Book 1
5.26
where they make the last syllable of circum acute on the ground that, if that syllable were given the grave accent, it might be thought that they meant circus not circuitus. i.e. that circum is the ace. of circus, and not the adverb indicating circuit. Similarly when quale is interrogative, they give the final syllable a grave accent, but when using it in a comparison, make it acute. This practice, however, they restrict almost entirely to adverbs and pronouns; in other cases they follow the old usage.
5.27
Personally I think that in such phrases as these the circumstances are almost entirely altered by the fact that we join two words together. For when I say circum litora I pronounce the phrase as one word, concealing the fact that it is composed of two, consequently it contains but one acute accent, as though it were a single word. The same thing occurs in the phrase Troiae qui primus ab oris. Aen. i. l: qui coalesces with primus, ab with oris.
5.28
It sometimes happens that the accent is altered by the metre as in pecudes pictaeque volucres Georg. iii. 243. ; for I shall read volucres with the acute on the middle syllable, because, although that syllable is short by nature, it is long by position: else the last two syllables would form an iambus, which its position in the hexameter does not allow.
