INDICATING VOWEL LENGTH IN LATIN. 85 



The Roman grammarians are not wholly silent as to this point, 

 Quintilian says : ^^ " Longis syllabis omnibus adponere apicem ineptis- 

 simum est, quia plurimae natura ipsa verbi quod scribitur patent ; sed 

 interim necessarium, cum eadem littera alium atque alium intellectum 

 prout correpta vel producta est f acit : ut " malus " arborem significet 

 an hominem non bonum apice distinguitur, " palus " aliud priore syl- 

 laba longa, aliud sequenti significat, et cum eadem littera nominativo 

 casu brevis, ablativo longa est, utrum sequamur plerumque hac nota 

 monendi sumus." In the time of Hadrian, Terentius Scaurus 

 writes : ^* " Apices ibi poni debent ubi isdem litteris alia atque alia 

 res designatur, ut ' venit ' et ' venit,' ' aret ' et ' aret,' ' legit ' et * legit,' 

 ceteraque his similia. Super i tamen litteram apex non ponitur; 

 melius enim I in longius producitur. Ceterae vocales, quia eodem 

 ordine positae diversa significant, apice distinguuntur, ne legens dubi- 

 tatione impediatur." 



These statements are clear and definite. The second one made 

 by Scaurus is confirmed by the inscriptions; for although there are 

 twenty-two instances of an apex over i in the twelfth volume of the 

 C. I. L. alone, that use is relatively very rare. An apex occasionally 

 appears even over a tall I, as in XII., 890 and 3065 add. The other 

 statement, in which Quintilian and Scaurus agree, points to a logical 

 and helpful use of the apex, but unfortunately the statement is not 

 confirmed by the inscriptions. The apex^^ is used in many instances 

 where it does not serve to distinguish words or case-endings of the 

 same spelling except for the quantity of the vowels, and frequently 

 such words or case-endings are left unmarked. This fact, however, 

 does not prevent us from accepting Quintilian's principle as one of 

 those which regulate the use of the apex ; for it will be seen that no 

 principle of the kind is observed with uniformity. In fact, one is 

 almost tempted to think at times that uniformity was deliberately 

 avoided. 



Of many thousand inscriptions which I have examined I have 

 found only two in which all the long vowels are marked. As both 



13 Inst. Orat., I., 7, 2-z. 

 " De Orthog., VII., 33, 5 ff- K. 



15 For brevity, the term 'apex' is used here and in numerous other in- 

 stances to include the apex and the I longa. 



