Kitap 1
5.20
Older authors used it but rarely even before vowels, saying aedus or ircus, while its conjunction with consonants was for a long time avoided, as in words such as Graccus or triumpus. Then for a short time it broke out into excessive use, witness such spelling as chorona, chenturia or praecho, which may still be read in certain inscriptions: the well-known epigram of Catullus Cat. Ixxxi. will be remembered in this connexion.
5.21
The spellings vehementer, comprehendere and mihi have lasted to our own day: and among early writers, especially of tragedy, we actually find mehe for me in the older MSS.
5.22
It is still more difficult to detect errors of tenor or tone (I note that old writers spell the word tonor, as derived from the Greek τόνος ), or of accent, styled prosody by the Greeks, such as the substitution of the acute accent for the grave or the grave for the acute: such an example would be the placing of the acute accent on the first syllable of Camillus,
5.23
or the substitution of the grave for the circumflex in Cethegus, an error which results in the alteration of the quantity of the middle syllable, since it means making the first syllable acute; or again the substitution of the circumflex for the grave on the second syllable of Appi, where the contraction of two syllables into one circumflexed syllable involves a double error.
