alifornia 
 
 jional 
 
 ility 
 
Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN 
 
THE 
 
 TKANSLITERATION AND PBONUNCIAT10N 
 OF THE LATIN LETTEE V. 
 
 By G. B. GRTJNDY, D.Litt. Oxford. 
 
 [Read at the Meeting of the Philological Society on February 1, 1907.] 
 
 SUMMARY OF CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. Transliteration as a basis for inquiry into pronunciation. Inquiry 
 facilitated by Dr. Eckinger's work on the Inscriptions. Transliterations in 
 Inscriptions and in received texts compared. Transliteration of Latin v 
 in Inscriptions and Authors, (pp. 1-11.) 
 
 CHAPTER II. Peculiarities of transliteration in Appian, in Dio Cassius, in the 
 Oxyrhynchus, Fayum, and British Museum Papyri. Effect of convention, 
 official and otherwise, on transliteration of Latin v. Mode in which its 
 transliterations vary in accordance with the knowledge of Latin and Greek 
 possessed by the transliterators. Geographical distribution of the variations. 
 Special case of Plutarch. Phonetic tendencies observable in the trans- 
 literations of v . (pp . 1 1 -2 1 . ) 
 
 CHAPTER III. General attitude of modern authorities towards the pronunciation 
 of Latin v. The pronunciation of Greek j3. Date at which its pronunciation 
 began to weaken. and the digamma in late Greek. Pronunciation of the 
 digamma in certain dialects of later Greek. ft as a transliteration of Latin b. 
 Evolution of the sounds of ft, Latin b, and Latin v. Various general views 
 in modern authors on the significance of the ov and ft transliterations of 
 Latin v . The present writer's conclusions as to the pronunciation of Latin o 
 in the Augustan age. (pp. 21-34.) 
 
 CHAPTER IV. The Latin v in ancient and modern grammarians. Consideration 
 of the detailed arguments in favour of the w pronunciation of the Latin v. 
 (pp. 35-41.) 
 
 CHAPTER V. The Latin v in Old Celtic, Old High German, Old Low German, 
 Old Syriac. Latin v in the modern Romance tongues. Peculiarities of 
 pronunciation observable in those Romance-speaking peoples whose ancestors 
 learnt Latin in an early age. (pp. 42-50.) 
 
THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE EVIDENCE IN THE KECEIVED TEXTS OF AUTHORS. 
 
 1 IT has been recognized for some time past by Classical scholars 
 in England that the question of the pronunciation of Latin in the 
 English schools and universities is one which calls urgently for 
 settlement. Two methods exist at present side by side, namely, 
 that which is called the old pronunciation, which makes no claim 
 to reproduce the sounds of spoken Latin, and the so-called new 
 pronunciation, which does make such a claim, but which never- 
 theless is not as yet uniform in many of its details. This latter 
 mode as adopted in English schools takes two forms: (1) that in 
 use in Germany ; (2) a form which pretends to greater scientific 
 accuracy, and which has been chiefly advocated by distinguished 
 Cambridge scholars. The Italian pronunciation, though at one 
 time adopted in some schools, seems to have fallen into disuse. 
 
 The evidence with regard to the pronunciation of the majority 
 of the Latin letters and combinations of letters is very clear ; and 
 the conclusions drawn from it do not require prolonged discussion. 
 But in the case of other letters, and especially of the vowel u, the 
 diphthongs ae and ?, and the consonants b and v, the evidence 
 is obscure. I propose to confine myself chiefly to the evidence as 
 to the pronunciation of the Latin v. 
 
 I am well aware of the boldness of the step which I have taken 
 in reopening a question which has for the last thirty years been 
 regarded as a res judicata by very eminent authorities in philology. 
 But the evidence which will be produced in this paper is novel in 
 form, and, to a certain extent, new in respect to matter. It would, 
 indeed, have been somewhat futile to reopen this question merely 
 on pre-existent evidence which had been already exhaustively 
 considered by eminent judges. 
 
 1 The assistance derived from published works is acknowledged fully in the 
 course of the discussion of the question involved ; but I have also to acknowledge 
 with gratitude important help received by me from Professor Rhys, Professor of 
 Celtic in this University ; from Professor Morfill, Reader in Slavonic languages ; 
 Mr. A. E. Cowley, assistant librarian of the Bodleian ; Mr. Sweet, Reader in 
 Phonetics ; and from Mr. de Atteaga, Reader in Spanish, who were kind enough 
 to assist me with information such as could only be obtained in a reliable form 
 from distinguished specialists. 
 
THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. <3 
 
 The nature of the new evidence is as follows. Late in the 
 eighties or early in the nineties of the last century (his work is not 
 expressly dated), Dr. Eckinger of Zurich published a hook of 
 about 150 pages on " Die Orthographic lateinischer Worter in 
 Griechischen Inschriften." 
 
 Dittenberger, the compiler of the well-known collection T 
 inscriptions, had already treated of the same subject; but the~ 
 work of Eckinger is far more exhaustive, chiefly owing to the 
 greatly increased amount of material available at the time at 
 which he wrote. "With the exception of the pronouncement of 
 Professor Lindsay in his book on the Latin language, the 
 authoritative pronouncements on the question of the pronunciation 
 of Latin 1 were made before Dr. Eckinger's work appeared. Professor 
 Lindsay's references to the work show that he has adopted 
 Dr. Eckinger's conclusions without forming his own inductions 
 from Dr. Eckinger's evidence. Those conclusions are limited by 
 the fact that Dr. Eckinger did not compare the evidence of 
 inscriptions with that to be obtained from authors, and, possibly, 
 because his work was that of a young man writing an exercise 
 for his degree, a composition in which it might conceivably 
 have been imprudent to attack an immense bulk of existent 
 authority. 
 
 Inquirers have fought shy of the transliterations of ancient 
 authors. Mr. Eoby does, indeed, make use of certain statistics 
 which he has himself drawn up from them ; but he uses them with 
 so much reservation as to make it obvious that he regards their 
 evidence as being of little value, because ultimately unreliable. 
 This distrust is expressed in the following words : " All the 
 MSS. of these authors are, I suppose, posterior by many centuries 
 to the confusion of v and b : this would not impair their testimony 
 when they represent v by ov, while the change of ov into ft would 
 be in accordance with the tendencies either of pronunciation or of 
 its expression." 
 
 This is only a special case of the great general question which 
 must be present in the mind of anyone who prosecutes any inquiry 
 into the transliterations of Latin words by Greek authors. Is it 
 possible to attain satisfactory assurance that, in dealing with those 
 
 1 I refer especially to the views expressed by Mr. Roby in his Latin Grammar, 
 and to the well-known work of Seelmann on Latin Pronunciation, as well as to 
 the incidental but important statements in Dr. Friedrich Blass'a work on the 
 pronunciation of the ancient Greek. 
 
 20O02G7 
 
THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 
 
 Greek forms of Latin names, we are dealing with the forms 
 employed by the authors themselves, and not with those employed 
 many centuries later by the scribes who copied the MSS. ? Unless 
 it can be shown, for example, that the transcription of Latin v by 
 Greek ft in the MS. of an ancient author is in accord with the 
 practice of his own time, there must always remain the possibility 
 that this transliteration is due to scribes who copied the MS. in 
 the sixth century or later, a period at which the Latin v is 
 admitted to have had the sound of the English v . So long as such 
 a possibility exists, no argument of any value can be drawn from 
 transliterations in purely literary documents, and Mr. Roby's 
 reservation is amply justified. 
 
 I began a collection of transliterations from literary sources 
 some years ago, but, faced by the difficulty of proving the evidence 
 to be contemporary, I desisted from further work on the subject. 
 It seemed as if no satisfactory conclusion could be drawn from 
 that particular form of inquiry. When, however, Dr. Eckinger's 
 work came into my hands not very long ago, I noticed a general 
 tendency to agreement with the data which I had obtained from 
 the purely literary source. I proceeded, therefore, to bring the 
 inquiry as near completion as possible, with a view to discovering 
 by the test of comparison whether the purely literary data, which 
 profess to originate at a certain age, are in accordance with such 
 inscriptional data as are without any question of that age. It 
 seemed that it would thus be possible to prove or disprove the 
 original character of the transliterations in the received texts of 
 ancient authors. If their original character could be proved, the 
 results promised to be valuable, not merely on the question of 
 pronunciation, but also with regard to the ultimate age of the 
 texts which are now extant. Reference will be made later in 
 this paper to the general results of this branch of the enquiry. 
 
 Before, however, turning to these results, it may be well to say 
 a word as to the nature of the evidence on pronunciation which 
 transliteration (or transcription) affords. It may be urged indeed, 
 it has been urged -that it cannot lead to satisfactory scientific 
 results, because it is of the nature of an argument from the 
 unknown, the pronunciation of ancient Greek, to the unknown, 
 the pronunciation of ancient Latin. 
 
 But the method is essentially a comparative one. It does not 
 take its premisses exclusively from the one or the other language. 
 It works by mutual elimination, enlarging the area of the negative 
 
THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 5 
 
 and narrowing the area of the positive, until in the case of most of 
 the sound signs in the two languages something like precision is 
 attained. 
 
 Turning onoe more, after this brief digression, to the evidence of 
 Dr. Eckinger, I may say that I have completed his data by evidence 
 taken from those volumes of the Corpus of Greek Inscriptions 
 which have been published since his book was given to the world, 
 but, in so doing, I have confined myself to the record of those 
 proper names which are variants in respect to transliteration. The 
 constants, that is, those proper names the transliteration of which 
 remains the same in form from the time of their first appearance 
 in Greek literature up to the end of the third century A.D., are 
 satisfactorily established on the evidence adduced by Dr. Eckinger, 
 and, in point of fact, the evidence since available is entirely in 
 agreement with that cited by him. 
 
 For the purpose of the comparison of inscriptional and literary 
 transliterations the decisive evidence must be drawn from the 
 variants. Of the constants it may be stated that they appear in 
 the received literary texts in the same form as in the inscriptions. 
 Such instances of variation from the inscriptional form as occur in 
 literary texts are so very exceptional in some cases absolutely 
 unique that they may safely be ascribed to the error of a copyist. 
 It must be understood throughout this article that by "received 
 texts " is meant the printed texts (Teubner series, where not 
 otherwise stated) of the present day. 
 
 MSS. of the authors who come into question in this present 
 consideration are very rare in England, and, at present, I have 
 only had the opportunity of examining one, that of Plutarch's 
 Lives in the Bodleian Library. The collations of texts printed in 
 the Teubner series are, however, very full. 
 
 The variants in transliteration may be divided for our present 
 purpose into four classes : 
 
 A. Those which present two or more forms whose uses were 
 separated from one another by a more or less distinct cleavage with 
 respect to time : that is to say, when one form of transliteration 
 was employed, the other form or forms were not in use. 
 
 B. Those which present two or more forms which overlap in 
 respect to a certain period, that is to say, a period during which 
 both were employed, while before that period the one form was in 
 exclusive use, and after it the other form or forms were employed. 
 
6 THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 
 
 C. Those which present two or more forms in contemporary 
 use, though at one period one form, at another another form was 
 more commonly employed. 
 
 D. Those which present two or more forms indifferently 
 employed at all times. 
 
 For the purpose of testing the dates of the transliteration in 
 the received texts, Classes A, B, and C are all of them important, 
 hut in descending order. 
 
 Thus far I have been speaking of variation in individual proper 
 names. But we must also take into consideration that wider form 
 of variation which consists in the diversity of the transliteration 
 of certain letters or combinations of letters at different periods. 
 This is much less precise as evidence, and therefore much more 
 difficult to deal with, save in the case of one letter, namely, that 
 with which we are at present concerned, the Latin v. 
 
 I will now turn to the evidence of the inscriptions with regard 
 to those forms of variation, and will compare in each case the 
 inscriptional evidence with the facts existent in the Greek texts 
 of certain authors. 
 
 The authors whose texts are of importance in this present inquiry 
 are Polybius, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Diodorus, Josephus, 
 Plutarch, and, with certain reservations which will be subsequently 
 made, Appian and Dio Cassius. It will also be necessary to deal 
 with the transliteration in the Oxyrhynchus and Fayum papyri. 
 The important period is that of the two centuries before Christ 
 and the first century after Christ ; and it so happens that the 
 period is well represented by authors whose subjects made it 
 necessary for them to transcribe Latin proper names. 
 
 Polybius' exile dates from 167 B.C., and the Roman portion of 
 his work, at any rate, was probably written about the middle 
 of the second century B.C. Dionysius of Halikarnassus and 
 Diodorus wrote during the second half of the first century B c. ; 
 Josephus and Plutarch during the second half of the first century 
 A.D. Part of the work of the latter may fall within the second 
 century. 
 
 The simplest mode of instituting a comparison between the 
 inscriptions and the received texts of these authors will be, 
 perhaps, to take first the inscriptional transliteration, and the 
 nature and date of its variation; secondly, to state the form in 
 which the transliteration should therefore appear in the texts of the 
 
THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 7 
 
 authors cited between 200 B.C. and 100 A.D. ; thirdly, to state 
 in which form it actually does appear in the texts of those authors. 
 (For details refer to Table I, at the end of the paper.) 
 
 1. <&Xoowo5 as a transliteration of Flavius is not found in 
 inscriptions before 62 A.D. <J>Xa/3<o9 first occurs in the Augustan 
 period. In the authors cited it should not therefore appear before 
 Josephus. 
 
 In point of fact it appears in Dionysius of Halikarnassus. 
 Diodorus has the form <I>Xatm>s, whose date of origin is not 
 determinable. 1 
 
 In Plutarch the ov transliteration appears, as it should, according 
 to the inscriptional evidence, side by side with <I>Xa/3to?. 
 
 The ov transliteration is the only form found in Appian and 
 Dio Cassius. 
 
 2. Caecilius : In inscriptions Kante'Xtos, 250-80 B.C. ; Kat/a'Xto?, 
 68 B.C. 260 A.D. The eaiiier form should, therefore, appear only 
 in Polybius. In point of fact this is the only author in which it 
 does appear, though the form KauciXio? is also found in his received 
 text. The name does not occur in Diodorus and Josephus. In 
 Dionysius, Plutarch, Appian, and Dio Cassius the form Ka//aX<o9 
 alone is found. 
 
 3. Apuleius: In inscriptions the forms 'A7T7ro\7j<o9, 'Airo\r)io<! 
 occur from 120 B.C. to 30 A.D. The form 'ATrn-ovXi//*? is found from 
 14 A.D. to the second century A.D. 
 
 This name only occurs, as it happens, in Plutarch, Appian, and 
 Dio, and in its later form, as it should appear, according to the 
 evidence of the inscriptions. 
 
 4. Lucullus : The form Aev/coXXos is found in inscriptions from 
 88 to 30 B.C. The form Aow/cowXXos is later than the last date. 
 Neither form occurs many times in inscriptions, and therefore it is 
 possible that the earlier form was used for some time after 30 B.C. 
 
 In Polybius the earlier form only is found. In Diodorus the 
 later form only is found. In Josephus the earlier form appears. 
 In Plutarch the later form is common, and the earlier form only 
 
 1 All that can be said of this av transliteration for Latin av is as follows : 
 It appears quite early, e.g. Avianus, 'Awav6s (Cyprus, 31 B.C.-14 A.D.) ; 
 Avillius, Aw'AAios and 'AouiAAios (both temp. Tiberius) ; Flavianus, *Aau<ai/oy, 
 twice in second century A.D. ; Flavius, 4>Aauios, twenty-three times from first to 
 third century A.D. It is less common than aov. Dr. Eckinger seems to think 
 that it is of later date, but the hard facts which he gives fail to bear out 
 that assumption. 
 
THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 
 
 occurs in one instance, which, as standing by itself, may be a 
 copyist's error. In Dio the later form alone is found. 
 
 5. Mummius : An earlier form Mo'/i/ito? appears in inscriptions 
 from 146 B.C. up to the. first half of the first century A.D. In 
 Plutarch the name appears as Mofifiiu^, in Appian as Moy/*/os. 
 In the other authors the name does not occur. 
 
 6. Publius : The earliest form in the inscriptions is IloVXto? ; 
 but a later form TlovTrXios appears in the time of Claudius and 
 Nero, and after this time the two forms exist more or less side 
 by side. 
 
 In Polybius and Dionysius the earlier form alone appears. In 
 Diodorus' text both forms are found ; in Josephus the later form 
 only ; in Plutarch both forms ; in Appian the earlier, and in Dio 
 the later form. 
 
 7. Lucius : Up to the time of the Christian era the form ACVKIOS 
 is the only form in inscriptions. A later form AOVKIOS then makes 
 its appearance. In the first century A.D. Aev/ao? : AOVKIOS '. ' 49 : 
 51 ; in the second century ', ' 34 : 66. 
 
 In Polybius and Dionysius the earlier form in ev alone occurs. 
 In Diodorus both forms are found, the ev being the more common. 
 In Josephus and Plutarch both forms occur. In Appian the form 
 with ev alone is found. In Dio the form with ov alone occurs. 
 
 8. Quintus : Earlier form in inscriptions is Ko'WT09, a later form 
 KwVVros not appearing before 50 A.D., after which the two forms co- 
 exist for a time. 
 
 In Polybius. Dionysius, and Diodorus the earlier form alone is 
 found. In Josephus both forms occur. In Plutarch the earlier 
 form occurs, save in one case, where a form in ov is found. In 
 Appian the earlier and in Dio the later form alone occurs. 
 
 It will, I think, be seen that the resemblance between the data 
 obtained from inscriptions and those obtained from the received 
 texts of authors is very striking. 1 
 
 When we take a test of comparison in which the instances are 
 large in number, I refer to the ov and ft transliterations of the 
 Latin v, we find a correspondence between the dated inscriptions 
 and the received texts which is far more close and far more striking 
 than any of the cases which have already been cited. 
 
 This dual form of transliteration makes its appearance first in 
 the second century B.C., though cases of /3 transliteration are rare 
 
 1 v. Table II at end of the paper. 
 
THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 
 
 in that century, and the sum of the cases of both forms of 
 transliteration is not large. In the first century B.C. a much 
 larger number of ft transliterations are found ; and in the first 
 century A.D. and the succeeding centuries they are quite common. 
 But it must be accounted remarkable that the earliest trans- 
 literations of the Latin v which are extant, those of the first half 
 of the second century B.C., show both forms, though the ov form is 
 the one which prevails at that time. 
 
 We may now turn to a comparison of the statistics of the use 
 of these two forms in those inscriptions which can be dated, with 
 their occurrence in the received texts of authors contemporary 
 with the inscriptions. 
 
 In the second century B.C. the Latin v is transliterated by ft in 
 27 per cent, of the names which appear in inscriptions. But the 
 data are few in number, only 11 in ov and 4 in ft. In Polybius, 
 who wrote in that century, the ft transliteration occurs in 14 
 per cent, of the cases afforded by his work. 
 
 In the first century B.C. the ft transliterations as compared with 
 the ov transliterations amount in inscriptions to 34 per cent. In 
 Dionysius of Halicarnassus they are 30 per cent. ; in Diodorus 
 they are 36 per cent. 
 
 The case of Strabo is a special one. Yery few personal names 
 appear in his work. It is impossible to treat geographical names 
 as affording on this question evidence as reliable as that afforded 
 by personal names. The pronunciation of the Latin geographical 
 names of North and Middle Italy, of Gaul, and of Spain, the only 
 regions from which names un contaminated by Greek influence 
 may be selected, cannot possibly have been as well known as that 
 of the Latin personal names, which would necessarily be far more 
 frequent in men's mouths. Moreover, a geographer like Strabo 
 or Ptolemy would probably have recourse, and especially in those 
 regions, to such Greek maps as existed at the time. Strabo 
 might, indeed, be omitted from calculation on the question of 
 pronunciation. 
 
 In the case of the other authors I have confined ray calculations 
 to personal names. Still, I may state that in Strabo, mainly in 
 geographical names within the areas I have specified, the ft 
 transliterations- form 20 per cent, of all the transliterations of the 
 Latin v. 
 
 Turning to the first century A.D., the ft transliterations form 
 in the inscriptions 29 per cent, of the transliterations in ov and 
 
10 THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 
 
 /3. In Josephus they are 31 per cent. ; in Plutarch they are 
 49 per cent. 
 
 It must be remembered that the statistics of inscriptions quoted 
 from Dr. Eckinger are taken from all parts of the Roman world. 
 There will be occasion to show that, had the data been taken 
 from Greece alone, the home of Plutarch, the percentage of ft 
 transliterations would have been considerably increased. 
 
 In the second century A.D. the ft transliterations in inscriptions 
 form 33 per cent, of all the transliterations in ov and /3. A com- 
 parison with the received text of Appian is impossible, and with 
 that of Dio Cassius would be misleading for reasons which will be 
 stated hereafter. 
 
 I venture to think that these data, and especially the close 
 correspondence between the transliterations of the Latin v in dated 
 inscriptions and in authors contemporary with them, lead to the 
 conclusion that th received texts of the present day go back in 
 respect, at any rate, to transcription, to a genuine ultimate origin 
 contemporary with the authors. It might seem, perhaps, on 
 general considei'ations, that transliteration would provide a fertile 
 source of error to scribes who copied MSS. at an age when trans- 
 literation had in certain important respects completely changed. 
 Yet the facts of the case seem to show that such errors have been 
 very rarely made. The exact significance of this consideration in 
 reference to the general reliability of the received texts of the 
 authors concerned is a question rather for the palaeographer than 
 for the philologist. The correspondence between the texts and the 
 inscriptions cannot be due to a series of consistent accidents. Nor 
 can it be due to deliberate acts on the part of the collator, for 
 most of these texts were collated before the evidence on this 
 particular question had been gathered from the inscriptions. 
 
 It is most satisfactory to find that modern editors have taken 
 very few liberties with the transliterations. I have not as yet 
 gone through the details of all the collations, but, as far as my 
 present experience goes, notes such as " Eerovpios MSS., ego 
 OvcToy/jtov," in the collation of Plutarch in the Teubner edition, 
 are, happily, very rare. 
 
 With regard to the individual manuscripts of authors in which 
 transliteration is common, I should like to suggest that trans- 
 literation may afford indications of the date of the originals from 
 which the extant MSS. are severally descended. 
 
 This is a digression from the course of inquiry in which I have 
 
THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 11 
 
 been engaged, and, so far, I have only had time to collect the 
 statistics in Niese's collation of the MSS. of Josephus. The results 
 of this preliminary test promise that the inquiry will prove 
 interesting, and I hope, all well, to follow it out. 
 
 I think it may be claimed with some confidence that the 
 evidence here adduced dissipates the suspicion which has, indeed, 
 with some people become an assumption that the transliteration 
 in the received texts of authors of the centuries immediately pre- 
 ceding and succeeding the Christian era date from a period several 
 centuries at least later than the authors themselves. There seems 
 to be good reason to believe that these transliterations are in all 
 essentials contemporary, and that they therefore afford a reliable 
 basis for inquiry into the pronunciation of Latin during the life- 
 time of the respective authors. 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 THE TRANSLITERATION OF THE LATIN v. 
 
 The second century A.D. only provides us with two authors in 
 which the transliterations of Latin names are at all common, and 
 the received texts of both of these authors present peculiarities 
 which make it difficult, if not impossible, to draw from them 
 conclusions as to the prevalence of the two forms of transliteration 
 of the Latin v at that period. The evidence for the second century 
 must be taken from the inscriptions. 
 
 In the case of Appian the peculiarity is at present inexplicable. 
 It is a striking peculiarity, and, if original in the MSS. of Appian, 
 may possibly be very significant. It consists in the use of the 
 sign 8 to represent transliterations of the Latin v. That sign is, 
 of course, common in the texts of other authors, and is, so I am 
 informed, as old as minuscule writing in the MSS. of Greek 
 authors. But it is ordinarily used as an abbreviation of ov, quite 
 regardless of whether that ov is a transliteration of v or not. Its 
 use in this special and exclusive form in the text of Appian is, so 
 far as I have been able to discover, unique. That it is used in 
 some of the MSS. of Appian in this connection is shown by the 
 notes in Dr. Ludwig Mendelssohn's text ; but what I cannot 
 discover without reference to the MSS. themselves is whether it is 
 
12 THE LATIN LETTER r G. B. GRUNDY. 
 
 used exclusively for this particular transliteration. The form is so 
 common an abbreviation of the ordinary ov that its existence in 
 the MSS. would not be necessarily noted in the collection of 
 variations of readings. It is possible that I may be able during 
 the coming Easter vacation to examine certain MSS. of Appian at 
 Paris and elsewhere. I cannot discover that any exist in England. 
 If the peculiarity in the received text is a mere convention of the 
 editor's own invention, it is a regrettable feature of that text. 1 
 Though it is not possible at this moment to make any pronounce- 
 ment as to this peculiarity, it may be well to call attention to the 
 fact that Appian's text shows a strong tendency to archaism in 
 transliteration, that is to say, to a preference for the earlier forms. 
 There is not an instance of the transliteration of any personal 
 names containing v with ft. In transliterating the proper names 
 Quintus, Lentulus, Lucius, and Publius, the earlier form is used, 
 though in all these cases the later forms existed in the previous 
 century, and are used by Dio Cassius later in this second century. 
 Appian's subject may have suggested archaism in form, and, as 
 will be hereafter seen, convention may well have had an influence 
 upon him. It must be noted that he was an imperial official ; he 
 served as procurator, probably, it would seem, in Egypt, though 
 possibly elsewhere. 
 
 The peculiarity of Dio Cassius consists in the fact that, whereas 
 in authors of the first century B.C. and the first century A.D. the 
 ft transliterations form from 30 to 49 percent, of the transliterations 
 of the Latin ;, in Dio they form but 9 per cent. 
 
 The case of the text of Dio Cassius presents less difficulty to 
 one who has examined the peculiarities in this transliteration 
 which are observable in the previous centuries. It is probably 
 to be explained by the life and career of the author himself. He 
 was an official and the son of an official. His father was governor 
 of Dalmatia and Cilicia. He himself was praetor in 193, and twice 
 consul, the second time in 229. Later he served in several 
 provincial governorships. Though the earlier period of his life 
 
 1 I have purposely left this passage in the form in which it was originally 
 written. Since I wrote it, Mr. J. D. Quirk, of Brasenose College, has been 
 kind enough to examine for me two fragmentary MSS. of Appian in the 
 Bibliotheque Natiouale at Paris. He reports that the 8 sign is ttot, in those 
 MSS., confined to ov transliterations of Latin r. It looks therefore as 
 if the usage in the Teubner text were a private convention of the editor of that 
 text. If that is really the case, I can only repeat that it seems to me to be 
 a very regrettable convention. 
 
THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 13 
 
 falls in the second century, his historical work was written in the 
 third century (211-222). In his transliteration of the Latin v 
 he would naturally tend towards the official form. 
 
 Before making any attempt to account for the peculiarities of 
 Dio Cassius, it will be well to turn to certain original documents 
 of the first,' second, and later centuries, the Oxyrhynchus and 
 Fayiim papyri, so far as they have been published by Dr. Grenfell 
 and Dr. Hunt. The striking feature ahout them is that they 
 contain only two instances of /3 transliteration in such documents 
 as are dated earlier than the sixth century, and these are 2t\/3ai/o9, 
 which is found in a document of 325 A.D., and 2e/>y8ato9 in a 
 document of 288 A.D. Roman names attached to private individuals 
 are rare in these Egyptian documents, with the exception of the 
 name Aurelius, which is very common. 
 
 The following names transliterated with ov appear in documents 
 of the first four centuries A.D. : 
 
 IMPERIAL CONSULAR ONLY. NEITHER. 
 
 <p\aovio<i . . 4 times. 2e/>omos . 1 time. SaXou'torto? . 1 time. 
 Nepova . 3 ,, OveT-rios . 1 ,, Qvep<yi\ios , 2 ,, 
 
 2eOUJ^OO9 . . 6 ,, Oii6<TT6?l/O9. 2 ,, OviKTWp . .1 ,, 
 
 OveffTraaiavo? . 4 ,, Ovapiavds .1 ,, 
 
 OvaXepios , .6 ,, 
 
 OvaXeptavo? . 1 ,, 
 
 Ovrjpov . . .4 ,, 
 
 Of those names which are neither consular nor imperial, it is 
 noticeable that all, Salvistius, Vergilius, Victor, and Varianus, are 
 akin respectively to the names Salvius, Vergilianus, Victorinus, 
 and Varius, all of which are found on the consular lists of those 
 centuries. 
 
 As far as in/stances of usage are concerned, it is noticeable that 
 29 are in imperial and 4 in purely consular names. Only 5 are 
 in neither category. 
 
 The statistics themselves suggest, what is the actual fact, that 
 these names occur in the vast majority of cases in the dating of 
 documents by the years of the reign of an emperor, or by the 
 name of the consul for the year, or, in one instance at least, by 
 both. I am informed that this peculiarity of transliteration is 
 observable in the papyri at the British Museum which belong 
 
14 THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 
 
 to these early centuries. They also, without exception, emanate 
 from Egypt. 
 
 In order to arrive at some explanation of that exceptional 
 phenomenon apparent hoth in Dio Cassius and the papyri, it is 
 necessary to turn to the consideration of certain general phenomena 
 apparent in the transliteration in authors and in inscriptions. 
 
 The phenomenon noticeable in Dio and the papyri, namely, the 
 rareness or complete absence of the B transliteration in the second 
 and third centuries, seems to be seriously at variance with the 
 data of contemporary inscriptions. It is noticeable that in the 
 inscriptions of the first four centuries A.D., that is to say, of those 
 which afford an ample number of instances from which to form 
 an induction, the /3 transliterations, as compared with those in 
 ov, show the following series of percentages : 
 
 1st century A.D., 29. 
 
 2nd 33. 
 
 3rd ,, 41. 
 
 4th 48. 
 
 In the first century B.C. the percentage is 34 ; but the instances 
 from which to form the induction are much less numerous. 
 
 It is worthy of remark that there is an actual set-back of 
 5 per cent, in the first century A.D., and a small increase of 4 per 
 cent, in the second century, rising to an increase of 8 per cent, 
 in the third, and a further 7 per cent, in the fourth. 
 
 Another phenomenon of a general character observable with 
 regard to the Greek inscriptions relating to Roman affairs is the 
 remarkable increase in their numbers at a time dating from the 
 age of Nero or thereabouts, and under the Flavian Emperors. 
 
 A comparison of the above phenomena shows that the set-back 
 and slow rate of increase in the /3 transliterations is contemporary 
 with and immediately subsequent to this period. 
 
 Now unless Roman ofiicialdom was exceptional among the 
 officialdoms which have existed in the world, it would tend to 
 develop convention in form in transliteration as in other matters. 
 In the particular case of transliteration this tendency would, of 
 course, be opposed, and especially in those Greek-speaking lands 
 where Latin was best known, by the antagonistic tendency to 
 transliterate by the native letter which most nearly conveyed to the 
 native ear the particular sound in Latin. 
 
THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 15 
 
 Hence official convention could never develop a rule. It could 
 not develop more than a tendency. 
 
 A most marked characteristic of official convention is the 
 preservation of early forms. That ov is the earliest prevalent 
 transliteration of the Latin v is not disputed. Official convention 
 would tend to preserve this form, and official convention would 
 display an increase of power at a period when examples of official 
 documents greatly increased. 
 
 When we take into account also ordinary unofficial convention, 
 which would also tend to perpetuate the early predominant form, 
 we are able to appreciate the phonetic force which produced the 
 ft transliteration despite the strength of the tendencies by which it 
 was opposed. 
 
 The evidence that such an official tendency was developed, 
 apart from that of the papyri, which may, in a sense, be called 
 as witnesses in their own case, is somewhat strong. 
 
 I must preface what I am going to say by pointing out that 
 the names commonly used in the dating of years, i.e. under the 
 Kepublic the consular names, and under the Principate the names 
 both imperial and consular, would, if my hypothesis be correct, 
 display a preference for the ov transliteration. 
 
 In the authors up to and including Plutarch 24 separate consular 
 and imperial names and 47 unofficial names containing the Latin 
 v are found. Of the official names 10 are transliterated with ov 
 and 4 with ft. Of the unofficial 20 with ov and 20 with ft. Ten 
 official and 7 non-official names present instances of both trans- 
 litei'ations. As far as the number of instances is concerned, there 
 are 58 cases of official names, of which 66 per cent, show ov, 
 22 per cent, show ft; the remainder ov and ft. The unofficial 
 occur in 64 instances, of which 55 per cent, are in ov, 42 per cent, 
 in ft, the remainder in ov and ft. 
 
 It seems impossible to regard these facts as purely accidental. 
 The tendency in transliteration to adopt the ov form in the case 
 of official is obviously more marked than in the case of unofficial 
 names. 
 
 If we turn to the author Plutarch, in whom the tendency to 
 the ft transliteration is most marked, the evidence is still more 
 striking. A further reason for citing the evidence of Plutarch on 
 this question is that advocates of the w pronunciation of the Latin 
 v, well aware that his transliterations in ft constitute a great 
 difficulty in the establishment of their theory, have always sought 
 
16 THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 
 
 to explain them away, usually on the ground that the trans- 
 literations in his received text are not contemporary with the 
 author himself. 
 
 I will first take the statistics of individual names, and then 
 those of the number of instances in which they occur in Plutarch. 1 
 
 Of consular and imperial names prior to Plutarch's time, and 
 containing the letter v, 28 appear in his works. Of these, 12 are 
 transliterated by ov only ; 8 are transliterated by ft only ; but, of 
 these last, 3 are names which, prior to Plutarch's time, appear on 
 the last occasion in the consular lists of 210 B.C., 223 B.C., and 
 125 B.C. respectively. Eight names are transliterated by both 
 ov and ft, there being 49 instances of ov and 31 of ft. 
 
 Of unofficial names containing v there are 25. Of these, 10 are 
 transliterated by ov only, 14 by ft only, 1 by both ov and ft. When 
 we take the instances in which these names occur in Plutarch, the 
 contrast is much more striking. 
 
 There are 243 instances of official names containing v. Of these 
 181 are transliterated in ov and 62 in ft whereas of 103 instances 
 of unofficial names, only 33 are in ov, while 70 are in ft. 
 
 The information in Dr. Eckinger's work only permits of calcu- 
 lations being made in the case of separate names. From his data 
 the following statistics are obtainable : 
 
 Percentages. 
 
 ov ft ov and ft 
 
 Official 21 ... 6 ... 73 
 
 Non-official 44 ... 37 ... 19 
 
 It can hardly be doubted that if statistics of the number of 
 instances were attainable, they would, as in the case of authors, 
 afford still more striking evidence of the official tendency. Never- 
 theless, it is noticeable in the above table that only 6 per cent, 
 of official names are found in ft only, whereas in the case of non- 
 official names the percentage is 37 ; and, again, 94 per cent, of 
 official names are found with the ov transliteration, whereas only 
 63 per cent, of unofficial names are so transcribed. Official con- 
 vention is, phonetically speaking, an artificial tendency. The 
 statistics show that even in the first century A.D. the natural 
 tendency was to transliterate the Latin v by ft. There are at least 
 
 1 v. especially Table IV at the end of the paper. 
 
THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 17 
 
 two striking individual cases of the official tendency. The name 
 Valerius, the most common name on the consular lists, is very 
 rarely transliterated by ft either in authors or in inscriptions, and 
 its ov transliteration is very persistent, so that we find it so late as 
 the second half of the sixth century. Yespasianus does not appear 
 in transliterated form before the reign of this emperor, and is never 
 found in inscriptions save with the ov transliteration. A comparison 
 of these conclusions with the peculiarities existent in the Egyptian 
 papyri and in Dio Cassius will, I think, suggest that the peculiarities 
 in the literary documents are due to official convention. It seems 
 more than probable that the ov transliteration continued to be used 
 long after it had ceased to convey the true sound of the Latin v. 
 
 I must now proceed to call attention to another tendency, which 
 is not less clearly marked and not less important than the one 
 which has just been discussed. 
 
 In Dr. Eckinger's work is a table of statistics of the trans- 
 literations of the eleven names containing the Latin v which are 
 most common in Greek inscriptions, arranged according to locality. 
 This table I have supplemented by materials from the recently 
 published volumes of the Corpus. 1 
 
 These localities may be arranged in classes, according to the 
 knowledge of loth the Greek and Latin languages which we may 
 estimate to have existed in various regions in the first century B.C. 
 and in the early centuries A.D. 
 
 I put in the first class Athens and the rest of Greece ; in the 
 second class Rome, Italy, Macedonia, Thessaly, and Asia Minor ; 
 in the third class Thrace, Russia, the rest of Europe, the rest of 
 Asia, and Africa. The inclusion, of Rome in class ii is perhaps 
 disputable, but were it placed in class i it would have little 
 effect on the statistics which I am about to give. 
 
 In class i the ft transliterations are 61 per cent, of the whole, 
 against 39 per cent, of ov transliterations. 
 
 In class ii they are 36 per cent., against 64 per cent, of ov. 
 
 In class iii they are only 23 per cent., against 77 per cent, of ov. 
 
 It is, therefore, the case that the percentage of ft transliterations 
 is in a scale descending in accordance with the knowledge of 
 Greek and Latin which we may presume on satisfactory grounds 
 to have existed in the various regions in which the inscriptions 
 have been found. It is, perhaps, unnecessary to say that a 
 
 1 v. Table VI at end of paper. 
 
18 THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 
 
 knowledge of both languages must be postulated for the purposes 
 of this calculation. I think it must be assumed that this 
 phenomenon is due to what I may call a natural phonetic tendency 
 antagonistic to that tendency of official and general convention 
 to which reference has been made. It is possible that this 
 tendency on its negative side aided official convention in producing 
 the peculiarities of the limited series of transliterations found in 
 the Egyptian papyri. 
 
 It is to this tendency that we must attribute the fact that 
 Plutarch, a native and resident in a region in class i, transliterated 
 49 per cent, of the names containing v in /3, whereas Josephus, 
 a contemporary, but a resident in a region of class iii, transliterated 
 only 31 per cent, of such names in ft. The revolt against official 
 convention is most marked in those lands where the two languages 
 were best known a fact which we cannot ignore in estimating the 
 phonetic value of the Latin v. 
 
 But we h#ve seen that the revolt against the ov transliteration 
 began, alike in inscriptions and in literature, long before the 
 Christian era. 
 
 The question naturally arises whether any phonetic law or 
 phonetic tendency can be distinguished in the ov and ft trans- 
 literations respectively. Dr. Eckinger, after consideration of the 
 facts which he has collected from the inscriptions published at the 
 time at which he wrote, sums up the matter as follows : 
 
 " We cannot argue the predominance of ov or /3 at a particular 
 epoch, or in certain places, or after certain vowels, except when 
 v comes between two t's, e.g. in A//3<o?. No rule prevailed for 
 either form : e.g. we find both forms upon the same stone. The 
 only theory which can be maintained is that /3 before or after 
 a became common outside Greece and Italy before it did in those 
 lands ; but in the second and third centuries A.D. the opposite 
 became the case, so that, for example, Greece at the time preferred 
 ft" (in this combination of sounds). " It cannot be said whether 
 this is due to some special pronunciation of the Greek either in 
 Greece or Asia Minor." 
 
 I have already produced evidence which suggests a modification 
 of the conclusions at which Dr. Eckinger arrived. The ft trans- 
 literation is undoubtedly a marked local characteristic in Greece. 
 The predominance of ov at a certain period and of ft at a later 
 period is demonstrable. The prevalence of the /3 transliteration 
 may be further shown from the inscriptions of Olympia. 
 
THE LATIN LETTER V O. B. GRUNDY. 19 
 
 
 No. of 
 Names. 
 
 Names 
 in uv. 
 
 Names 
 in/3. 
 
 No. of 
 Instances. 
 
 Instances 
 in ov. 
 
 Instances 
 in j8. 
 
 1 cent. B.C. 
 
 ... 1 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 1 cent. A.D. 
 
 ... 4 
 
 3 
 
 1 
 
 9 
 
 3 
 
 6 1 
 
 2 cent. A.D. 
 
 ... 8 
 
 3 
 
 5 
 
 20 
 
 3 
 
 17 
 
 3 cent. A.D. 
 
 ... 7 
 
 
 
 7 
 
 23 
 
 
 
 23 
 
 This seems to indicate that at Olympia in the second century 
 the /3 transliteration was predominant, and in the third century 
 universal. 
 
 It must he remembered that Dr. Eckinger wrote under the 
 pressure of that weight of authority which had definitely pro- 
 nounced against the v sound of the Latin v at any time anterior to 
 the fifth century A.D. Also he had not at his cisposal the data 
 furnished by the recent volumes of the Corpus of Greek Inscriptions, 
 which deal with material from North Greece, from the Islands, and 
 from Olympia. 
 
 As to phonetic law, in the strict sense of the term ' law,' 
 I agree with Dr. Eckinger that none is discernible as determining 
 the uses of ov and ft respectively. 
 
 But phonetic tendencies are certainly apparent. 2 There is, for 
 instance, a certain general tendency in the case of Latin v medial 
 to transliterate by ft. This contrasts with the tendency in the first 
 century to transliterate Latin v initial by ov. 
 
 In the authors Polybius, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Diodorus, 
 Josephus, Plutarch, and Dio Cassius, there are fifty-five Latin 
 personal names containing v in which the /3 transliteration is found. 
 Of these i/'s eighteen are initial and thirty-seven medial. In 
 inscriptions used by Dr. Eckinger and those published since 
 Dr. Eckinger wrote there are fifty-six such names, in which the v 
 is initial in thirty-one and medial in twenty-five cases. 
 
 It may be well in reference to these statistics to call attention to 
 a consideration which must be borne in mind in estimating the 
 comparative value of the evidence of the inscriptions and the 
 authors on the question of transliteration. It is reasonable to 
 suppose that convention would have greater, and phonetic evolution 
 less influence with an engraver of an inscription than with an 
 author. To five, at least, of the above authors, Greek was his 
 native tongue, which would not by any means be necessarily the 
 
 1 The three names in ov are all official ; the other is not. 
 
 2 v. Table IX at end of paper. 
 
20 THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 
 
 case with the engraver ; and, again, the less educated ear of the 
 latter combined with the influence exercised by examples in 
 previous inscriptions would tend to render him less appreciative of 
 sound modifications. 
 
 A strong tendency is shown to maintain ov before the so-called 
 ' hard ' vowels, a, o, v, followed by a liquid. 
 
 In the first century A.D. we find in these combinations of letters 
 in Josephus and Plutarch eleven names with ov alone, one with ft 
 alone, and two with both forms. 
 
 In inscriptions of the same period we find five with ov alone, one 
 with ft alone, and two with both forms. 
 
 Before the vowels e and i followed by a liquid the tendency is 
 by no means so marked, and cannot indeed be said to demonstrably 
 exist. 
 
 The figures are () in authors, eight in ov alone, seven in ft 
 alone, two in both forms ; (b] in inscriptions, five in ov alone, one 
 in ft alone, two in both forms. 
 
 Before the endings -nis, -ia, -ianus, a tendency is shown to 
 transliterate by ft. The figures are (a) in inscriptions, three in ov, 
 seven in ft, six in both forms ; (#) in authors, one in ov, six in ft, 
 five in both forms. The modification of a w sound in proximity 
 with this Latin i, i.e. the high front wide vowel, 1 would be a natural 
 tendency. The raising of the back of the tongue to produce a to 
 sound would tend to decrease, and the sound evoked would be first 
 a bilabial spirant v and ultimately the labio-dental spirant v, 
 i.e. the v of English. 
 
 There are two other tendencies suggested by the statistics, 
 tendencies which cannot, however, be reliably demonstrated, 
 because the examples are too few in number. 
 
 The cases of v before a vowel followed by the sibilant s suggest 
 that the ov transliteration was maintained in this combination. 
 
 In the authors there are two transliterations in ov; one valid, 
 and one uncertain in ft. In inscriptions there are three in ov, and 
 none in ft. 
 
 The same tendency to maintain ov is suggested by the few cases 
 of v followed by a vowel and a labial. In the authors of the first 
 century A.D. there are three cases with ov alone, none with ft. In 
 inscriptions there are two with ov alone, and one with both 
 ov and ft. 
 
 1 Sweet's Primer of Phonetics, p. 107. 
 
THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNBY, 21 
 
 I have spoken of phonetic tendencies rather than phonetic law, 
 in order to be free of the charge of drawing conclusions of a greater 
 precision than is warranted by the actual evidence. But these 
 indications of phonetic law become much more significant when we 
 consider that the evidence for them is obscured by the tendency of 
 convention (both official and ordinary), and by the local tendencies 
 of regions where the knowledge of both Greek and Latin was 
 defective, but from which nevertheless some of the data have been 
 drawn. 1 
 
 The existence of phonetic tendencies of this character must be 
 taken as indicating that the pronunciation of the Latin v in the 
 century preceding and the century succeeding the Christian era 
 was not uniform, but varied according to the sounds with which it 
 was combined, and must indicate, moreover, that the ear of the 
 Greek-speaking world distinguished these variations as being more 
 clearly represented in one set of instances by ov and in another 
 by ft : that is to say, the ov and ft are not merely interchangeable 
 alternatives, but actually represent different sounds. 
 
 Their apparent interchangeability in certain instances is due to 
 a cause which is not phonetic the struggle between the later 
 transliteration in ft and the persistent tendency of convention to 
 employ the originally predominant transliteration in ov, even in 
 cases where it had ceased to represent the contemporary pro- 
 nunciation of the Latin v in some particular phonetic environment. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE PRONUNCIATION OF LATIN v IN THE AUGTJSTAN AGE. 
 
 We are now in a position to consider the question of the 
 pronunciation of the Latin v during the Augustan age. 
 
 Many of the learned discussions which have been published: 
 on this subject treat the choice between the sounds of English 
 w and English v as a mutually exclusive choice. But the most 
 ardent advocates of the w pronunciation admit that this sound 
 became eventually a v sound. There is no evidence of such change 
 
 1 Dr. Eckinger's evidence on the localities of transliterations is by no means 
 complete. 
 
22 THK LATIN LETTER V O. B. GRUNUY. 
 
 having been sudden or deliberate. It seems to have followed the 
 natural and usual phonetic course of an infinite series of modi- 
 fications of the original sound tending towards the sound ultimately 
 developed. It is difficult to express in satisfactory scientific 
 language the infinite series of intervening modifications, but it 
 is, at any rate, not misleading to say that, during this interval, 
 both the w and the v elements must have been present in the 
 pronunciation of the Latin v, the former becoming weaker and 
 the latter becoming stronger as time went on. No sane person 
 could for one moment suppose that the learned advocates of the 
 w sound are oblivious to this progressive series and its corollaries, 
 but nevertheless their discussions have an unfortunate tendency to 
 take a form in which the element of progressive development either 
 does not appear or is not given its due prominence in the problem 
 under treatment. 
 
 As far as the evidence of transliteration is concerned, Dr. Emil 
 Seelmann, in his work on the pronunciation of Latin, 1 expresses 
 himself as follows : " The Greek transcription of the v by ov or /3 
 deserves no special consideration beside the other evidence and 
 arguments for the determination of the sound." It may be doubted 
 whether Dr. Seelmann would have expressed himself so positively 
 had he had Dr. Eckinger's book at his disposal, and had he 
 compared the evidence of the inscriptions with that taken from 
 contemporary authors. 
 
 Professor Lindsay, in his work on the Latin language, has used 
 Dr. Eckinger's work, but confines himself, as far as transliteration 
 is concerned, to the evidence of the inscriptions. Mr. Roby, in 
 his singularly lucid discussion of the question contained in his 
 well-known Latin Grammar, does not ignore the transliterations 
 in the texts of authors. He recognizes that the /3 transliteration 
 is one which must be explained or explained away. He argues 
 that the ft of this period had not the sound of the labio-dental v . 
 He does not think that those who believe the ft of modern Greek 
 to have the labio-dental sound of the English v are right ; but on 
 this latter point his information appears to be second-hand. He 
 is of opinion, as it would seem, that the Greek /3 of the first 
 century A.D. was, and that of the twentieth century A.D. is, in 
 respect of sound, a bilabial v, which, as he very rightly says, 
 stands in as close a relation to English w as to English v. 
 
 1 " Die Aussprache des Latein nach physiologisch-historischen Grundsa'tzen," 
 TOD Emil Seelmann, p. 241. 
 
THE LATIN LETTER v G. B. GRUNDY. 23 
 
 It is my intention to discuss Mr. Roby's clearly stated arguments 
 after the conclusions from the evidence of transliteration have been 
 stated, because it will, I think, be found that such of those 
 arguments as are valid point to conclusions in accord with the 
 transcriptional evidence. But, as far as the /3 of modern Greek 
 is concerned, either Mr. Roby is mistaken, or a very large number 
 of people who have studied modern Greek, have heard it spoken, 
 and have spoken it themselves, are grievously in error, and this, 
 too, on a point which is of peculiar interest to the classical scholar. 
 I have been accustomed to hear modern Greek spoken at frequent 
 intervals during the last fourteen years, and I have consulted others 
 who have had opportunities, equal with or greater than my own, 
 of forming an opinion on the question. Neither have they nor 
 have I any doubt whatever that the modern (3 is practically 
 undistinguishable from the English v, that is to suy, is a labio- 
 dental v. Were the sound a bilabial v, the difference between 
 it and the English v would certainly strike an English ear. 
 
 There seems to be no reason to doubt that the ft of Greek had 
 originally the pure b sound. Whether the sound was still 
 unweakened in the fifth century B.C. is a very difficult question, 
 and one which only indirectly concerns our present purpose. What 
 we do know is that the sound developed ultimately into a labio- 
 dental v. 
 
 The series may be represented for convenience as b b v bv b v 
 v, understanding an infinite and progressive series of modifications 
 leading from the one extreme to the other. There is no evidence 
 whatever that a w sound developed at any point in the series. 
 
 ft must have represented some element in the sound of the Latin 
 v which the ov transliteration did not represent. The advocates 
 of the w pronunciation are quite agreed that the ov aimed at 
 representing a w sound. But it is probable that the sound 
 produced was not exactly that of the English w, but the w sound 
 discernible in the French oui. The fact of the transliteration 
 being o -j- v precludes the idea of a v sound in connection with 
 the v. The alternative ft transliteration must have represented 
 some other element in the sound of the Latin v, some non-w 
 element, if I may so call it, and as Latin v and also Greek ft were 
 both in process of evolution towards the labio-dental v (Eng. v), it 
 must have been the v element in Latin v which the (3 transliteration 
 represented. Surely, had this w sound revived in Greek in con- 
 nection with the ft the grammarians, who seem to have recognised 
 
24 THE LATIN LETTER V G B. GRUMDY. 
 
 the sound as having been that of the original digamma, would have 
 noticed the reappearance of this sound in connection with another 
 letter. Yet they do not refer to such a phenomenon. 
 
 It has already been said that there seems no doubt that the 
 original pronunciation of ft was that of the English b. But it is 
 difficult, if not impossible, to say when it began to weaken towards 
 the spirant v sound. Dr. Friedrich Blass says: "That ft was, 
 during the Attic period, not v, appears sufficiently proven, in 
 case there be still any doubt, by Plato, who calls it a mute ; 
 cf. Thaeetatus, 2033. TOV &av fti/ra ou-re (frwvr) ov-re ^-o'0os." 
 
 The context is not unimportant: "I can only reply that * is 
 a consonant, a mere noise,, as of the tongue hissing ; ft and most 
 other letters, again, are neither vowel sounds nor noises." 1 
 
 Dr. Blass also adduces in proof of the b pronunciation the fit] fttj 
 of the comic drama. 2 
 
 But his argument displays that tendency to which attention 
 has been already called, namely, to take the two extremes of an 
 evolutionary series, in this case b v, in strong contrast, and to 
 ignore the infinite series of modifications of the original sound 
 which must have intervened between the two extremes. An exact 
 scientific interpretation of the passage in Plato is unattainable, 
 but there is nothing in it which precludes the possibility that the 
 modification of the labial the weakening, as it is called, of the 
 sound had already begun. Would Plato have called a b sound 
 weakening towards a labio-dental v a " vowel sound " or a " mere 
 noise " ? Nor is the fit) ft>j of the comic drama by any means 
 convincing. The mere presence of y in that imitative sound shows 
 that the Greek did not interpret it phonetically as we do at the 
 present day. Perhaps the Greek sheep baaed in Greek, or, possibly, 
 there has been an evolution in the speech of the animal ! 
 
 In point of fact, we do not possess any conclusive evidence for 
 or against the weakening of ft in Greek of the fifth century B.C. 
 Such evidence as we have for the weakening of the sound is later 
 and is dialectic. 
 
 Dr. Blass 3 points to the fact that so early as the pre-Roman 
 period Lakonian employs ft in place of the digamma. He thinks 
 that the Lakonians themselves must have preserved the digamma 
 symbol with the sound, as the Herakleots of Italj did, had not 
 
 1 Jowett's Plato. 
 
 2 Cf. also Kratinus. 
 
 J Blass: " The Pronunciation of Greek " (Eng. trans.), p. 111. 
 
THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 25 
 
 the appropriate symbol ceased to be indispensable owing to the 
 similar sound of ft. This last may or may not be the case. 
 But is it necessary to suppose that the sound of this late 
 digamma was a w sound ? In Greek generally the digamma 
 had been modified out of existence long before this time ; and, 
 indeed, there is a period in the centuries immediately preceding 
 our era during which we have no trace of it, though it comes 
 to light again about the age of Augustus. Had a sound which 
 suffered such drastic modification elsewhere shown no tendency 
 to modify in the Dorian and -iJEolic dialects ? It would seem 
 strange that a sound which had been modified out of existence 
 in Greek generally should have remained absolutely unmodified in 
 these particular dialects. Is it not more probable that ft in those 
 later dialectic forms represents a modified digamma ? In any case 
 it implies a pronunciation of ft very much weaker than the English b. 
 What form that weakening took is another question. So far 
 I have only been concerned in showing that such a weakening 
 did take place before the age of Augustus in fact, as it would 
 seem, long before that age. 
 
 It is very difficult to come to a very definite conclusion with 
 regard to this late digarama, and especially with regard to the 
 sound which it represented. The facts with regard to its history, 
 in so far as they are known, are, briefly, as follows. The sound, 
 or traces of the sound, survived in the historical period in JEolic, 
 Pseuda3olic, and Dorian dialects. 1 It is found in certain definite 
 localities in Lesbos, Pamphylia, Boeotia, Elis, Argos, Lakonia, 
 Crete, and Heraklea in Italy. But this late digamma is rarely 
 represented by the digamma sign F, but by some other letter, 
 ft being the most common representative. 
 
 In the JEolic and Pseudaeolic dialects 2 the ft transcription 
 of the initial digamma is found, but except before /> does not 
 appear to be more common than other transcriptions in r, 7, and 0. 
 Very few instances of these transcriptions exist. But before p we 
 have several examples of the ft transcription ; cf. ftpfrtap, ftpatSios, 
 ftpdcov, ftpaKia, the last two in fragments of Sappho. This series 
 points to a v rather than a w pronunciation in Lesbian, wr being 
 a peculiarly awkward combination of sounds. The intervocalic 
 F passes into v (cf. aitw? and 0ao9 with Lakonian aftws and 
 
 1 Ahrens : " De Dialectis .iEolicis et Pseudaeolicis," etc. 
 
 2 Ahrens: " De Dialectis Solids et Pseudteolicis." 
 
26 THE LATIN LETTER v~ O. B. GRUNDY. 
 
 Pamphylian 0a/3o<?) or is dropped altogether.. In these JEolic 
 inscriptions there is no reason, as Ahrens points out, why the sign 
 of digamma should have heen changed, had not the sound itself 
 changed. 
 
 In the Boeotian dialect the initial digamma is retained until 
 a late date in literature and inscriptions to a later date than 
 in the .^Eolic dialects. Medial digamma is very rare, and between 
 vowels is changed into v or dropped. 
 
 In the dialect of Elis the actual digamma sign survives in 
 Pap^ov for ep~(ov, feTros, /"e'ro?, etc., and in faXrj'ioi for 'HXetot even 
 on coins. We find tf for digamma in B^Xews (proper name), fta&v 
 (^w). Before /> we find digamma in fpdvpa, but changed into 
 (3 before / in ftpardvav. 1 
 
 The most interesting case of the surviving digamma in the 
 Dorian dialects occurs in the Lakonian -Tarentine colony of 
 Heraklea, whose use of the sign suggested to Claudius its 
 adoption into Latin. In this case it is remarkable that the 
 Herakleots seem at one time to have cast it aside, when it is 
 certain that most of the Greeks made use of it, and at a later 
 time to have resumed it when in the remaining dialects and 
 cognate languages no trace of it is apparent. It is preserved in 
 certain words which are found in the Tabula? Heraclienses. But 
 there is a further phenomenon displayed by this late Herakleot 
 digamma. It makes its appearance in the numeral peg (eg) and 
 its derivatives, a word in which it is not found either among 
 the Greeks or in the cognate languages. There are, indeed, traces 
 of this pleonastic digamma in the Lakonian dialect. In that 
 dialect the late digamma is usually represented by ft ; and at times 
 we find ft placed at the beginning of words which had certainly 
 no original digamma. This would suggest an original pleonastic 
 digamma. Other transcriptions of the digamma in the Dorian 
 dialects are TT in Lakonian, which is very rare ; o in Cretan, also 
 very rare ; v in Lakonian, of which there is only one example. 
 
 In Hesychius many words which had the digamma are found 
 with initial 7. Ahrens regards this as an instance of the confusion 
 of letters. 
 
 It appears, then, that in the dialects in which this late digamma 
 appears it is usually transcribed by ft, less commonly by v, and so 
 very exceptionally by any other letters that we may consider them 
 as merely accidental representatives of the original letter. 
 1 Ahrens: " De Dialecto Dorica." 
 
THK LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 27 
 
 Of the transcription by Ahrens says that two opinions are 
 possible : either that /3 with sound unchanged, i.e. with its 
 pronunciation at that period, took the place of the obsolete 
 digamma, or that the digarnma was actually changed into a /J 
 pronunciation. He prefers the latter explanation. Among the 
 Lesbians the digamma changed into /3 before initial />, into v after 
 a vowel, and this change was not orthographic but dialectic. Nor 
 can the change in the Dorian dialects be otherwise accounted for, 
 for it is not intelligible why the Dorians should have blindly 
 changed the sign if the sound had not changed. 1 Besides, why, 
 says Ahrens, should the Dorians write a/3u>s, when the Lesbians 
 wrote ayws, unless there was a difference in pronunciation ? Nor 
 do the most learned grammarians Herodianus and Heraklides 
 discover that the ft which took the place of the digamma had any 
 other pronunciation than that of the ordinary p. 
 
 To what date or dates are we to attribute this late digamma and 
 its transcription ? 
 
 The Italiots wrote an actual digamma until the fourth century 
 before Christ, and there is uo reason to believe that it became 
 obsolete among the Lakonians and Cretans before that date. In 
 the following centuries the Lakonian inscriptions (though we 
 cannot argue from them, because they do not exhibit any Lakoniau 
 peculiarities) and the Cretan inscriptions exhibit neither digamma 
 nor the vicarious letter /3. That vicarious letter is seen in certain 
 proper names in the first century A.D. 
 
 The disappearance of dialectic peculiarities from many of the 
 Greek inscriptions of the fourth century B.C. is due largely to the 
 fact that Ionian lettering was adopted in nearly all the Greek 
 states towards the close of the fifth and the beginning of the fourth 
 century. No p was preserved in this lettering, and therefore 
 those dialects which had up to that time preserved the digamma 
 had either to express it by some other letter or to revive the 
 digamma sign. But in the centuries immediately preceding the 
 Christian era, not merely the original sign but also its substitutes 
 disappeared. This phenomenon is curious, but is not apposite to 
 the present inquiry. The sound of the digamma certainly 
 continued to exist. The revival of the original or of some 
 
 1 Though Ahrens' arguments on this question are, as a whole, convincing, 
 it is not certain that this appearance of $ for digamma in the Dorian Peloponnesus 
 is dialectic. The change to the Ionian script, of which more will be said later, 
 complicates the matter in this region. 
 
28 
 
 THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 
 
 substituted letter about the time of the Christian era cannot be 
 attributed to any archaising tendency to any mania for antiquity. 
 Both Ahrens and Tudeex, however, believe that this late digamma 
 was changed in sound from the original. The sound had survived 
 and been modified in the speech of the masses, but, after the fourth 
 century, had been rejected by the classes, so Ahrens thinks, 
 because of its roughness, and hence does not appear in inscriptions 
 either in the form of the original or of a substituted sign. 
 
 As far as the change in sound is concerned, transliteration affords 
 certain striking evidence of a negative character. The early 
 digamma had, as most authorities believe, the sound of the English 
 tv, or, as Tudeex asserts, the sound of bilabial , i.e. a sound 
 which may be best represented in English by the combination vw. 
 Had this sound remained unchanged in the centuries before Christ 
 we should have certainly expected to find at least some instances 
 of ov being substituted for it where a vicarious sign is employed. 
 ov is the transliteration of the early Latin v, whose sound was, 
 as it is asserted, that of the English w. But not a single instance 
 of this vicarious use of ov for the digamma is extant, though 
 a variety of such substitutes are found. Is it not inconceivable 
 that, if the Greek of the fourth and following centuries had been 
 seeking for a substitute for a Greek letter whose sound was that 
 of the English w, he should have failed to adopt in some instance 
 or instances that combination ov by which he transliterated a 
 Latin letter having the to sound? It is, indeed, wholly against 
 probability that this late digamma was a w at all, and therefore /3, 
 when it appears as its representative, cannot be assumed to be 
 representative of a w sound. 
 
 It is infinitely easier, in the case of this late digamma, to show 
 what its sound was not, than to show what it was. Tudeex says : 
 "The original pronunciation of the digamma could easily pass 
 into the semi-vowel v, or even into the full vowel." That it 
 did not pass into the full vowel v in the majority of instances, 
 is shown by the consonantal character of the substitutes employed 
 for it in later Greek. Even the Lesbian v, which takes the place 
 of the intervocalic digamma, must have been, from its very 
 intervocalic position, at least semi-consonantal. In the semi-vowel 
 v sound we are coming very near a v, or, at any rate and this 
 is the important point near to a sound which might, faute de 
 mieux, be transliterated by a letter containing a v element. The 
 variety of the representatives employed for this late digunima 
 
THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 29 
 
 indicates that the representation was not, in the case of any one of 
 them, completely satisfactory. 
 
 I have dealt with this question of the late digamma at some 
 length, because its representation by ft has been used as an 
 argument for the weakening of the Greek ft sound towards a w ; 
 and it is the only evidence which can be employed to support 
 that argument. If that evidence breaks down, as, 1 think, I have 
 shown that it does, there is not one jot of evidence for any trace 
 of a w pronunciation in either the Greek ft or the Latin b, of 
 which it is the all but invariable representative in transliteration. 
 It may further be remarked that the confusion between the 
 Latin b and the Latin v, though found in the second century A.D., 
 did not become common until the third and fourth centuries, that 
 is to say, at a time when, as even the most ardent advocates of 
 the w sound of the Latin v would admit, the Latin v was on the 
 point of becoming a labio-dental v correspondent in sound with 
 the same English letter. If the Latin b had developed a weakening 
 towards a w sound at an earlier period, why did not its confusion 
 with the Latin v take place at an earlier date ? 
 
 Eckinger, in noting the case of the transliteration of the Latin av 
 by a/9, says: "The Latin v must have sounded much harder to 
 the Greek than ov. He therefore sought for another transliteration 
 and chose ft, which was very natural, since it appears to have 
 had a peculiarly soft pronunciation in Greek ; cf. Ka-reaKeftaaa 
 (Lebas, v, 6, 1076, and C.I.G. 3693), Vipvftavaaaa (Lebas, ii, 4, 
 163), Ben/a*:? (C.I.G. 5513), etc." " Also," he proceeds, 
 "the Latin seems to have softened the b, and brought it near to 
 the v, e.g., in the second, third, and fourth centuries A.D. lavoratum, 
 livido, praBstavitur, sivi, desaBbisse, sibe, etc " Reference has been 
 made already to the transliteration of Latin b by Greek ft. Save 
 in very rare cases, so rare as almost to amount to a negligible 
 quantity, the Latin b is transliterated by ft. 
 
 The rare exceptional cases show TT as a transliteration, e.g in 
 the special name FloVXto* (Publius). That both ft and Latin b were 
 in process of weakening at the time of the Christian era, there is 
 no reason to doubt. The weakening of ft has been already 
 demonstrated, and a modification of Latin b which produced 
 a tendency to confusion with v in the second century A.D. cannot 
 have been of recent origin. We have, it is true, no evidence 
 whatever as to the exactness with which ft represented the sound 
 of the Latin b at this period. 
 
30 THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 
 
 What, then, is our knowledge, as distinguished from our con- 
 jectures, on this subject ? 
 
 We know that the Latin b was tending in certain sound 
 combinations towards the labio dental v of the early Romance. 
 We know that the Latin v was tending in the same direction. 
 That is the extent of our actual knowledge. But, on these facts, 
 is it an unreasonable conjecture that the common element in the 
 sounds of these letters which caused them to be confused so early 
 as the second century A.D. was a v element ? 
 
 It was the medial rather than the initial b of Latin which tended 
 to weaken, as is shown by the evolution of the sound in the 
 Eomance languages ; so Dr. Eckinger's remark must be understood 
 as not applicable to the initial b of Latin. 
 
 We have, then, in Latin and Greek three evolutionary series of 
 sounds, whose extremities, at any rate, are not disputed : 
 
 1. Greek ft b .. v 
 
 2. Latin v (transliterated by ov and /3) . w . . v 
 
 3. Latin b (transliterated by (3} 
 
 where it weakens, i.e. in medial and final syllables, 
 produces three modifications in the Romance languages : 
 
 b v 
 
 ^ / 
 
 b . . . . . . disappearance. 
 
 In all these three series the outward and visible sign of a common 
 element in the Augustan age is the Greek ft ; and the only traceable 
 inward, i.e. sound element which is common to all is the sound 
 which, in English, we represent by the letter v. 
 
 This ft transliteration of the Latin v has always been recognized 
 by the advocates of the w pronunciation of that letter as a dis- 
 turbing element in ttie premisses from which they draw their 
 conclusions. Various attempts have been made to explain it away. 
 
 Several of the most prominent writers on Latin pronunciation 
 have utterly failed to realise the seriousness of the fnctor. Dr. 
 Seelmann, in his well-known book on the subject, refuses to regard 
 it as constituting any evidence whatever up >n the question, and 
 dismisses the matter in one short sentence at the end of a long 
 discussion of the pronunciation of this Latin letter. When Dr. 
 Seelmann wrote, Dr. Eckinger's work had not been published '> 
 still less had anyone attempted to compare, as has been done in the 
 
THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 31 
 
 course of this discussion of the question, the evidence of the 
 inscriptions with the evidence obtainable from Greek authors. 
 I venture to assert that this new evidence cannot be dismissed in 
 a few lines in any scientific treatise of the question of the 
 pronunciation of Latin, and that, as a corollary, Dr. Seelinann's 
 conclusions, which form the real basis of that which has been 
 written in English upon this question, demand reconsideration 
 in the light of the new facts. Even Professor Lindsay, in his 
 work on the Latin language, who had used Dr. Eckinger's work, 
 speaking of this transliteration, says : " But we find fi occasionally 
 even in the first century A.D." Can the word "occasionally" be 
 applied to a form of transliteration which in the inscriptions 
 amounts to 29 per cent, of the numerous examples, and in the 
 two authors of this century is represented in 31 per cent, and 
 49 per cent, respectively of their transliterations of the Latin v ? 
 Again, the words " even in the first century A..D." are most mis- 
 leading, inasmuch as this transliteration appears in the second 
 century B.C. both in inscriptions and in Polybius, and is quite 
 common both in inscriptions and in authors of the first century 
 before our era. 
 
 There is another explanation which has been commonly put 
 forward with a view to meeting the difficulty caused by this 
 inconvenient (3 transliteration. It is suggested that ft as a trans- 
 literation of the Latin v was merely used because it was shorter 
 to write and to engrave, and therefore more convenient than ov. 
 The fact of such a suggestion having been made shows the straits 
 to which the advocates of the pure to pronunciation have been put 
 by the presence of this disturbing factor in their calculations. 
 In the first place, it is obvious that the 'convenience' might be 
 doubted. Again, how are we, under this hypothesis, to account 
 for the phonetic tendencies which are apparent in the use of ov 
 and ft respectively in certain combinations of sound? How, too, 
 are we to account for the fact that the use of /3 was most common 
 in those regions where both Latin and Greek were best known, and 
 tends to decrease in accordance with a decrease in the knowledge 
 of the two languages in other regions of the Roman Empire. 
 Furthermore, under this hypothesis what a strange thing it must 
 be accounted that the authors of the first century B.C. and the first 
 century A.D., if they used the letter merely as a convenient alternative 
 for ov a form of use in which individual choice would be 
 absolutely free should have happened to employ it in percentages 
 
32 THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNOY. 
 
 of cases which so singularly accord with the percentages which we 
 find in contemporary inscriptions ! 
 
 Before taking the specific objections which have been raised 
 against the v pronunciation of the Latin v, it will be better, for the 
 sake of clearness, to state the conclusions which may be drawn 
 from the constructive evidence which has been adduced in this 
 article, the more so inasmuch as some of those objections are not 
 in conflict with these conclusions. The evidence of transliteration 
 clearly indicates that any argument for the original pronunciation 
 of the Latin v as a pure labio dental v (English) is at least as 
 disputable as one which maintains that the Latin v was pronounced 
 like the English w until a comparatively late period. The trans- 
 literation by ov seems to indicate distinctly that there was a period 
 in Latin when the sound of the v did closely resemble that of the 
 English w. There is a certain probability, however, that the 
 w sound was rather that of the French ov in ovi than that of the 
 English iv. 1 It is perhaps interesting to note incidentally in 
 connection with this French word that, in the Swiss pronunciation 
 of it, an initial v element is said to be distinguishable. 
 
 But, while admitting the existence of this original w sound, it 
 must be pointed out that we have no evidence relating to a time 
 when this sound was in a pure form in Latin. That evidence goes 
 back to the first half of the second century B.C. At that period, 
 though the ov transliteration seems to have predominated, the 
 ft transliteration existed. The evolution of the sound from w to v 
 had begun, and had progressed so far, at any rate in certain 
 combinations, as to be perceptible to the ordinary ear, and this, too, 
 especially in Greece, that land in which the knowledge of the two 
 languages combined would be most existent. 
 
 Before the Christian era, in the second half of the first century 
 B.C., the evolution had made great progress, and was clearly shown 
 in the transliterations of the time. The v element in the Latin v 
 must have been very strongly marked at this period for it to 
 overcome, to the extent to which it did, the force of the con- 
 ventional transliteration by ov. 
 
 1 The difference, so far as I can distinguish it, in the mechanical product : on 
 of the two sounds consists in this, that whereas in the pronunciation of the 
 English w (not icfi) the lips come into momentary and slight contact, in the 
 pronunciation of this French ov they do not. The difference is also marked by 
 the current use of ' wee, wee ' to indicate the English mispronunciation of the 
 French word. 
 
THE LATIN LETTER V O. B. GRUNDY. 
 
 It is at least probable that it was this new element in the 
 pronunciation of the literal sign which troubled the grammarians 
 of the period, and especially those learned men whom Claudius 
 consulted as to the revision of certain elements in the Latin 
 alphabet. Claudius' proposal indicates in itself that even the 
 speaker of Latin recognized a change which would be far less 
 perceptible to him than to a Greek of that age, who compared 
 his own tendencies in transliteration with those observable in the 
 Greek authors of a previous period. This, again, would indicate 
 that the change had become veiy marked. A good deal of capital 
 has been made out of the fact that, under Claudius or by Claudius, 
 the JEolic digamma was suggested as the new sign for the Latin 
 v. But Claudius was seeking for a sign, not a sound. The ft sign 
 he could not propose to adopt, because it resembled the Latin b 
 too closely in form. It would seem that it was to the Latin the 
 changed sound and to the Greek the composite sound of the Latin v 
 of the age of Claudius which caused the difficulty. Neither Greek 
 nor Latin had any single letter which could represent the 
 differences in the sound of the old Latin v caused by the fact that 
 its evolution had been more rapid in certain sound combinations 
 than in others, e.g., more rapid before -ius than before -al. 
 
 The time has now come to make some definite suggestions as to 
 the actual pronunciation of the Latin v in the Augustan age, and 
 to compare those suggestions with the pronouncements of the 
 grammarians of the period. 
 
 The Latin v of the Augustan age is a sound in process of 
 evolution, and one in which the evolutionary series has made 
 considerable progress, though not, it would seem, the same progress 
 in all combinations of sounds. 
 
 I would suggest that there is no one English letter which can 
 by itself render the sound of the Latin v at this period. A com- 
 bination of the letters vw would in all probability most nearly 
 represent the pronunciation of Latin v initial ; that is to say, it 
 was a bilabial, not labio-dental, v. 1 Those who would argue for 
 the pronunciation 'Walerius,' 'weni,' 'widi,' 'wici,' ignore evidence 
 which, scientifically speaking, cannot be ignored. That evidence 
 points to a stage in the evolution of this sound which must at 
 least have produced at this period ' Vwalerius,' ' vweni,' 'vwidi,' 
 ' vwici.' It is, indeed, possible on the evidence to go further 
 
 1 The bilabial v can only be represented in the English system of phonetic 
 signs by this combination of letters. 
 
34 THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 
 
 than this, and to say that in the case of most medial v's and of 
 some initial v's the evolution had progressed more towards the 
 v sound than is indicated by the via combination of English 
 letters which has been suggested. Attention has already been 
 called to the fact that, especially in authors, the /3 transliteration 
 is more common in the case of Latin v medial than of Latin 
 v initial. I have already mentioned that, before the ending 
 -ius the ft transliteration is by far the most common, and 
 also that it appears at a very early date : cf. the A//3<os of 
 Polybius. It is probable that in this termination the i was 
 practically consonantal a yod sound, and in combination with the 
 following v sound would tend to modify the preceding v. 
 Phonetically the tendency may be expressed as follows. The 
 raising of the back of the tongue, an essential mechanical element 
 in the production of a w sound, would tend to disappear owing to 
 the difficulty, or, shall we say, inconvenience of passing from that 
 tongue position to the position demanded for the production of the 
 front vowel or semi-vowel i ; and the w sound would under those 
 circumstances be gradually evolved into a v sound. It is 
 probable, therefore, that in this combination the v sound developed 
 earlier and more rapidly than in the case of other combinations 
 containing the Latin v, and that, by the Augustan age, the w 
 sound in this particular Latin v before -ius, -ia, -ium had practically 
 developed into the v sound. 
 
 On the practical question of the pronunciation of the Latin v in 
 English schools I shall only speak with brevity. The pronunciation 
 of the Latin initial v as a bilabial v ( = vw as nearly as may be, 
 when expressed in English characters) would possibly be incon- 
 venient. The tendency is to choose between w and v. For the 
 Latin initial v neither is correct, and either is as correct as the 
 other. The choice is open. For most cases of the medial Latin v, 
 however, the v pronunciation would seem, on the evidence of 
 transliteration, to be far more near the truth than the pronunciation 
 with the sound of the English w. 
 
THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 35 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE LATIN v IN THE ANCIENT AND MODERN GBAMMABIANS. 
 
 In the previous chapter I have attempted to show that the 
 evidence of transliteration points to the Latin v of the Augustan 
 age having undergone a modification of its original w pronunciation, 
 which modification I have ventured to estimate in general terms as 
 having been 
 
 (1) v initial to a bilabial spirant, which may be ex- 
 pressed in English lettering by the nearest equivalent, vw. 
 
 (2) v medial, especially before i, to something very closely 
 resembling the labio-dental spirant v of English, though the 
 closeness of the resemblance would tend to vaiy according 
 to the environment of sounds. 
 
 It now remains to consider the real and apparent objections to 
 this view which may be gathered from the works of the ancient 
 and modern grammarians. I say "apparent" advisedly, because 
 the argumeuts of recent grammarians have been directed against 
 the pronunciation of the Latin letter as a pure labio-dental spirant, 
 a pronunciation to which the evidence of transliteration does not 
 appear to me to give support, save when the letter is in a medial, 
 and especially in an intervocalic position. 
 
 The arguments of the ancient grammarians have been fully 
 stated in various modern works, and I shall confine myself to their 
 quotations, except in cases in which the context in the ancient 
 authors seems to me to modify or to cast doubt upon the modern 
 interpretation of a particular passage. 
 
 A summary of the arguments in three modem works Dr. Emil 
 Seelmann's "Die Aussprache des Latein" (1885), Mr. Roby's 
 "Latin Grammar" (4th edition), and Professor Lindsay's "The 
 Latin Language" (1894), will, I think, exhaust the objections 
 which can be raised to any view which does not accept the 
 pronunciation of Latin v in the age of Augustus as an English w. 
 
 It may be well to take the objections in the order in which 
 they are stated in Mr. Roby's Grammar, because they are there 
 expressed in a peculiarly lucid and businesslike form. 
 
<5b THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 
 
 Objection 1. "The same letter v was used in Latin both for 
 a vowel and consonant sound. The vowel had the English oo 
 Bound. I$y a slight appulse of the lips ou became w. The Romans 
 were quite alive to the distinction. The Emperor Claudius 
 proposed a new letter, and Quintilian thought it would be desirable 
 to have one. For (he says) neither uo, as his teachers wrote, nor 
 uu, as was written in his own time, expressed the sound actually 
 heard, which he compares to the digamma. The later grammarians, 
 e.g. Terentianus Maurus, dwelt at greater length on this difference. 
 This makes it probable that the sound was rather w than French ou." 
 
 It is very difficult to give a satisfactory answer to this particular 
 objection, because the evidence cited is very obscure in its 
 meaning, and is capable of at least two interpretations, neither 
 of which can, in the present state of our knowledge, be satis- 
 factorily established. With the earlier part of the statement 
 everybody will agree. But the question is as to the element in 
 pronunciation which suggested the new letter in the time of 
 Claudius. 
 
 Transliteration points to the growth of a new element in the 
 pronunciation of the Latin letters at this period. Professor 
 Lindsay seems to think that the new element consisted in an 
 increased consonantalism in the prevocalic v (u], that is to say, 
 in the growth of a marked w as distinguished from an ' oo ' pro- 
 nunciation. He speaks ("Latin Language," p. 8) of "a large 
 number of words which in the Classical period, or the Empire, had 
 the . . . . w sound," but "had in earlier times the sound of 
 the vowels (sometimes of the half vowels) ; larva, for example, is 
 a trisyllable in Plautus, never a dissyllable." Again (p. 9), "On 
 the Monumentum Ancyranum we have IVENTVTIS (3. 5m.), and 
 in Virgil MSS. iuenis, fluius, exuiae, etc." 
 
 The evolution of the w sound from prevocalic Latin v (ou) is 
 so natural and so easy, as Mr. Roby implies, and the tendency 
 to prevocalic consonantalism of this sound is so strong and so 
 marked in all languages in which the sound exists, that it is 
 very difficult to imagine that Latin resisted the tendency until 
 an age immediately preceding that of Claudius. The citation of 
 the one word from Plautus is hardly convincing. Does Plautus 
 commonly deal in this way with prevocalic v ? Again, it is quite 
 conceivable that, in the case of two sounds so nearly allied as 
 that of the Latin v and the w sound apparent in the French out, 
 the distinction might not be customarily apparent in certain words. 
 
THE LATIN LETTER F O. B. GRUNDY. 37 
 
 In the case of the words cited from the Ancyran monument and 
 from Virgil we have to do with that phonetic busybody the yod, 
 which was always apt to interfere with the affairs of neighbouring 
 sounds, apart from the fact that in all the above cases the v is 
 in juxtaposition to its kindred u. The peculiarity may be 
 orthographic and not phonetic. Professor Lindsay assumes a change 
 in pronunciation. The increased employment of ft in the trans- 
 literations of the first century B.C. also implies a change. The 
 assumption and the implication are both, in all probability, facts. 
 The /3 transliteration is almost certainly the outward and visible 
 sign of the change which Professor Lindsay assumes. But it also 
 throws light on the nature of the change. Its earliest and, 
 subsequently, its most regular employment is in the case of 
 intervocalic v followed by -ius. I have already pointed out 
 (page 34) that a w sound before this high front wide vowel would 
 be peculiarly liable to modification, owing to phonetic reasons ; 
 and therefore the change indicated by the ft transliteration is 
 most probably a modification of the w sound, tending towards the 
 front letter v. The same thing is, of course, far more strongly 
 indicated by the fact that the further Latin v tends to the pure 
 labio-dental, the more frequently does the /3 transliteration occur, 
 until finally, when the change to the labio-dental is a fully 
 accomplished fact, the ov transliteration practically disappears. 
 
 I have already discussed the question of the late digamma in 
 JEolic and other dialects, and I need not repeat arguments to show 
 that the proposed adoption of this letter more probably implies 
 a non-w than a w sound. Yarro, nigh a century before Claudius' 
 time, spoke of the v in vafer, velum, vinum, vomis, vulnus as 
 having a strong thick sound (" crassum et quasi validum "). As to 
 the exact technical meaning of Varro's 'crassus' and ' validus ' 
 there may be some dispute, but, on the face of them, they are 
 infinitely more applicable to a bilabial v than to a w sound. 
 Again, the remark of Consentius, quoted by Professor Lindsay 
 (p. 45), to the effect that the Greeks mispronounced the v in ' veni,' 
 " v quoque litteram aliqui pinguius ecferunt, ut, cum dicunt 
 'veni,' putes trisyllabum incipere," pictures exactly what would 
 be liable to occur in the case of a people who tried to pronounce 
 a bilabial v which they had not in their own language. If anyone 
 doubts this, let them ask some English friend to pronounce an 
 initial bilabial v. 
 
 The passages from Quintilian referring to the proposed digamma 
 
38 THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 
 
 are in i, 4, and i, 7. In i, 4, he says: " Aut grammatici saltern 
 omnes in hanc deseendunt rerum tenuitatem, desintne aliquse nobis 
 necessarise literarum, non cum Graeca scribimus (turn enim ab 
 iisdern duas mutuamur) sed proprise in Latinis, ut in his ' seruus ' 
 et ' uulgus ' jEolicon digarama desideratur." 
 
 In i, 7 : " Nostri preceptores cervom servomque u et o literis 
 scripserunt, quia subjecta sibi vocalis in unum sonum coalescere 
 et confundi neqnit ; nunc w gemina scribuntur ea ratione quam 
 reddidi : neutro sane modo vox quam sentiraus efficitur. Nee 
 inutiliter Claudius -5<!olicam illam ad hoc usus f literam adjecerat." 
 Quintilian's reference to the ' preceptores ' in relation to this 
 maintenance of the antique os, om spelling after v, looks as if the 
 whole thing were merely a schoolmaster's trick to prevent boys 
 making mistakes in spelling. But the interesting thing is that the 
 v sign, which had apparently satisfied previous ages when it had 
 a w sound, no longer satisfied the age of Quintilian. Is it not 
 probable that Quintilian and his contemporaries recognized that 
 the sound of u consonantal in their time was not the sound 
 which would be naturally evolved directly out of prevocalic v, 
 i.e. the w sound, but a sound which could not be directly evolved 
 by the consonantalisation of u ? Therefore they felt that a new 
 letter was desirable. The unscientific speaker of Latin, on the 
 other hand, who associated the pronunciation of his own time with 
 a certain customary sign v, and neither knew nor cared whether 
 his pronunciation of the consonantal v was directly evolved from 
 vocalic v or not, refused the new letter. It is noteworthy that the 
 sign adopted by Claudius was not a digamma, but a doubly 
 inverted/, i.e. J. 
 
 Objection 2. The vowel o when following v (consonant or vowel) 
 was retained till the Augustan age or later, though after other 
 letters it had usually changed to u, e.g. servos, later servus, etc. 
 
 Compare this fact with Bell's statement : " When w is before oo, 
 the combination is rather difficult from the little scope the organs 
 have for their articulation (i.e. consonantal) action ; the w is in 
 consequence often omitted by careless speakers, wool being pro- 
 nounced 'ool, woman, 'ooman, etc." 
 
 With the passage in Quintilian in which reference is made to 
 this peculiarity, I have already dealt. But the phenomenon as 
 a whole, and particularly as stated by Mr. Roby, tends to support 
 my contention that by the Augustan age a change had come over 
 the pronunciation of v. This o survived till the beginning of the 
 
THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 39 
 
 first century A.D. It then died out. It had survived, Mr. Eoby 
 says, because it was more easy to pronounce with a w sound than 
 was the Latin u (00). Its disappearance would, in this case, 
 appear to indicate a modification of the w sound of v such as 
 allowed the ending -us to immediately succeed Latin v without 
 inconvenience of pronunciation. At the same time I must say that, 
 though this argument is really in favour of the view which I 
 advocate, I am disposed to think that too great stress may have 
 been put upon the difference between the sounds of o and u in this 
 termination. Transliterations and other evidence show clearly that 
 the border-line between o and a certain u in the Latin language 
 was very difficult to define. 
 
 Objection 3. " The interchange of u and v ; cf. miluus and 
 milvus, relicuum and reliqvum." Miluus and relicuum belong to 
 an age when transliteration shows that the w element in Latin v 
 predomiuated. The other cases cited belong to the same or an 
 earlier age. 
 
 Objection 4. " v between two vowels constantly falls away, 
 not sapped by a slow decay, but, as it were, melted before the eye 
 and ear of the people. Compare amaram, amaveram ; audieram, 
 
 audiveram ; junior, juvenior ; etc This phenomenon, 
 
 repeatedly occurring, seems hardly explicable, except on the 
 assumption of the v being a vowel, or the closest approach to 
 a vowel." 
 
 This abbreviation had taken place in an age long before the 
 Christian era (cf. Lindsay, pp. 463-4, and also 53, p. 52), 
 i.e. at a period when, according to the evidence of transliteration, 
 v retained a predominant w sound. There are two cases cited by 
 Professor Lindsay (p. 52), viz. 'O/craio? (time of Augustus) and 
 2e^/9os, from Greek inscriptions. The latter is practically a unique 
 case, possibly an engraver's error. No argument can be drawn 
 from it. The common forms are 2eow///>os, 2ey/}/>os, SeyS/y/ao?, 
 which Dr. Eckinger cites as occurring respectively 123, 37, and 
 47 times in inscriptions examined by him. 'O/muos is a form 
 which occurs 8 times in inscriptions between 100 B.C. and 156 A.D., 
 as compared with 'O/cTaovtos 16 times, 'O/cray3tos 12 times, and 
 'O/crawto? twice. I have not found it in any author. But it 
 illustrates the twofold tendency which is apparent in the two 
 centuries preceding the Christian era in reference to the inter- 
 vocalic v, especially before the front vowels i and e. The v (w) 
 either vanishes, or tends to harden into a v sound. In this particular 
 
40 THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 
 
 name both tendencies developed, but the latter seems to have 
 eventually overcome the former. The ov transliteration is mainly 
 due in this case to official convention, especially after the age of 
 Augustus (Octavius). 
 
 Objection 5. v in Latin, except in very rare cases, never follows 
 short i. 
 
 Objection 6. Consonantal v is never found before a consonant. 
 
 Objection 7. No distinction between the names of v consonant 
 and v vowel in Latin. 
 
 All of these objections apply to an early age, and do not affect 
 the evidence of transliteration, in fact are in agreement with it. 
 
 Objection 8. "The labio-dental / differs from the labio-dental 
 
 v only as p from b, t from d, * from 2, etc With so 
 
 great a similarity between / and v is it likely that the Romans, 
 if their v was a labio-dental, would not have confused them, or 
 have noticed the resemblance ? Yet (a) no inscription substitutes 
 f for v ; and (b) the Roman writers, at any rate before the fourth 
 century, seem not to have noticed this close resemblance, although 
 (as was said before) the symbol /was borrowed from the digamma 
 to which the Roman v corresponded." Mr. Roby then quotes 
 Quintilian and Terentianus Maurus in support of the views above 
 expressed. 
 
 The question here is the distinction or resemblance between the 
 voiceless and voiced consonants, and the recognition or non- 
 recognition of this distinction and resemblance by the Roman 
 grammarians. 
 
 On this last point I cannot do better than quote a striking 
 passage in Professor Lindsay's work ("Latin Language," p. 72). 
 "The Latin phoneticians, who, as we have seen, are not very 
 safe guides on any point of Latin pronunciation, are especially at 
 fault here" (with regard to the tenues and mediae); "for neither 
 they nor their Greek masters seem to have carried their analysis 
 of sounds as far as the phoneticians of India, who had at an 
 early time discovered the distinction between unvoiced and voiced 
 consonants, and its dependence upon the opening or closure of 
 the glottis. The Latin phoneticians talk of p and b, of t and d, 
 of o and g, as entirely different types of sounds, produced by 
 different positions of the vocal organs." Professor Lindsay says, 
 further (p. 73): "In native Latin words the tenues and mediae 
 
 are not confused to any great extent It is perhaps 
 
 only at the end of a word that we find a real variation between 
 tenuis and media." 
 
THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 41 
 
 It is possible that the difference between the pronunciations of 
 the voiced and those of the voiceless consonants, whether mutes or 
 spirants, was greater in Latin than, for instance, in English. At 
 any rate, the tendency to confusion between the two classes did not 
 markedly exist. Nor does it appear to be a noticeable feature in 
 Romance languages. It is, of course, the case that in Inlaut the 
 Latin tenuis passes into a Romance media, the media to a spirant ; 
 but that is by the operation of phonetic tendency, not the result of 
 confusion. 
 
 Objection 9. Mr. Roby cites the evidence of transliteration. 
 I have already discussed his views on this question, with the 
 exception of what he says with regard to the MSS. of the New 
 Testament. " The name Silvanus occurs four times (2 Cor. i, 19 ; 
 1 Thess. i, 1 ; 2 There, i, 1 ; 1 Pet. v, 12). In St. Peter Vat. 
 alone (against Sinait. Alex.) has 2t\/3avos, etc." In point of fact 
 this evidence amounts to very little. Eckinger cites one example 
 of the form S/X/Sai/o? in an inscription of 4 A.D. Otherwise it does 
 not appear in inscriptions of the first and second centuries A.D., 
 except as 2tX<wai/ds. We have to go to the fourth and fifth 
 centuries before we get another example of the transliteration of 
 this name in ft. 
 
 As far as literary evidence is concerned, it appears in Diodorus 
 once with the ov and once with the ft transliteration. In Josephus 
 and Dio Cassius it has the ov transliteration only. I have not 
 come across an instance of it in the other authors I have examined. 
 It is a consular name (B.C. 2 and A.D. 156), and therefore the 
 tendency would be to transliterate it by the official ov. On the 
 whole the transliterations in the, MSS. of the New Testament are, 
 in respect to this name, in agreement with the evidence of 
 contemporary documents, both literary and inscriptional. 
 
 I have dealt with those objections which are not directly 
 answered in the constructive part of this discussion. A con- 
 sideration of the other objections raised by Mr. Roby and by 
 others would merely result in the repetition of what has already 
 been said. 
 
42 THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 
 
 CHAPTER Y. 
 
 THE LATIN v IN LANGUAGES CONTEMPORAEY WITH AND LATER 
 THAN LATIN. 
 
 The transliteration of the Latin v in Old Celtic, Old German, 
 and in Syriac and Hebrew has frequently been used as an argu- 
 ment in favour of the w pronunciation of that letter. My own 
 acquaintance with three out of these four languages is of the very 
 slightest character, and in dealing with them I have relied on the 
 standard works already published, supplemented in certain most 
 important respects by information obtained first-hand from eminent 
 scholars to whom I have applied for information on special points. 
 
 A great deal of misapprehension appears to exist as to the exact 
 nature of this evidence. It has been cited again and again as 
 absolutely conclusive upon this question, whereas the evidence of 
 the standard works to which I have referred, and still more the 
 information obtained from specialists in these languages, show that 
 it is absolutely inconclusive. 
 
 The state of the case in Syriac and Hebrew may be dismissed 
 in a few words. The Latin transliterations in Semitic docu- 
 ments have been discussed by Dr. S. Krauss. 1 Dr. Krauss (p. 47) 
 states, on authority other than his own, that Latin v was not 
 pronounced like Dorian digamma or French v ; thus, speaking 
 on his own authority, he says otherwise, "the transcription 
 by waw (vv~) as in velum would have sufficed. The fact, how- 
 ever, that the majority of the borrowed words reproduced v 
 by Beth (b, v} indicates that in the Jewish mouth v sounded 
 somewhat more strongly, something like German w or modern 
 Greek /3," etc. All this would appear to tell in favour of the 
 view which I have put forward ; but, unfortunately I have been 
 informed, on the best authority, that no one of the documents used 
 by Dr. Krauss can be dated earlier than the sixth century, and the 
 majority of them are of much later date than that. They therefore 
 do not afford any evidence whatever as to the pronunciation of 
 Latin in the first century ; and thus the Syriac and Hebrew 
 witness is of no avail. 
 
 1 S. Krauss : " Griechische u. Lateinische Lehnworter itn Talmud." 
 
THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 43 
 
 The appeal to the evidence of the Old Celtic has been regarded, 
 as conclusive on the question of the pronunciation of the 
 Latin v . At a joint meeting of the Philological Societies of Oxford 
 and Cambridge held in the Autumn of 1905 in the Hall of Exeter 
 College, Oxford, with a view to arriving at some agreement 
 on Latin pronunciation, a set scheme was presented to those 
 attending the meeting, about one hundred persons all told, and 
 the acceptance or rejection of the proposals was made dependent 
 on the majority of votes. On an objection being raised to the 
 pronunciation of the Latin v as English w, one of those responsible 
 for the scheme said that no question could be raised on this point, 
 inasmuch as the Celts expressed the Latin v in transliteration by 
 a w sound. That seemed decisive. But on the next day I ventured 
 to put in writing to an eminent Celtic scholar the following 
 question : " Did the Celtic language between 100 B.C. and 200 A.D. 
 possess a sound correspondent to the English v ? " The answer, 
 also in writing, was as follows: "The question which you ask 
 suggests to me that you know more about Celtic than you admit in 
 your letter : it is as to the sound of English v in Celtic from 100 B.C. 
 to 200 A.D. I can only guess that this sound was not there. It 
 would come in plentifully when vowel-flanked b was softened to a v 
 sound perhaps at first it was bilabial v, as in the German ' quick ' 
 as contrasted with the English ' quick.' This sort of change may 
 be put down to the period of consonantal mutation, which most 
 Celtists have been wont to regard as beginning much later than 
 200 A.D. ; but I should say that the later tendency is to regard 
 it as beginning early, perhaps not so far back as 200 A.D., but say 
 400 A.D." 
 
 If this be the case, then the evidence of Celtic is of no avail, 
 inasmuch as Celtic does not appear to have had any means of 
 expressing the v element in the pronunciation of Latin v. 
 
 Professor Loth, 1 of Kennes, gives a still wider aspect to the 
 question. He says (p. 3): "In the absence of Brittonic texts, 
 aud by reason of the small number of Celtic proper names for the 
 first to the fifth century, and above all because of the radical 
 transformation of the accent, of the quantity and of the quality 
 of vowels, and of consonantism, in short of the organisation of the 
 word, there exists between the Brittonic of the early centuries 
 of our era and that of the ninth century a gulf which we can only 
 
 1 J. Loth : " Les Mots Latins dans les langues Brittoniques." 
 
44 THE LATIN LETTER r G. B. GRUNDY. 
 
 attempt to bridge by the aid of the words borrowed from Latin." 
 To this eminent Celtic scholar, therefore, it would seem that the 
 data with regard to early Celtic must be taken from the Latin, not 
 those with regard to Latin from the early Celtic. If that be so, 
 argument from early Celtic to Latin is mere argument in a circle. 
 
 The question of the evidence of Old German is not quite so 
 simple a matter. Old High German did not possess the v sound. 
 Kluge says of the Old German w : "In the beginning of German 
 w had the strong vocalic sound of the English w quite a different 
 sound to what it has at the present time. Hence in A.S. and 
 O.H.G. w appears as o in Auslaut. When w developed into the 
 spirant sound of the present day cannot be said with certainty. In 
 Bavaria the change must have been completed before the end of 
 the thirteenth century, for from this time onwards the signs w 
 and b appear as of equal value, and indicate in the first place the 
 Germanic w, and in the second the sound which had developed from 
 the German as spirant J." l If O.H.G. did not possess a v sound, then 
 its evidence on the question before us is as- colourless as that of the 
 Celtic. The difficulty in the case of Low German is not of the same 
 nature. The question is as to whether the words of Latin origin 
 existent in Old English came into that language direct from the 
 Latin, or through the medium of Old Celtic or Old High German, or 
 both. If they reached the Old English through either of these 
 media, they reached it through a language which did not possess 
 the v sound. The absolutely indecisive nature of the evidence 
 from the Old Low German is well expressed in a passage translated 
 from Kluge (p. 283) : " The discussion of the Celtic elements in 
 English shows clearly how difficult it is to work out the Latin 
 influence which Old English has undergone. The possibility often 
 arises that the material in question may come to the Old English 
 through the Celtic. No one has as yet seriously considered whether 
 the Anglo - Saxon experienced a generally direct but specific 
 influence from the side of the Latin before the conversion to 
 Christianity, or whether it is not the case that the old stratum 
 English loan-words from the Latin refer back necessarily to the 
 Celtic." 
 
 It is unfortunate, but it is the fact, that the languages 
 contemporary with Latin afford us no clue whatever to the 
 pronunciation of this important and puzzling Latin letter. 
 
 1 Kluge in II. Paul's " Grundriss der Germanischen Philologie." 
 
THK LATIN LETTER v G. B. GRUNDY. 45 
 
 The history of the development of the sound of the Latin v in the 
 Romance descendants of the Latin language is peculiarly interesting, 
 but presents problems of special difficulty. It must be premised 
 that the question of the pronunciation of v is in this area of 
 investigation inseparable from that of the pronunciation of b. 
 A consideration of the relations existing between these two sounds 
 in Latin itself might well lead one to suspect that such would 
 be the case in the languages descended from the Latin. 
 
 There are certain obvious factors to be taken into account in 
 estimating the causes which have produced the wide differences 
 which exist between the Romance descendants of the parent Latin. 
 Differences of race, differences of climate, differences in the environ- 
 ment of daily life have played a great part. Modifications have 
 been introduced into certain regions by the invasion of speakers of 
 non-Latin tongues. All these elements in the calculation are well 
 known, and have been taken into account by students of Romance. 
 
 But there is a further element to which I should like to call 
 attention, which must, I think, play an important part in the 
 calculation, especially in relation to the question with which I am 
 now concerned. We cannot, as it seems to me, leave out of our 
 calculation the approximate date at which the linguistic ancestors 
 of the speakers of a Romance tongue first became acquainted with 
 the Latin language. Latin was in process of apparently rapid 
 evolution, in respect especially to the pronunciation of certain 
 elements, between 200 B.C. and 200 A.D., and the Latin which the 
 inhabitants of the Spanish peninsula and Narbonensis first learnt 
 in the early half of the second century before Christ was in certain 
 respects very different from the Latin which the middle and northern 
 Gauls acquired about the time of the Christian era, and still more 
 widely separated from the Latin which Trajan's colonists canned 
 with them to Dacia. It seems to amount to a law of nature that 
 all languages, 'whether indigenous or imported, are at all times 
 in process of modification with respect to sound ; but it is also 
 a well-known fact that speakers of an imported language, especially 
 if it be the language of a politically superior race, tend to resist 
 modification of the tongue as they originally learnt it, and thus 
 the development of a language is consciously retarded in a region 
 in which it was not originally spoken, whereas it is allowed full 
 play in a region in which it is native. Cteteris paribus, the 
 linguistic ancestors of the Spanish, Catalan, and Provencal would 
 tend to a pronunciation of the Latin tongue more antique than 
 
46 THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 
 
 that of the other races of the empire, who learnt the language 
 at a later date, or than that of the Italian, who had, outside the 
 select literary circle, no motive for conscious resistance to the 
 natural development of what had become his native tongue. 
 
 It is, of course, true that the evidence of the Romance languages 
 on the pronunciation of Latin is of indeterminate value, chiefly 
 because, in the case of most of them, their full development in 
 early mediaeval times is unknown to us. Still, it is evident that 
 the Latin sounds indicated by the letters b and v had, on the 
 whole, a common development in most of the Romance tongues, the 
 general tendency being in the case of b to retain the original sound 
 of b initial and to evolve a v sound out of b medial. In this 
 evolution the Romance tongues seem to have merely inherited an 
 evolution which had taken place in Latin itself, in those parts of 
 the empire, at any rate, in which an archaizing tendency did not 
 prevail. Also, Latin v is generally admitted to have become a labio- 
 dental in most parts of the empire before Latin had developed into 
 Romance forms. The pure to sound of the old Latin v has not 
 survived in any of the Romance languages, except, perhaps, in 
 Sardinian. Though, owing to the evolution in the sound of that 
 letter within Latin itself, the facts with regard to its pronunciation 
 in the individual Romance tongues are not very pertinent to our 
 present subject, still it may be well to summarise the facts with 
 regard to the pronunciation of the present day. 
 
 The critical question in relation to our present investigation is 
 not concerned with the existence of a labio-dental pronunciation 
 of v. That is accounted for by the general tendency of the 
 evolution of the letter within Latin itself. The element which 
 demands consideration is what may be called the non-labio-dental 
 pronunciation of v in certain Romance tongues. In French, of 
 course, the v is labio-dental. 1 A w sound seems to have existed 
 in mediaeval French in connection with the semi-vowels , v, and 
 que, qui were pronounced qwe, qwi so late as the twelfth century. 
 We have noticed, too, the w sound of' the French oui. But in 
 no case is a w element in this language to be traced to either 
 of the Latin letters b or v. In the Italian groups a w element is 
 said to be apparent in the Sardinian pronunciation of the Latin v, 
 otherwise the v is labio-dental in this group. In the peculiar 
 Raetian Romance dialect, which is still spoken in the Alpine 
 
 1 H. Suchin: " Die Franzosische u. Provenzalische Sprache m. ihrer 
 Mundarten." 
 
THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 47 
 
 districts of the upper Rhine, the v is labio-dental where it survives. 
 The case of its disappearance may be stated here. Dr. Gartner 
 says: "v, einmal auch /" (bei foras) verschwindet oder vergrobert 
 sieh vor dunklen Vocalen, zb. bei ex-volare." l Of this last word 
 he gives the following forms in the local Ra?tian dialects : zgula, 
 zvole'r, zgolar, zulp, zore, anzora, zolp, zvuah!, zvola. 
 
 Before passing to the Romance groups of the Iberian peninsula, 
 we may consider the case of Provengal, that language which, 
 both in respect to its geographical position and its linguistic 
 characteristics, forms the central point of the great Romance 
 triangle of the French, Italian, and Iberian groups. 
 
 The case of Provencal offers some difficulty to the student 
 who is not a specialist in this language, because the presence of 
 a distinct w element in the pronunciation of the Provencal 
 descendant of the Latin v is asserted by some authorities. This 
 assertion appears to be an error. I am assured by one to whom 
 the Proven9al is well known as a spoken language that the v is 
 a labio-dental spirant. 
 
 In Provencal, as in French, the voiced mute b when intervocal 
 was evolved into the voiced spirant v. But this v, as well as that 
 derived from the Latin v, passes in ProvenQal into a u when after 
 a vowel and in the Auslaut of a syllable or word; e.g., liura, 
 libram ; viure, vivere. It is noticeable that in cases in which the 
 Germanic w has been received into Provenqal, it has been treated 
 as in French : warden becomes Prov. guardar, Fr. guarder. The 
 u after the g vanishes in Provenqal during the tenth, in French 
 during the twelfth century. It is certainly curious that, if 
 Proven gal retained a w sound descended from Latin v, this German 
 w sound, for such it was at that date, was not expressed by the 
 Provengal v. 
 
 In the Iberian group the evolution of the Latin letters b and v 
 has varied. In Portuguese v has (in rare cases apparently) passed 
 into /, vehementia femen<ja ; often into b, venitta btta, etc. ; 
 once into m, veturnus modorra. In a few cases vo, vu initial 
 have passed into go, cf. vulpecla, golpelha. 
 
 But in Portuguese the v appears to be a labio-dental spirant, 
 both when it is a survival of the Latin v and when it represents 
 some other Latin letter. Latin v does not appear to survive in the 
 language in any form containing a w element. 
 
 1 Theodor Gartner : " Grammatik der Ratoromanischen Mundarten." 
 
48 THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 
 
 In Spanish and Catalan the case is different, and in a certain 
 sense strikingly different. In the first place, b and v in Spanish 
 are identical in sound, though distinguished, sometimes incorrectly, 
 in writing. 1 
 
 Educated Spaniards distinguish a small difference between the 
 respective pronunciations of the two letters, b has softened towards 
 v, and v has hardened towards b ; but still the pronunciation of b 
 is said to be slightly harder than that of v. But the most 
 interesting feature of the language for the purpose of our present 
 consideration is that v has not become a labio-dental, but is a bi- 
 labial. The line of division in Spanish between the bilabial and 
 the labio-dental is not, as in most Romance languages, between b 
 and v, but between v and/. 
 
 In Catalan the matter is not so simple, because we have to deal 
 with three related sounds, namely, b, b', and v. b' is related to b, 
 and is, apparently, a modification of the b sound which occurs 
 between two vowels which are either in the same word, or in two 
 words which are not separated in respect to pronunciation. 2 
 
 " In the greater part of the Catalan region v and b have been 
 mingled together. In Barcelona and Valentia (for example) ' la 
 vaca' becomes 'la b'aca.' At other points on the Mediterranean, in 
 Reus, Tarragona, Castillon, Alicante, on the contrary, according 
 to the witness of the grammarians, the v in ' vida,' or that v which 
 has sprung from intervocalic b, is carefully distinguished from the 
 mute b and the fricative b', and has the same value as in French. 
 This v is therefore labio-dental. In the Balearic Isles and in 
 Alghero the v in Auslaut has in some cases become f, e.g. escrif 
 (escrivo). This v must also have been labio-dental. 
 
 Of the three letters the b' is, for our present purpose, the most 
 interesting. " b' gives the ear the impression of a v, but of 
 a bilabial sound, as was the v in vulgar Latin." 3 
 
 In the Human tongue the v is labio-dental. 
 
 It is practically impossible to draw any conclusion with regard 
 to the pronunciation of the Latin v from a consideration of the 
 pronunciation of its lineal descendant in any one of these Romance 
 tongues. The fact that v is a labio-dental in the case of most of 
 them merely suggests the labio-dental character of the v of late 
 
 1 G. Baist: " Grammatik der Spanischen Sprache." 
 
 * Morel-Fatio & SaroVhandy : " Grammatik der Katalanischen Sprache." 
 
 3 Morel-Fatio, etc. : op. cit. 
 
THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 4'. 
 
 Latin, about which there exists no real dispute. In itself it throws 
 no light upon the pronunciation of the letter in the Augustan age. 
 
 But when we take the whole group of Romance languages in our 
 survey, they appear to be divisible into two groups on a certain 
 fundamentum division, or, perhaps, on a dual basis of division, 
 which, however, result in groups which are identical. This 
 dual basis is : 
 
 (a) The labio-dental character of the sound descended 
 from the Latin v. 
 
 (b) The labio-dental character of the v sound descended 
 from Latin intervocalic b. 
 
 These two labio-dental characteristics seem to be present in Italian, 
 Raetian, French, Human, and Portuguese. 
 
 In the other Romance tongues there are actual or reported 
 divergencies. In ProvenQal a w element is said to be existent in 
 the pronunciation of v, though the evidence on this point seems 
 more than doubtful. Prove^al pronunciation must have been 
 considerably affected by the French. 
 
 In Sardinia the w element in the pronunciation of v is definitely 
 stated to exist. 
 
 In Catalan, though the labio-dental v exists, intervocalic b (b'} 
 has become a bilabial spirant. In Spanish no labio-dental v exists, 
 both b and v being pronounced almost like the English b, i.e. v is 
 bilabial. 
 
 It is, at any rate, remarkable that the exceptions to the usual 
 labio-dental sound of the original or evolved v of the Romance 
 languages should occur in those regions, and in those regions only, 
 which by the process of Roman conquest acquired a knowledge 
 of the Latin tongue at a period considerably anterior to the 
 Christian era. It suggests that the Latin v, and indeed the Latin 
 b, with which these regions first became acquainted was not 
 identical in sound with that v which Middle and Northern Gaul, 
 Lusitania, Rsetia, and Dacia learnt to know in the Augustan age or 
 later. I lay down no law : the factors in the calculation, though 
 known, are so incalculable in their effect that it would be absurd 
 to claim a knowledge of the exact effect of the particular factor 
 presented by the date at which those speakers of a Romance tongue 
 learnt that language which they were destined later to adopt as 
 their own. But it must be accounted to be at least a remarkable 
 coincidence that the Romance tongues of earlier origin display this 
 
50 THE LATIN LETTER V B. G. GRTJNDY. 
 
 peculiar characteristic, in contrast with those whose origin is of 
 later date a characteristic, moreover, which accords with the 
 evidence afforded both by transliteration and by the movement of 
 the time of Claudius as to the perceptible nature of the change 
 which had taken place by the date of the Christian era or there- 
 abouts in the pronunciation of the Latin letter. The tendency 
 of those provincials who had learnt the Latin of the second 
 century would be to maintain its pronunciation, that is to say, 
 to resist the natural course of development which the language 
 underwent in the two centuries before Christ within the area 
 of Italy itself. Hence the early prevalent w pronunciation of 
 v was preserved in these regions long after it had become modified 
 in the native land of the Latin tongue, and hence we find even 
 now, after the lapse of 2,000 years, that the development of that 
 sound of the Latin is in some respect or other in an earlier stage in 
 these lands than in the other parts of Europe where Romance 
 tongues are spoken. 
 
TABLE I. 
 
 SPECIAL NAMES IN INSCRIPTIONS AND 
 IN AUTHORS. 
 
52 
 
 THE LATIN LETTER v G. B. GRUNDY. 
 
 B 
 
 Sif 
 
 
 
 1 ! 
 
 
 
 : 
 
 
 O oo g 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 
 
 O . C3 
 
 ^ 
 
 cs 
 
 II 
 
 * 
 
 
 Q 
 
 i 
 
 M 
 
 if 
 
 < 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 : 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^ <3 p 
 
 Cr 
 
 ^ 
 
 IS" 
 
 
 
 S .5 < 
 
 I 
 
 t$ 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 o 
 
 
 
 "S -^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 & 
 
 
 
 
 
 e 
 
 M 
 
 f 
 
 
 
 i3T 
 
 o' 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 .0 
 
 j j jS 
 
 s 
 
 2 ^'S 
 
 HO S 
 
 p co 
 
 i 
 
 1 j 
 
 ^ 
 
 2 
 
 s 
 
 M 
 
 1 
 
 O O V O) 
 ^^ ^^ ' 
 
 ^K 
 
 
 
 < 
 
 g 0-5- 
 
 
 
 
 o 
 
 
 W < 'g 
 
 4i 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 p 
 
 111 
 
 J 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 -s> 
 
 
 p 
 
 e 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Ssf 
 
 S a 
 
 
 
 
 
 Ids 
 
 a a 
 
 
 
 
 
 POLYBIUS 
 
 (cired 
 150 B.C.). 
 
 
 o o 
 
 -il 
 
 Jj 
 
 
 
 p 
 
 AWTQ'TJO?. 
 
 
 
 
 o 
 
 d 
 
 
 
 <o 
 
 p' 
 
 p 
 
 i 
 
 
 
 || 
 
 do 
 
 o oS 
 
 
 
 P 
 
 00 
 
 *'S 
 
 S 
 
 ? ' 
 
 t9 
 
 4 
 
 o 
 
 i 
 
 5 
 
 II 
 l| 
 
 1. 
 
 22 
 
 10 oo 
 
 <M CO 
 
 o2 
 
 
 CO 
 
 & 
 
 
 
 
 
 <yT O 
 
 ^* ^ 
 
 
 /< 
 
 &- Cf 
 
 Cr ^-^, 
 
 O ^ 
 
 Cf~ ft 
 
 
 S Qi 
 
 
 2 *> 
 
 ^ <* 
 
 o p 
 
 
 -fa 
 B ^i 
 
 v 3 
 
 ~K~ ^ 
 
 o E 
 
 u 
 
 H v a 
 
 1| 
 
THE LATIN LETTER V O. B. GRUNDY. 
 
 53 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 .1 
 
 
 lit 
 
 5 
 
 
 ! 
 
 
 o 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 E 
 
 
 <J<!^ 
 
 < 
 
 M 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 o 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 o 
 
 Q 
 
 O 
 
 o 
 
 2 
 
 -5 
 
 h 
 
 
 
 
 
 o 
 
 '0 
 
 a 
 
 J 
 
 "U 
 
 -8 
 
 * 
 
 E 
 
 DH 
 
 < 
 
 J 
 
 
 
 
 So O 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 . o 
 
 *, . 
 
 \. 
 
 -Mil 
 
 '1 
 
 
 ^ 1 8 
 
 141 
 
 Hi 
 
 w 
 
 E E 
 
 5^ 
 
 < < 
 
 <! < 
 
 
 
 C* 
 
 
 
 S 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 1'i 
 
 S 
 33 
 
 1 
 
 II 
 
 
 E 
 
 ?*fr 
 
 < < 
 
 < 
 
 
 
 o 
 
 2 
 
 "j 
 
 . i 
 
 
 
 1.1 
 
 
 JJ I | 
 
 11 
 
 ( 
 
 
 -o o 
 
 
 <u ^ o 
 
 
 
 
 EE 
 
 PH 
 
 
 < < 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 o 
 
 
 5 
 
 
 b 
 
 
 
 
 | 
 
 
 -o 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 E 
 
 
 o 
 
 
 M 
 
 
 
 
 
 o 
 
 
 
 * 
 
 
 .b 
 
 
 6 
 
 -E 
 
 -S 
 
 
 E 
 
 
 
 < 
 
 M 
 
 e 
 
 : p 
 
 
 a 
 
 13 ^ 
 
 
 tH gj 
 
 9 . * 
 
 
 Q *"""* ^ 
 
 ^ *~ 
 
 
 'a ^ 
 
 
 * 
 
 SH 
 
 
 P 
 
 Mo' / w / o9, 146 B.c.-first h 
 1st cent A.D. 
 Mov / H / uo9, later than abc 
 
 noVX<o9, early form, but 
 nion in 1 st and 2nd cer 
 r7oi;7rXo9, temp. Claudiu 
 Nero onward. 
 
 'PoT/X<09, 105B.C.-30 A. 
 'Poim'Xtos, 84-243 A.D. 
 
 AevKios, practically sole 
 up to Christian era. 
 1st cent. A.D. 
 AevKio? : AOVKIOS :: 1 
 2nd cent. A.D. 
 Aevicios '. AOVKIOS '.'. 1 
 
 AeVTXo9, instances seconc 
 of 1st cent. B.C. anc 
 half of 1st cent. A.D. 
 
 KO'WTOV, earlier form. 
 Kw'j/T09, not before 50 A 
 
54 
 
 THE LATIN LETTER F G. B. GRUNBY. 
 
 TABLE II. THE ov AND /3 TRANSLITERATIONS. 
 
 
 INSCRIPTIONS. 
 
 POLY- 
 BIUS. 
 
 DlONYS. 
 
 HALIC. 
 
 Dio- 
 
 DORU8. 
 
 Jo- 
 
 SEPHUS. 
 
 PLU- 
 TARCH. 
 
 Instances. 
 
 Per- 
 centages. 
 
 Per- 
 
 centages. 
 
 Per- 
 centages. 
 
 Per- 
 centages. 
 
 Per- 
 centages. 
 
 Per- 
 centages. 
 
 ov 
 
 P 
 
 ov 
 
 P 
 
 ov 
 
 ft 
 
 ov 
 
 ft 
 
 ov 
 
 ft 
 
 ov 
 
 ft 
 
 ov 
 
 ft 
 
 3rd cent. B.C. 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 2nd cent. B.C. 
 
 11 
 
 4 
 
 73 
 
 27 
 
 86 
 
 14 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1st cent. B.C. 
 
 27 
 
 14 
 
 66 
 
 34 
 
 
 
 70 
 
 30 
 
 64 
 
 36 
 
 
 
 
 
 1st cent. A.D. 
 
 130 
 
 54 
 
 71 
 
 29 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 69 
 
 31 
 
 51 
 
 49 
 
 2nd cent. A.D. 
 
 312 
 
 150 
 
 67 
 
 33 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 3rd cent. A.D. 
 
 158 
 
 110 
 
 69 
 
 41 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 4th cent. A.D. 
 
 32 
 
 29 
 
 52 
 
 48 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 TABLE III. OFFICIAL NAMES IN AUTHORS TIP TO 100 A.D. 
 
 
 SEPARATE NAMES. 
 
 TRANSLITERATION OF THESE NAMES 
 IN THE SEVERAL AUTHORS. 
 
 No. 
 
 Instances. 
 
 Percentages. 
 
 No. 
 
 ov 
 
 ft 
 
 ov&P 
 
 ov 
 
 ft 
 
 ov&P 
 
 ov 
 
 ft 
 
 ov &p 
 
 OFFICIAL ... 
 
 24 
 
 10 
 
 4 1 
 
 10 
 
 58 
 
 38 
 
 13 
 
 7 
 
 66 
 55 
 
 22 
 
 12 
 
 NON-OFFICIAL 
 
 46 
 
 20 * 
 
 20 s 
 
 7 
 
 C4 
 
 35 
 
 27 
 
 2 
 
 42 
 
 3 
 
 TABLE IV. OFFICIAL NAMES IN PLUTARCH. 
 
 
 Instances. 
 
 Percentages. 
 
 ov 
 
 P 
 
 ov 
 
 ft 
 
 OFFICIAL NAMES 
 
 181 
 
 62 
 
 74 
 
 26 
 
 NON- OFFICIAL NAMES 
 
 33 
 
 70 
 
 32 
 
 68 
 
 1 Of which 3 in ov in Dio Cassius. 2 Of which 1 in p in Dio Cassius. 
 3 Of which 6 in ov in Dio Cassius. 
 
THE LATIN LETTER V G. B. GRUNDY. 55 
 
 TABLE V. OFFICIAL NAMES IN INSCRIPTIONS NOTED IN ECKINGER. 
 
 
 Percentages. 
 
 ov 
 
 ft 
 
 ov & ft 
 
 OFFICIAL NAMES 
 
 21 
 
 6 
 
 73 
 
 NON- OFFICIAL NAMES 
 
 44 
 
 37 
 
 19 
 
 N.B. In this table the number of names, not the number of instances of their 
 occurrence, is given. In the case of official names included under ' ov & /3,' the 
 number of instances of ov transliteration is infinitely larger than the number of 
 transliterations into y3. 
 
 TABLE VI. GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF ov AND /3 TRANS- 
 LITERATION OF ELEVEN MOST COMMON NAMES. 
 
 Class I : Athens and Greece. 
 
 Class II : Rome and Italy, Macedonia, Thessaly, Asia Minor. 
 
 Class III : Thrace, Russia, rest of Europe, rest of Asia, Africa. 
 
 
 Percentages. 
 
 Class I. 
 
 Class II. 
 
 Class III. 
 
 ov 
 
 39 
 
 64 
 
 77 
 
 ft 
 
 61 
 
 36 
 
 33 
 
 TABLE VII. INSCRIPTIONS OF OLYMPIA : ov AND /3 
 TRANSLITERATION. 
 
 
 No. of 
 
 Names. 
 
 Names 
 with ov. 
 
 Names 
 with ft. 
 
 No. of 
 
 Instances. 
 
 Instances 
 of ov. 
 
 Instances 
 of ft. 
 
 1st cent. B.C. 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 1st cent. A.D. 
 
 4 
 
 3 1 
 
 li 
 
 9 
 
 3 
 
 6 
 
 2nd cent. A.D. 
 
 8 
 
 3 
 
 5 
 
 20 
 
 3 
 
 17 
 
 3rd cent. A.D. 
 
 7 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 23 
 
 
 
 23 
 
 The 3 names in ov are all of them official. The name in /3 is not. 
 
56 
 
 THE LATIN LETTER F 
 
 B. GRUKDY. 
 
 TABLE VIII. LATIN F, INITIAL AND MEDIAL. 
 
 
 Total No. of 
 
 
 
 
 Names 
 
 
 
 
 transliterated 
 
 /3 initial. 
 
 ft medial. 
 
 
 by/3. 
 
 
 
 AUTHORS 
 
 
 
 
 Polybius 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 Dionysius Halic. 
 
 5 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 Diodorus 
 
 6 
 
 2 
 
 4 
 
 Josephus 
 
 6 
 
 1 
 
 5 
 
 Plutarch 
 
 33 
 
 13 
 
 20 
 
 Dio Cassius ... 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 
 55 
 
 18 
 
 37 
 
 INSCRIPTIONS 
 
 
 
 
 Up to 2nd cent. A.D. (Eckinger) 
 Since Eckinger 
 
 48 27 
 8 4 
 
 21 
 4 
 
 TABLE IX. ILLUSTRATING PHONETIC TENDENCIES IN THE 
 
 1ST CENTURY A.D. 
 
 
 AUTHORS. 
 
 INSCRIPTIONS. 
 
 TOTALS. 
 
 
 ov 
 
 ft 
 
 ov 
 
 ov 
 
 . 
 
 ov 
 
 ov 
 
 
 ov 
 
 
 
 
 &ft 
 
 
 
 Heft 
 
 
 
 & ft 
 
 v before any vowel + liquid . . . 
 v before a, o, u + liquid 
 
 19 
 11 
 
 8 
 1 
 
 4 
 
 2 
 
 10 
 6 
 
 2 
 
 1 
 
 4 
 2 
 
 29 
 16 
 
 10 
 2 
 
 8 
 4 
 
 v before -/s, -ia, -lum (yod) 
 
 1 
 
 6 
 
 5 
 
 3 
 
 2 
 
 4 
 
 4 
 
 8 
 
 9 
 
 v before vowel + nasal 
 
 7 
 
 8 
 
 3 
 
 2 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 9 
 
 9 
 
 3 
 
 v before vowel + sibilant 
 
 2 
 
 2(?1) 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 
 v before vowel + dental 
 
 8 
 
 3 
 
 2 
 
 7 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 10 
 
 6 
 
 2 
 
 v before vowel + labial 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 1 
 
Univers: 
 
 South 
 
 Libi