82 ROLFE— THE USE OF DEVICES FOR 



paratus."^ The theory is also given strong support by the circum- 

 stance that both quantitative poetry and pitch accent by 400 A.D. 

 were giving place to the native stress and to accentual poetry. For 

 the detailed evidence I may refer to Abbott's paper and to one by 

 Professor R. G. Kent in the Transactions of the American Philologi- 

 cal Association, LI., pp. 19 fif.^ 



This theory of the nature and history of the Latin accent makes 

 the metrical reading of Latin poetry, if not less difficult, at least more 

 rational and. it is to be hoped, more uniform. It also makes possible 

 the careful observance of the quantity of all long syllables, which 

 would be difficult, and probably impossible, in such words as evUd- 

 batur and dcs'idenlbdtur, if the accent were one of stress. Careful 

 observance of quantity did not, of course, imply an abnormally slow 

 delivery or a uniform length for every long syllable. Choeroboscus, 

 a writer on Greek metrical theory, designates five degrees of length in 

 syllables, and modern phoneticians recognize at least as many. 



It is natural to infer, as certain linguistic phenomena indicate, that 

 the common people as a whole did not adopt the fashionable pitch 

 accent ; but it was probably not without influence upon the speech of 

 those who came most closely in contact with the upper classes or had 

 social ambitions. Furthermore, the Greeks at Rome were not only 

 the teachers of the children of the upper classes, but they filled many 

 humbler positions and therefore were likely to influence all classes of 

 society. Thus Juvenal writes : 



Quem vis hominem secum attulit ad nos ; 

 Grammaticus, rhetor, geometres, pictor, aliptes, 

 Augur, schoenobates, medicus, magus ; omnia novit 

 Grseculus esuriens. (Sat., III., 75 ff-) 



* Suet. Claud., 42, i ; cf . Hor. Odes, III., 8, 5, docte sermones utriusque 

 linguae, and many similar utterances. 



5 See also Turner, Classical Review, 1912, pp. 147 flF., who finds no evi- 

 dence in formal Latin from 250 B.C. to the end of the fourth century of our 

 era in support of the opinion that the Latin accent was primarily one of 

 stress ; although, as Professor Abbott again points out in Class. Phil, VIII., 

 p. 92, vulgar Latin seems to furnish clear proof of the predominance of 

 stress. Skutsch, in Glotta, IV., pp. 187 flf. suggests that the pre-literary first- 

 syllable accent came from the Etruscans, and that the later three-syllable ac- 

 cent was due to Greek influence. 



