INDICATING VOWEL LENGTH IN LATIN. 87 



missus, IV., 1 182, No. 6, and F for fecit, IX., 2082 B, a Christian 

 inscription; cf. Augg. and lib., VI., 738, of the time of Septimius 

 Severus; dec.. XIV., 3023, and primig., XIV., 2851. This apex is 

 much less common than the one which designates a long vowel and 

 is not likely to be mistaken for it. It may have led to the use of the 

 long vowel apex as a mark of punctuation after abbreviations and at 

 the end of sentences and clauses (see p. 86), when such a use is 

 consistent with its employment as a designation of long quantity; as 

 in fee. for fecerunt, VI., 4027, and elsewhere. Conversely, the long 

 vowel apex may have influenced the form of the other apex, which 

 perhaps came from the commoner mark of punctuation .'. 



It would seem that the best results would be obtained by examin- 

 ing some of the longer official inscriptions of the best period, and we 

 may begin with the Monumentum Ancyranum, the great inscription 

 in which the Emperor Augustus recorded the events of his reign. ^^ 

 In examining this document we must, of course, bear in mind that it 

 is a copy of the lost original in Rome. We shall probably be safe, 

 however, in assuming that the stone-cutter followed his copy as care- 

 fully in adding such marks as he did in other respects, and this as- 

 sumption receives support from the fact that in the beginning and 

 end of the inscription, which were not copied from the Roman origi- 

 nal, errors are more frequent than in the body of the record, where 

 they are very rare. 



The inscription proper contains approximately 1,884 words and 

 1,399 Jo^g vowel-quantities. Of the latter 487, or about 34 per cent., 

 are indicated by apices or by the tall I. The marks are for the most 

 part limited to one on each word, but forty words have two marks 

 and two have three marks each.^'' The modern scholar, in spite of 

 the silence of the native grammarians, might be led to inquire whether 

 the so-called " hidden quantities " are designated by marks. We find 



IS Suet. Aug., loi, 4; Cassius Dio, 56, 2)2>- 



19 The counting has been done with care, and while it would be rash to 

 claim absolute accuracy, the percentage of error is certainly not large enough 

 to affect any of the conclusions. The writer has made complete word in- 

 dices of the Monumentum Ancyranum (designated as M. A.) and the Speech 

 of Claudius (S. C), and full lists of all the examples of the different posi- 

 tions and uses of the apex. Considerations of space prevent the printing of 

 these lists, but they form a reasonable guarantee of accuracy. 



