LATIN INSCRIPTION AT CIRTA. 375 



1. Hie 6go quit^ceo versibus m^a vita dem6n8tro 



2. Mcem clara frdltus ett^mpora sdmma. Praecll(iu)s 



3. Cirt^nsi lare argentar(ia)m exibui artem. 



4. fydes inmS mtra fuit semper etv^ritas 6mnis. 



5. (Smnibus commtinis ^go cut nonmisdrtus ubtque? 



6. rfsiis, ]uxur(ia) semper frditus cuncdris amicis, 



7. tilem post(obit)um d(6min)ae Valer(iae) noninv^ni pudfcae. 



8. vitam ciim p6tui gratam h5b(m) cunc6njuge s^nctam. 



9. nat^les hon^ste m(eo)s c^ntfim c(ele)brdvi felfces. 



10. dt v(enit) postrdma d(les) ut3p(£rit)us in^nia mempra relinquat. 



11. titulos quoslegia vivus m^e in<5rti par&vi, 



12. utvoluit fortiina: nunquam medeseruit fpsa. 



13. sequlmini tkha: hinc v6s exp^cto. venitae. 



V. 12. Perhaps utvolui: fortuna namnon, etc. 



When I read Mr Blakesley's book last autumn, this inscription at once attracted my 

 attention. On examining it I saw, as indeed its author tells us, that it was verse, and verse 

 of some importance as a landmark in the history of the Latin language. Not long before 

 that time I had been reading the two poems of Commodian, an early African Bishop, of 

 whom I will presently say more. They, as well as our inscription, are composed in what 

 is intended to be hexameter verse, verse that is to say written by men of some education, 

 who lived however at a time when that most . extraordinary change had already taken place 

 in Latin, and probably also in Greek. I allude to the loss of quantity which was the very 

 bone and sinew of the old language, and to the consequent revolution in the nature of the 

 accent which then degenerated and hardened into a mere stress, resembling the Italian or 

 German or English accent. Of course in the schools of Italy, Gaul and Spain the know- 

 ledge of the old quantity was maintained, just as it is in England at Eton or Cambridge ; 

 but the poems of Ausonius and Claudian are in all essential points as artificial an imitation of 

 Virgil or Horace, as the Musae Etonenses or the ^Arundines Cami. As prosody therefore 

 and the writing of nonsense or sense verses appear unfortunatelj to have been quite neglected 

 in the schools of Africa, a worthy Bishop or rich banker, like Commodian or Praecilius, read 

 Virgil by accent alone, and in attempting to imitate him set to work in much the same way 

 as a modern Roman or Englishman would do, who had made himself in other respects a good 

 Latin scholar, without having learned the rules of Prosody : rules which swineherds in the 

 Vol. X. Part IL 48 



