INDICATING VOWEL LENGTH IN LATIN. 83 



The new pitch accent became known to the commons also in the 

 theatres, as they Hstened to the declamation of the comic and tragic 

 actors. Cicero twice tells us" that all the whole audience cried out 

 if a single syllable was pronounced too long or too short. That he 

 referred only to the senators who sat with him in the orchestra, or 

 at most added only the " fourteen rows " occupied by the knights, is 

 made improbable by the context ; for he prefaces the former state- 

 ment with the remark, quotus quisque est qui teneat artem numerorum 

 ac modorum, and follows the latter with the words, nee vero multi- 

 tudo pedes novit aut ullos numeros tenet. And today auditors with 

 good ears notice an unmetrical line in a Shakespearean play, or a false 

 note in grand opera, even though they know nothing of musical 

 theory or of meter. 



In many instances, of course, the difference between long and 

 short was obvious and significant. Thus Nero used to pun cruelly 

 at the expense of his sainted predecessor, saying that Claudius had 

 ceased inter homines morari, lengthening the first syllable of the last 

 word, as Suetonius obligingly explains,'^ and thus changing its mean- 

 ing from " linger " to " play the fool." We may compare hinc avium 

 dulcedo ducit ad avium in the Auctor ad Herennium (iv, 29) and 

 many similar word plays. ^ 



As is well known, the Romans employed various devices for indi- 

 cating the length of vowels. A doubled vowel^r.^r., Paastor, I, 

 551,'^ 132 B.C. ; Seedes, I, 1166, 104 B.C. — from about 134 B.C. until 

 about 78 B.C., a period fixed by the testimony of inscriptions, as well 

 as by the assignment of the device to the poet Accius,^^ who, if he 

 was the first to employ it in Latin, borrowed it from the Oscan. For 



•5 Orat., 173 and De Orat., III., 196. 



'Nero, 23, i- The tense of iocabaiur indicates that Nero was proud of 

 this witticism and used it more than once. 



^ It hardly seems necessary to say that the pronunciation of prose and 

 poetry were the same. This is directly stated by Cicero, Orator, 190: 'Sit 

 igitur hoc cognitum, in solutis etiam verbis inesse numeros eosdemque esse 

 oratorios qui sunt poetici ' ; and by Quintilian, Inst. Orat. IX., 4, 61 : ' Et in 

 omni quidem corpore totoque, ut ita dixerim, tractu numerus insertus est; 

 neque enim loqui possumus nisi syllabis brevibus ac longis, ex quibus pedes 

 fiunt.' 



" References like this are to the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. 



10 Terentius Scaurus, Dc Orihog., VII., 18, 12 K. 



