, sounds. The cicer, which must have been imported into 
 those countries in early times, perhaps by Atticus on his farm at Buthrotum, 
 is represented by KjvKjepc: this y (or German/) sound being exceedingly 
 common in Albanian before all vowels, a and o as well as c and t. Now 
 when I think of the Greek KiKepoiv and then of his own eponymous cicer 
 reproduced on one side by the Albanian KyvKjepe and on the other by the 
 German kicher, each of these languages shewing only the first and to them 
 most natural deviation from the pure k sound, the concentrated force of 
 the three impresses me strongly ^ 
 
 1 It strikes me as improbable that Ulfilas, after years of intercourse with Eoman 
 dignitaries in Constantinople during its early days, and living with his flock in the 
 midst of Latin-speaking nations, should have got his Latin words through any * Greek 
 transliteration' ; and, as to the form aivaggeli, surely although in modern Greek 77 
 and in Italian ng are alike sounded as ng, the very fact that the Greeks put 7 for y and 
 that some of the best Eoman Grammarians wished to write in Latin aggulus, aggens, 
 iggerunt and the like, prove that it was different in ancient times. 
 
14 
 
 For the Greeks, though indeed they did represent / by eft, took much 
 pains to reproduce the most peculiar Latin sounds. How trying must it 
 have been to the eyes and ears of a Greek — unless he wished to laugh at 
 the barbarians — to find in his Polybius IloorTov/xtos ^P-rjyovXos (Postiimius 
 Regiilus), in his D. Cassius OvovXTovpvov (Yulturni), in his Dionysius 
 Ovokova-KLos (Yolscius), in his Ptolemy OvLpoveSpovfx, and the like. If the 
 Latin -ce and -ci had anything of an s sound, why could not the Greeks 
 represent them by some combination of ^ or ^ or a; such as were used in 
 Byzantine times'? The Greeks would probably have given to these sounds 
 some conventional meaning, as to those odd accumulations of ov : nor do 
 I think they would have cared for the quantity of such barbarous words; 
 or, if they had cared for it, would have hesitated to change it. Indeed any 
 consideration of quantity seems to me to apply with tenfold force to the 
 supposition of an s added to the k sound in Latin, so long as quantity was 
 regarded, or to the Italian ich, which surely must have been anterior to the 
 English or French s sound. 
 
 Yet more weighty to my mind is the fact that the Romans in all cases 
 expressed k by c. In old times they could only reproduce Greek words in 
 the rudest "way; but for several generations this nation of philologers 
 expended vast energy in overcoming this difficulty. For this j^urpose they 
 introduced no less than five 'diacritical' letters or combinations of letters, 
 2/, z, ch, ph, th, in order to reproduce with the nicest accuracy every Greek 
 sound; and schooled their tongue to utter words which once were most 
 strange to them. At first content with Teses, they finally brought them- 
 selves to adopt Theseus, a sound and intonation most alien to a Koman 
 ear. Long satisfied with Sagu7itum, with sejmrus or sepirics, lucinus or 
 licinus, they came at last to Zacynthus, zephyrus, lychnus, containing each 
 of them three letters or combinations of letters utterly foreign to them. 
 So that at length they learnt to revel in such sweet sounds as Antheus, and 
 Mnestheus, and Actids Oreithyia. 
 
 Why then, when they had got to Cephe'ds, Cephalus, Chalcis, cithara 
 and the like, if c was not exactly equivalent to k, did they not adopt here 
 too a ' diacritical ' letter 1 One was at hand, more ready for use than any 
 of the five adopted, their own k, now lying idle, with only an antiquarian 
 value before a in a few words or symbols of words. And on this point the 
 dekemhres of no. 844 of the Corpus inscr. vol. 1 seems to have some bearing. 
 This is one of nearly 200 short, plebeian, often half-barbarous very old 
 inscriptions on a collection of ollae. The k before e or any letter except a 
 is solecistic, just as in no. 831 is the c. instead of k. for calendas. From 
 this I would infer that, as in the latter the writer saw no difference between 
 c and k, so to the writer of the former k was the same as c before e. 
 Perhaps keri tells the same tale, if, as Mommsea assumes, it be the geni- 
 tive jof cerus {creator). 
 
 The following too appears to me to have no small significance. In 
 Oicero's time from an abuse of Greek fashions the aspirate was permanently 
 attached to a few Latin words. Cicero tells us (Orator § 160) that till late 
 in life he had persisted in saying pulcros, Cetegos, triumpos, Cartaginem ; 
 but after a hard atruggle evil habit and public opinion forced him to insert 
 the h in these words. It appears now from inscriptions and Quintilinn 
 (i, §, 20) that this h, which in some words was permanent, in others not^ 
 
15 
 
 was attached to c alike before a, o, u and e, i: in the list vol. of the Corpus 
 inscr. we find Volchacia and Achilio (Acilio) ; often Pulcher, but also 
 Pulcer. We have Gracchus and Graccus, Gracchis and Graccis : Quintilian 
 refers to what he calls Catullus' ' nobile ei)igramma' Cliommoda dicehat, 
 and says that some inscriptions still extant have choronae chenturiones 
 lyraechones. It is I believe generally allowed that the ancient sound of 
 ^, <^, X was that of the tenuis with a distinct h sound attached to it. But 
 even conceding that ch was like the modern Greek or Scotch or German 
 guttural, in either case I do not well see how the aspirate could have been 
 attached to the c, if c had not a h sound, or how in this case c before e or i 
 could have differed from c before a, o, u. 
 
 And finally, what is to me most convincing of all, I do not well under- 
 stand how in a people of Grammarians, where for 700 years from Ennius 
 to Priscian the most distinguished writers were also the most minute 
 philologers, not one, so far as we know, should have hinted at any diflference, 
 if such existed : neither Ennius, Accius or Lucilius, the three greatest of 
 the early poets; nor Cicero, Varro or Caesar; nor Pliny or Quintilian, nor 
 Gellius, Charisius, Donatus, Servius or Priscian. Lucilius devoted whole 
 books to such slight matters as the use of fervit or fervet ; i or ei in termi- 
 nations. Cicero in his Orator and. elsewhere dwells on what seem to us 
 very trivial minutiae. Varro asserted that lact was right, lac wrong; 
 Caesar in his ' de analogia', addressed to Cicero, maintained that Varro and 
 lact were both wrong, lac alone right. He told Cicero that the genitive of 
 their common friend Pompeiius' name ought to have three I's and explained 
 how they were to be pronounced; but seems to have said nothing of the 
 c's in Cicero. Quintilian tells us how to pronounce the i of optimus, the 
 final e of here^ and much else of an equally important nature. And all 
 know that Gellius, Servius, Priscian and the rest are brimful from first 
 to last of the most insignificant details : but of a soft c not one syllable. 
 
 Nay, what is even more to the point, Priscian relates at length how 
 Pliny heard three difierent sounds of I: an *exilis sonus' as in ille: a 
 *plenus' as in sol \ a'medius' as in lectus. So Priscian himself finds 
 the n of nomen to be * plenior ', that of annis to be ' exilior'; and not only 
 is there a difference in final m, but the m of magnus ' apertum sonat ', the 
 m of iimhra ' mediocre '. Of c ovSe ypv, singular indeed if its sound differed 
 perceptibly before different letters ; for surely the distinctions in the letters 
 just enumerated cannot have been so very great. 
 
 Quite as little classical authority can I find for our strange confusion 
 of sounds in many classes of words, important from their great number, as 
 they happen to occur in so many common inflexions : I speak of ce, a, se, 
 si^ ti, coming before another vowel, to all of which we give the same Hebraic 
 ^tXshiov sound: iaceam, placeo, iacies, /aciunt, condicio', nausea, caesius 
 divisio; ratio, gratia, retia, otium, indutiae, etc. etc. The modern confu- 
 sion of sounds here comes I believe not from classical times, but from the 
 ' col lu vies gentium' which met together on the breaking up of the old 
 world. Mr Miiller says Corssen has 'proved (p. 54) that from about 
 200 A.D. words with ti began to be spelt with ci. How was that possible? 
 if ci was always pronounced ki, then assibilated ti could never have been 
 written ci' The 'never' is surely too much: Ribbeck in his prolegomena 
 to Virgil, p. 241, gives dozens of instances where one or other of his capital 
 
16 
 
 Mss. writes c for t or t for c; such as ac for a^, tetera for cetera, tumulol 
 for cumulos, etquis for ecquis, in none of which can the two letters hav} 
 had the least similarity of sound. But he gives not a single instance 
 confusion in a capital Ms. between the ci and ti in question: these Mss 
 write without fail dido, solacia, Jacies, proditio, seditio, ratio, spatium] 
 And yet almost every line of Latin offers opportunities for blundering oi 
 this point. When we consider this, the half-dozen instances in Corssei 
 seem quite inadequate to prove confusion between ci and ti. For there art 
 but six which have even a prima facie look of sufficiency : the most pre 
 mising of these is renunciationem from a Roman inscription of a.d. 211] 
 But when we examine its pedigree, we find that Orelli cojiies it froi 
 Keinesius' collection ^quibus nihil imperfectius vitiosiusque extet,' sayd 
 lac. Gronovius: 'ipse lapides nullos viderat,' says another scholar: 'wh( 
 exceeds all bounds in saxa violentius grassando,' says a third. When w( 
 remember then that in Keinesius' time renunciotio was the recognise 
 spelling, that one instance after another of conditio for example vanisht 
 when it can be put to the test, surely the chances are a hundred to one 
 that the c is due to Reinesius or some previous transcriber, not to the oldj 
 Roman chiseller. Two more of unknown age are due to old copies takei 
 when ocio at least was a received spelling: two more are published byj 
 Renier from a copy taken by a French officer at Medjana in Africa, Afnc^j 
 great mother of barbarisms and heresies. The 6th has an unquestionable! 
 voucher : Mommsen's inscr. reg. Neap. 109 has disposicionem. It was copiet 
 at Salerno ; but it must be late and is very barbarous, containing also[ 
 rivocaverit, distituta, popidusquae, an unmeaning suetad, the language! 
 being in part unintelligible. Had Corssen applied his vast industry to] 
 post-classical times, he might have collected without effort 100,000 clear] 
 instances of the confusion in question, the only reason with many ap-l 
 parently for writing racio, spacium, faties, speties being that the spelling! 
 was wrong. We still see some relics of this barbarism of the middle agesj 
 in conditio, solatium, novitius, trihunitius, nuncius, and the like. 
 
 We have however late classical authority of the 5th century for a cor- 
 ruption of ^i (not ci) : Servius tells us that medius was pronounced medsitc8,\ 
 something like the Italian mezzo: Pompeius, probably of the same age, 
 informs us that it is a fault to say. Titius, not Titsius. If therefore we! 
 prefer the 5th century to the age of Cicero and Quintilian, we should say 
 not Tishius, Horashius, but Titzius, Horaizius: but then to be consistent! 
 we should also say medzius, commodzius. From the strange emphasis with] 
 which Pompeius asserts that Titsius is right, Titius wrong, I should infer 
 that this was a new fashion; and that laiktio represented to Ulfilas the] 
 sound oi lectio in his day, while kautsjo gAve the sound of cautio in the yeari 
 551. In Servius' time the natural feeling for quantity was utterly gone: 
 it had to be learnt as artificially as it is learnt now. But in earlier classical 
 times such pronunciations were out of the question. Indeed if we are to 
 observe quantity, which many of us think a vital part of reform, I hardly 
 know how with any of the modern fashions of pronouncing we are properly 
 to enunciate ratio and H or dtius, fades and solddum. 
 
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