Handbook of Latin inscriptions; illustrating the history of the language

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE AGE OF CICEEO AND THE EARLY EMPIRE. CLASSICAL LATIN. 23. The number of Greek words that were being introduced into the language, and the growing study of Greek Grammar and Phonetics, led to the more exact orthography of Greek loan-words. The Greek letters Upsilon (Y, our y) and Zeta (Z, our z) supplanted the earlier transliteration by u, ss (s) (e.g. cymba, earlier cumba), and found their way into some words that were pure Latin, e.g. sttva, wrongly written sylva. The Greek Aspirate Mutes were expressed by th, ph, ch, instead of t, p, c, as hitherto, and Greek initial Rho by rh-. 24. A change in the 2d Decl. is described by Cicero (Orat. xlvi. 155) as having been effected in his own lifetime, viz. the disuse of the old Gen. Plur. ending -um (-om) for the new-fashioned -orum (see my Hist. Gram. ch. iii. 6, and cf. duonord(m), No. 25). 25. The Orthography of Ciceronian and Augustan Latin exhibits many archaic features that are not always found in our editions of these authors, e.g. quoi for cui, ei frequently for I, ns for s in vicensumus, etc., u for i in vicensumns, maxumus, etc. Julius Caesar is said to have brought about the use of the 'new' spelling with i onState inscriptions, optimus, maximus. Long Vowels are now indicated by the ' apex, ' a mark like the Greek acute accent. Traces of the apex still remain in French, e.g. ete, and other alphabets derived from the Latin. After a diphthong II is now written Z; while ss becomes s after a long vowel too, e.g. causa, misi (cf. repromeisserit, No. 59). LVIII. Epitaph on an actress, Rome; c. 50 B.c. (C.I.L. i. 1009; vi. 10096.) Eucharis Liciniae l(iberta) docta erodita omnes artes uirgo uixit an(nos) XI11I. / . heus oculo errante quei aspicis leti domus, morare gressum et titulum nostrum pe...… (more)