Part I - Old-fashioned Spellings

Chapter 2 <ai> for /ae̯/

In the late third or early second century BC the off-glide of the diphthong /ai/ was lowered to /ae̯/, leading to a change in spelling from <ai> to <ae> (see p. 40).¹ The use of <ai> for <ae> in inscriptions of the first–fourth centuries AD, especially in genitive and dative singulars of the first declension, is actually not particularly difficult to find, even in quite large numbers (although given the thousands of examples of <ae>, the frequency is probably still very low).² Some, but not all, of these will be due to Greek influence,³ misreadings, or mistakes by the stonemason. Use of <ai> seems to have been one of the spellings favoured by Claudius (Biddau 2008: 130–1), but examples can still be found long afterwards.

It is clear that Quintilian considers the <ai> spelling already highly old-fashioned:

ae syllabam, cuius secundam nunc e litteram ponimus, uarie per a et i efferebant, quidam semper ut Graeci, quidam singulariter tantum, cum in datiuum uel genetiuum casum incidissent, unde “pictai uestis” et “aquai” Vergilius amantissimus uetustatis carminibus inseruit. in isdem plurali numero e utebantur: “hi Sullae, Galbae”.

The syllable ae, whose second letter we now write with the letter e, they used to express differently with a and i, some in all contexts, like the Greeks, others only in the singular, when in the dative or genitive case, whence Virgil, who adored archaism, inserted ‘pictai uestis’ and ‘aquai’ in his poems. In the same words they used e in the plural: ‘hi Sullae, Galbae’.

(Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 1.7.18–19)

The <ai> spelling is attributed to the antiqui by Velius Longus (5.4 = GL 7.57.20–58.3), Terentius Scaurus (5.2.2 = GL 7.16.7–10) and Festus (Paul. Fest. 24.1–2) but Marius Victorinus suggests that it may have been in vogue in the fourth century, which is not impossible given its presence in inscriptions, as already mentioned (although Marius recommends his charges always to use <ae>):

ae syllabam quidam more Graecorum per ai scribunt, ne illud quidem custodientes omnes fere qui de orthographia aliquid scriptum reliquerunt praecipiunt, nomina femina casu nominatiuo a finita plurali in ae exire, ut ‘Aeliae’, eadem per a et i scripta numerum singularem ostendere, ut ‘huius Aeliai’, inducti a poetis, qui “pictai uestis” scripserunt, et quod Graeci per i potissimum hanc syllabam scribunt …

Certain people write the syllable ae as ai, in the Greek manner, paying no attention to the teaching of practically everyone whose writing on orthography is preserved, which is that feminine nouns whose nominative is in -a should have plurals ending in -ae, as in Aeliae, but the singular cases in -ai, as in huius Aeliai, following the example of the poets, who wrote ‘pictai uestis’, and because the Greeks wrote this syllable with i …

(Marius Victorinus, Ars grammatica 4.38 = GL 7.14.1–6)

Use of <ai> for <ae> is extremely rare in the corpora. There are only 2 instances in the curse tablets from the first to fourth centuries AD.⁴ The use of Maicius beside Maecius (Kropp 1.7.1/1, mid-first century AD, Altinum) could perhaps be attributed to Greek influence, since many of the names listed on the tablet are Greek. In 1.5.2/1 (around AD 50, Capua) quaistum is the only instance of /ai/ in this tablet, which otherwise shows a number of substandard spellings: ilius for illius, uita for uītam, ipsuq for ipsumque, mado for mandō, Sextiu for Sextius. Greek influence is of course possible, but there is no other internal or external evidence for it.

In the Vindonissa tablets, we have the dative Secundi{i}na<e> (T. Vindon. 41), where only one stroke of the final letter II <e> is observed. Given how rare the use of <ai> is in the corpora it seems unlikely that that it is intended here (although the editor notes the fashionability of <ai> under Claudius). The possibility that the second stroke of the <e> was simply not preserved on the wooden backing of the tablet must be strong.

There is also a single example of <ai> in the dative in the Isola Sacra inscriptions, in Marcianai (IS 308, undated). The editors suggest that this is a morphological borrowing from Greek, perhaps to distinguish the dative from the genitive. The (surviving) inscription reads d(is) m(anibus) Marcianai Donatus, so there is no evidence that the composer was a Greek-speaker (nor was the inscription found in situ, so there are no other known inscriptions from the same tomb). It is the case that many of the people commemorated in these inscriptions have Greek names, which sometimes have Greek morphology. There are also three instances of a Latin name with a Greek first declension nominative (Saluiane 89, Manteiane 196, Galitte 288; see Adams 2003: 490), and there is at least one instance of the hybrid Greek/Latin first declension genitive -aes attached to a Roman name, in Aureliaes (74).⁵ Greek influence, while by no means certain, seems at least as likely as an old-fashioned spelling.

Chapter 3 <ei> and <e> for /iː/

Around the middle of the third century BC, the diphthong /ɛi/ underwent monophthongisation to close mid /eː/; about a century later, this /eː/ was raised further to /iː/, thus falling together with inherited /iː/ (see p. 40). We will see that neither <ei> nor <e> for /iː/ – and for /i/ which results from shortening of /iː/ – are very well attested in the corpora. Nonetheless, even after the first century BC/Augustan period a few plausible examples of each do pop up, in the case of <ei> in one of the Claudius Tiberianus letters, which in general often seem to preserve old-fashioned spelling, and, in the case of <e>, at Vindolanda.

<ei> for /iː/

The effect that this monophthongisation had on spelling was a subject of considerable discussion in the second and first century BC and beyond. The advantage of <ei> was that it provided a spelling that allowed /iː/ and /i/ to be distinguished, but Roman writers disagreed on the exact contexts in which <ei> should be used, with Lucilius, Accius and Varro all apparently taking differing positions (Somerville 2007; Nikitina 2015: 53–8; Chahoud 2019: 50–3, 57–9, 67–9).

The use of <ei> for /iː/ was still extant in literary contexts towards the end of the first century BC and perhaps later. The Gallus papyrus (Anderson et al. 1979), probably from c. 50–20 BC, with the reign of Augustus particularly likely, contains the spellings spolieis for spoliīs, deiuitiora for dīuitiōra, tueis for tuīs and deicere for dīcere, all with <ei> for *ei̯ beside mihi (whose final syllable scans heavy) and tibi (with light final syllable) < *-ei̯;¹ <ei> for /iː/ is attested in manuscripts of authors as late as Aulus Gellius (13.4.1, writing in the second century AD), along with corruptions which suggest scribes dealing with the unfamiliar spelling (Gibson 2011: 53–4). According to Nikitina (2015: 58–70), legal texts and ‘official’ inscriptions of the first century BC show a tendency to prefer <ei> for /iː/, especially from original /ɛi/, whereas from the Augustan period there is a clear move to using the <i> spelling, with very occasional instances of <ei>.

The Roman writers on language send mixed messages about the status of <ei>. In the late first century AD, Quintilian says:

diutius durauit, ut e et i iungendis eadem ratione, qua Graeci, ei uterentur: ea casibus numerisque discreta est, ut Lucilius praecipit … quod quidem cum superuacuum est, quia i tam longae quam breuis naturam habet, tum incommodum aliquando; nam in iis, quae proximam ab ultima litteram e habebunt et i longa terminabuntur, illam rationem sequentes utemur e gemina, qualia sunt haec “aurei” “argentei” et his similia.

The habit of joining e and i together lasted rather longer, on the same reasoning as the Greeks used ei: and this usage is decided by case and number, as Lucilius teaches … This is entirely superfluous, because i has the same quality, whether long or short, and sometimes it is actively inconvenient; because in words which end in an e followed by long ī (like aureī and argenteī) we would have to write two es, if we followed this rule [i.e. aureei, argenteei].

(Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 1.7.15–16)

It is not clear from this passage whether or not there are contemporaries of Quintilian who still use <ei>; although he only mentions Lucilius, the fact that Quintilian feels the need to argue against it may suggest that in fact there are. The same is true of Velius Longus’ discussion:

hic quaeritur etiam an per ‘e’ et ‘i’ quaedam debeant scribi secundum consuetudinem graecam. nonnulli enim ea quae producerentur sic scripserunt, alii contenti fuerunt huic productioni ‘i’ longam aut notam dedisse. alii uero, quorum est item Lucilius, uarie scriptitauerunt, siquidem in iis quae producerentur alia per ‘i’ longam, alia per ‘e’ et ‘i’ notauerunt … hoc mihi uidetur superuacaneae obseruationis.

Now I turn to the question whether certain words should be written with ei as in Greek. For some have written long instances of i in this way, while others have been content to use an i-longa for this long vowel or to have given it a mark. Still others, among whom is Lucilius, have written it in various ways, since they have written long i sometimes with i-longa and sometimes with ei … This seems to me to be unnecessary pedantry.

(Velius Longus, De orthographia 5.2 = GL 7.55.27–56.15)

However, Charisius (Barwick 1964: 164.21–29) attributes to Pliny (the Elder) a rule for explaining when third declension accusative plurals are in -eis, suggesting that at least some writers in the first century AD used <ei>, at least in this context, and in the late second or early third century AD, Terentianus Maurus also implies that <ei> is still in use, at least in particular lexemes and endings:

sic erit nobis et ista rarior dipthongos ‘ei’, ‘e’ uidemus quando fixam principali in nomine: ‘eitur in siluam’ necesse est ‘e’ et ‘i’ conectere, principali namque uerbo nascitur, quod est ‘eo’. sic ‘oueis’ plures et ‘omneis’ scribimus pluraliter: non enim nunc addis ‘e’, sed permanet sicut fuit lector et non singularem nominatiuum sciet, uel sequentem, qui prioris saepe similis editur.

For us that diphthong <ei> is rarer, when we see <e> fixed in the original word: in ‘eitur in siluam’ it is necessary to join <e> and <i>, because <e> occurs in the base word, which is ‘eo’. In the same way, we often write ‘oueis’ and ‘omneis’ in the [accusative] plural: here we are not adding an <e>, rather it is retained from the nominative plural so that the reader knows it is not the nominative singular or the case which follows it [i.e. the genitive], which is often identical.

Terentianus Maurus, De litteris 459–466 = GL 6.339.459–466

Marius Victorinus (Ars grammatica 4.4 = GL 6.8.13–14) attributes the <ei> spelling to the antiqui, and at 4.59 (GL 6.17.21–18.10) notes that the priores used it to represent the nominative plural of second declension nouns as opposed to the genitive singular. He follows this with the observation that the use of <ei> is a topic which has exercised all writers on orthography, although without making it clear whether any modern writers use it (he himself appears to be opposed).

Diomedes, however, in the late fourth century, is much more explicit that he considers this spelling out of use:

ex his diphthongis ei, cum apud ueteres frequentaretur, usu posteritatis explosa est.

Of these diphthongs, ei, while it was used frequently by the ancients, has been rejected in subsequent usage.

(Diomedes, Ars grammatica, GL 1.427.14–15)

Any kind of conclusive, or even representative, survey of the use of <ei> in the inscriptional context is made extremely difficult by the problems involved in searching on the online databases. The string ‘ei’ in standard spelling represents several sequences of phonemes, while ‘i’ represents (at least) /j/, /i/ and /iː/, all highly frequent phonemes. It is thus extremely difficult to get results which are restricted to the use of <ei> which is desired, and completely impossible to compare it with instances of <i> for /iː/ (and even more impossible, so to speak, to isolate cases of /iː/ < /ɛi/). I carried out a search for the sequence ‘{e}i’ on a plaintext copy of all the inscriptions in the EDCS downloaded on 18/06/2019. After removing cases of <ei> which did not represent /iː/ or /i/, I identified a maximum of 15 dated to the first four centuries AD.² However, this is highly likely to undercount the total instances, partly because of the usual problems with this database, partly because of my own decisions of what to include.³ Nonetheless, this does not suggest that <ei> was in common usage in this period (as of 06/04/2021, the database finds 150,594 inscriptions dated from the first to fourth century AD).

In general, the corpora agree with this picture, since <ei> for /iː/ is entirely absent from the Vindonissa, Vindolanda and London tablets, the TPSulp. and TH² tablets, the Bu Njem ostraca, the Dura Europos papyri, and the graffiti from the Paedagogium.⁴ There are a couple of examples where <ei> is used for the sequence /i.iː/: one in the Caecilius Jucundus tablets ([ma]ncipeis, CIL 4.3340.74, for mancipiīs), in the scribal portion of a tablet which is undated but presumably belongs to the 50s or 60s AD; and one in the Isola Sacra inscriptions (macereis, IS 1, for māceriīs).

There are two possibilities to explain these spellings. The first is that the sequence /i.iː/ has contracted to give /iː/ (Adams 2013: 110). In this scenario, <ei> is being used to represent the remaining /iː/. The second possibility is that the speaker has undergone raising of /ɛ/ to /i/ before another vowel in words like aureus ‘golden’ > /aurius/ (Adams 2013: 102–4). If this were the case, <ei> could be a hypercorrect spelling for /i.iː/. An example of such hypercorrection can be found in Terenteae for Terentiae in another Isola Sacra inscription (IS 27). There is no way to distinguish between these possibilities: neither inscription shows any other old-fashioned or substandard features (and nor do any of the other inscriptions from the same tomb, in the case of IS 1).

Otherwise, only the curse tablets and letters provide a certain amount of evidence for the continuing use of <ei> either to represent /iː/, [ĩː],⁵ or etymological /iː/ which became /i/ by iambic shortening (on which, see p. 42), in words like ubi ‘when’ < ubī < ubei.⁶

In the curse tablets <ei> is found, on the whole, in fairly early texts: in Kropp 10.1.1, from the later second century BC, and 1.4.4/3, 1.4.4/8, 1.4.4/9, 1.4.4/10, 1.4.4/11, 1.4.4/12, 2.1.1/1, 2.2.3/1, all from the first century BC, <ei> is used frequently (but not necessarily consistently), including for iambically shortened /i/ in tibei (1.4.4/3). There are a handful of other examples, although some are in undated tablets (see Table 1).⁷ 1.4.4/1, dated to the first two centuries AD, has the spelling suom twice, and otherwise is entirely standard (including nisi, whose final vowel would have been /iː/ prior to iambic shortening). 1.5.3/2 has largely standard spelling, though it is possible that the writer had the /eː/ and /i/ merger, given the spellings Caled[um, Cale[dum] for Calidum and niq[uis] for nēquis and possible ni[ue for nēue if correctly restored. However, the author could also be using the variant nī for nē in the latter two. In 3.6/1, sanguinei reflects the (originally i-stem) ablative *-īd; <i> is used for the iambically shortened final vowel of tibi and for /iː/ in ni ‘if not’. Substandard spellings are found in domna for domina and hyper-correct palleum for pallium. In the case of the very late Deidio (4.3.2/1), the use of <ei> may have been preserved in the family name: <i> is used for /iː/ in oculique. The writer shows substand-ard spelling in bolauerunt for uolāuē̆runt and pedis for pedēs.

Table 1 <ei> in the curse tablets, undated and first to fourth (or fifth) century AD

	Tablet	Date	Place
Apeiliae	Kropp 1.4.3/1	No date	Ostia
eimferis	Kropp 1.4.4/1	First–second century AD	Rome
seiue seiue seiue	Kropp 1.5.3/1		Cumae
infereis	Kropp 1.5.3/2	First century AD	Cumae
sanguinei	Kropp 3.6/1	First or early second century AD	Caerleon
Deidio	Kropp 4.3.2/1	Fourth or fifth century AD	Gallia Aquitania

Likewise, in the letters most examples of <ei> are found in texts dated to the first century BC or the Augustan period. In the case of CEL 3, from the second half of the first century BC, the writer seems not to have learnt the rule of when to use <ei> well, deploying it for short /i/ in sateis for satis and defendateis for dēfendātis alongside /iː/ in s]ẹi for sī and conserueis (twice) for conseruīs. If the author Phileros is also the writer he may not have been a native speaker of Latin. CEL 12, dated to 18 BC, has <ei> in eidus for īdūs. CEL 10, from the Augustan period, includes <ei> for iambically shortened /i/ in tibei beside <i> in mihi, and, mistakenly, in the second person singular future perfect uocāreis for uocaris by confusion with the perfect subjunctive uocārīs. Alongside these, the genuine cases of /iː/ (originally < /ɛi/) in quī and sī are spelt with <i>. This letter is characterised by both conservative spelling features alongside substandard orthography (on which, see pp. 10–11). CEL 13, from the early first century AD, includes tibei (beside tibi); other instances of etymological /ɛi/ are spelt with <i>in ịḷḷịṣ and ṣc̣ṛịp̣si.

Probably the latest example of <ei> in the corpora is reṣc̣ṛeibae (P. Mich. VIII 469.11/CEL 144) for rescrībe in the Claudius Tiberianus letters, in which most other instances of /iː/ are spelt <i>, including original /ɛi/ in uidit, [a]ttuli, tibi (with iambic shortening). This letter also includes three instances of the dative singular of illa written illei, as well as ille[i]. This could represent Classical illī but scholars have instead suggested that it be understood as an innovative feminine dative /illɛːiː/ which lies behind Romance forms such as Italian lei ‘she’ (Cugusi, in the commentary in CEL; Adams 1977: 45–7; 2013: 459–64).⁸ Adams makes the point that in the other letters of the Claudius Tiberianus archive the masculine dative is always spelt illi, and that illei in this letter is therefore more likely to be a specifically feminine form. This is not a strong argument, however, since none of the other Tiberianus letters is written by the same hand. None of the other scribes uses <ei> at all, while that of 469/144 also uses it in reṣc̣ṛeibae. So the fact that in the other letters the masculine dative is illi tells us nothing about the spelling illei in 469/144.

Similar forms appear in the letters of Rustius Barbarus from the first century AD: a feminine dative illei (CEL 75), and a genitive illeius (CEL 77), the gender of whose referent cannot be determined. Nowhere else in these ostraca written by the same hand is there any example of /iː/ being spelt with <ei> (and there are very many examples of /iː/); this includes one instance of illi (in the same letter 77, probably masculine). Now, it is conceivable that this has something to do with the unique genitive and dative endings of pronouns: perhaps <ei> was preserved as a spelling in the educational tradition to mark out these curious endings; this would be particularly relevant in the genitive where original illīus underwent shortening to illius. The spelling with <ei> could then preserve a memory of the original length. However, in this case, given the existence of other evidence for similar feminine genitive and dative forms in Latin put forward by Adams, and the absence of other instances of <ei> for /iː/ in Rustius Barbarus, there is a strong possibility that illei and illeius represent special feminine forms rather than illī and illīus. Since these forms are therefore present in a corpus of similarly early date, it cannot be ruled out that illei in the Claudius Tiberianus letter is also a form of this type, rather than having <ei> for /iː/.

<e> for /iː/

In addition to the continuing use of <ei> for /iː/, <e> too apparently remained an infrequent possibility to represent /iː/. Quintilian provides the relevant examples leber for līber and Dioue Victore for Iouī Victorī in his list of old spellings at Institutio oratoria 1.4.17, implying that they are no longer in use, and I have not found any other reference in the writers on language. There are significant difficulties in finding examples of <e> for /iː/ in the epigraphic record as a whole; I have found 114 instances on LLDB in the first four centuries AD.⁹ This number is almost certainly too high since some cases will be things like a mistaken use of the ablative -e in place of dative -ī, and many examples are for original /iː/, not from /ɛi/: these may be hypercorrect of course, but may also suggest that a different explanation should be sought. Nonetheless, these results imply that the <e> spelling did survive to some extent, although the spellings with <e> must represent a tiny proportion of all instances of <i> for /iː/.

Unsurprisingly, then, in the corpora there are only a very small number of examples of <e> for /iː/, of which a couple are very plausible. One is deuom (CEL 10) for dīuom ‘of gods’ in Suneros’ letter from the Augustan period characterised by conservative as well as substandard spelling (see pp. 10–11). Another is amẹcos (Tab. Vindol. 650) for amīcōs ‘friends’ in a letter at Vindolanda authored by one Ascanius who was apparently a comes Augusti, and hence of relatively high rank. The text is all in a single hand, but we cannot tell if it was that of Ascanius himself or a scribe. The letter was sent to Vindolanda and therefore does not necessarily reflect the same scribal tradition. The spelling is all otherwise standard, as far as we can tell. Adams suggests (2003: 535) that the maintenance of pronunciation of /eː/ < /ɛi/ ‘was seen as a regionalism and belonged down the social scale’, but this does not fit well with the social context of the Vindolanda letter (although of course it could be a feature of the scribe’s Latin rather than Ascanius’).¹⁰ However, Festus (Paul. Fest. 14.13) notes amecus as an old spelling,¹¹ so it may be better to see the spelling as old-fashioned.

In the curse tablets, a first century BC instance of <e> for /iː/ may be nesu (Kropp 1.4.2/2), if this stands for nīsum ‘pressure, act of straining’, although this text has a number of errors of writing (see p. 132 fn. 2).¹² Otherwise we find only 4 instances of <e>, all from Britain: deuo for dīuō (Kropp 3.15/1, 3.19/3) ‘god’, demediam (3.15/1) for dīmidiam ‘half’, and requeratat (3.7/1) for requīrat ‘may he seek’. Adams (2007: 602) suggests that deuo could reflect a British pronunciation of deo ‘god’, or be a code-switch into British Celtic, for which dēuos would have been the word for ‘god’;¹³ at any rate, it is not a good example of <e> for old-fashioned /iː/. We could have a hypercorrect old-fashioned spelling with <e> for /iː/ < *ī in demediam, but perhaps instead one should think of confusion between the prepositions dī- and dē-. Nor is requeratat a plausible example, since the writer of the text has made a large number of mistakes in the writing of the text (as distinct from substandard spellings), such as memina for fēmina, capolare for capitulāre, pulla for puella, uulleris for uolueris, llu for illum, Neptus for Neptūnus etc.

In the tablets of the Sulpicii, C. Novius Eunus writes dede (TPSulp. 51.2.13) for dedī‘I gave’. This could well be an old-fashioned spelling, since Eunus uses other old-fashioned spellings (see pp. 187, 202–4, and 262).¹⁴ But we could also imagine repetition of the first syllable by accident (and Eunus is prone to mechanical errors in his writing, as shown by ets, 51.2.9, for est, Cessasare, 52.2.1, for Caesare, and stertertios, 68.2.5, for sestertiōs).

In the Isola Sacra inscriptions, there is one example of coniuge (IS 249, second–third century AD) in place of dative coniugī ‘for his wife’. There are no other substandard features in this short text, but perhaps this is a slip into the ablative (or even the accusative with omission of final <m>) rather than an old-fashioned spelling. The dative ending is spelt with <i> in merenti ‘deserving’.

A much more complicated situation arises where <e> represents short /i/ from long /iː/ by iambic shortening (see p. 42) or other types of shortening. This could be an old-fashioned spelling, reflecting the mid-point of the development /ɛi/ > /eː/ > /iː/. But from the first century AD onwards, at least some speakers in certain contexts use <e> for /i/, presumably due to a lowering of /i/ to [e] and the raising of (original) /ɛː/ to /eː/; with the loss of vowel length distinctions these phonemes would end up falling together as /e/ in the precursor of most Romance varieties (see p. 40). In cases where original /ɛi/ > /eː/ > /iː/ underwent iambic or other types of shortening, it is then difficult to tell whether <e> for <i> is old-fashioned or substandard, and each example needs careful investigation.

Adams (2013: 51–5) entertains the possibility that several <e> spellings in the Rustius Barbarus and Claudius Tiberianus letters may be old-fashioned, and notes the following observation by Quintilian:

“sibe” et “quase” scriptum in multorum libris est, sed, an hoc uoluerint auctores, nescio: T. Liuium ita his usum ex Pediano comperi, qui et ipse eum sequebatur. haec nos i littera finimus.

Sibe and quase are written in the books of many authors, but I do not know whether this is what the authors intended: I have learnt from Pedianus – who followed him in doing this – that Livy used these spellings. We write these words with a final i.

(Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 1.7.24)

Quintilian clearly thought this spelling was old-fashioned (in addition to what he says in this extract, it forms part of a list of archaic spellings), and Adams (2013: 54) follows him, saying that ‘[i]t is inconceivable that Livy and other literary figures used such spellings as a reflection of a proto-Romance vowel merger that was taking place in speech. They must have been using orthography with an old-fashioned flavour to it’.¹⁵ According to Adams, use of <e> is retained from the time when sibi was still /sibeː/.

However, I have my doubts about this. Quintilian himself is aware, as shown by his comment ‘sed, an hoc voluerint auctores, nescio’, that it was possible for an author’s spelling to become corrupted by subsequent copyists (as noted by De Martino 1994: 743). It is striking that the examples given by Quintilian are of <e> in absolute word-final position. Adams (2013: 51–62, 67) has identified /i/ in closed word-final syllables as showing evidence of lowering to [e] in the first and second centuries AD. The apparent frequency of <e> in words like tibe and nese might instead be taken as showing that this lowering also affected /i/ in absolute word-final position. If lowering of /i/ to [e] had already happened, at least in words like sibi and quasi, by the first century AD, it is not impossible that it could have entered the manuscript tradition of earlier literary authors by the time of Quintilian.

In either case, it is probably not coincidental that the words in question all involve final /i/ resulting from iambic shortening. If Adams is right that this is an archaism, the old-fashioned spelling could have been retained in these words because iambic shortening applied to forms like /sibeː/ and produced a variant /sibe/; after /sibeː/ became /sibiː/ (and then /sibi/) the standard spelling sibi followed, but sibe remained as an alternative spelling.¹⁶ This would explain, for example, why <e> is only found to write synchronic short /i/ in tibe in the Rustius Barbarus letters, despite a large number of instances of synchronic /iː/ < /ɛi/, which is what we might expect an old-fashioned use of <e> to represent. If, on the other hand, <e> in these words is due to lowering of /i/ in final syllables, it is also not surprising that the examples are in originally iambic words: iambic shortening of /iː/ is one of the very few sources of absolute word-final short /i/ in Latin.

The explanation by lowering seems particularly likely in the case of the Rustius Barbarus letters. As Adams (2013: 55) notes, ‘these letters are very badly spelt, with no sign of hypercorrection or other old spellings, and there is an outside chance that tibe here is a phonetic spelling’. We find 4 examples of the spelling tibe (CEL 73, 74, 76, 77) for tibi beside 8 of tibi (these are the only examples of absolute word-final short /i/ in the letters). This compares with 4 (certain) examples of <e> for /i/ in final closed syllables of a polysyllabic word (scribes for scrībis ‘you write’, CEL 74, scribes, mittes for mittis ‘you send’ 75, scribes 76),¹⁷ and 6 examples with <i> (dixit, enim 73, talis, leuis 74, possim 75, traduxit 77). The rate at which <e> is written for /i/ in these contexts is therefore almost identical,¹⁸ so it makes sense that the same explanation, lowering of /i/ to [e] in final syllables, should apply to both. Consequently, it seems more probable that the tibe spellings are substandard rather than old-fashioned.

The same explanation could pertain in most of the other examples of <e> for /i/ by iambic shortening in the corpora, and cannot be ruled out in any of the examples I now discuss, from the tablets of the Sulpicii, the Isola Sacra inscriptions and the Vindolanda tablets.

In the tablets of the Sulpicii we find ube for ubi < ubei ‘when’ in the chirographum of Diognetus, slave of C. Novius Cypaerus (TPSulp. 45.3.3, AD 37). Although there are no other examples of <e> for /i/ in final syllables, Diognetus also spells leguminum ‘of pulses’ as legumenum, suggesting that /i/ may have been lowered to [e] more generally in his idiolect (although short /i/ is otherwise spelt correctly several times, including in a final syllable in two instances of accepit).¹⁹ There are two examples of sibe in the Isola Sacra inscriptions, and these too are likely to be due to lowering. IS 27 contains several other substandard spellings, including Terenteae for Terentiae, filis for filiīs, qit for quid, aeo for eō. IS 337 has mea for meam and nominae for nōmine. These may reflect carelessness on the part of the engraver rather than lack of education, since mea comes at the end of a line (and in space created by erasure of a previous word or words), while nominae follows poenae and looks like the result of eyeskip. But the same carelessness could presumably have allowed <e> to be used, reflecting his pronunciation, instead of <i> in his copy of the text.

In the Vindolanda tablets ụbe (Tab. Vindol. 642) for ubi is the only instance of <e> for short word-final /i/.²⁰ The spelling in this tablet seems otherwise standard, and note in particular an instance of ṭibi. Adams (1995: 91; 2003: 533–5) has emphasised the general lack of confusion between /i/ and /eː/ in the Vindolanda tablets. But given that this appears to be the only text written in this hand, it was probably not written by a Vindolanda scribe,²¹ and that it has no other examples of /i/ in a word-final syllable, we cannot be absolutely sure that <e> is not due to lowering rather than being old-fashioned.

The final case of <e> for short final /i/ is nese (P. Mich. VIII 468/CEL 142, and CEL 143) for nisi in the Claudius Tiberianus archive. Could this be due to lowering? In 468/142, there are two other instances of <e> for <i>, both in a final syllable: uolueret for uoluerit ‘(s)he would have wanted’ and aiutaueret for adiūtāuerit ‘(s)he would have helped’ (beside 3 cases of <i>: nihil, [ni]hil, and misit). But apart from nese there are 10 examples of short /i/ spelt <i> in an open final syllable: tibi (twice), [ti]bi, ṭibi, mihi (4 times), [mih]i, sibi. In CEL 143, written by the same scribe, apart from nese there are no other instances of <e> for /i/, and 5 of short /i/ in an open final syllable: tibi (twice), mihi (twice), miḥi. On the one hand, therefore, the writer of these texts did seem to have lowering in word-final syllables followed by a consonant. On the other, nese is the only example of possible lowering of /i/ in absolute word-final position, compared to 15 examples spelt with <i>. I am not certain whether use of <e> is due to lowering or is old-fashioned.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that the letters include some further instances of <e> being used for /i/ which are not due to iambic shortening but could also reflect old-fashioned spellings. The first vowel of sene (468/142) for sine was originally /i/, but the writer may have thought of sine as being connected with sī ‘if’. A hypercorrect spelling seine (CIL 1².583), presumably resting on this false etymology, is attested in the second century BC. The forms nese, nesi in 468/142, and nese in 143 also have <e> for /i/ in their first syllable. This could be an old-fashioned spelling accurately reflecting original /ɛ/ here, since nisi probably came from *ne sei̯ (Fries 2019: 94–7). The spelling nesei is attested in the two copies of the Lex luci Spoletina (CIL 1².366 and 1².2872, probably from the mid-second century BC), and nesi is mentioned by Festus (Fest. 164.1).²² Alternatively, it could be a hypercorrection, with analysis of the ni- in nisi as being derived from the alternative negative nī < /neː/ < /nɛi/.

However, given that the writer (or author, dictating) of the text does have lowering of /i/ to [e], at least in final syllables followed by a consonant (i.e. in a position of minimal stress: Adams 2013: 60), it is still possible that it is lowering that is to blame for the spelling with <e> in sine, nese, nesi, especially because these are function words, which are particularly likely not to receive phrasal stress (see p. 42), and hence might have undergone the same lowering seen in the final syllable despite not being in the final syllable of the word.

There is not enough evidence to draw completely certain conclusions. However, I do not think that we can be sure that the various types of <e> for /i/ used by the writer of P. Mich. VIII 468/CEL 142 and CEL 143 are to be attributed to old-fashioned spelling (which would be of several different types). I would be inclined to explain all instances as due to lowering of /i/ to [e] in relatively unstressed position (in function words and in final syllables).

Chapter 4 <o> for /u/

There are a number of processes which led to the possibility of using <o> as an old-fashioned spelling to represent /u/. I will begin by discussing examples which may be attributed to the following sound changes:

1. (1) /ɔ/ in final syllables was raised to /u/ before most consonants and consonant clusters in the course of the third century BC, e.g. Old Latin filios > filius ‘son’;

2. (2) /ɔ/ was raised to /u/ in a closed non-initial syllable during the second century BC, e.g. *eontis > euntis ‘going (gen. sg.)’;

3. (3) /ɔ/ > /u/ before /l/ followed by any vowel other than /i/ and /eː/ in non-initial syllables (Sen 2015: 15–28), e.g. *famelos > *famolos > famulus ‘servant’ (cf. familia ‘household’).

For various reasons, including the relatively late confusion of /ɔː/ and /u/ discussed directly below, and the difficulty of removing false positives from searches in the database, trying to establish the rate at which old-fashioned <o> for /u/ appears in the epigraphic spellings of the first four centuries AD is not practical. In his list of changes wrought by time, all of which seem to be seen as deep archaisms, Quintilian includes some examples of type (1):

quid o atque u permutata inuicem? ut “Hecoba” et “nutrix Culchidis” et “Pulixena” scriberentur, ac, ne in Graecis id tantum notetur, “dederont” et “probaueront”.

What about o and u taking each other’s place? So that we find written Hecoba for Hecuba and nutrix Culchidis for Colchidis, and Pulixena for Polyxena, and, so as not to only give examples from Greek words, dederont for dederunt and probaueront for probauerunt.

(Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 1.4.16)

Apart from after /u/, /w/ and /k^w/, where the raising of /ɔ/ was retarded until the first century BC, which is discussed below (Chapter 8), there are few cases of <o> for <u> arising from these contexts in the corpora. Even where we do find <o>, a confounding factor in identifying old-fashioned spelling of /u/ of these types is the lowering of /u/ to [o] which eventually led in most Romance varieties to the merger of /u/ and /ɔː/. According to Adams (2013: 63–70), this can be dated to between the third and fifth centuries AD, and did not take place at all in Africa.¹ This requires him to identify a number of forms which show <o> for /u/ as containing old-fashioned spelling (or having other explanations) in the Claudius Tiberianus letters (Adams 1977: 9–11, 52–3; 2013: 63–4).

He sees posso (P. Mich. VIII 469/CEL 144) not as a rendering of possum, but a morphological regularisation with the normal first singular present ending which shows up elsewhere; this is quite plausible. Also plausible, given the spelling with final <n>, is the influence of the preverb con- on the preposition cum, which is spelt con in 468/142 (8 times) and 471/146 (twice), but old-fashioned spelling could also be a factor.

The origin of the adverb minus ‘less’, is extremely uncertain. It could go back to *min-u-s, since /u/ is also found in the stem of the related verb minuō ‘I lessen’; this may also be the origin of the neuter of the comparative minor ‘smaller, lesser’ (Leumann 1977: 543; Sihler 1995: 360). If this is correct, the <o> in the final of quominos (470/145) would not be old-fashioned. But alternative explanations would see adverbial minus and the neuter of the comparative both coming from *minos > minus (although this would have to be somehow secondary, since the usual comparative suffix is *-i̯os-; Meiser 1998: 154; Weiss 2020: 384). If minus does come from *minus rather than *minos, quominos could be a false archaism, by influence from comparative minus, since the neuter of comparative adjectives normally did come from *-i̯os-.

However, sopera (471/146) for supra certainly never had *o in the first syllable. Adams (1977: 10–11) originally saw <o> here as due to the merger of /u/ and /ɔː/, but subsequently (Adams 2013: 64) suggests that the scribe may have seen <o> as also being old-fashioned, bolstered by the possibility that the lack of syncope is also an old-fashioned feature (supera is found in Livius Andronicus, in Cicero’s Aratea and in Lucretius; Adams loc. cit. and OLD s.v. supra).² It is of course not impossible that the scribe was hypercorrect here, but in the absence of other evidence for this false etymology this explanation is not particularly appealing.

In my view, it is more likely that sopera, and perhaps quominos, suggests that either the author, Claudius Terentianus, or the scribe, was an early adopter of lowered [o] for /u/ (and note that both cases of <o> are in paradigmatically isolated formations which may have made it difficult for the scribe to identify which vowel was involved).³ It is also possible that one or both were not native speakers of Latin, which may also have led to problems in identifying the vowel for the scribe.

There are quite a number of cases of <o> for /u/ in the curse tablets (see Table 2), but I am doubtful of how many really reflect archaisms. con (Kropp 1.4.2/2), con (twice), co (twice, 11.1.1/37) for cum can be explained in the same way as in the Tiberianus letters, while second declension nominative singular masculine forms in -o(s) may be due to influence from other languages: Celtic in the case of Secundo, Secuno, Ssecundo (8.1/1, Pannonia, first half of the second century AD), if it really represents Secundus.⁴ This tablet also has uolontas for uoluntās, but it uses <u> for /o/ in lucuiat (apparently for loquiat or loquiant, an active equivalent of loquātur or loquantur), as well as a number of spellings which cannot be explained as due to normal features of spoken Latin (<i> for /ɛ/ in ageri for agere and limbna for lingua), so we cannot be sure uolontas does not arise from the writer’s problems with spelling or abnormal phonology.

Table 2 <o> for /u/ in the curse tablets

	Text	Date	Place
con	Kropp 1.4.2/2	100–50 BC	Nomentum, Latium
capilo	Kropp 1.4.2/3	100–50 BC	Nomentum, Latium
nascitor nascitor	Kropp 1.4.4/5	Second–third century AD	Rome
corpos	Kropp 1.4.4/13	Fourth–fifth century AD	Rome?
questo	Kropp 2.1.3/2	First century AD	Hispania Tarraconensis
consilio	Kropp 2.2.2/1	50–1 BC	Hispania Baetica
morbo	Kropp 2.2.2/1	50–1 BC	Hispania Baetica
dioso	Kropp 2.2.3/1	First century BC	Hispania Baetica
paretator	Kropp 3.3/1	Fourth century AD	Brandon
capolare	Kropp 3.7/1	No date	Caistor St. Edmund
eorom	Kropp 4.3.1/1	Mid-second century AD	Gallia Aquitania
grano	Kropp 4.4.1/1	First century AD	Gallia Narbonensis
nullom	Kropp 5.1.2/1	Mid-second century AD	Germania Superior
conscios	Kropp 5.1.7/1	First–third century AD	Germania Superior
Secundo	Kropp 8.1/1	First half of the second century AD	Pannonia Superior
Secuno	Kropp 8.1/1	First half of the second century AD	Pannonia Superior
Ssecundo	Kropp 8.1/1	First half of the second century AD	Pannonia Superior
uolontas	Kropp 8.1/1	First half of the second century AD	Pannonia Superior
Paconios	Kropp 10.1/1	Second half of the second century BC	Delos
Paconios	Kropp 10.1/1	Second half of the second century BC	Delos
[G]erillano	Kropp 10.1/1	Second half of the second century BC	Delos
Varaios	Kropp 10.1/1	Second half of the second century BC	Delos
illoro	Kropp 11.1.1/5	Second–third century AD	Carthage
iloro	Kropp 11.1.1/5	Second–third century AD	Carthage
Cusconio	Kropp 11.1.1/6	Second–third century AD or first century AD	Carthage, Africa
cursoro[m](?)	Kropp 11.1.1/20	Third century AD	Carthage, Africa
manos	Kropp 11.1.1/25	Middle of the fourth century AD	Carthage, Africa
eo(?)]rom	Kropp 11.1.1/32	Second–third century AD (?)	Carthage, Africa
co	Kropp 11.1.1/37	Middle of the third century AD	Carthage, Africa
co	Kropp 11.1.1/37	Middle of the third century AD	Carthage, Africa
con	Kropp 11.1.1/37	Middle of the third century AD	Carthage, Africa
con	Kropp 11.1.1/37	Middle of the third century AD	Carthage, Africa
deo	Kropp 11.2.1/6	Third century AD	Africa
meo	Kropp 11.2.1/6	Third century AD	Africa
Incleto	Kropp 11.2.1/31	Third century AD	Africa

The fairly late date of cor]pos (1.4.4/13) for corpus and paretator (3.3/1) for parentātur allow them to be attributed to lowering of /u/; both also contain other substandard spellings. Undated capolare and capeolare (3.7/1) for capitulāre could also be due to lowering (in an inscription whose spelling is anyway highly deviant). And nascitor for nascitur (twice, 1.4.4/5), dated to the second or third centuries AD, could also be a precocious example of this; so could conscios (5.1.7/1) for conscius if it belongs towards the end of its date range. Both contain other substandard spellings. Having accepted that [o] for /u/ might be attested in the Claudius Tiberianus letters, I would suggest that this may also be a possibility for eorom (4.3.1/1) for eōrum, and nullom (5.1.2/1) for nūllum, also from the second century AD. The preponderance of cases in the final syllable might point to lowering occurring there first, in parallel to the situation of /i/ to [e].

Given their datings to the first century BC and first century AD, capilo (1.4.2.3) for capillum, questo (2.1.3/2) for quaestum, cos[i]lio, morbo (2.2.2/1) for cōnsilium, morbus, dioso (2.2.3/1) for deorsum, granom (4.4.1/1) for grānum could be old-fashioned spellings. Some of these texts also contain substandard spellings. None of them is in a context in which a mistake of ablative for nominative or accusative is very easy to envisage.

If Adams is right that the lowering of /u/ to /o/ did not take place in Africa (but see footnotes 1 and 10), old-fashioned spelling becomes a plausible explanation for a few instances there of <o> for /u/ from the second to third centuries AD. Incleto for Inclitum (11.2.1/31) I attribute to influence from the Greek second declension ending -ον, since the text has other examples of interference from Greek spelling.⁵ 11.1.1/32 has eo(?)]rom for eōrum, but in addition to substandard spellings has a number of mechanical errors. So does 11.2.1/6, and there is also the possibility that p]er deo meo reflects an error in what case goes with per rather than an old-fashioned spelling of deum meum. The other example of a noun following per in this text is Bonosa for Bonōsam, so the author may have thought that per took the ablative. But we do find illoro, iloro for illōrum (11.1.1/5), Cusconio for Cuscōnium (11.1.1/6), cursoro[m] for cursōrum (11.1.1/20). There is no reason to imagine that Cusconio is an ablative since it forms part of a list of four names in the accusative. Many of these texts also contain substandard spellings.⁶

Overall, it is striking how many cases of <o> for /u/ there are in the curse tablets. I am reluctant to see them all as old-fashioned features, especially since few of the texts show any other such spellings; in practically all of the texts there are several other endings in -us or -um, and there seems no reason why a single word should be marked out in this way, especially in cases like the three names in sequence Cosconio Ianuarium et Rufum (11.1.1/6). I have more sympathy than Adams does with the idea that we may be seeing early signs of the lowering of /u/ to [o] that is better evidenced in much later texts; one could even suppose that in African Latin /u/ did lower to [o] in final syllables as elsewhere, but since /ɔː/ did not merge with /u/, [o] simply remained an allophone of /u/. One should also note that the intrinsic difficulties in the writing and reading of (often very damaged) curse tablets do make them more unreliable than other types of epigraphic evidence (Kropp 2008a: 8).⁷ On the other hand, all the examples of <o> for /u/ from the curse tablets do come from original /ɔ/, unlike with sopera and perhaps quominus in the Claudius Tiberianus letters, and a few of them are very early compared to the emergence of good evidence for the merger of /ɔː/ and /u/. So I do not rule out the possibility that some of these <o> spellings are old-fashioned.

There is one Augustan example of <o> for /u/ < /ɔ/ in the letters, in the form of Dìdom (CEL 8, 24–21 BC), which appears to represent the name Didium. It seems strange that an old-fashioned spelling should be used here but not in the name [I]ucundum with which it is conjoined (or indeed in the other accusative singular second declension form in this letter, decrìminatum), but no other explanation arises.⁸ Another damaged letter (CEL 166, around AD 150) has epistolám, which is reasonably likely to be an old-fashioned spelling (assuming this is not an early example of lowering of /u/).

There are two possible examples in the Bu Njem ostraca, but kamellarios (O. BuNjem 76) is very uncertain: it could be a nominative singular for accusative, which is common in the ostraca (Adams 1994: 96–102), but could also be an accusative plural (this is how Adams understands it). The other is ]isṭolạ[ (114), which may reflect epistola for epistula; but apart from the fact that the reading is not certain, there is a certain amount of evidence for confusion between /ɔː/ and /u/ at Bu Njem (see fn. 10).

Another case of <o> for <u> occurs in cui, the dative singular of the relative pronoun quī and the indefinite pronoun quis. An older form is quoiei (CIL 1². 11, 583, 585) and it had come to be spelt quoi around the start of the first century AD, according to Quintilian:

illud nunc melius, quod “cui” tribus, quas praeposui, litteris enotamus, in quo pueris nobis ad pinguem sane sonum qu et oi utebantur, tantum ut ab illo “qui” distingueretur.

We now do better to spell cui with three letters, as I have given it here. When I was a boy, they used qu and oi, reflecting its fuller sound, just for the purpose of distinguishing it from qui.

(Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 1.7.27)

The passages of Velius Longus (13.7 = GL 8.4.1–3) and Marius Victorinus (4.31–32 = GL 6.13.11–12) quoted on pp. 166–7 suggest that the spelling quoi, and its genitive equivalent quoius, was also old-fashioned for these writers. We find no examples of quoi in the corpora, but the strange spelling cuoì, [c]ụ[o]i (TPSulp. 48) in the parts of a tablet written by the scribe presumably reflects a sort of compromise between quoi and cui (the non-scribal writer spells the word cuì). I know of no other examples of this spelling in Latin epigraphy.

Another conceivable instance of an old-fashioned spelling involving <o> are fornus (O. BuNjem 7), for[num (49), fornarius (8, 25), foṛ[narius] (10) for furnus, furnārius. The sequence /ur/ < *or or *r̥ in the standard forms of these words is unexpected; a dialectal sound change or borrowing from other languages is often supposed (I have argued for the latter: Zair 2017). So these words could represent the original, older form, which is attested in manuscripts of Varro and by writers on language (Zair 2017: 259). However, influence from fornāx ‘furnace, oven’ is also possible (thus Adams 1994: 104);⁹ another possibility is that /u/ was lowered by the following /r/ in syllable coda, which by this time was ‘dark’ in Latin (Sen and Zair 2022). This might be particularly likely if there was some confusion of /ɔː/ and /u/ at Bu Njem.¹⁰

Chapter 5 <o> for /uː/

The diphthong /ɔu/ became /oː/ and then /uː/ by the third century BC (see pp. 39–40). On the use of <o> in place of <u> in poplicos > pūblicus and words derived from it, see Chapter 17. It is possible that iodicauerunt (Kropp 11.1.1/26) in a curse tablet from Carthage, in the second century AD, for iūdicāuē̆runt < *i̯oudik- is an old-fashioned spelling representing the mid-point of the change (at any rate, no other explanation springs to mind). Since we have long /uː/ in the first syllable, this spelling cannot be explained by confusion of /ɔː/ and /u/. At least in legal texts, derivatives of iūs were particularly favoured for this (Decorte 2015: 160–2), although use of <o> for /uː/ rather than <ou> was never common, even in the archaic period.

Chapter 6 Alternation of <u> and <i>

There are two environments in which spelling with <u> and <i> alternated in Latin orthography, with, on the whole, a movement from <u> to <i>, although in certain phonetic, morphological or lexical contexts the change in spelling either did not take place at all or took place at different rates. These environments are (1) original /u/ in initial syllables between /l/ and a labial; (2) vowels subject to weakening in non-initial open syllables before a labial. Both the question of the history and development of the spelling with <u> and <i>, and what sound exactly was represented by these letters is lengthy and tangled (especially with regard to the medial context; for recent discussion and further bibliography, see Suárez-Martínez 2006 and Weiss 2020: 584).

/u/ and /i/ in Initial Syllables after /l/ and before a Labial

In initial syllables we know on etymological grounds that the words in question had inherited /u/. In practice, there are very few Latin words which fulfil this context, and only two in which the variation is actually attested: basically just clupeus ~ clipeus ‘shield’ and lubet ~ libet ‘it is pleasing’ and its derivatives such as lubēns ~ libēns ‘willing’ (which is part of a dedicatory formula and makes up the majority of attestations of this verb), *lubitīna ~ libitīna ‘means for burial; funeral couch’, Lubitīna, Lubentīna ~ Libitīna ‘goddess of funerals’. No forms with <u> are found in liber ‘the inner bark of a tree; book’ < *lub^h-ro-, whose earliest attestation is libreis in CIL 1².593 (45 BC, EDR165681), as well as being attested in literary texts from Plautus onwards. Strangely, lupus ‘wolf’ does not become ^×lipus, as Leumann (1977: 89) points out, although as it is attested in Plautus it was surely borrowed from a Sabellic language (as demonstrated by /p/ < *k^w) early enough to have been affected.

As we shall see, both spellings are attested from the third century BC onwards in lub- and clupeus, with <u> predominating initially and slowly being replaced by <i>. Some scholars view this as a sound change from /u/ to /i/ (e.g. Weiss 2020: 153), others as the development of an allophone of /u/ to some sound such as [y], leading to variation in spelling with <u> and <i>, but with <i> eventually becoming standard (e.g. Meiser 1988: 80; making it more or less parallel with the development in non-initial syllables, which we shall discuss later).

In epigraphy other than my corpora, the <i> spelling is attested early in the lub- words (see Table 3): libes (CIL 1².2867) for libēns is about the same time as the first instances of lubēns, but <u> outnumbers <i> by 13 (or 14, if CIL 1².1763 is to be dated early) to 3 in the third and second centuries BC. In the first century BC, however, there are only 4 (or 5 if CIL 1².1763 is to be dated later) instances of <u> to 4 of <i>, and subsequently <u>, with 2 instances in the first century AD (or 1 in the first, 1 in the second if CIL 3.2686 is to be dated late), is completely swamped: there are 16 (or 17 if CIL 5.5128 is to be dated early) instances of <i> in the first century AD, and in subsequent centuries the numbers are too massive to be included in the table.¹ These have not been thoroughly checked, and some are mere restorations, but the vast majority do indeed belong to the lexeme libēns.² Overall, then, it seems clear that the spelling with <i> was becoming more common in the course of the first century BC, becoming the usual spelling in the first century AD, and subsequently overwhelming the <u> spelling, although the latter is still occasionally found in the first, and perhaps second, century AD.

Table 3 lub- and lib- in inscriptions (omitting forms of libēns from AD 100)

lub-	Inscription	Date	lib-	Inscription	Date
lubens	AE 2000.283	260–240 BC (EDR177325)	libe(n)s	CIL 12.2867	250–201 BC (EDR079096)
lub(en)s	CIL 12.62	270–230 BC (EDR110696)	lib(en)s	CIL 12.392	End of the third century BC (Peruzzi 1962: 135–6)
lub(en)s	CIL 12.388	Late third to second century BC (Dupraz 2015: 260)	liben[s]	CIL 12.33	250–101 BC (EDR104811)a
lubens	AE 1985.378a	Towards the end of the third century BCb	libitinamue, libitina<m>ue	CIL 12.593	45 BC (EDR165681)
lubens	AE 1985.378b	Towards the end of the third century BC	libentes	CIL 12.1792	71–30 BC (EDR071934)
lubens	CIL 12.2869b	270–201 BC (EDR079100)	libitin[ario], Libit(inae), libitinae, libit[inae	AE 1971.88	Late first century BCc
lubens	AE 2016.372	End of the second–start of the first century BC	libentes	CIL 8.26580	Not long before AD 5 or 6 (Thomasson 1996: 25)
lubens	CIL 12.28	225–175 BC (EDR102308)	libens	CIL 9.1456	AD 11 (EDR167653)
lubens	CIL 12.29	230–171 BC (EDR161295)	libitinam	AE 1978.145	AD 19
lubent[es	CIL 12.364	200–171 (EDR157321)	libens	AE 1999.689	Early decades of the first century AD
lubens	CIL 12.10	170–145 BC (EDR109039)	libens	CIL 6.68	AD 1–30 (EDR161210)
lube(n)tes	CIL 12.1531	170–131 BC (EDR142283)	libentius	CIL 5.5050	AD 46 (EDR137898)
lub[en]s	AE 2000.290	130–101 BC (EDR155416)	lib[iti]nar[io]	Castagnetti (2012: 19)	AD 1–50 (EDR077677)d
lubens	CIL 14.2587	100–51 BC (EDR160891)	libens	CIL 14.2298	AD 20–50 (EDR138163)
Lubitina	CIL 12.1268	100–50 BC (EDR126391)	libens	CIL 9.1702	AD 1–70 (EDR102210)
[l]ubens	CIL 12.1763	150–1 BC (EDR072021)	libens	CIL 6.12652	AD 14–70 (EDR108740)
lubens	CIL 12.1844	100–1 BC (EDR104237)	libenter	CIL 4.6892	AD 1–79 (EDR125510)
Lubent(inae)	CIL 12.1411	50–1 BC (EDR071756)	libens	CIL 6.398	AD 86 (EDR121358)
lubens	CIL 2.7.428	Mid-first century AD	[l]iben[s]	AE 1986.426, 1988.823	AD 1–100 (EDH, HD004388)
lubens	CIL 3.2686	AD 1–150 (EDH, HD058450)	libe[ns]	CIL 5.17	AD 1–100 (EDR135137)
			libens (twice)	CIL 6.710	AD 51–100 (EDR121389)
			libens	AE 1988.86	AD 51–100
			libens	CIL 14.2213	AD 100 (EDR146713)
			Libitinae	CIL 5.5128	AD 51–125 (EDR092038)
			libet	CIL 6.30114	AD 101–200 (EDR130532)
			libet	EDR171805	AD 100–200
			cuilibet	CIL 5.8305	AD 151–200 (EDR117525)
			quibuslibet	CIL 3.12134	AD 305–306

^a Second century BC according to Grandinetti in Romualdi (2009: 150).

^b But 170–100 BC on the basis of the palaeography according to EDR (EDR079779).

^c Hinard and Dumont (2003: 29–35, 38, 49–51), on the basis of the spelling, language and historical context; similarly Castagnetti (2012: 37–43).

^d Not before the Augustan period, and prior to the change by Cumae from a municipium to a colonia in the second half of the first century, probably under Domitian (Castagnetti 2012: 46–8).

The spelling of clupeus ~ clipeus (Table 4) has a rather different profile: the lexeme is not found before the first century BC, when only the <u> spelling appears (2 or possibly 3 examples); in the first century AD there are 6–8 inscriptions which use <u>, but only 1–3 with <i> (and possibly quite late in the century), and still 4–5 <u> in the second century AD to 7 of <i>, with 1 <i> in the fourth.³ It is perhaps surprising, given the common formulaic usage of lubens in dedicatory contexts, that clupeus appears to have retained the <u> spelling longer. Perhaps this is connected to the influence of the Res Gestae of Augustus.

Table 4 clupeus and clipeus

clupeus	Inscription	Date	clipeus	Inscription	Date
clupeum	AE 1952.165	26 BC	clipeum	CIL 9.2855	AD 79–100 (EDR114839)
cḷup̣[eum]	CIL 6.40365	27 BC (EDR092852)	clipeis	CIL 2.5.629	End of the first century or start of the second AD
clupeum	CIL 9.5811	25 BC–AD 25 (EDR015394)	clipeum	CIL 10.4761	AD 1–200 (EDR174193)
clupeo	CIL 13.1041	Augustan (CIL), AD 15–40 (EDCS-10401220)	clipeos	Ihm (1899 no. 245)	AD 101–200 (EDR171383)
clupei	Res Gestae Diui Augusti (Scheid 2007; CIL 3, pp.769–99)	AD 14	clipeos	Ihm (1899 no. 245) (a copy of the preceding inscription)	AD 101–200 (EDR171384)
clupea	CIL 14.2794	AD 50–51 (EDR154835)	clipeum	AE 1996.424b	AD 113
clupeos	AE 1994.398	AD 41–54	[cl]ipeo	CIL 14.4555	AD 172 (EDR072930)
clupeus	CIL 6.912 and 31200	AD 23 (EDR105655)	clipeum	CIL 9.5177a	AD 172 (EDR135001)
clupeum	CIL 14.2215	AD 1–100 (EDR146609)	clipeor(um)	CIL 9.2654	AD 151–200 (EDR128138)
clupeum	AE 1934.152	AD 71–200 (EDR073231)	clipe[u]m	AE 1948.24	AD 191–192 (EDR073666)
clupei	CIL 11.3214	AD 101–200 (EDR137358)	clipeos	ICVR 3.8132	AD 366–384 (EDB24864)
clupeum	CIL 14.72	AD 105 (EDR143920)
clupeum	CIL 9.2252	AD 131–170 (EDCS-12401765)
clupeo	CIL 14.2410	AD 158 (EDR155630)

^a CIL in fact gives the reading clupeum, but clipeum is correctly given by EDR135001 (a photo of the inscription can be found under the entry).

Unsurprisingly, given the restricted number of lexemes containing the requisite phonological environment, there are very few instances of this type of <u> spelling in the corpora. However, lubēns ~ libēns is used occasionally in letters at Vindolanda, where <i> outnumbers <u> 5 to 1. The sole use of <u>, in lụḅẹṇṭịṣsime (Tab. Vindol. 260), occurs in a letter whose author Justinus is probably a fellow prefect of Cerialis, and which the editors suggest may be written in his own hand, as it does not change for the final greeting. Towards the end of the first century AD, it seems fair to call this an old-fashioned spelling.

The examples of <i> are libenter (291, scribal portion of a letter from Severa), libenti (320, a scribe who also writes omịṣẹṛas, without old-fashioned <ss>), libente[r (340), libentissime (629; probably written by a scribe)⁴ and ḷibent (640, whose author and recipient are probably civilians, and which also uses the possibly old-fashioned spelling ụbe).

The <u> spelling also occurs in a single instance in the Isola Sacra inscriptions (lubens, IS 223, towards the end of the reign of Hadrian or later). There is a good chance that this is the latest attested instance of the <u> spelling.The inscription is partly in hexameters, the spelling is entirely standard, and <k> is used not only in the place name Karthago but also in karina ‘ship’. Again, it is reasonable to assume that the <u> spelling in this word might be considered old-fashioned.

/u/ and /i/ in Medial Syllables before a Labial

The second context for <u> ~ <i> interchange is short vowels which were originally subject to vowel weakening before a labial. Hence we are not dealing only with original /u/ as is the case in initial syllables, and hence the subsequent development is not necessarily the same as in initial syllables.

In order to utilise the evidence of the corpora it is necessary to first examine the highly complex evidence both of inscriptions and of the grammatical tradition, which descriptions in the literature such as Meiser (1998: 68), Suárez-Martínez (2006) and Weiss (2020: 72, 128) tend to oversimplify.⁵ Leumann (1977: 87–90) provides a more comprehensive discussion. I will begin with the evidence of inscriptions down to the first century AD. In the first place, it is important to make a distinction which most of those writing about the <u> and <i> spellings do not make clearly enough. There are certain words in which the vowel before the labial was always written with <i> or <u> (as far as we can tell); presumably in these words the vowel had become identified with the phonemes /i/ or /u/ early on.⁶ By comparison, there are some words in which the vowel before the labial shows variation in its spelling. The first instance of <i> before a labial is often attributed to infimo (CIL 1².584) in 117 BC (thus Nikitina 2015: 19; Weiss 2020: 72), or testimo[niumque (CIL 1².583) in 123–122 BC (thus Suárez-Martínez 2016: 232). However, these are in fact the earliest examples of <i> in a word in which <i> and <u> variation is found. Probably earlier examples of the <i> spelling actually occur in opiparum ‘rich, sumptuous’ in CIL 1².364 (200–171 BC, EDR157321) and recipit ‘receives’ in CIL 1².10 (170–145 BC, EDR109039), for which a <u> spelling is never found.

In Table 5 I provide all examples of the use of <u> and <i> in this environment in some long official/legal texts of the late second century BC.⁷ As can be seen, both spellings are found in these texts, but the distribution is not random. Most of the words with an <i> spelling never appear with a <u> spelling in all of Latin epigraphy: compound verbs in -cipiō,⁸ -hibeō, -imō,⁹ and forms of aedificium and aedificō,¹⁰ uadimonium and municipium. Outside these particular texts, the same is true of pauimentum (CIL 1².694, 150–101 BC, EDR156830), animo (CIL 1².632, 125–100 BC, EDR104303). It looks as though by the (late) second century certain lexical items had already generalised a spelling with <i>.¹¹

Table 5 <u> and <i> in some second century BC inscriptions

Inscription	Date	<u>	<i>
CIL 12.582	130–101 BC (EDR163413)	testumonium	accipito
		recuperatores
		proxsumeis × 3
CIL 12.583	123–122 BC (EDR173504)a	aestumatio × 4
		aestumandis × 2	adimito
		aestumare	testimo[niumque
		aestumatam × 2
		aestumata × 2
		aest]umatae
		exaestumauerit
		uincensumo
		proxum(eis)
		proxumo
		proxsumo
		prox]umos
		proxsumeis × 2
		maxume
		plurumae
CIL 12.584	117 BC (EDR010862)	proxuma × 2	ac(c)ipiant
		Postumiam × 4	prohibeto × 2
		infumum	eidib(us)
		infumo × 2	infimo
		uicensumam	fruimino
CIL 12.585	111 BC (EDR169833)	optuma	aedificium × 6
		recuperatoresue	[a]edifi[cium]
		r]ecuperatores	aedificio
		recuperato[res	aed]ịf̣icio
		recuperatorum	aedificii
		recuperatoru[m	aedific[iei
		maxsume	aedificiorum
		mancup[is	aedificieis
		proxsumo × 2	uadimonium
		proxsumeis × 4	moi]nicipieis
		proxumum	moinicipioue
		decumas	moinicipieis
		mancupuṃ	undecimam
CIL 12.2924	123–103 BC (EDR073760)	maxume	inhiber<e>

^a In fact EDR mistakenly gives the date as 123–112 BC.

By comparison, <u> spellings are found only in words which either show variation with <i> in the later period or which are subsequently always spelt with <i>,¹² such as testimonium, which across all of Roman epigraphy is found with the <u> spelling only in CIL 1².582.¹³ The <u> spellings predominate in these words in these inscriptions: with <i> we have only infimo beside the far more common superlatives in <u>, the ordinal undecimam beside uicensumam, testimo[niumque beside testumonium, and eidib(us), which, as a u-stem, is also found spelt elsewhere with <u>.¹⁴

The same pattern is found in other inscriptions from the third and second centuries: in Table 6 I have collected all instances that I could find of <u> spellings in inscriptions given a date in EDCS, along with examples of <i> spellings of those words (other than those from CIL 1².582, 583, 584 and 585 and 2924). It seems clear that at this period the <u> spellings are dominant, although we do find a few <i> spellings (perhaps more towards the end of the second century). Nonetheless, all of these words do subsequently show <i> spellings (although the extent to which the <i> spelling is standard varies, as we shall see).

Table 6 Words with <u> spellings in the third and second centuries BC

<u>	Inscription	Date	<i>	Inscription	Date
Decumius	CIL 12.1299	130–100 BC (EDR129261)	Maxima	CIL 12.1928	170–100 BC (EDR079759)
Postumius	CIL 12.804	142 BC (EDR121377)	[m]inimus, minimus	CIL 12.2103	150–101 BC (EDR176945)
optumo	CIL 12.2676	106–101 BC (AE 1997.1319)	monimentu[m]	CIL 12.1687	130–100 BC (EDR116154)
De]cumius	CIL 12.673	112–111 BC (EDR005398)
Postumio	CIL 12.674	110 BC (EDR080358)
D(e)cumius	CIL 12.1445	230–201 BC (EDR113670)
Postumia	CIL 12.2197	148–101 BC (EDR118800)
Postumius	CIL 12.624	148 BC
ḍecuma, decumam	CIL 12.632	125–100 BC (EDR104303)
[de]cuma	CIL 12.1531	170–131 BC (EDR142283)
decuma	CIL 12.1482	150–100 BC (EDR173392)
parisuma	CIL 12.7	230–190 (EDR032799)
plouruma	CIL 12.1861	Second century BC, probably second half (Kuznetsov 2013)
manubies	CIL 12.635	135 (EDR005419)
sai[pi]sume	CIL 12.364	200–171 BC (EDR157321)
Maxsuma	CIL 12.2469	280–251 BC (EDR112036)
maxsume	CIL 12.1531	170–131 BC (EDR142283)
ploirume, optumo	CIL 12.9	230–151 BC (EDR109038)
Septumius	AE 1997.737	Late third or early second century BCa
Optumo Maxsumo	CIL 12.2101	200–150 BC (EDR025082)
monumentum	CIL 12.1202	150–125 BC (EDR135684)
facilumed	CIL 12.581	186 BC

^a Dated to the second century AD by Kropp (1.11.1/1), presumably by mistake.

Overall, the picture seems to be a much more complex one than simply a move from early <u> spellings to later <i> spellings.¹⁵ Although <u> spellings outnumber <i> spellings in some words and morphological categories in the second century BC, certain words have already developed a fixed <i> spelling by this period, with no evidence to suggest that they were ever spelt with <u>. Most other words will go on to see <i> supplant <u> as the standard spelling, although at varying rates as we shall see, but some, like monumentum, postumus and contubernalis, will strongly maintain the <u> spelling.

For the later period, Nikitina (2015: 10–48) examines the use of <u> and <i> in words which show variation in a corpus of legal texts and ‘official’ inscriptions from the first centuries BC and AD. In the legal texts, she finds only <u> down to about the mid-first century BC, after which <i> appears: in a few texts only <i> is attested, but many show both <u> and <i>. The lexeme proximus seems to be particularly likely to be spelt with <u>, perhaps due to its membership of the formulaic phrase (in) diebus proxumis. Even in AD 20, the two partial copies of the SC de Cn. Pisone patri (Eck et al. 1996) contain between them 24 separate <u> spellings and 2 <i> spellings, while CIL 2.1963, from AD 82–84, has 7 instances of <u> (5 in the lexeme proxumus), and none of <i>. There are only two ‘official’ inscriptions of the first century BC which contain words with <u> or <i> spellings, but in the other ‘official’ texts of the first century AD, <i> spellings are heavily favoured (73 examples in 25 inscriptions) over <u> spellings (8 examples across 4 inscriptions).

An interesting observation is that in the first century BC, superlatives in -issimus are often spelt with <u>. By comparison, in law texts of the first century AD, except in the SC de Cn Pisone patre, all 10 attested superlatives in -issimus have the <i> spelling, whereas the irregular forms like maximus, proximus, optimus etc. show variation. Although the switch between <u> and <i> in the -issimus superlatives is probably less abrupt than Nikitina perhaps implies,¹⁶ it does seem likely that the <i> spelling became particularly common in this type of superlative around the Augustan period: as we shall see below, in imperial inscriptions <u> is used vanishingly seldom.

Nikitina’s study makes it clear that there was a movement from <u> spellings to <i> spellings in some words in high-register inscriptions over the course of the first century BC and first century AD. This movement probably took place more slowly in the more conservative legal texts,¹⁷ and more quickly in certain lexical items (notably superlatives in -issimus) than in others.

If we turn to the evidence of the writers on language, the question of the spelling of these words was clearly one of great interest for some time.¹⁸ Quintilian briefly mentions sounds for which no letter is available in the Latin alphabet, including the following comment:

medius est quidam u et i litterae sonus (non enim sic “optimum” dicimus ut “opimum”) …

There is a certain middle sound between the letter u and the letter i (for we do not say optĭmus as we say opīmus) …¹⁹

(Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 1.4.8)

This appears to imply that the vowel in this context was not the same as either of the sounds usually represented by <i> or <u>.²⁰ The spelling with <u> was however apparently ‘old-fashioned’ for Quintilian (at least in the words optimus and maximus):

iam “optimus” “maximus” ut mediam i litteram, quae veteribus u fuerat, acciperent, C. primum Caesaris in scriptione traditur factum.

C. Caesar is said in his writing to have first made optimus, maximus take i as their middle letter, as they now do, which had u among the ancients.

(Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 1.7.21)

Cornutus (as preserved by Cassiodorus) appears also to think that the <u> is old-fashioned, and suggests that the spelling with <i> also more accurately reflects the sound. He gives as examples lacrima and maximus, as well as ‘other words like these’:

“‘lacrumae’ an ‘lacrimae’, ‘maxumus’ an ‘maximus’, et siqua similia sunt, quomodo scribi debent?” quaesitum est. Terentius Varro tradidit Caesarem per i eiusmodi uerba solitum esse enuntiare et scribere: inde propter auctoritatem tanti uiri consuetudinem factam. sed ego in antiquiorum multo libris, quam Gaius Caesar est, per u pleraque scripta inuenio, <ut> ‘optumus’, ‘intumus’, ‘pulcherrumus’, ‘lubido’, ‘dicundum’, ‘faciundum’, ‘maxume’, ‘monumentum’, ‘contumelia’, ‘minume’. melius tamen est ad enuntiandum et ad scribendum i litteram pro u ponere, in quod iam consuetudo inclinat.

“How should one write lacrumae or lacrimae, maximus or maximus, and other words like these?”, one asks. Terentius Varro claimed that Caesar used to both pronounce and write this type of word with i, and this became normal usage, following the authority of such a great man. What is more, I find many of these words written with u in books of writers much older than Gaius Caesar, as in optumus, intumus, pulcherrumus, lubido, dicundum, faciundum, maxume, monumentum, contumelia, minume.²¹ However, it is better to both pronounce and write i rather than u, which is the way common usage is going now.

(Cornutus, in Cassiodorus, De orthographia 1.49–52 = GL 7.150.10–17)

Velius Longus discusses the vowel in this context in several places. What he says about it provides an important caution against us assuming that the ancient writers on language thought, like us, that the words with <u> and <i> variation formed a single category for which a single rule was necessarily applicable. Instead, it seems likely that they looked at each word, or category of word, individually (an approach which accurately reflects usage, on the basis of the epigraphic evidence). Note that he also includes among his examples lubidō and clupeus (discussed above, pp. 75–82). The first passage which touches on this issue is a long and complex one:

‘i’ uero littera interdum exilis est, interdum pinguis, … ut iam in ambiguitatem cadat, utrum per ‘i’ quaedam debeant dici an per ‘u’, ut est ‘optumus’, ‘maxumus’. in quibus adnotandum antiquum sermonem plenioris soni fuisse et, ut ait Cicero, “rusticanum” atque illis fere placuisse per ‘u’ talia scribere et enuntia[ue]re. errauere autem grammatici qui putauerunt superlatiua <per> ‘u’ enuntiari. ut enim concedamus illis in ‘optimo’, in ‘maximo’, in ‘pulcherrimo’, in ‘iustissimo’, quid facient in his nominibus in quibus aeque manet eadem quaestio superlatione sublata, ‘manubiae’ an ‘manibiae’, ‘libido’ an ‘lubido’? nos uero, postquam exilitas sermonis delectare coepit, usque ‘i’ littera castigauimus illam pinguitudinem, non tamen ut plene ‘i’ litteram enuntiaremus. et concedamus talia nomina per ‘u’ scribere <iis> qui antiquorum uoluntates sequuntur, ne[c] tamen sic enuntient, quomodo scribunt.

The letter <i> is sometimes ‘slender’ and sometimes ‘full’, such that nowadays it is uncertain whether one ought to say certain words with i or u, as in optumus or maxumus. With regard to these words, it should be noted that the speech of the ancients had a fuller – and indeed rustic, as Cicero puts it – sound, and on the whole they liked to write and say u. But those grammarians who have thought that superlatives should be pronounced with u are wrong. Because, if we should concede to them with regard to optimus, maximus, pulcherrimus, and iustissimus, what will we do in words which are not superlatives, but in which the same question arises, such as manubiae or manibiae, libido or lubido? After we began to prize slenderness in speech, we went as far as to correct the fullness by using the letter <i>, but not so far as to give our pronunciation the full force of that letter. So let us permit those who want to follow the habits of the ancients in writing <u> to do so, but not to pronounce it how they write it.

(Velius Longus, De orthographia 4.2.5 = GL 7.49.16–50.7)

My understanding of this passage is that Velius Longus is saying that the pronunciation of the words he discusses involves a sound which is not the same as the sound represented by <i> in other contexts, and is apparently ‘fuller’, but not as ‘full’ as it used to be, when <u> was a common spelling. Nowadays, the usual spelling is with <i>, but people who prefer to use the old-fashioned spelling <u> may do so. However, they should not extend this to actually pronouncing the sound as [u], because if they did, they would also by the same logic have to say [u] in words like manibiae and libidō. This final point is rather surprising. Does it suggest that by the early second century AD, the vowel of the first syllable of libidō had already developed to /i/, and hence a spelling pronunciation of [u] would sound wrong? Perhaps the same could be true of manibiae, if the development of the medial vowel before a labial was very sensitive to phonetic conditioning, such that here the pronunciation had again fallen together with /i/, unlike in the superlatives.

The following passage suggests that variation in both spelling and pronunciation still existed, with mancupium, aucupium and manubiae (again!) containing a sound which some produced in an old-fashioned ‘fuller’ manner and spelt with <u>, while others used a more modern and elegant ‘slender’ pronunciation, and wrote with <i>. Unlike in the previous passage, it is not explicitly stated here that the pronunciation of the relevant sound is different from /u/ and /i/.²²

uarie etiam scriptitatum est ‘mancupium’ ‘aucupium’ ‘manubiae’, siquidem C. Caesar per ‘i’ scripsit, ut apparet ex titulis ipsius, at Augustus [i] per ‘u’, ut testes sunt eius inscriptiones. et qui per ‘i’ scribunt … . item qui ‘aucupium’ per ‘u’ scribunt … sequitur igitur electio, utrumne per antiquum sonum, qui est pinguissimus et ‘u’ litteram occupabat, uelit quis enuntiare, an per hunc qui iam uidetur elegantior exilius, id est per ‘i’ litteram, has proferat uoces.

There is variation in how mancupium, aucupium and manubiae are written, since C. Caesar wrote them with i, as his inscriptions demonstrate, but Augustus with u, as his writings bear witness. And those who use i … Likewise those who use u to write aucupium … So it follows that it is a matter of choice whether one wants to use the old-fashioned sound, which is very full and is represented by u, or to pronounce these words using the more slender sound, which seems more elegant nowadays, that is, with the letter i.

(Velius Longus, De orthographia 8.1.1 = GL. 7.67.3–14)

The next four passages give examples of which letter to use in particular words which show variation: clipeus, aurifex, contimax and alimenta are better than the spellings with <u>, but aucupare, aucupium and aucupis are better than spellings with <i> (contradicting the previous passage with regard to aucupium). It is implied at 13.1.1 that the <u> spelling actually corresponds with a different pronunciation, but it may simply be as /u/.

idem puto et in ‘clipeo’ per ‘i’ scripto obseruandum, nec audiendam uanam grammaticorum differentiam, qui alterum a ‘clependo’, <alterum a ‘cluendo’> putant dictum.

I think the same thing [i.e. i for u] should also be observed in clipeus written with i, and we should not listen to the grammarians who set up an unnecessary distinction between clipeus, which they think comes from clependus, and clupeus from cluendus.

(Velius Longus, De orthographia 8.1.4 = GL 7.68.11–13)

‘aurifex’ melius per ‘i’ sonat, quam per ‘u’. at ‘aucupare’ et ‘aucupium’ mihi rursus melius uidetur sonare per ‘u’ quam per ‘i’; et idem tamen ‘aucipis’ malo quam ‘aucupis’, quia scio sermonem et decori seruire et aurium uoluptate.

aurifex sounds better with i than with u. But aucupare and aucupium contrariwise to me seem to sound better with u rather than i; and likewise I prefer aucipis to aucupis, because I know that diction is subservient both to grace and to the pleasure of its hearers.

(Velius Longus, De orthographia 13.1.1 = GL 7.75.12–15)

at in ‘contimaci’ melius puto ‘i’ servari: uenit enim a ‘contemnendo’, tametsi Nissus et ‘contumacem’ per ‘u’ putat posse dici a ‘tumore’.

But in contimax I think it is better to keep the ‘i’; for it comes from contemnendus, even if Nissus also thinks that contumax can be said, from tumor.

(Velius Longus, De orthographia 13.2 = GL 7.76.6–8)

‘alimenta’ quoque per ‘i’ elegantius scribemus quam ‘alumenta’ per ‘u’.

We should also write alimenta with the more elegant i rather than alumenta with u.

(Velius Longus, De orthographia 13.6 = GL 7.77.8)

Terentius Scaurus has little to add, except for some other examples of <u> and <i> interchange (in two of which, the dative/ablative plurals of the u-stems artus and manus, analogy with the rest of the paradigm is the cause of the continuing oscillation, as Scaurus goes on to note):

in uocalibus ergo quaeritur ‘maximus’ an ‘maxumus’, id est per ‘u’ an per ‘i’ debeat scribi; item ‘optimus’ et ‘optumus’, et ‘artibus’ et ‘artubus’, et ‘manibus’ et ‘manubus’.

Therefore amongst the vowels people wonder whether maximus ought to be spelt like this, with i, or as maxumus, with u; likewise optimus and optumus, and artibus and artubus, and manibus and manubus.

(Terentius Scaurus, De orthographia 8.2.1 = GL 7. 24.13–15)

The fourth-century grammarians Diomedes and Donatus use almost exactly the same wording, no doubt due to reliance on the same source. They both imply that only <u> is used in optimus, but that it does not have the same sound as in other words:

hae etiam mediae dicuntur, quia in quibusdam dictionibus expressum sonum non habent, ut uir optumus.

These [i.e. i and u] are even called ‘middle’, because in certain words they are used even though they do not represent the sound which is actually pronounced, as in uir or optumus.

(Diomedes, Ars grammatica, GL 1.422.17.19)

hae etiam mediae dicuntur, quia in quibusdam dictionibus expressum sonum non habent, i ut uir, u ut optumus.

These [i.e. i and u] are even called ‘middle’ vowels, because in certain words they are used even though they do not represent the sound which is actually pronounced, i as in uir, u as in optumus.

(Donatus, Ars grammatica maior 1.2, p.604.2–3 = GL 4.367.14–16)

Marius Victorinus, although in the fourth century, suggests that optimus maximus is presently written with <u>, but that a number of other words, including maximus again, should be written with <i>, not <u>. This may be carelessness, or be due to differences in the sources that Marius Victorinus used. If we want to exculpate him of inconsistency, we might note that the sequence optimus maximus is a traditional epithet of Jupiter, in which the <u> spelling may have been maintained for longer than in maximus in other contexts.

idem ‘optimus maximus’ scripsit, non ut nos per u litteram.

The same man [Licinius Calvus] wrote optimus and maximus, not as we do using the letter u.

(Marius Victorinus, Ars grammatica 4.6 = GL 6.9.3–4)

… sicut ‘acerrimus, existimat, extimus, intimus, maximus, minimus, manipretium, sonipes’ per i quam per u.

… in this way [we should write] acerrimus, existimat, extimus, intimus, maximus, minimus, manipretium, sonipes with i rather than with u.

(Marius Victorinus, Ars grammatica 4.18 = GL 6.10.24–25)

The final passage contains various words in which Victorinus says that others have thought that they contain a sound between u and i, of which only proximus is relevant here. He suggests that in fact this sound is no longer used, and recommends a spelling either with <u> or <i>:

sunt qui inter u quoque et i litteras supputant deesse nobis uocem, sed pinguius quam i, exilius quam u <sonantem>. sed et pace eorum dixerim, non uident y litteram desiderari: sic enim ‘gylam, myserum, Sylla[ba]m, proxymum’, dicebant antiqui. sed nunc consuetudo paucorum hominum ita loquentium euanuit, ideoque uoces istas per u <uel per i> scribite.

There are those who think that we are lacking a letter for the sound which is between u and i, fuller than i but more slender than u. But with all due respect to them, I would say that they do not see that it is the letter y they want: for the ancients used to say gyla (for gula), myser (for miser), Sylla (for Sulla) and proxymus (for proximus).²³ But now this convention – which only a few men used in speech – has vanished, so you should write those words with u or i.

(Marius Victorinus 4.72 = GL 6.19.22–20.5)

In dealing with these extracts from the writers on language of course the usual problem arises of to what extent the authors are reporting the situation in their own time, and to what extent they are reacting to spellings long out of use but still found in manuscripts and inscriptions, and passed down in grammatical writings. Nonetheless, it seems reasonable to me to deduce that even in the fourth century AD there were some people who used <u> in at least some words. However, Quintilian, Cornutus, Velius Longus, and to some extent Marius Victorinus, all imply that at least in some words this spelling was old-fashioned. On the basis of what Quintilian and Velius Longus say, there may have remained a sound not easily identifiable as /i/ or /u/ in some words into the second century AD (for more on the possible phonetic developments, see pp. 276–9).²⁴

If it is true that this sound continued in at least some words, it makes identifying old-fashioned spelling somewhat difficult. Since we do not know precisely at what point in a given word the sound became identified as /i/, continuations of the <u> spelling in words which are generally written with <i> may reflect an attempt to represent the sound as spoken, particularly if the writer has other substandard spellings, rather than knowledge of an older orthography, and this must be borne in mind when analysing the data.

We can now turn to the inscriptional evidence of the first to fourth centuries AD, and the use of the <u> spellings in the corpora. The lexicalised nature of the spellings with <u> or <i> makes it important that we do not assume that the spelling of all words containing the variation developed in the same way. This is also convenient, since it is difficult to carry out searches in the EDCS for sequences like ‘um’, ‘im’ etc. without including far too many false positives. I have therefore restricted searches to the words and categories which show variation in the corpora: these are largely the lexemes monumentum, contubernium and contubernalis, superlatives, and the ordinals septimus and decimus, and derivations thereof (including names).

I shall start with these last two categories. Very few superlatives in -issimus are found with <u> spellings in the epigraphy. I have found 39 inscriptions containing a <u> spelling in the first four centuries AD,²⁵ of which 1 is dated to the fourth century, 8 might be as late as the third, 19 as late as the second, and 11 are dated to the first century. This might suggest a general decline over time, although it would be necessary to know the frequency of superlatives in -issimus in these centuries to be sure of this (since in principle use of superlatives in general in inscriptions might have decreased over this period). In any century, however, the <u> spelling is clearly rare when compared with use of -issimus, which is found in thousands of inscriptions.²⁶ Combined with the evidence of a change in official inscriptions in the first century AD discussed above, it is reasonable to suppose that the standard spelling was <i>, and that the sound before the labial had become identified with /i/ in this morphological category.

In other superlatives in -imus and words derived from them, the <u> spelling, while uncommon in all lexemes except postumus, is far more frequent than in -issimus superlatives (as we can see in Table 7).²⁷ Compared to the dominance of <u> spellings in the second century BC, it is clear that for most lexemes the <i> spelling becomes the standard in the imperial period, although to varying degrees. This may partly be because the sound before the labial remained different enough from /i/ to inspire <u> spellings for longer than in the -issimus superlatives. In postumus, conversely, it may at some point have been identified as /u/, but the (few) spellings with <i> suggest that this analysis was not inevitable: some people still heard a sound closer to /i/. A confounding factor is that several of these superlatives and their derivatives are very frequent as personal names; the same is true for ordinals: Septimus, Decimus, Postumus etc. It might be assumed that old-fashioned spellings are more likely to be preserved longer in names, but there is no easy way to search only for examples as names.

Table 7 <u> and <i> in superlatives in -imus

Form with <i>	Number of inscriptions	Form with <u>	Number of inscriptions	Percentage of inscriptions with <u> spellings
maximusa	5600	maxumusb	95	2%
optimusc	1682	optumusd	171	9%
plurimuse	61	plurumusf	3	5%
postimusg	18	postumush	434	96%
proximusi	103	proxumusj	10	9%

^a ‘maximu’ in the ‘original texts’ search, date range ‘1’ to ‘400’: 1502, ‘maximi’ 2021, ‘maximo’ 1452, ‘maxima’ 476, ‘maxime’ 73, ‘maxsimu’ 20, ‘maxsimi’ 26, ‘maxsimo’ 17, ‘maxsima’ 10, ‘maxsime’ 3 (26/04/2021).

^b ‘maxumu’ in the ‘original texts’ search, date range ‘1’ to ‘400’ (20/04/2021): 34, ‘maxumi’ 12, ‘maxumo’ 18, ‘maxsumu’ 6, ‘maxsumi’ 8, ‘maxsumo’ 3, ‘maxsima’ 13, maxsume 1 (20/04/2021).

^c ‘optimu’ in the ‘original texts’ search, date range ‘1’ to ‘400’: 90, ‘optimi’ 129, ‘optimo’ 980, ‘optima’ 399, ‘optime’ 84 (26/04/2021).

^d ‘optum’ in the ‘original texts’ search, date range ‘1’ to ‘400’ (20/04/2021).

^e ‘plurimu’ 8, ‘plurimi’ 9, ‘plurimo’ 11, ‘plurima’ 32, ‘plurime’ 1, date range ‘1’ to ‘400’ (26/04/2021).

^f ‘plurum’ in the ‘original texts’ search, date range ‘1’ to ‘400’ (20/04/2021).

^g ‘postim’ in the ‘original texts’ search, date range ‘1’ to ‘400’ (26/04/2021).

^h ‘postum’ in the ‘original texts’ search, date range ‘1’ to ‘400’ (20/04/2021).

ⁱ ‘proximu’ 34, ‘proximi’ 13, ‘proximo’ 22, ‘proxima’ 26, ‘proxime’ 9, ‘proxsimi’ 0 (in fact 1, but in Kropp), ‘proxsimo’ 0, ‘proxsima’ 1, ‘proxsime’ 0 in the ‘original texts’ search, date range ‘1’ to ‘400’ (26/04/2021). I have removed from the count 2 instances in the TPSulp. tablets.

^j ‘proxum’ 11, ‘proxsum’ 1 in the ‘original texts’ search, date range ‘1’ to ‘400’ (20/04/2021). I have removed from the count 2 instances in the TPSulp. tablets.

We also see a difference in the use of <u> and <i> in the ordinals in -imus: septimus is found in 1525 inscriptions, while septumus in only 83, given a rate of <u> of 5%; by comparison, decimus appears in 221 inscriptions and decumus 53, so that <u> is found in 19%.²⁸

On this basis, it is unclear at exactly what point use of <u> spellings in the corpora in these words, other than postumus, will have become old-fashioned rather than being a possible spelling for a living sound. Certainly not in the first century BC (e.g. Maxuma Kropp 1.7.2/1, optumos CEL 7.1.21, maxsuma CEL 10). However, the corpora tend to match quite well the distribution we see in the epigraphic record more generally. At Vindolanda, there are no examples of <u> spellings in 54 examples of superlatives in -issimus or 12 of superlatives and ordinals in -imus, and at Vindonissa 1 in -issimus and 1 in -imus (a name). At Dura Europos, 50 superlatives and ordinals in -imus (and -imius) are found, almost all the name Maximus. In the Isola Sacra inscriptions, 98 instances of this type are found with <i>, some names but the majority not; there is a single instance of <u> in the name Postumulene (IS 364). This consistent use of <i> rather than <u> is clearly not particularly remarkable.

In the curse tablets, there are a few examples of <u> spellings in names, where the spelling was probably maintained for longer: Septumius (Kropp 1.11.1/11, second century AD, Sicily), Postum[ianus] (3.2/77, third or fourth century AD, Britain), Maxsumus (5.1.4/10, first half of the second century AD, Germania Superior); likewise in the tablets of Caecilius Jucundus the names Postumi (CIL 4.3340.56, 74, 96) and Septumi (92) have <u> (there are no other examples of these names).

In the letters there is more variety, with three non-name instances of <u>. We find amicissumum (CEL 2, second half of the first century AD) in a very broken text apparently using a model letter of recommendation as a writing exercise. This is striking, since <u> is found so seldom in -issumus superlatives, and particularly so, since the same text apparently also includes an <i> spelling in plurị[mam]. The writer is not yet expert, going by the spelling Caesarre for Caesare. It seems likely that use of <u> was old-fashioned at this point, and the vowel had probably already merged with /i/ in -issimus by this period. Another damaged letter (CEL 166, around AD 150) has plúruma[m alongside the old-fashioned spelling epistolám (assuming this is not an early example of lowering of /u/; see pp. 66–71). The combination of the relative lateness, another old-fashioned spelling, and the fact that plurimus is written with <u> so rarely, suggest that this too is an old-fashioned spelling. On the other hand, this is far less clear for proxumo in a letter from one soldier to another dated to AD 27 (CEL 13). While this letter does have an old-fashioned spelling in tibei for tibi, proximus does seem to have maintained the <u> spelling for longer than the other superlatives, given the relatively high frequency of the <u> spelling for proximus seen at large, and Nikitina’s (2015: 26–7) observation that this lexeme was particularly likely to maintain <u> in official inscriptions. So its use here may not be very old-fashioned. The writer’s spelling is otherwise standard.²⁹

In the tablets of the Sulpicii, we find <u> spellings in the epithets of Jupiter Optum<u>m, Maxumu, Optumum (TPSulp. 68), the first 2 by Eunus, the last by the scribe, where the <u> spelling is probably supported by tradition. And, again, we also have 2 other examples of <u> in pr[o]xum[e] (15) and prox]ume (19), both written by scribes. The same lexeme has the <i> spelling in proximas (87, 89), the former by a scribe, the latter not. Again, proximus show signs of having maintained its <u> spelling longer than some other words. Apart from these, the <i> spelling appears in duodecimum (45), uicẹṇsimum (46), the lexeme mancipium (85, twice, and 87, 3 times), and the perfect infinitive mancipasse (91, 92, 93), all written by scribes.³⁰ There are also 5 instances of the name Maximus (25, 50, twice, and 66, twice), of which 4 are written by a scribe.

Moving on to other lexemes, a curse tablet has alumen[tum] (Kropp 3.23/1, AD 150–200, Britain), which is found in two other inscriptions of the second century AD (alumentorum, AE 1977.179; alument[a]r(iae) CIL 9.3923= EDR175389).³¹ This is therefore probably an old-fashioned spelling, since it compares with 98 inscriptions from the first to fourth centuries AD containing the <i> spelling (not to mention Velius Longus’ advice to use <i>),³² although it is just possible that this word maintained a vowel for which <u> could be a plausible representation. Another has an<n>uuersariu (Kropp 1.4.1/1, c. AD 50, Minturno) for anniuersārium. No other examples of the <u> spelling are found, versus anniuersali (AE 1992.1771, AD 193–195, anniuersarium (CIL 6.31182, AD 101–200, EDR166509), anniuersaria (CIL 11, 05265, AD 333–337, EDR136860) and [ann]iuer[sarium (Res Gestae Diui Augusti; Scheid 2007; CIL 3, pp. 769–99, AD 14).

Lastly, a letter of the third century AD (CEL 220) has estumat for aestumat. I find no other instances of a <u> spelling, and no instances of the <i> spelling either, dated to the first four centuries AD in the EDCS, other than in the Lex Irnitana, which has both, but with <u> predominating (see fn. 17). In my corpora, aestimatum is found Dura Europos in a list of men and mounts (P. Dura 97.15, AD 251), and aestimaṭurụm in a copy of a letter sent by a procurator (P. Dura 66B/CEL 199.2, AD 221). If the vowel in the second syllable had not yet merged with /i/, estumat could be an attempt to represent the sound rather than an old-fashioned spelling, especially since the author has substandard <e> for <ae>.

Apart from these, fairly infrequent, examples, most words which are found with <u> in the corpora are those for which <u> seems to have been maintained as the standard spelling, i.e. monumentum, and contubernalis and contubernium. The evidence of the corpora provides an interesting hint that by the late first century or second century AD, use of <u> in these words was associated with writers whose orthographic education hewed closer to the standard and/or included old-fashioned features.

The Isola Sacra inscriptions, being funerary in nature, are the only corpus to include monumentum (see Table 8). There are 4 instances spelt with <u> and 10 with <i>, a reversal of the pattern in all of first–fourth century AD epigraphy, in which <u> spellings make up nearly two thirds of the examples, with 420 dated inscriptions, while the <i> spelling is found in 240.³³ There is no evidence that <u> is used in earlier inscriptions than <i>.

Table 8 monumentum and monimentum in the Isola Sacra inscriptions

monument-	Inscription	Date	moniment-	Inscription	Date
mo]numento	Isola Sacra 30	Age of Hadrian	monimentum	Isola Sacra 96	Age of Hadrian
monumenti	Isola Sacra 116	Second half of the second century AD	monimento	Isola Sacra 106	Age of Antoninus
monument(i)	Isola Sacra 125	c. AD 150	monimento	Isola Sacra 107	Age of Antoninus
monumentum	Isola Sacra 228	Age of Hadrian	mon`i´m(ento)	Isola Sacra 206	No date given
			monim(entum)	Isola Sacra 240	After AD 98; Trajanic-Hadrianic age
			moni(mentum)	Isola Sacra 284	Age of Hadrian
			monimento	Isola Sacra 320	Age of Hadrian
			monimento	Isola Sacra 320	Age of Hadrian
			monimento	Isola Sacra 337	Age of Hadrian
			m]onimenṭu[m	Isola Sacra 362	No date given

It is possible that there is a correlation between use of monimentum and substandard spelling. The inscriptions with the <u> spelling use an orthography which is otherwise standard, with the exception of filis for filiīs in 228; the stonemason has also made several mistakes in the lettering, so an accidental omission of an <i> is also possible. All but 228 also feature Greek names containing either <y> or aspirates which are spelt correctly. However, the text of IS 30 is very damaged. By comparison, of the inscriptions containing monimentum, 206 has Procla for Procula, preter for praeter and que for quae; 284 also has filis for filiīs; 320 has que for quae, 337 has mea for meam and nominae for nōmine (both may be stonemason’s mistakes, however; see pp. 62–3), and sibe for sibi (on which, see pp. 59–64). 106 and 107 have Ennuchis for Ennychis, 337 Afrodisius for Aphrodisius (Agathangelus and Tyche are spelt correctly in 240; Polytimus, Polytimo and Thallus in 284; and Zmyrnae in 320). None of these inscriptions, even those which use the <u> spelling, features any other old-fashioned spellings (e.g. <c> rather than <k> before<a> in cari[ssimae, IS 30, huius with single <i>, IS 125). While not being conclusive evidence, all this would be consistent with the possibility that monumentum was the standard spelling at this period, and that monimentum was substandard.³⁴

A search on the EDCS finds 433 inscriptions containing contubernium and contubernālis in the first four centuries AD, and only 17 with contibernālis (there were no examples of contibernium).³⁵ The earliest dated example found for contibernālis is contibernali (AE 1975.226), from between 31 BC and AD 30 (EDR076061), although the earliest examples of contubernālis are not necessarily much earlier: contubernal(i) (CIL 6.39697, 50–1 BC, EDR072515) and contubernali (CIL 5.1801, Augustan period). It seems, therefore, that the spelling of these words with <u> is not old-fashioned in terms of usage: it remained current throughout the imperial period and was apparently never replaced by the <i> spelling in standard orthography. The epigraphic evidence does not even allow us to be certain that the <u> spelling is the older spelling.

Table 9 contubernalis and contibernalis in the Vindolanda tablets

contubern-	Tab. Vindol.	contibern-	Tab. Vindol.
contubernalis	181	[c]ontibernales	346
contubernali	310	[con]ṭibernales	641
contubernalem	311	contibeṛ-	656
contubernalis	343	contiḅernium	657
[con]tubẹrṇạ[	349	contibeṛṇale	698
		contibernị	708

For the spelling of this word in the Vindolanda tablets see Table 9. The <u> spelling in this word is used by the writer of 181, who also wrote 180 and 344; the author was a civilian, and the writer of these texts also uses <ss> and <xs> (see p. 263) as well as some substandard spellings. 310 is the letter of Chrauttius, whose scribe also uses <ss>. 311 is written by a scribe who also uses apices. 343 is the letter whose author is Octavius, possibly a civilian, and which combines use of <xs>, <ss> and <k> with a number of substandard spellings. 349 is a fragmentary letter, presumably written by a scribe. It includes an instance of <x>. Note that two of these texts also include superlatives spelt with <i>: felicissimus (310), plurimam, inpientissime (311).

The <i> spelling is used by the writer of the letters 346, 656, 657, and perhaps also the fragmentary 708, presumably a scribe. The spelling is entirely standard (n.b. solearum twice at 346, not soliarum). In 655 the same writer has misi rather than missi, and in 657 <x> rather than <xs>. The writer of 641, a letter, is presumably also written a scribe. It contains misi and an example of <x>. 698 is too fragmentary to say anything about. The number of instances of <i> is surprising, but less striking when we observe that 4 out of 6 (probably) belong to the same writer. All instances of <i> are likely to belong to scribes, whereas <u> is used both by scribes, and, possibly, civilian writers. The use of <u> may correlate with the other old-fashioned spellings <ss>, <xs>, and <k> – but also substandard spellings.

The <u> spelling of contubernalis is found also in the letters of Tiberianus (P. Mich. VIII 467.35/CEL 141), which features some old-fashioned spelling (<uo> for /wu/, <k> before <a>), and some substandard features, although the spelling is overall closer to the standard than some of the letters in this archive.³⁶ This combination leads Halla-aho (2003: 248) to suggest that the writer was ‘a military scribe, trained to write documents for the military bureaucracy’. This letter also provides evidence for the independence of <u>/<i> spellings across lexemes: it includes plurimam, optime, optimas, libenter.

The <u> spelling is also found in an early private letter (contubernálés, CEL 8, 24–21 BC), which has completely standard spelling (apart possibly from Nìreo for Nēreō, see p. 209 fn. 6), and also includes ualdissime. A much later letter has c]ọn[t]ubernio (CEL 220, third century AD), and has estumat for aestimat (see above). The use of <e> for <ae> in the latter is substandard; we do not have enough evidence to be sure that <u> is old-fashioned.

Chapter 7 <uo> for /we/ before a Coronal

In the course of the second century BC, /ɔ/ became /ɛ/ after /w/ and before a coronal, other than a single /r/ (Weiss 2020: 152), for example uoster > uester ‘your’, uoto > ueto ‘I forbid’, aduorsom > aduersum ‘against’. The earliest inscriptional example comes in the Lex repetundarum of 123–122 BC (CIL 1².583), where we find a single example of auersum beside five cases of the spelling <uo>. I have found 6 instances of the <uo> spelling dated to the first century BC, beside 52 examples of <ue>.¹

This suggests a fairly rapid replacement of the <uo> spelling by the <ue> spelling (although diuortia apparently remained the standard spelling for this word), which is supported by the fact that only 13 instances of <uo> are found datable to the first four centuries AD.² Of these, 5 are instances of the divine name Vortumnus, in which archaic spelling might be expected to be retained longer than in other items. Two late cases of uostras (ICUR 5.14057), uostrum (CIL 8.9081) may well reflect the analogical effect of uōs and noster which led to the *o of the Romance languages in this word (e.g. Spanish vuestro, Italian vostro, French vôtre). We find uortice (AE 2015.1186), uorsum (twice, CIL 6.20674) in verse inscriptions of the second century AD, where the effect is probably intended to be archaising; the latter inscription also features the spellings paussa for pausa ‘pause’, gnatam for nātam ‘daughter’, ollim for ōlim ‘once’, and ollis for illīs ‘them’.

The writers on language make it clear that the <o> spelling is outmoded. Quintilian makes the following comment:

quid dicam ‘uortices’ et ‘uorsus’ ceteraque ad eundem modum, quae primus Scipio Africanus in e litteram secundam vertisse dicitur?

What shall I say about ‘uortices’ and ‘uorsus’ and other words spelt in the same way, in which Scipio Africanus [184–129 BC] is said to have been the first to turn the second letter into e?

(Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 1.7.25–26)

While this passage is expressed somewhat cryptically, I take it to mean that he considers the <uo> spelling to be absurdly old-fashioned, and it comes as part of a list of such spellings. Cornutus and Marius Victorinus also address the topic:

‘uostra’ olim ita per o, hodie per e, ut ‘aduorsa’ ‘aduersa’, ‘peruorsa’ ‘peruersa’, ‘uotare’ ‘uetare’, ‘uortex’ ‘uertex’, ‘conuollere’ ‘conuellere’, ‘amploctere’ ‘amplectere’.

uostra used to be written as here with o but now we write e; the same is true of aduorsa beside aduersa, peruorsa beside peruersa, uotare beside uetare, uortex beside uertex, conuollere beside conuellere, amploctere beside amplectere.³

(Cornutus, in Cassiodorus, De orthographia, 1.37 = GL 7.149.16–18)

‘uoster, uortit’ et similia per e, non per o, scribere debemus.

We ought to write uoster, uortit and the like with e, not with o.

(Marius Victorinus, Ars grammatica 4.18 = GL 6.10.22)

Accordingly, none of the corpora preserves the <uo> apart from the curse tablets. This phonological context appears only in a very few lexical items so there are not that many tokens of it in most corpora (I count 7 instances in the tablets of the Sulpicii, for instance, and 6 in P. Dura, although 5 of these are in the same text), but the curses as a genre happen to contain many instances of uerto ‘I turn’ and lexical items derived from it, so there are particularly large numbers of examples. Only 3 of these (across 2 tablets) appear to show the spelling with <uo>, as opposed to 93 with <ue>. Two belong to the same tablet (Kropp 1.4.2/1, Latium), aruosarius for aduersārius, and aruosaria for aruersāria. Since the tablet is dated to the first half of the first century BC, this usage is not relevant for spelling under the empire. The spelling is probably already old-fashioned, but not overly so, as both /wo/ > /we/ and ar- for ad- before a labial fricative are characteristic of the second century BC. The remaining instance is uostrum for uestrum (1.1.1/1, Arretium, second century AD). Although this text does also include another old-fashioned spelling in the form of uoltis for uultis,⁴ uostrum could again instead be an instance of analogy from uōs and noster.

Chapter 8 <uo> and <uu> for /wu/ and /uu/, and <quo> and <quu> for /k^wu/

A number of sound changes raised original /ɔ/ to /u/ in Latin in the course of the third and second centuries BC (in addition to those given on p. 65, this raising also took place before the sequence -lC-, for example *solkos > sulcus ‘furrow’, in the second century). However, the raising was delayed in all cases after /u/, the labial glide /w/ and the labiovelar stop /k^w/ until the first century BC.¹ I have found no certain examples of a spelling <uu> in these sequences prior to the first century. It is often stated or implied in modern scholarship both that original /wɔ/, /k^wɔ/ and /uɔ/ became /wu/, /k^wu/ and /uu/ at the same time, and that the use of <uo> fell out of use extremely quickly.² However, neither of these statements appears to hold true.

As to the former, the inscriptional evidence, including that after the first century BC and some of the corpora (as we shall see), suggests that /uɔ/ became /uu/ earlier than /wɔ/ and /k^wɔ/ became /wu/ and /k^wu/.³

As can be seen in Table 10, 5 inscriptions, all likely to be from the first half of the first century BC,⁴ show 6 examples of the spelling <uu> for original /uɔ/, alongside 2 inscriptions showing three examples of /uɔ/ being spelt <uo>. Conversely, there are 4 instances of original /wɔ/ and /k^wɔ/ being spelt <uo>, and only 1 instance of <uu> which might be dated to between about 100 and 50 BC.⁵ This suggests that /uɔ/ became /uu/ towards the start of the first century BC, whereas /wɔ/ and /k^wɔ/ became /wu/ and /k^wu/ towards the middle of that century. Of course, the numbers are small, but this does fit in with the later spelling conventions, as will be seen.⁶

Table 10 <uo> and <uu> 100–50 BC

<uo> = /uu/	Inscription	Date	Place	<uu> = /uu/	Inscription	Date	Place
suom suom	CIL 12.590	c. 80 BC (Crawford 1996: 302)	Tarentum	duumu(iri)	EDR157325	200–71 BC (EDR, palaeography)	Sezze
perpetuom	CIL 12.1632	80–65 BC (ILLRP 645; Étienne 1965: 214–15; Engfer 2017 no. 96)	Pompeii	duum.uìr	CIL 12.992	100–50 BC (Solin 2003: 97; Gregori and Mattei 1999 no. 1)	Antium
				duum.u[iri]	CIL 12.3091	80–50 BC (Harvey 1975: 49; Granino Cerere 2005 no. 699)	Praeneste
				duum[uiri ?]	CIL 12.1467	80–50 BC (Harvey 1975: 49)	Praeneste
				duum.uir, ḍụum.uir	CIL 12.1620, AE 2000.341	58 and c. 50 BC (Bispham 2000: 52)	Puteoli
<uo> = /wu/, /kwu/	Inscription	Date	Place	<uu> = /wu/	Inscription	Date	Place
soluonto	CIL 12.2951a	87 BC (Richardson 1982: 37)	Contrebia Belaisca	uiuus	AE 1993.545	Mid-first century BC	Muro Lucano
paruom	CIL 4.4972, CIL 12.2540	c. 78 BC (Lieberg 2005: 62)	Pompeii
aequom	CIL 12.588 and p. 913	78 BC	Rome
seruom	CIL 12.686	71 BC	Capua

In the rest of the first century BC and till the end of the Augustan period, <uo> remains the majority way of spelling both /uu/ and /wu/ and /k^wu/. Leaving aside the aqueduct inscriptions from Venafrum, the Fasti Consulares and Triumphales, and the Res Gestae of Augustus, which would distort the figures and will be discussed below, in inscriptions dated between 49 BC–AD 14 I have found the following figures:

• 5 (16%) instances (from 5 inscriptions) of /wu/ and /k^wu/ are spelt <uu>

• 27 (84%) instances (from 27 inscriptions) of /wu/ and /k^wu/ are spelt <uo>

• 8 (32%) instances (from 8 inscriptions) of /uu/ are spelt <uu>

• 17 (68%) instances (from 13 inscriptions) of /uu/ are spelt <uo>.

There are very few inscriptions which contain both /wu/ or /k^wu/ and /uu/, but just as we will see in the corpora there is none which contains both /wu/ or /k^wu/ spelt <uu> and /uu/ spelt <uo>. All three other possibilities are attested: the Laudatio Turiae (CIL 6.41062), from the last decade or so BC, uses <uo> for both /wu/ (uolneribus) and /uu/ (tuom). An inscription on a marble tablet from Herculaneum (CIL 10.1453), shows <uo> for /wu/ (seruom) but <uu> for /uu/ (perpetuum), and it is the same almost consistently in an Augustan edict from Venafrum regarding an aqueduct; across the three copies of the inscription plus a number of cippi marking the route (CIL 10.4842 and 4843; Capini 1999 no. 1a, 1b, 1c, 2a, b, c, d, f, g, i, l, 17–11 BC), there is 1 instance of riuos and 10 of riuom, alongside 1 instance of [u]acuo[m, 1 of uacuum, and 6 of uacuus. In the Res Gestae of Augustus (Scheid 2007; CIL 3, pp. 769–99), <uu> is used in both contexts: sụụm, annuum, ṃ[agistratu]um, riuum, uiuus.

That there was some confusion about when to use <uo> and when to use <uu> in this period is suggested by the Fasti Consulares (CIL 1² pp. 16–29, FC) and Triumphales (Degrassi 1947 no. 1h, FT), erected by Augustus. These in general show a mixture of more old-fashioned and more up-to-date spellings, presumably partly due to their composer working from a range of earlier sources, and partly due to the tendency for names to retain older spellings anyway.

For /wu/ and /uu/ we consequently find an interesting mixture of spellings. In both Fasti we have <uu> used for /uu/ in mortuus (twice, FC) and triduum (FT), and <uu> used to represent /wu/ in the personal names Vulso (4 times, FC, once FT), Ca]luus (FC) and Coruus (3 times, FT), and in the name of the non-Roman people Vulcientib(us) (FT). There is also <uo> for /wu/ in the names of non-Roman peoples: Volsceis (twice, FT), Volsonibus (FT), where the <uo> spelling would remain standard, and the abbreviation uol(nere) (FC). But in addition to these we also find the personal name usually written Scaeuola as Scaeuula (FC), [Sc]aeuula (FT), and the names of the peoples generally known as the Volsinienses as Vulsiniensibus, V]ulsiniensibus (FT). Although these spellings do indeed reflect the expected development of the sequence /wɔ/ to /wu/ before dark /l/ before a back vowel or a consonant, the older spelling Scaeuola appears to have been generally retained, with no other instances of Scaeuula attested, while there are 23 epigraphic instances of the spelling Volsinii and Volsinienses as late as the third century AD. The only other instance with <uu> in this word is Vulsinios (4 times) in a copy of rescript of Constantine (CIL 11.5265, AD 333–337), with many non-standard features.

I would attribute these spellings to an (inconsistent) tendency to modernise the spelling of the sequence of /wu/ to <uu> in the Fasti, even in those lexemes where the old-fashioned spelling would in the end be continued as the standard spelling. Whether this was an idiosyncrasy of the writer of the inscriptions or whether it reflects a more wide-ranging movement towards the use of <uu> for /wu/ amongst whatever body was responsible for the composition of the Fasti cannot be known, although it does fit in with the preference for <uu> also demonstrated by the Res Gestae.

On the basis of this epigraphic evidence, therefore, there is already significant support for the conclusion that /uɔ/ had become /uu/ around the start of the first century BC, while /wɔ/ and /k^wɔ/ only became /wu/ and /k^wu/ around the mid-point of the century. For both contexts, the spellings with <uo> remained more common to the end of the Augustan period, although /uu/ was more frequently written <uu> than /wu/ and /k^wu/ were. In the Augustan period, there are signs of <uu> becoming the standard spelling in official inscriptions for both contexts.

The idea that /uɔ/ became /uu/, and adopted the spelling <uu> earlier, and more thoroughly, than /wɔ/ and /k^wɔ/ is supported by the evidence of both the writers on language and of my corpora. Starting with the former, a well-known passage of Quintilian states that <uo> for /wu/ was still used by his teachers towards the middle of the first century AD, who presumably also passed on this spelling at that time, although he subsequently prefers to use <uu>. The examples he gives for the <uo> spelling are of /wu/ (seruos and uolgus). This is not a coincidence: as we have seen, the epigraphic evidence suggests that his teachers might well have already been using <uu> to represent /uu/, and this in fact provides the key to understanding the passages in which he talks about use of <uo>. The two relevant passages are extremely complex:

atque etiam in ipsis uocalibus grammatici est uidere, an aliquas pro consonantibus usus acceperit, quia “iam” sicut “tam” scribitur et “uos” ut “cos”.⁷ at, quae ut uocales iunguntur, aut unam longam faciunt, ut ueteres scripserunt, qui geminatione earum uelut apice utebantur, aut duas, nisi quis putat etiam ex tribus uocalibus syllabam fieri, si non aliquae officio consonantium fungantur. quaeret hoc etiam, quo modo duabus demum uocalibus in se ipsas coeundi natura sit, cum consonantium nulla nisi alteram frangat. atqui littera i sibi insidit (“conicit” enim est ab illo “iacit”) et u, quo modo nunc scribitur “uulgus” et “seruus”.

And even with regard to the vowels themselves it is up to the teacher of grammar to see whether he will accept that in certain contexts i and u are used as consonants, because iam is written just like tam, and uos like cos [i.e. with an initial consonant]. But when vowels are joined together, they either make one long vowel, as in the writings of the ancients, who used this gemination like an apex, or a diphthong,⁸ unless one thinks that a syllable can consist of three vowels in a row, without one of them taking on the function of a consonant. Then, indeed, he will also examine how it can be in the nature of two identical vowels to be combined [in a single syllable], when none of the consonants can do so except when they ‘break’ another [i.e. in muta cum liquida sequence, which can occupy the onset of a syllable].⁹ But nonetheless, the letter i [as a vowel] can occupy the same place as itself [as a consonant] (since conicit is from iacit), as can u, as we now write uulgus and seruus.

(Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 1.4.10–11)

And:

nostri praeceptores “seruum” “ceruum”que u et o litteris scripserunt, quia subiecta sibi uocalis in unum sonum coalescere et confundi nequiret; nunc u gemina scribuntur ea ratione, quam reddidi: neutro sane modo uox, quam sentimus, efficitur, nec inutiliter Claudius Aeolicam illam ad hos usus litteram adiecerat.

My teachers wrote seruus (“slave”) and ceruus (“stag”) with the letters u and o, because they did not think that a vowel could coalesce and be combined with itself into a single sound. Now we write double u, for the reason I have given above [i.e. in section 1.4.10–11]: clearly by neither method is the sound which we hear represented, and Claudius’ addition of the Aeolic letter for this usage was not without value.

(Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 1.7.26)

The exact meaning of these passages is somewhat complicated, and is discussed by Colson (1924) and Ax (2011) in their commentaries, as well as, for the first passage, Coleman (1963: 1–10). The first passage states that when a vowel is added to another vowel within a syllable this either represents a long vowel (in old writers), or a diphthong (but not a triphthong: three vowels can only go together in the same syllable if one is consonantal <i> or <u>). In addition, <i> and <u> can occupy both vocalic and consonantal positions, as shown by the interchange between /j/ and /i/ in iacit and conicit respectively,¹⁰ and by /wu/ in uulgus and seruus. If these letters are considered always to be vowels, one then has to explain why they can (nowadays) appear consecutively in the same syllable, when two identical consonants cannot do this (or indeed any two consonants, except in muta cum liquida sequences).

In the second passage, Ax explains unus sonus as the onset and nucleus of a syllable (‘eine neue eigene silbische Toneinheit’). He concludes that, since it was acceptable to use <u> to write /w/ plus a vowel other than /u/, Quintilian’s teachers, not being prepared to countenance <uu> for /wu/, fell back on <uo>, which was acceptable. However, in the absence of other information, this leaves us in the dark as to why <uu> for /wu/ was not to their liking.

Colson takes unus sonus to refer to a diphthong, and says of the second passage:

I think it is clear that the meaning is ‘as they held, two identical vowels could not form a diphthong,’ cf. 4, 11. The reasoning is (a) two vowels in a syllable must form unus sonus, but (b) two identical vowels cannot do this, therefore (c) one of these must be altered.

But if it is true that the rule is that two vowel letters in a syllable must form a (rising) diphthong, the sequence <uo> for /wu/ and /wɔ/ ought to have been just as forbidden as <uu>, since these also did not form a diphthong (and the same would be true of <ua>, <ue>, <ui>).

The missing piece to the puzzle is the fact that, once gemination had ceased to be used to represent vowel length, doubled vowel letters generally could only represent two vowels in two consecutive syllables, as in words like cooperatio and anteeo;¹¹ <uu> of course also represents /uu/. These sequences of vowels in separate syllables unquestionably represent two sounds. I take it, therefore, that unus sonus refers to a sequence of sounds within the same syllable, as in <uu> for /wu/. So, Quintilian’s teachers accepted the use of <uu> to represent /uu/, since this was a sequence of two sounds across two syllables, as in all other sequences of two vowels, but not <uu> to represent /wu/, since this would be considered unus sonus.¹² And in fact, this analysis will be supported when we turn shortly to other writers from shortly before and after Quintilian, who make it explicit that the problem with <uu> is that it ought to represent two vowels in two syllables.

Combining and expanding on Quintilian’s two passages, his argument is as follows: it is necessary to consider whether i and u are to count as vowels or consonants. At least some of the time, i and u should be considered consonants, as in iam and uōs, where they occupy the syllable onset. It is true that when vowel letters are combined in a single syllable they represent either a long vowel (in the olden days) or a (rising) diphthong (e.g. ae, au etc.), but an ostensible combination of three vowels (e.g. seruae) in fact can only be analysed as containing a consonantal i or u. The analysis as vowels is also problematic if we assume that two of them can be combined in a single syllable, when two identical consonants have to be split across a syllable boundary (and indeed two non-identical consonants, except in muta cum liquida sequences); in addition (and more relevantly), as Quintilian’s teachers maintained, two identical vowels have to be split across two syllables too (as in words like cooptō, praeeō, ingenuus). However, now it is recognised that i and u can sometimes function as consonants, allowing the spelling seruus (although consonantal u does somehow sound different from u as a vowel, so it would be sensible to use the digamma for consonantal u).

This analysis is supported when we turn to other writers who talk about the <uo> spelling: Cornutus, Velius Longus and Terentius Scaurus all refer to the old belief that two consecutive identical vowel letters could only represent vowels in separate syllables. This point is made very clearly by Cornutus:

alia sunt quae per duo u scribuntur, quibus numerus quoque syllabarum crescit. similis enim uocalis uocali adiuncta non solum non cohaeret, sed etiam syllabam auget, ut ‘uacuus’, ‘ingenuus’, ‘occiduus’, ‘exiguus’. eadem diuisio uocalium in uerbis quoque est, <ut> ‘metuunt’, ‘statuunt’, ‘tribuunt’, ‘acuunt’. ergo hic quoque c littera non q apponenda est.

There are other words which are written with double u, whose number of syllables increases. Because a vowel attached to another same vowel not only does not form a single syllable, it even increases the number of syllables, as in uacuus, ingenuus, occiduus, exiguus. The same division of vowels also takes place in verbs, as in metuunt, statuunt, tribuunt, and acuunt. Therefore here too one should use the letter c not q [i.e. because in acuunt we have /kuu/, not /k^wu/].

(Cornutus, in Cassiodorus, De orthographia 1.45–48 = GL 7.150.5–9)

We can see that Cornutus, a decade and a half older than Quintilian, does indeed follow the rule that Quintilian ascribes to his teachers that <uu> must reflect two vowels in different syllables. Direct evidence that Cornutus used <uo> for /wu/ may come from the following passage; however, the manuscripts are all corrupt here, so that the reading is not certain, and due to its brevity the passage is also difficult to understand:¹³

‘extinguont’ per u et o: qualem rationem supra redidi de q littera, quam dixi oportere in omni declinatione duas uocales habere, talis hic quoque intelligenda est; ‘extinguo’ est enim et ab hoc ‘extinguont’, licet enuntiari non possit.

Extinguont is written with u and o: this is to be understood here for the same reason which I gave above, when I discussed the letter q. There I said that whenever it appears it ought to be followed by two vowels. Since it is extinguō, from that we get extinguont, even if that cannot be pronounced.¹⁴

(Cornutus, in Cassiodorus, De orthographia 1.56–57 = GL 7.150.22–151.2)

Velius Longus also explains the rule concerning <uu> more clearly than Quintilian:

transeamus nunc ad ‘u’ litteram. a[c] plerisque super<i>orum ‘primitiuus’ et ‘adoptiuus’ et ‘nominatiuus’ per ‘u’ et ‘o’ scripta sunt, scilicet quia sciebant uocales inter se ita confundi non posse, ut unam syllabam [non] faciant, apparetque eos hoc genus nominum aliter scripsisse, aliter enuntiasse. nam cum per ‘o’ scriberent, per ‘u’ tamen enuntiabant.

Now we turn to the letter u. By many of our predecessors primitiuus and adoptiuus and nominatiuus were written with uo, evidently because they held that a vowel could not be combined with itself to form a single syllable, and it appears that they wrote and pronounced this type of word differently. That is, while they wrote o, they said u.

(Velius Longus, De orthographia 5.5.1 = GL 7.58.4–8)

Like Quintilian, Velius Longus, writing probably slightly later, sees the use of <uo> for /wu/ as old-fashioned. In addition to the reference to superiores in the passage above, he subsequently makes the comment

illam scriptionem, qua ‘nominatiuus’ ‘u’ et ‘o’ littera notabatur, relinquemus antiquis.

That spelling, whereby nominatiuus used to be written with uo, we shall leave to the ancients.

(Velius Longus, De orthographia 7.2 = GL 7.67.1–2)

Terentius Scaurus mentions the rule more briefly, and again makes it clear that the <uo> spelling for /wu/ is old-fashioned:

proportione ut cum dicimus ‘equum’ et ‘seruum’ et similia debere scribi, quanquam antiqui per ‘uo’ scripserunt, quoniam scierunt uocalem non posse geminari, credebantque et hanc litteram geminatam utroque loco in sua potestate perseuerare, ignorantes eam praepositam uocali consonantis uice fungi et poni pro ea littera quae sit ‘ϝ’.

[The third way of identifying correct spelling] is by analogy, as when we say that equus and seruus and similar words ought to be written like this, although the old writers wrote them with uo. This is because they knew that a vowel ought not to be written twice [in the same syllable], and they believed that the same applied to u, having vocalic force in both places, not being aware that it functioned as a consonant when put before a vowel and that it was used in the same way as the Greeks used ϝ”.

(Terentius Scaurus, De orthographia 3.4.1 = GL 7.12.11–16)

Interestingly, Pseudo-Probus, probably largely repeating Sacerdos’ late third century AD Artes grammaticae, treats <uo> simply as an alternative spelling, with no suggestion that is old-fashioned or unusual:

uos uel uus secundae sunt declinationis, i faciunt genetiuo, hic ceruos uel ceruus huius cerui, neruos uel neruus huius nerui, et siqua talia.

Nouns ending in -uos or -uus belong to the second declension. They make their genitive in -i, as in hic ceruus or ceruos, huius cerui, neruos or neruus, huius nerui, and others of this sort.

(Ps-Probus, De catholicis, GL 4.19.13–15)

Marius Victorinus also does not make an explicit statement about whether the <uo> spelling is old-fashioned, although he does go on, after the following passage, to recommend the use of <uu>, to his pupils, with spelling matching pronunciation:

sed scribam uoces, quas alii numero singulari et plurali indifferenter per u et o scripserunt, ut ‘auos, coruos, nouos’ et cetera.

But I shall write about words which other people have written the same way in the singular and plural, such as auos, coruos, nouos etc.

(Marius Victorinus, Ars grammatica 4.42 = GL 6.14.23–24)

Donatus does not mention the <uo> spellings, but gives seruus and uulgus as examples of consonantal plus vocalic <u> (Donatus, Ars maior 2, p. 604.5–6 = GL 4.367.18–19).

Looking at the inscriptional evidence after the Augustan period, it seems likely that Quintilian, Velius Longus and Terentius Scaurus’ objections to <uo> may actually be a response to its survival relatively late, even in official and elite inscriptions, throughout the first century AD and into the second. As we have seen, the Res Gestae already uses <uu> for both /uu/ and /wu/ and /k^wu/, but <uo> could still be used for both on the gravestone of a high-status woman towards the end of the first century BC, and <uo> for /wu/ in particular is found in a number of inscriptions which could be considered to represent the elite standard.¹⁵

In legal texts:

• aequom (CILA 2.3.927) in a Senatus consultum from Spain, AD 19–20

• aequom (CIL 2.5.900) in a Senatus consultum from Spain in several copies from AD 20

• clauom (twice, CIL 2.5181; second half of the first century AD) in a lex from Lusitania

• uacuom, diuom (CIL 2.1964), diuom (6 times), seruom, suom (CIL 2.1963), diuom (12 times) beside seruum duumuir, duuuiri, suum (CILA 2.4.1201) in several versions of a Lex Flavia municipalis from Spain, with parts dating back to legislation of Augustus

• riuom (3 times), alongside riuum, riuus (twice) in the Lex riui hiberiensis from Hispania Citerior, during the reign of Hadrian (Beltrán Lloris 2006)

• diuos and –]ụom (CIL 6.40542) on a legal text on a marble tablet, Rome, during the reign of Antoninus Pius.

Other inscriptions of an official or public character:

• equom, ]uom beside suum, magistratuum (AE 1949.215) in a tablet recording the honours paid to Germanicus Caesar, from Etruria, AD 20

• au]onc[ulus], diuom (CIL 13.1668; Malloch 2020) beside diuus, patruus, arduum. A tablet recording a speech of Claudius, Lugdunum, AD 48 or shortly afterwards

• riuom (CIL 6.1246) in an inscription commemorating Titus’ rebuilding of the Aqua Marcia, Rome, AD 79

• aequom (AE 1962.288). A bronze tablet recording a rescript of Titus, from Spain, AD 79 or shortly afterwards

• diuos (AE 1988.564) in a marble fragment of an imperial Fasti from Etruria, in the reign of Trajan or later

• aequom (CIL 3.355). A bronze tablet recording a rescript of Trajan, AD 125–128, from Asia.

In general, <uo> was by no means uncommon. It was perhaps particularly frequent in uiuos for uiuus ‘alive’ on tombstones, where it appears in the formula uiuus fecit ‘(s)he made it while still alive’. A search on the EDCS finds 209 inscriptions dated between AD 1 and 400 which contain uiuos, and 372 containing uiuus. So <uo> represents /wu/ in 36% of these inscriptions.¹⁶ Of course, some instances of uiuos may be accusative plurals rather than nominative singulars, but given the vast frequency of the uiuus fecit formula, this will make up a very small part of the total. A search with much smaller numbers allows for checking the inscriptions, and confirms this proportion of <uo> to <uu>: there are 55 inscriptions containing (con)seruos in the nominative singular and 118 of (con)seruus = 31% dated between AD 1 and 400.¹⁷

It also survived for a long time, although its use for /uu/ is rare in later inscriptions. Not including instances of quom for cum (on which see pp. 165–8), I find 68 inscriptions dated between AD 150 and 400 which contain <uo>, of which only 3 have <uo> for /uu/ (CIL 5.4016, AE 1989.388, CIL 3.158); the rest are all /wu/ or /k^wu/.¹⁸ These are found in inscriptions from a range of genres (funerary, honorary, dedication, building, a contract on a wax tablet, a statue base etc.) from all over the empire. To give an extremely rough idea of the frequency of <uo> at this period I searched for <uu> on the EDCS, which found 979 inscriptions containing this sequence from between these dates, giving a frequency of 7%.¹⁹ A couple of inscriptions from this period suggest that the convention of using <uo> for /wu/ and <uu> for /uu/ may have been maintained: CIL 10.1880 has [P]rimitiuos and [p]erpetuus, CIL 3.5295 (= 3.11709) has uolnus and suum.

The corpora confirm the tendency among some writers to use <uo> to represent /wu/, and <uu> to represent /uu/ (and never the other way round) and hence the implication that /uɔ/ to /uu/ took place earlier.²⁰ This is most clear in the Vindolanda tablets, where the distinction is consistent: /wu/ is always spelt <uo> and /uu/ always spelt <uu> (see Table 11).²¹ Most of the instances of <uo> appear in letters to and from the prefect Cerialis; it correlates with instances of etymological <ss> for /s/ in 225, a draft letter from Cerialis, probably written in his own hand, and in 256, a letter to Cerialis. Most of the latter was written by a scribe, whose spelling is otherwise standard, and it comes from a certain Flavius Genialis of unknown status, but who is probably not the prefect Flavius Genialis. In 261, another letter to Cerialis, presumably from someone of similar rank, it appears in the formula annum nouọm f̣ạuṣṭum felicem ‘a fortunate and happy New Year’. In 720 too little remains to say anything about the contents.

Table 11 <uo> and <uu> spellings at Vindolanda

/wu/	Tablet (Tab. Vindol.)	/uu/	Tablet (Tab. Vindol.)
uolnerati ‘wounded’	154	Ingenuus	187
saluom ‘in good health’	225	tuu[ ‘your’	270
siluolas ‘thickets’	256	t]ụum ‘your’	291
nouọm ‘new’	261	tuum ‘your’	292
uolt ‘wants’	720	Ingenuus	631
		Ingenuus	735

Although this distribution might imply that use of <uo> is associated with high-status individuals, it also appears in 154, which is an interim strength report, unlikely to have entered the official archives of the unit. Although it does not contain a large amount of text, its spelling is standard except for the contraction of original /iiː/ sequences in is (six times beside eis twice) and Coris ‘at Coria’. Of the tablets using <uu> for /uu/, 187 is an account, whose spelling is, as far as one can tell, standard. 270 is a letter to Cerialis, likewise. 291 and 292 are letters from Severa to Lepidina; the main hands of each are described by the editors as ‘elegant’ and ‘rather elegant’ respectively, and use standard spelling. 631 is a letter to Cerialis from an Ingenuus, who addresses Cerialis as domine ‘my lord’; very little remains, although an apex is used in the greeting formula, which may imply that it was written by a scribe (see pp. 226–32). 735 is fragmentary, but also includes the word dịxsịt. It looks as though use of <uo> is associated with use of etymological <ss> and of <xs>, and both <uo> and <uu> with standard spelling; most of our examples come from texts associated with high-status individuals, but their appearance in a strength report and an account suggest that this is a coincidence, and the absence of <uu> for /wu/ or <uo> for /uu/ suggests that <uo> is the normal way of spelling /wu/ and <uu> /uu/ at Vindolanda.

The same distinction is found in one of the Claudius Tiberianus letters (P. Mich. VIII 467/CEL 141), where <uo> is used for /wu/ in saluom, no]uom, fugitiuom and <uu> is used for /uu/ in tuum (twice). A confused version of the rule also seems to appear in bolt (469/144) for uult ‘wants’ (<o> after /w/ according to the rule, but /w/ spelt with <b>), while <uu> is also used by the same writer in tuum (468/142), but there is no example of /wu/ or /k^wu/. All of these letters feature substandard spelling to varying degrees (Halla-aho 2003: 247–50), but they also feature (other) old-fashioned spellings (<k> before /a/ in 467/141; <q> before /u/ inconsistently in 468/142; <q> before /u/ inconsistently, <ei> for /iː/ once in 469/144). Also from a military context, but significantly later, the Bu Njem ostraca show one example of seruu (O. BuNjem 71.5) for seruus or seruum and one example of ṭụụṃ (114.5)

In the tablets of Caecilius Jucundus all 5 instances of /wu/ are spelt with <uo> (see Table 12);²² all in the word seruos and by five different writers, one a scribe. All 8 instances except 1 of /uu/ are spelt with <uu>; 2 instances are written by a scribe, and the remaining 6 are by Privatus, slave of the colony of Pompeii, who uses <uo> once in duomuiris, which he otherwise 4 times spells duumuiris.

Table 12 <uo> and <uu> in the Caecilius Jucundus tablets

<uo>	Tablet	Date	Writer	<uu>	Tablet	Date	Writer
seruo[s]	CIL 4.3340.6	AD 54	Salvius the slave	duumuiris	CIL 4.3340.142	AD 58	Privatus, slave of the colonia
seruos	CIL 4.3340.20	AD 56	Vestalis, slave of Popidia	duumuiris	CIL 4.3340.145	AD 58	Privatus, slave of the colonia
seruo[s]	CIL 4.3340.138	AD 53	Secundus, slave of the colonia	duumuiris	CIL 4.3340.145	AD 58	Scribe
seruos	CIL 4.3340.142	AD 58	Privatus, slave of the colonia	duumuiris	CIL 4.3340.146	AD 58	Scribe
duomuiris	CIL 4.3340.144	AD 60	Privatus, slave of the colonia	duumuiris	CIL 4.3340.147	AD 59	Privatus, slave of the colonia
seruos	CIL 4.3340.146	AD 58	Scribe	duumuiris	CIL 4.3340.150	AD 58	Privatus, slave of the colonia
				merca[t]uus	CIL 4.3340.151	AD 62	Privatus, slave of the colonia

In the tablets of the Sulpicii, /wu/ is commonly spelt <uu>: there are 5 instances (TPSulp. 26, 46, 51, 56, twice) in the word seruus, and 1 in seruum (TPSulp. 51), all written by scribes, between AD 37 and 52. There is 1 example with <uo>, also written by a scribe, at the early end of the date range of the tablets: fụg̣ịṭ[i]ụom (TPSulp. 43, AD 38). There are 4 examples of /uu/ in the lexeme duumuir (TPSulp. 23, scribe; 25, twice, scribe; 110, non-scribe). The tablets from Herculaneum have a single example of [ser]ụụṣ (TH² A10).

In the curse tablets, there are only two instances of <uo> for /wu/, but Primitiuos (11.1.1/18, second–third century AD, Carthage) is not a certain example, because the writer of the curse also writes Romanous for Rōmānus, suggesting some confusion as to the vowel in the final syllables of these names (and perhaps Greek influence). The remaining form uoltis (1.1.1/1, second century AD, Arretium) also features another old-fashioned spelling, uostrum for uestrum (unless this is analogical on uōs and noster, see p. 106), and shows substandard spelling in interemates for interimātis and interficiates for interficiātis, as well as nimfas for nymphās ‘nymphs’. There are 34 instances of <uu> (from the first century BC to third or fourth century AD, from Rome, Hispania, Britannia and Africa).

There are 6 instances of <uo> for /uu/ beside 18 of <uu> (from the first or second century AD to the fourth century AD; two in Germania, one in Italy and the rest in Britannia), but 4 of the examples of <uo> for /uu/ are dated to the first century BC, when the change was only just taking place (1.4.4/3, 1.7.2/1). The remaining text has 2 examples of suom (1.4.4/1, first–second centuries AD). It also contains old-fashioned <ei> for [ĩː] in eimferis for inferīs. All we can really deduce from the evidence of the curse tablets is that use of <uo> was uncommon in texts of this type, but could be found as late as the second century AD in texts which showed other old-fashioned spellings and, in one case, substandard orthography.

In the corpus of letters, <uo> for /wu/ and <uu> for /uu/ is found in CEL 10 (the letter of Suneros, Augustan period), which contains uolt and deuom beside tuum. This distinction can hardly be considered old-fashioned at this time; the spelling as a whole might be considered conservative, as well as including substandard features (see pp. 10–11). Another letter from the last quarter of the first century BC contains sa]ḷuom (CEL 9). By comparison, CEL 167, a papyrus of c. AD 150 from Egypt, contains dịụus and annuum (as well as ]uum, which could represent /wu/, /k^wu/, or /uu/), and CEL 242, an official letter on papyrus from Egypt of AD 505, has octauum and Iduuṃ. In addition, uult (CEL 75) is found in a letter of Rustius Barbarus, tuum (CEL 1.1.18) perhaps third or fourth century AD, suum (CEL 226) in a papyrus from Egypt, AD 341, and ambiguum (CEL 240), a papyrus from Ravenna of AD 445–446. This confirms that at least in the Augustan period there were writers who used <uo> for /wu/, and, in one case, distinguished it from <uu> for /uu/. However, it seems that from the first century AD, <uu> was used also for /wu/.

In the London tablets, there is only a single example of /k^wu/, spelt ]equus (WT 41). In the Isola Sacra inscriptions, there is only a single example of /uu/, spelt suum (Isola Sacra 285). There is also only 1 instance form Dura Europos (e]quum, P. Dura 66PP/CEL 191.42, AD 216).

Chapter 9 Double Letters to Write Long Vowels

In the second half of the second century BC, the Romans adopted the practice of writing long vowels with double letters from the Oscan alphabet (Oliver 1966: 151–5; Vine 1993: 267–86; Wallace 2011: 18; Weiss 2020: 32). However, it did not remain a standard part of Latin orthography past the end of the Republic. According to Oliver, Wallace and Weiss, the double spelling of long vowels can be found as late as the early fourth century AD. Oliver points out uii (CIL 3.4121) = uī ‘by force’ from AD 312–323,¹ exercituus (CIL 6.230) for exercitūs ‘of the army’, from AD 222–235, and aara (Lemerle 1937 no. 12) for ārās,² fourth century according to Oliver, third century according to Lemerle.

It is difficult to find really plausible examples for the first to fourth centuries AD, partly because the possibility of false positives when searching the EDCS is very high, and partly because it is hard to be sure that a particular instance is not a mistake in the writing. Searches for <aa>, <ee>, <oo> and <uu> provide a small number of at all plausible examples:³ Spees (CIL 4.5127, prior to AD 79), [I]uunia (CIL 4.8029, prior to AD 79), lacuus (CIL 12.2606, 2607, first century AD), domuus (CIL 9.4794; first century AD, Dessau 1892–1916, 7332), Iuulius (AE 1976.700, AD 201), porticuus (ILA 531, AD 298), Ianuariaas (CIL 11.4033, AD 345, but note a mistake in palcis for pacis), Erclaanius (ICUR 10.26742 = EDB18026, AD 301–349), uoot(a) (AE 1977.540), feceerunt (AE 1972.709), dieebus (CIL 14.1212), duouiratuus (CIL 3.9768).

The writers on language who mention this feature at all consider it old-fashioned. Quintilian mentions it in passing:

at, quae ut uocales iunguntur, aut unam longam faciunt, ut ueteres scripserunt, qui geminatione earum uelut apice utebantur …

When letters which are vowels are joined together, they either make one long vowel, as the ancients wrote, who used this gemination as though it were an apex …

(Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 1.4.10)

usque ad Accium et ultra porrectas syllabas geminis, ut dixi, uocalibus scripserunt.

Down to the time of Accius and beyond they [i.e. ‘the ancients’] wrote long syllables with double vowels, as I have mentioned.

(Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 1.7.14)

Unsurprisingly, therefore, use of double letters to write long vowels in the corpora is extremely rare, if not non-existent. The curse tablets provide two possible examples: uoos for uōs ‘you’ (Kropp 11.1.1/26) from Carthage, dated to the second century AD, and ceernis (Kropp 6.1/1) for cernis, from Noricum, mid-second century AD. In neither case can a mere dittography be ruled out. In the case of 6.1/1, additional letters are also written in siuem for sīue (due to anticipation of the following word Iouem?), oporno/tet for oportet and quom/modi for quōmodo (dittography across a line divide). It seems unlikely that ceernis is an intentional use of double letters. In 11.1.1/26 uos is written thus several more times, and no other long vowel is written with double vowels. We also find in this tablet the old-fashioned spelling iodicauerunt for iūdicāuē̆runt (see p. 74). The spelling on this tablet is substandard, but mostly reflects the spoken language. However, there is an unmotivated geminate spelling in coggens for cōgēns ‘forcing’, and a scrambled spelling in Atsurio for Asturiō. I do not think we can be sure that uoos reflects an old-fashioned spelling rather than an accidental dittography.

In addition, we find an instance of q̣uụr (Tab. Vindol. 652) for cūr at Vindolanda between AD 104 and 120. However, while a possible analysis here is that <q> represents /k/ before /u/ and that <uu> represents /uː/, it is more likely that this is a quasi-etymological spelling whereby /qu/ represents *k^w (cf. the spellings quom and quum for cum; pp. 165–8). In the Vindonissa tablets, we have the dative Secundi{i}na<e> (T. Vindon. 41). Again, dittography seems more likely than intentional double writing of the vowel.

Chapter 10 <c> for /g/

The writers on language were aware that <c> had previously been used for /g/ (e.g. Terentianus Maurus 210–211, 894–901 = GL 6.331.210–211, .351.894–.352.891). Instances of <c> for <g> are occasionally found in my corpora, but it is hard to take them seriously as examples of old-fashioned spelling.¹ In the curse tablets there are scores, if not hundreds, of instances of <g> in the corpus as a whole, and in most cases the few apparent cases of <c> are probably to be put down to the difficulty of distinguishing <c> from <g>, either in the writing or reading of small letters on a thin piece of soft metal which is generally then subject to folding and unfolding, abrasion, water and other types of damage etc. – cf. Väänänen’s (1966: 53) comment that instances of <c> for <g> at Pompeii are ‘simple writing errors’ (‘simples erreurs d’écriture’). For similar reasons, the few instances of <c> for <g> in the graffiti from the Palatine are not to be taken seriously.

Most of the curse tablets have only one or two apparent examples of <c> for <g>. Kropp 1.4.3/2 has colico for colligō beside two other cases of <g>, 1.10.2/1 has [r]oco for rogō beside rogo twice. 3.2/25 has no other instances of <g> beside sacellum for sagellum, but is fairly short. 3.14/1 has defico for defigō and also a number of mechanical errors: intermxixi/ta for intermixta, fata for facta (if this is not due to assimilation), sci for sīc, possitt for possit, amere for amārae. 11.1.1/3, along with two examples of Callicraphae for Calligraphae, has seven other examples of <g>.

In the first to fourth century AD, only 1.4.1/1 (Minturnae, c. AD 50) gives the impression that <c> for <g> could be intentional:² it is used for all instances of /g/, in acat for agat, ficura for figūram, dicitos and ticidos for digitōs, and cenua for genua. However, it also has hbetes for habētis, tadro for tradō, uitu for uultum, fulmones for pulmōnes, dabescete for tabēscentem, and ticidos for digitōs. In particular, the use of <f> for <p>, <d> for <t>, and <t> for <d> suggests that the writer, as well as being prone to errors such as omitting or transposing letters, had particular problems in identifying stops correctly. Something weird is going on, but use of <c> for <g> cannot be attributed certainly to the type of education the writer received, rather than linguistic problems (or, conceivably, a form of ‘magical’ writing).

Visible in a small number of the Isola Sacra inscriptions is a curious tendency for /g/ to be represented by <c> when there is another <c> in the word (see Table 13). Whatever the explanation for this, it seems unlikely that it has anything to do with old-fashioned spelling.

Table 13 <c> for <g> in the Isola Sacra inscriptions

Clauce	Isola Sacra 204	No date
Clauceni	Isola Sacra 205	No date
Clauce	Isola Sacra 205	No date
sarco˹f˺acu	Isola Sacra 237	No date
cocnatu	Isola Sacra 321	Perhaps second century AD

Apart from in these corpora, the only other example of <c> for <g> is q]uadrincẹnto (CEL 157, AD 167, Egypt) for quadringenti, where the editor is probably correct to suspect influence from centum ‘one hundred’ (the letter contains another 5 examples of <g>).

Chapter 11 <ii> for /jj/

Single *i̯ between vowels was lost very early in Latin (possibly at the Proto-Italic stage). Consequently, the sound represented by consonantal <i> between vowels was actually geminate /jj/ from various sources (Weiss 2020: 67–8). I have not been able to find any epigraphical examples of <ii> prior to the first century BC, and Weiss’ (2020: 68 fn. 64) statement that ‘[g]eminate spelling … is frequently encountered on inscriptions’ seems exaggerated. A search for ‘cuiius’, one of his two examples, on the whole of the EDCS, finds 13 examples, as opposed to 793 for ‘cuius’. The other is maiiorem (CIL 2.1964.3.10): a search for ‘maiior’ finds 12 examples, including derived names, beside 948 for ‘maior’.¹

The same infrequency applies specifically to the dated inscriptions from the first to fourth centuries AD. I searched for selected forms either mentioned by the grammarians or which appear in the corpora: there are 7 instances of Maiia to 336 of Maia (encompassing the month, divine name, and personal names), 2 of huiius to 192 of huius, 6 of Pompeiius and Pompeiianus to 914 of Pompeius and Pompeianus.²

The writers on language often discuss use of <ii>; from Velius Longus, and especially Terentianus Maurus, there are some hints that it might still be in use in the second century AD, but implying that the single spelling is standard. Others do not give the impression that it is much in use in their own time:

sciat etiam Ciceroni placuisse “aiio” “Maiiam”que geminata i scribere …

He should know that even Cicero thought it good to write aiio and Maiia with geminated i …³

(Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 1.4.11)

et in plerisque Cicero uidetur auditu emensus scriptionem, qui et ‘Aiiace<m>’ et ‘Maiiam’ per duo ‘i[i]’ scribenda existimauit … unde illud <quod> pressius et plenius sonet per duo ‘i’ scribi oportere existimat, sic et ‘Troi <i> am’ et siqua talia sunt. inde crescit ista geminatio et incipit per tria ‘i’ scribi ‘coiiicit’, ut prima syllaba sit ‘coi’, sequentes duae ‘ii’ ‘cit’ … at qui ‘Troiam’ et ‘Maiam’ per unum ‘i’ scribunt, negant onerandam pluribus litteris scriptionem, cum sonus ipse sufficiat.

And in many instances Cicero seems to have corrected spelling to match sound; he thought that Aiax and Maia should be written Aiiax and Maiia, with two is … Hence he thinks that this more sustained and fuller sound ought to be written with two is, as in Troiia, and words of this sort. From this idea arises the gemination, and coiiicit begins to be spelt with three ‘i’s, as though consisting of a first syllable ‘coi’, followed by the double ‘ii’ and then ‘cit’ … But those who write Troia and Maia with a single ‘i’ say that writing ought not to be weighed down by too many letters, the sound itself being sufficient.

(Velius Longus, De orthographia 5.1 = GL 7.54.16–55.4)

‘i’ geminum scribere nos iubent magistri …

Teachers order us to write i double …

(Terentianus Maurus, De litteris 175= GL 6.330.175)

uel gemella si locanda est, ut uidetur pluribus …

Or if a double spelling is to be used here, as many think …

(Terentianus Maurus, De litteris 623 = GL 6.343.623)

sic enim scribi per geminatam litteram metri ratione desiderat, si quidem potestatem tuetur duplicis consonantis.

It (i.e. i) ought to be written with the letter doubled for metrical reasons, if one had an eye on its ability to act as a double consonant.

(Diomedes, Ars grammatica, GL 1.428.10–19)

sibi autem ipsa subiungitur in his, ut ‘aiio, Troiia, G<r>aiius, Aiiax’.

It [i.e. i] is joined to itself in these words, as in aiio, Troiia, Graiius, Aiiax.

(Marius Victorinus, Ars grammatica 4.102 = GL 6.24.21–22)

aut in i litteram solam loco consonantis positam, quam nonnulli geminant, ut aio te Aeacida, Romanus uincere posse …

But with regard to the letter i placed in a consonantal position, which some people double, as in aio te Aeacida, Romanus uincere posse …

(Donatus, Ars grammatica maior 1.3, p. 606.4–6 = GL 4.368.27–369.2)

Use of <ii> to represent intervocalic /jj/ is very uncommon in the corpora; for example in the Caecilius Jucundus tablets, in which the genre and location of the texts mean that eius, Pompeius, Pompeianus, and the month Maia appear frequently, there are 31 instances of <i> and none of <ii>, and in the Isola Sacra inscriptions, 29 instances of <i> in the words cuius, eius, huius, and in the names Cocceius, Manteiane, Maiorice, Septeius and Tonneius, but none of <ii>. Generally, therefore, I did not count instances of <i> . Where <ii> is used, this may be one of the times when an old-fashioned spelling corresponds to a spelling produced by a writer with lower education, since words like eius really did contain a double /jj/, which might be spelt <ii> simply by a writer who closely produced what they pronounced.

The Vindolanda tablets have a single example of <ii> in Coceịió (Tab. Vindol. 645). Either old-fashioned or substandard spelling is possible: the writer uses old-fashioned <ss> in fussá, but also has substandard features in Vindolande for Vindolandae ‘at Vindolanda’ and resscribere for rescrībere ‘to write back’. He writes the name Maior without <ii>. There are 4 instances in the curse tablets, across 3 different texts. Pompeiius appears in the undated Kropp 1.3.1/1 from Maruvium, eiius in Kropp 3.11/1, fourth century AD, from Britain, and huiius and eiius in Kropp 11.2.1/36 from Africa, perhaps the third century AD.

The brief text of Kropp 1.3.1/1 shows no other substandard or old-fashioned features. In the case of Kropp 3.11/1 a substandard spelling seems most likely: there are a number of others in the text, most notably, since they suggest particular attention to representing glides, puuer for puer [puwɛr] and puuella for puella [puwɛlla]: this is not part of the old-fashioned spelling tradition. There are also straightforward mistakes such as omitted and transposed letters. So I do not think that eiius here should be taken as an old-fashioned spelling. The same could be true for 11.2.1/36, although the writer here produces several spellings which presumably do not reflect his or her speech (initial <h> in hac, hora, hoc despite hypercorrect haera; final <m> in omn]ium, omnium twice, caelum, terram, Veram, de]tinentem, sempiternum, amorem, neminem, alium, quem, consummatum despite immobile for immōbilem; double <ll> in nulli despite coliga for colligā), so the likelihood of its being old-fashioned is higher; no other old-fashioned spellings are found, however.

Chapter 12 <k> before /a(ː)/ and <q> before /u(ː)/

The Latin alphabet inherited from its Etruscan model a superfluity of signs to represent the phoneme /k/: <c>, <k> and <q>. It also inherited, to some extent, the convention in early Etruscan inscriptions whereby <k> was used in front of <a>, <q> before <u>, and <c> before <e> and <i>, although consistent usage of this pattern is found rarely even in the oldest Latin inscriptions (Hartmann 2005: 424–5; Wallace 2011: 11; Sarullo 2021). Over time, <c> was preferred for /k/ in all positions, while the digraph <qu> was used to represent the phoneme /k^w/. Nonetheless, both <k> before <a> and <q> before <u> (with the value /k/) lived on as optional spellings into the imperial period.

Since the writers on language often mentioned <k> and <q> together, I compile here their comments for both usages (organised in rough chronological order). Especially as regards the use of <k> there is considerable variation between the authors, and the discussion continued past the fourth century AD. Consequently, I have included some writers from later than the fourth century, without carrying out a complete survey. I will refer back to these in the separate discussions of <k> and <q> below.

q littera tunc recte ponitur, cum illi statim u littera et alia quaelibet una pluresque uocales coniunctae fuerint, ita ut una syllaba fiat: cetera per c scribuntur.

The letter q, then, is rightly used when a u follows it directly and then one or more vowels are joined to it, such as to make a single syllable: other contexts require use of c.

(Cornutus in Cassiodorus, De orthographia, 1.23–4 = GL 7.149.1–3)

alia sunt quae per duo u scribuntur, quibus numerus quoque syllabarum crescit. similis enim uocalis uocali adiuncta non solum non cohaeret, sed etiam syllabam auget, ut ‘uacuus’, ‘ingenuus’, ‘occiduus’, ‘exiguus’. eadem diuisio uocalium in uerbis quoque est, <ut> ‘metuunt’, ‘statuunt’, ‘tribuunt’, ‘acuunt’. ergo hic quoque c littera non q apponenda est.

There are other words which are written with double u, whose number of syllables increases. Because a vowel attached to another same vowel not only does not form a single syllable, it even increases the number of syllables, as in uacuus, ingenuus, occiduus, exiguus. The same division of vowels also takes place in verbs, as in metuunt, statuunt, tribuunt, and acuunt. Therefore here too one should use the letter c not q.

(Cornutus, in Cassiodorus, De orthographia 1.45–8 = GL 7.150.5–9)

an rursus aliae redundent, praeter illam adspirationis, quae si necessaria est, etiam contrariam sibi poscit, et k, quae et ipsa quorundam nominum nota est, et q, cuius similis effectu specieque, nisi quod paulum a nostris obliquatur, coppa apud Graecos nunc tantum in numero manet, et nostrarum ultima, qua tam carere potuimus quam psi non quaerimus?

Or again, do we not wonder whether some letters are redundant; aside from the letter of aspiration [i.e. h] – if this is necessary, there ought also to be one expressing lack of aspiration – also k, which by itself is an abbreviation of certain nouns, and q, which is similar in effect and appearance – apart from the fact that we have twisted it somewhat – to the Greek qoppa, which is only used as a number, and the last of our letters [i.e. x], which we could do without just as well as psi.

(Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 1.4.9)

nam k quidem in nullis uerbis utendum puto nisi, quae significat etiam, ut sola ponatur. hoc eo non omisi, quod quidam eam, quotiens a sequatur, necessariam credunt, cum sit c littera, quae ad omnis uocalis uim suam perferat.

I think that k ought not be used in any words, except those for which it can also stand as an abbreviation on its own. I do not exempt from this rule use of k whenever a follows, which some people think is necessary, because the letter c can express its own sound regardless of what vowel follows.

(Quintilian Institutio oratoria 1.7.10)

hinc supersunt ex mutis ‘k’ [et c] et ‘q’, de quibus quaeritur an scribentibus sint necessariae. et qui ‘k’ expellunt, notam dicunt esse magis quam litteram, qua significamus ‘kalumniam’, ‘kaput’, ‘kalendas’: hac eadem nomen ‘Kaeso’ notatur. … at qui illam esse litteram defendunt, necessariam putant iis nominibus quae cum ‘a’ sonante ha[n]c littera[m] inchoant. unde etiam religiosi quidam epistulis subscribunt ‘karissime’ per ‘k’ et ‘a’.

Of the stops, k and q remain, about which people wonder whether they are necessary for writers. Those who remove k say that is more a sort of symbol than a letter, which we use to represent kalumnia, kaput, kalendae: it is also used for the name Kaeso … But those who defend k being a letter think it necessary in words which begin with this letter pronounced along with a. As result, certain punctilious writers even write karissime in the greetings in their letters with k and a.

(Velius Longus, De orthographia 4.5.1–2 = GL 7.53.5–14)

‘locutionem’ quoque Antonius Rufus per ‘q’ dicit esse scribendam, quod sit ab eo est ‘loqui’; item ‘periculum’ et ‘ferculum’. quae nomina contenta esse ‘c’ littera existimo …

Antonius Rufus says that locutio ought to be written with ‘q’, because it comes from loqui; likewise periculum and ferculum. I think the words are content to be written with ‘c’ …

(Velius Longus, De orthographia 13.10 = GL 7.79.13–15)

‘k’ quidam superuacuam esse litteram iudicauerunt, quoniam uice illius fungi satis ‘c’ posset, sed retenta est, ut quidam putant, quoniam notas quasdam significant, ut Kaesonem et kaput et kalumniam et kalendas. hac tamen antiqui in conexione syllabarum ibi tantum utebantur ubi ‘a’ littera subiugenda erat, quoniam multis uocalibus instantibus quotiens id uerbum scribendum erat, in quo retinere hae litterae nomen suum possent, singulae pro syllaba scribebantur, tanquam satis eam ipso nomine explerent … ita et quotiens ‘canus’ et ‘carus’ scribendum erat, quia singulis litteris primae syllabae notabantur, ‘k’ prima ponebatur, quae suo nomine ‘a’ continebat, quia si ‘c’ posuissent ‘cenus’ et ‘cerus’ futurum erat, non ‘canus’ et ‘carus’.

Certain people judge k to be redundant, since c can discharge its duty well enough, but it is retained, others think, since it acts as a symbol for certain words, such as Kaeso and kaput and kalumnia and kalendae. When forming syllables, however, the ancients only used it when the letter a was added to it, since whenever a word containing many vowels had to be written, in which these letters could, as it were, represent their own name, these letters on their own were used to express an entire syllable, as though they fulfilled its sound enough by their name … Thus, too, whenever canus and carus were to be written, because they wrote the first syllable with a single letter, they used to put k at the beginning, which contained a in its name, because if they had put c there the words would have been cenus and cerus rather than canus and carus.

(Terentius Scaurus, de Orthographia 4.9.1–5 = GL 7.14.12–15.7)

‘k’ perspicuum est littera quod uacare possit, et ‘q’ similis. namque eadem uis in utraque est, quia qui locus est primitus unde exoritur ‘c’, quascumque deinceps libeat iugare uoces, mutare necesse est sonitum quidem supremum, refert nihilum, ‘k’ prior an ‘q’ siet an ‘c’.

Clearly k is a letter which could be considered useless, and likewise q. They both have the same value, because, regardless of whatever vowel follows them, the place where they begin their pronunciation is also where c is made; it is only this following vowel which makes them sound different, and it makes no difference whether one writes k, q or c before it.¹

(Terentianus Maurus, De litteris 204–209 = GL 6.331.204–209)

‘k’, similiter otiosa ceteris sermonibus, tunc in usu est, cum ‘kalendas’ adnotamus <aut> ‘kaput’, saepe ‘Kaesones’ notabant hac uetusti littera.

K, which is likewise unnecessary in other words, is, however, used when we write kalendae or kaput; old writers spelt Kaesones with this letter.

(Terentianus Maurus 797–9 = GL 6.349.797–9)

ex his superuacuae quibusdam uidentur k et q; qui nesciunt, quotiens a sequitur, k litteram praeponendam esse, non c; quotiens u sequitur, per q, non per c scribendum.

Of these [stops] some people think that k and q are redundant; they do not know that whenever a follows, k ought to be put before it, not c, and whenever u follows, q should be written, not c.

(Donatus, Ars maior 1.2, p. 604.16–605.2 = GL 4.368.7–9)

k autem dicitur monophonos, quia nulli uocali iungitur nisi soli a breui, et hoc ita ut ab ea pars orationis incipiat; aliter autem non recte scribitur.

But k is called monophonos, because it cannot be used before any vowel other than short a, and even then only at the start of a word; otherwise it is wrong to use it.

(Marius Victorinus, Ars grammatica 3.23 = GL 6.7.7–9)

attamen ‘locutus, secutus’ per c, quamuis quidam praecipiant ad originem debere referri, quia est ‘locutus’ a loquendo, ‘secutus’ a sequendo, <et ideo> per q potius quam per c haec scribenda. nam ‘concussus’ quamuis a ‘quatio’ habeat originem et ‘cocus’ a coquendo et ‘cotidie’ a quoto die et ‘incola’ ab inquilino, attamen per c quam per q scribuntur.

But locutus and secutus ought to be spelt with c, even though some people teach that they should be spelt with q rather than with c, with an eye to their origin, because locutus comes from loqui, and secutus from sequi. This is because, although concussus comes from quatio, and cocus from coquere and cotidie from quotus dies and incola from inquilinus, nonetheless these words are all written with c rather than q.

(Marius Victorinus, Ars grammatica 4.36 = GL 6.13.18–23)

praeponitur autem k quotiens a sequitur, ut kalendae Karthago.

But k is used whenever a follows, as in kalendae or Karthago.

(Charisius, Ars grammatica 1, p. 5, 26–7 = GL 4.8.17–18)

k littera notae tantum causa ponitur, cum kalendas solas aut Kaesonem aut kaput aut kalumniam aut Karthaginem scribimus.

The letter k is only used as an abbreviation, when it only represents kalendae or Kaeso or kaput or kalumnia or Karthago.

(Charisius, Ars grammatica 1, p. 7, 17–19 = GL 4.10.12–14)²

superuacuae uidentur k et q, quod c littera harum locum possit implere; sed inuenimus in Kalendis et in quibusdam similibus nominibus, quod k necessario scribitur.

k and q seem to be superfluous, because the letter c can be used in their place. But we find, in kalendae and certain similar words, that it is necessary to write k.

(Diomedes, Ars grammatica, GL 1.423.11–13)

k littera notae tantum causa ponitur, cum calumniam aut clades aut Caesonem quaqua aut caput significat. k consonans muta superuacua, qua utimur, quando a correpta sequitur, ut Kalendae kaput kalumniae.

The letter k is only used as a symbol when it represents calumnia, or clades, or Caeso (always), or caput. K the plosive consonant is completely redundant, which we use when a short a follows, as in kalendae, kaput, kalumnia.

(Diomedes, Ars grammatica 2, GL 1.424.27–30)

k littera consonans muta notae tantum causa ponitur, cum aut kalendas sola significat, aut Kaesonem, aut kaput aut kalumniam aut Karthaginem.

The letter k is a plosive consonant which is only used as an abbreviation, when on its own it represents kalendae or Kaeso or kaput or kalumnia or Karthago.

(Dositheus, Ars grammatica 10 = GL 7.385.8–10)

nunc et in his mutis superuacue quibusdam k et q litterae positae esse uidentur, quod dicant c litteram earundem locum posse complere, ut puta Carthago pro Karthago. nunc hoc uitium etsi ferendum puto, attamen pro quam quis est qui sustineat cuam? et ideo non recte hae litterae quibusdam superuacuae constitutae esse uidentur.

Now, among these stops k and q are included, although to some they seem to be superfluous, because they say that the letter c could take their place: think of Carthago for Karthago. Now, I think that this fault – even if it is one – should be put up with, because who could bear cuam instead of quam? So these letters seem to me to have been wrongly characterised as superfluous by those people.

(Ps-Probus, Instituta artium, GL 4.50.10–15)

k non scribitur nisi ante a litteram puram in principio nominum vel cuiuslibet partis orationis, cum sequentis syllabae consonans principium sit, sicut docui in libro primo.

K is not used except before a on its own, at the start of nouns or any part of speech, when the following syllable starts with a consonant, as I have taught in my first book.

(Ps-Probus, De catholicis, GL 4.10.23–25)

k littera non scribitur, nisi a littera in principiis nominum uel uerborum consequentis syllabae et consonans principium sit, sicut in institutis artium, hoc est in libro primo, monstraui, Kamenae kaleo.

The letter k is not used, unless with the letter a at the start of nouns or verbs, and a consonant begins the following syllable, just as I demonstrated in the Instituta artium, my first book: Kamenae, kaleo.

(Ps-Probus, De catholicis, GL 4.39.1–4)

k uero et q aliter nos utimur, aliter usi sunt maiores nostri. namque illi, quotienscumque a sequebatur, k praeponebant in omni parte orationis, ut kaput et similia; nos uero non usurpamus k litteram nisi in Kalendarum nomine scribendo. itemque illi q praeponebant, quotiens u sequebatur, ut qum; nos uero non possumus q praeponere, nisi et u sequatur et post ipsam alia uocalis, ut quoniam.

We use k and q differently from our ancestors. They, whenever a followed, put k before it in every part of speech, as in kaput and similar words; but we do not employ the letter k except when we write kalendae. Likewise, they used to put q before a following u, as in qum; but we cannot use q except when u follows and is itself followed by another vowel, as in quoniam.

(Servius, Commentarius in Artem Donati, GL 4 422.35–423.4)

k et q: apud ueteres haec erat orthographia, ut, quotiens a sequeretur, k esset praeposita, ut kaput Kalendae; quotiens u, q. sed usus noster mutauit praeceptum, et earum uicem c littera implet.

K and q: the ancients used to include this in their spelling practice, so that whenever a followed, k was placed before it, as in kaput, kalendae, and whenever u followed, q was used. But our usage changed the rule, and the letter c took their place.

(Cledonius, Ars grammatica, GL 5.28.7–9)

quae ex his superuacuae uidentur? k et q. quare superuacuae? quia c littera harum locum possit explere. uerum has quoque necessarias orthographiae ratio efficit. nam quotiens a sequitur, per k scribendum est, ut kanna, kalendae, kaput; quotiens u, per q, ut quoniam Quirites; quotiens reliquae uocales, per c, ut certus, ciuis, commodus.

Which of these [stops] seem redundant? K and q. Why redundant? Because the letter c can take their place. But orthographic logic makes these also necessary. Because whenever a follows, the stop should be written with k, as in kanna, kalendae, kaput; whenever u follows, it should be written with q, as in quoniam, Quirites; whenever the remaining vowels, with c, as in certus, ciuis, commodus.

(Maximus Victorinus, Ars grammatica, GL 6.195.19-23–196.1)

<k> before /a(ː)/

Modern scholars usually say that in the imperial period, K. was the standard abbreviation for the praenomen Caeso (C. being used for Gaius), and the usual spelling of kalendae was with a <k>.³ It is often noted that Carthago, Carthaginiensis was frequently spelt with a <k>,⁴ which could also act as an abbreviation for this and for other words. Other words are occasionally mentioned in which <k> is used before /a/.⁵

The writers on language have an unusually broad and complex range of views about use of <k> (for the relevant passages, see pp. 138–43). Until the fourth century it seems likely that its use, at least in some contexts, was not uniformly seen as old-fashioned. Quintilian, the only one who says that he believes <k> should not be used (except in words for which it can stand alone as an abbreviation), accepts that others maintain that it should be used whenever <a> follows, as does Velius Longus (who, however, suggests its use is pedantic). Most of the writers say it should be used, either whenever followed by <a> (Donatus, Charisius, Maximus Victorinus), short /a/ (Diomedes),⁶ short /a/ at the start of a word (Marius Victorinus) or short <a> at the start of a word when the following syllable begins with a single consonant (Ps-Probus). Terentianus Maurus only gives the examples of kalendae and kaput, along with Kaesōnēs in older writers. Even in those authors who do not restrict its use to the beginning of a word, this may be implicit, since all the examples are in fact at the start of a word.

Terentius Scaurus is the only writer prior to the fifth century not to mention use of <k> in full words: he states that some deny it altogether, and that there are others who approve it only as an abbreviation. Servius and Cledonius say that, while earlier writers used it whenever an <a> followed, now (in the fifth century) it is used only in kalendae. Use of <k> as an abbreviation is identified as representing Caesō, caput and calumnia (Charisius, Diomedes, Dositheus, Velius Longus, Terentius Scaurus), kalendae (Charisius, Dositheus, Velius Longus, Terentius Scaurus), Carthāgō (Charisius and Dositheus), and clādēs (Diomedes).

How does the information in the writers on language fit with the epigraphic record? First it is worth mentioning that <k> is also used to represent /k/ in proper nouns in two contexts which are not relevant to the present discussion; in both cases use of <k> is not restricted to position before /a(ː)/. The first group is Greek names, or Roman names which, however, appear in a highly ‘Greek’ context, such as bilingual inscriptions or inscriptions which contain other Greek names, for example:

• Britanniae / Sanctae / p(osuit) Nikomedes / Augg(ustorum) nn(ostrorum) / libertus (CIL 7.232, York)

• Quintio Ḳrassi / Frugi sumptuarius / Κοιντιων Κρασσου / Φρουγι σουμπτου/αριος (CIL 3.12285, Athens)

• D(is) M(anibus) / L(ucio) Plautio Heli/o filio qui ui/xit annis duob/us mensibus / X diebus XII Iso/krates et Markel/la filio pientissi/mo fecerunt (CIL 6.24272, Rome).

The second group is non-Roman and non-Greek names, in which use of <k> may represent some sound different from the Latin /k/ written with <c>, or is felt to be appropriate to mark out ‘foreign’ names, for example:

• Bodukus f(ecit) (AE 2002.885, Edgbaston)

• D(is) M(anibus) / Galulircli / et omnes / an<t>ecessi / Duetil Tiblik / Eppimus Soris / omn(i)bus co(m)p/otoribus / bene (CIL 13.645, Bordeaux).

Outside these proper nouns, use of <k> overwhelmingly occurs before /a(ː)/,⁷ and as a single letter stands as an abbreviation of a number of words (sometimes before other vowels). A large number of personal names that contain /ka(ː)/ are found spelt with <k>,⁸ as well as the place name Carthāgō. Otherwise, the use of <k> appears to be lexically determined, with frequency varying significantly across lexemes, as can be seen in Table 14. The table contains all examples of words in which the <k> spellings appear at a rate greater than 1% in inscriptions dated from the first to fourth centuries AD which I found in the EDCS (except for kalendae, where <k> is standard, and words only found abbreviated as k.). I have not removed proper names where these seem originally to have been the same lexeme.⁹

Table 14 Inscriptional spellings with <k> and <c>

<k> spelling	Number of inscriptions (first–fourth centuries AD)	<c> spelling	Number of inscriptions (first–fourth centuries AD)	Rate of <k> spellings (nearest integer)
kalator	18	calator	12	60%
arkarius	16	arcarius	14	53%
karissimus	1258	carissimus	1916	40%
arkanus	4	arcanus, arcanum	7	36%a
kapitalis	10	capitalis	26	28%
karus	83	carus	226	27%
euokatus	51	euocatus	160	24%
kanaba, kanabensis	5	canaba, canabensis, canabarius	17	23%
kandidatus	43	candidatus	140	23%
karcer,b karcerarius	5	carcer, carcerarius	17	23%
kaput	21	caput	83	20%
kasa	2	casa	8	20%
kastellum, kastellanus	15	castellum, castellanus	66	19%
kastrensis	17	castrensis	90	19%
arkac	22	arca	158	12%
kastra	43	castra	484	9%
karitas	2	caritas	22	8%
uikarius	6	uicarius	152	4%

^a There appears to be a distinction in usage between arkanus, which appears only as a cult title of Jupiter and in the title Augustalis arkanus, while arcanus appears as a cognomen, an adjective or as the substantive arcanum.

^b Including one instance of kark(eris) (AE 1983.48).

^c The following strings produced some results (29/01/2021): ‘arkae’ (‘wrong spelling’, 9 inscriptions), ‘arkarum’ (‘wrong spelling’, 1 inscription), ‘arcam’ (68 inscriptions, and 1 containing ‘arkam’ not produced in the ‘wrong spelling’ search), ‘arcae’ (45 inscriptions, and 9 containing ‘arkae’ not produced in the ‘wrong spelling’ search), ‘arcarum’ (0 inscriptions, and 1 containing ‘arkarum’ not produced in the ‘wrong spelling’ search). I also searched for ‘ arca ’ (45) and ‘ arka ’ (1, after removing the example in IS 319) in ‘search original texts’ on 28/09/2022.

The most frequent word with <k> is kalator, which makes up 60% of all instances of this lexeme in inscriptions dated to the first–fourth centuries AD in the EDCS. By far the greatest number of tokens of a word spelt with <k> are found for carissimus ‘dearest’, and it also has a high frequency relative to spellings with <c>: a search for karissimus on the EDCS finds 1258 inscriptions containing this spelling beside 1916 with carissimus in the first to fourth century AD, a frequency of 40%. The adjective from which it is derived, carus ‘dear’, is also common (though far less so than carissimus), especially as a name, and shows a somewhat lower frequency of <k> spellings, at 27%.¹⁰ However, the derived noun karitas is found only in 2 inscriptions, with caritas and Caritas in 22 in the same period (8%), while the extremely numerous causa is, as far as I can tell, never spelt kausa after the start of the first century AD;¹¹ for many words, there are no spellings with <k> at all.

The relatively high numbers and frequency of <k> in these lexemes compare with the more haphazard occasional uses of <k> in other words. The forms dedicauit, dedicauerunt, dedicatus appear in 1246 inscriptions compared to 6 for dedikauit, dedikauerunt, dedikatus (0.5%); there are single examples of kalumnia,¹² kapsarius,¹³ kasus,¹⁴ kanalicularius ‘a clerk in the Roman army’¹⁵ and katolika (ILCV 1259, probably under the influence of Greek orthography).

As an abbreviation, <k> can stand for cardo ‘baseline (in surveying)’, which never appears written in full and is found 11 times in inscriptions dated to the first to fourth century AD, and in fact 49 times across all inscriptions regardless of period.¹⁶ It also often stands for castra and castrensis, for caput, and for casa in 3 inscriptions (2 of which are undated in the EDCS). Twice in the same inscription we find b. k. for bona caduca (Ihm 1899: 141). The abbreviation k. c. for cognita causa appears in two inscriptions from Ostia (CIL 14.4499, 5000), and ḳ. k. once (AE 2003.703c = 2016.468) for citra cardinem.¹⁷ These cases where it stands as an abbreviation of a word where /k/ is followed by a vowel other than /a(ː)/ are surprising, but perhaps connected to the fact that in each case they form a syntagm of two consecutive words beginning with /k/. There is a single instance of kos for consulibus (CIL 6.2120). In CIL 5.1025, the abbreviation k(oniugi) is directly followed by karissime.

The use of <k> in inscriptions to some extent matches what the writers on language say, but shows somewhat different applications. As many state, it is uniformly found before /a(ː)/ (except in abbreviations), but Diomedes, Marius Victorinus and Ps-Probus’ further restriction to short /a/ is not followed, since we find <k> before /aː/ in arcānus, arcārius, cārissimus, cāritās, cārus, euocātus, uicārius. The range of words written with <k> is greater than those given as examples by the writers, but they do not say that their examples are exhaustive (although the repetition of the same examples through the tradition might imply this); there are also examples of <k> in non-initial position, again unlike the examples, and against the explicit advice of Marius Victorinus and Ps-Probus. Likewise, <k> can stand as an abbreviation for caput, but also a wider range of words than implied by the writers, who do not mention <k> for castra and cardo despite their appearance in relatively large numbers (perhaps because the language of the army and of surveying fell outside the literary focus of the writers).

Since I have carried out searches for individual lexemes it is not possible to see to what extent spellings with <k> in the inscriptions reflect an orthographic practice of writing every word containing the sequence /ka(ː)/ with <k>, rather than only writing particular words with <k>. However, the very fact that frequency of spelling with <k> is so variable across lexemes implies that many of those using <k> some of the time did not do so in every context, as some of the grammarians imply is (or should be) the case. In particular, the high frequency of <k> in the word cārissimus (very heavily concentrated in funerary inscriptions) suggests that it was not solely the ‘religiosi’ who were using it in this lexeme, as Velius Longus states (nor was it restricted to letters).

We can now move on to the evidence of the sub-elite corpora, beginning with the instances of <k> at Vindolanda (Table 15).¹⁸ The lexeme karissimus, karissime clearly predominates, mostly appearing in the closing greeting of letters, occasionally in the opening greeting (Tab. Vindol. 670, 893 add.), and once in the main text (331). The closing formula is often written in a second hand, presumably that of the author: these are 242 (probably the prefect Cerialis), 247, 285, 623 (Aelius Brocchus, an equestrian officer), 291, 292, 293 (Severa, wife of Aelius Brocchus), 611 (Haterius Nepos, an equestrian, probably a prefect), 613 (unknown), 869 (a Secundus), 875 (unknown). So, many of these instances of <k> are in parts of texts that are not written by scribes. There is no evidence as to whether the instances of karissimus, -e in closing greetings reflect scribal orthography or not in some letters. 341 and 531 preserve only the closing greeting; on 355 the editors comment ‘it is not clear whether the hand changes for the last two lines’. In 632 and 661 the same hand writes the final greeting and the rest of the letter. There are only two other instances of /ka(ː)/ written by the same hands in these letters; 632 also includes the word caballi, while 670 has Cataracṭoni. In 613 the other hand writes capitis, and in 875 Candịḍị, C̣ạ[, Carạṇṭ[.

Table 15 <k> spellings in the Vindolanda tablets

Word containing <k>	Tablet (Tab. Vindol.)	Document type
kạṛịṣṣịṃe	242	Letter (from Cerialis?)
karissime	247	Letter to Cerialis
Karuṣ	250	Letter to Cerialis
Karụṣ	251	Letter to Cerialis
karissime	285	Letter (to Cerialis?)
kạṛissime	288	Letter, perhaps to Cerialis
karissima	291	Letter to Lepidina
ḳạrissima	292	Letter to Lepidina
kạṛịṣsimạ	293	Letter from Severa (to Lepidina?)
karissim	331	Draft letter
karisime	341	Letter
karrum	343	Letter from Octavius
ḳarro	343	Letter from Octavius
ka[ri]ṣsime	355	Letter
ḳạṛịṣịṃẹ	531	Letter
karrạ	583	Account
kanum	597	Account
ḳạrissime	611	Letter
karissime	613	Letter
karisṣị[me]	623	Letter
kạrịṣsime	632	Letter
ḳạṛịṣs[i]ṃạ	661	Letter
kạṛ[i]ṣṣime	696	Letter
karissimo	670a	Letter
karissime	869	Letter from Secundus
ḳarissime	875	Letter
uikario	879	Letter
karisṣịṃọ	893 add	Letter to Verecundus

^a 670 is probably from the late second century AD, significantly later than the other tablets.

In the main, the hands which use <k> in this lexeme otherwise use standard spelling (as far as we can tell, since often there is little other text), as we might expect since several are of equestrian rank. In 292 Severa writes ma for mea (which could be a reduced form of the possessive pronoun or dittography after anima; Adams 1995: 120). In 341 and 531 the geminate seems to be simplified in karisime for karissime, but there is not enough remaining text in either case to tell if this is a feature of these writers. In 661, we perhaps find a substandard spelling if muḍetur is for mundētur, although the editors are uncertain of the reading.¹⁹

The remaining four letters have <k> in other contexts: in 250 and 251, Karus is the cognomen of the author, probably also a prefect; the letters are in different hands, and there is no reason to think either is his. There is no other instance of /ka(ː)/. The spelling of 250 is standard except for ḍebetorem for debitōrem ‘debtor’; given the general infrequency of i and e confusion at Vindolanda, Adams (1995: 91) suggests the influence of debet, which seems possible.²⁰ 343 is the letter sent to Vindolanda from Octavius, who may have been a civilian, and whose spelling has both substandard and old-fashioned features. Apart from karrum and ḳarro (and K(alendas)), /ka(ː)/ is otherwise spelt <ca> in Candido, explicabo, spịcas, circa, erubescam, and Cataractonio. 879 has uikario in a highly broken context: the spelling is otherwise standard, but there is little text, and no other instances of /ka(ː)/. In the accounts 583 and 597 there are no other instances of /ka(ː)/ (except for K(alendis) in the former). 597 shows a substandard spelling in the form of laṃṇis for laminīs ‘sheets’ and pestlus and p̣eṣṭḷ[us] for pessulus ‘bolt’ (Adams 2003: 539–41).

The pattern of <k> use at Vindolanda appears pretty much as we might expect on the basis of the inscriptional evidence. Although strictly speaking we usually do not have evidence that writers who spell cārus, cārissimus with a <k> do not use <k> consistently before /a(ː)/, the match with the inscriptional evidence (and that of Velius Longus) suggests that this spelling is probably specific to this lexeme (there are only 2 examples spelt with <c>, at 255 and 306). We also find uicārius attested with <k> in the inscriptions (although not very frequently); there are no other examples at Vindolanda. The 3 instances across 2 tablets of karrum ‘wagon’ compare to 4 across 3 tablets of carrum (488, 642, 649), 4 across 3 tablets of carrulum (315, 316, 643), 1 of carrārius (309) and 1 of c̣arr[(721). There are no other instances of canis. Apart from in cārus, cārissimus, then, <k> is rare in the tablets: I count 139 instances of <ca>, of which 90 are word-initial, across a great range of lexemes, including castra (3 instances, tablets 300, 668) and castrēnsis (337), castellus (178), caput (613), casula (643), and personal names such as Candidus, Cassius and Caecilius.

As we will see in the case of <xs>, use of <k> does not provide as much evidence for a specific old-fashioned orthographic tradition among the scribes of Vindolanda as might be thought at first sight. In cārus, cārissimus, use of <k> is clearly standard in the greeting formulas of letters among writers of equestrian rank, including Severa, whose education was presumably not carried out in the army, as it is among scribes, if the letters all in one hand were written by them. Octavius, whose letter is apparently in his own hand, who is particularly fond of old-fashioned features, and who may or may not have received an army education, uses 2 out of 5 of the remaining instances of <k>. It is also conceivable that the use of <k> particularly in carrum may reflect this word’s Celtic origins, since <k> was in general associated with foreign words: the writers at Vindolanda were clearly in contact with Celtic speakers, so may have recognised it as a borrowing.²¹

The other, much smaller, military corpora, show a different picture. There are 20 instances of <ca> at Vindonissa, including 2 examples of carus (both T. Vindon. 45) and castra (4, 40), and none of <ka>. At Bu Njem, there are 24 of <ca>, including once caṣtṛị[s (O. BuNjem 29), of which 5 are the lexemes camellus ‘camel’, camellārius ‘camel driver’ (3, 5, 10, 42, 78); all 6 examples of <k> are kamellus (8, 9) and kamellarius (7, 8, 76, 77). The preponderance of <k> in these words is probably because of their Greek origin. At Dura Europos, again, <k> is almost entirely lacking. Against 69 instances of <ca>, we find once Kastello (P. Dura 94, c. AD 240) as part of a place name (otherwise spelt with <c> several times) in a summary of dispositions of soldiers and once ]kas(tra?) (P. Dura 66SS/CEL 191.45, AD 216) in a letter. Both of these are lexemes which we saw occasionally receive the <k> spelling in the epigraphy more generally. Several letters in a military or official context from Egypt also use <k> in spelling kastra (CEL 207, AD 200–250), kastresia, kastrense (CEL 205, AD 220) or as an abbreviation for castrī (CEL 231, AD 395; 232, AD 396; 233, AD 401).²² This may be a military convention which developed after the time of the Vindolanda tablets. In addition there is 1 instance of kapitum (CEL 234, 399).

The letters also match those of Vindolanda in showing use of <k> in cārissimus, which is used by writers of low and high educational level. 3 of the 4 instances of karissimus come from initial or final greetings formulas as at Vindolanda. 2 occur in the letters of Rustius Barbarus (k[a]ṛịṣṣịṃẹ CEL 74, karisimo CEL 77), which is interesting since he otherwise appears not to know any old-fashioned spellings and his orthography is highly substandard (pp. 35–6). The remaining 2 examples, both also from Egypt, are karissiṃe (CEL 140, AD 103, copy of an official letter from the praefectus Aegypti), and karissi[mum (CEL 177, AD 150–200, a military letter of commendation).

In the Claudius Tiberianus archive, only the scribe of one letter (P. Mich. VIII 467/CEL 141) uses <ka>, and does so inconsistently, with no particular rationale emerging: all 4 examples are word-initial, but the same is true of 1 out of 3 of the instances of <ca>; 2 instances consist of karus (in the main text) and karissimus (in the initial greeting formula), as we might expect, and <k> in Kalaḅ[el] might be particularly likely in a foreign place name, but kasus is not commonly spelt with <k> in the inscriptions. This writer is characterised by another old-fashioned spelling in the form of <uo> for /wu/, and substandard spellings (see p. 263).

Table 16 shows the cases of <k> in the Isola Sacra inscriptions, with <k> once again predominantly used with the lexeme cārissimus, although less frequently than at Vindolanda (where we find 22 cases with <k> and only 2 with <c>) or in the epigraphy in general (where 40% of tokens of cārissimus have <k>). There are 5 instances of <k> in this word against 15 of <c>. Unlike at Vindolanda, the cognomen Cārus appears with <c>: Carae (IS 296). Otherwise, <k> appears in personal names (Kallotyceni, Kania),²³ the former of these Greek; but these are very much the minority: there are several dozen other names beginning with <ca>. Note in particular Callistianus (IS 85), Callityche (IS 133), Callisto twice, Callistion (IS 241), Callist[ (IS 282) and Canniae (IS 237). The single instance of <k> within the word is arka (IS 319), which has a <k> not infrequently in the epigraphy more generally. IS 223 has the only instance of a <k> spelling of carīna in all of Latin epigraphy (albeit compared to only three examples of carina), alongside the place name Karthago (but <c> is used in Caelestino). The use of <k> may be connected to the fact that the inscription includes a hexametric composition (and also includes the old-fashioned spelling lubens); its spelling is otherwise completely standard.

Table 16 <k> in the Isola Sacra inscriptions

Kallotyceni	Isola Sacra 27	End of the third century AD; or perhaps end of the second
Kania	Isola Sacra 34	Second century AD; or third century AD
karissim(is)	Isola Sacra 69	Age of Trajan or Hadrian
karíssimáe	Isola Sacra 79	Perhaps end of the second century AD; age of Trajan–Hadrian
karissimo	Isola Sacra 115	Age of Hadrian
kariss[i]mo	Isola Sacra 167	Age of Trajan–Hadrian; manumitted AD 96 at the latest
karissimae	Isola Sacra 174	Age of Hadrian
Karthago	Isola Sacra 223	Hadrianic-Antonine age; use of the agnomen suggests late Hadrianic or later
karina	Isola Sacra 223	Hadrianic-Antonine age; use of the agnomen suggests late Hadrianic or later
arka	Isola Sacra 319	End of the third century AD

There is an interesting distinction between the use of <k> in cārissimus and in other words. As already mentioned, the context of 223 is poetic, while 27, 34 and 319 all show signs of substandard orthography: 27 has Terenteae for Terentiae, filis for filiīs, qit for quid, aeo for eō and sibe for sibi, as well as sarcofago rather than sarcophagō; 34 has mesibus for mēnsibus; and 319 has hypercorrect Lucipher for Lūcifer. Meanwhile, all the inscriptions with <k> in cārissimus have standard spelling. This pattern is not dissimilar from the situation at Vindolanda, where <k> is used in cārissimus by standard spellers, while in other words it is used by Octavius and the writer of Tab. Vindol. 597, whose spelling is substandard. This may imply that use of <k> before <a> is subject to some rather fine distinctions: in the word karissimus it is an acceptable and commonly used variant in standard orthography, but in other words it may have a poetic ring or be characteristic of substandard spellers.

The tablets from Pompeii and Herculaneum show complete avoidance of <k> before /a(ː)/, except for in kalendae, and its derivative kalendarịọ (TH² A13) ‘estate’. In TH² there are some 55 instances of <ca>, including 3 instances of Carum (2 in TH² 85, 1 in TH² 85 bis) as a personal name. In the Jucundus tablets there are approaching 200 instances of <ca>, almost all in personal names, and no instances of <k> (there are no instances of cārus or Cārus). In the tablets of the Sulpicii there are also large numbers of <ca>, including a handful of Cārus, while the only case of <k> is in Ḳ[innamo] (TPSulp. 62), where the use of <k> is presumably triggered by the Greek name.

In the curse tablets, use of <k> before /a(ː)/ is practically non-existent, compared to several hundred instances of <ca>. The only instance is Karkidoni (Kropp 11.1.1/37), from Carthage, which is presumably a foreign name; Greek letters are also used at the start of the tablet. There are a handful of cases of <k> before another letter: Greek influence must also be responsible for the spellings koue for quem and kommendo (11.2.1/32), also from Africa, and perhaps also for Klaudia (1.5.4/2, Pompeii), given that this woman’s cognomen is Elena; the divine name Niske (3.11/1) from fourth century AD Britain is presumably a case of <k> being used for a foreign name, although no similar explanation arises for Markellinum (3.2/45, Aquae Sulis, second or third century AD).

The graffiti from the Paedagogium contain 4 instances of <k>, 2 in the Greek word Nikainsis (297), Nikaẹnsis (332), and 2 in Kartha(giniensis) (322), Kart(haginiensis) (323); all perhaps from the reign of Septimius Severus. There are 10 other examples of <ca>. In the London tablets there are 16 instances of <ca>, including Caro as a personal name (WT 36) and castello (WT 39), and none of <ka>.

Use of <k> in the corpora depends very much on lexeme and genre. The word carissimus, which occurs frequently in fairly formulaic contexts in letters, is overwhelmingly spelt with <k>, in the letters at Vindolanda and elsewhere, in texts which show standard and substandard spelling, and which are written both by scribes and non-scribes, including those of relatively high and low social rank. The same lexeme is also spelt frequently with <k> in the Isola Sacra funeral inscriptions.

At Vindolanda, it is possible that carrum ‘wagon’ may also have become associated with a spelling <k>, although this may have been a peculiarity of individual writers rather than part of the scribal tradition in the army; as also perhaps in the very occasional other instances of use of <k>. The use of <k> in the word castra, and in particular as an abbreviation, seems to have been a feature of official/military spelling in Egypt and Dura Europos in the third–fifth centuries AD.

There is very little evidence for a general rule that <k> should be used before all instances of /a(ː)/, although perhaps the writer of one of the letters of Claudius Tiberianus had learnt such a rule (4 out of 5 instances of word-initial /ka(ː)/ are spelt with <k>). Interestingly, although there is a small number of personal names being spelt with <k>, it is not clear that it is their status as personal names that triggers the <k>: in the two instances of Karus at Vindolanda, the cognomen is also a lexeme which anyway tends to be spelt with <k>, and in the examples in the Isola Sacra inscriptions there are no other instances of /ka(ː)/. Outside the lexeme carus, use of <k> may have a remarkable twofold correlation: on the one hand with substandard spelling, and on the other hand with other old-fashioned spellings.

<q> before /u(ː)/

Wallace (2011: 27 fn. 29) notes that <q> before /u(ː)/ ‘is found with some frequency in late Republican Latin, particularly in the word for “money”’ [i.e. pecūnia], and that it is ‘also found sporadically in Imperial Latin texts’. On the whole, a more comprehensive investigation supports Wallace’s statements. Searches on the EDCS show that pequnia is found in 39 dated inscriptions up to the end of the first century BC, pecunia in 45, giving a frequency of 46%,²⁴ which is higher than most other lexical items containing this sequence:²⁵ Merqurius, Mirqurius is found in 4 inscriptions, Mercurius, Mircurius, Mercurialis in 18, giving a frequency of 18%; sequndum, Sequndus is found in 4 inscriptions, secundus, secundum, Secundius in 52, giving a frequency of 7%; cura and forms of curare are found in 71 inscriptions, where qura only appears once (1%), although the low number of instances of <q> is probably due to the existence of the alternative spelling coera-.

The numbers of inscriptions with <q> decline significantly in the period of the first to fourth centuries AD, but the relative preponderance of pequnia continues:²⁶ it is found in 20 inscriptions dated from the first to the fourth centuries AD, while pecunia is in 650, to give a frequency of 3%. A search for curauit, curauerunt between the first and fourth centuries AD gave 750 inscriptions, while there were 6 with quravit, quraverunt, a frequency of 0.8%. Only 2 examples of sequritas are found (both from fourth century AD inscriptions), while securus, securitas, Securius are found in 243 inscriptions, also a frequency of 0.8%. 2 inscriptions contain Merqurius, and 773 have Mercurius, a frequency of 0.3%.²⁷ There were 3 inscriptions containing Sequndus, Sequndinus (all names), and 3241 containing secundus (including as a name), Secundius, Secundulus, Secundinus, secundum, giving a rate of 0.09%. Not all words containing /ku/ have variants with <qu>. For example, there were 61 instances of secum between the first and fourth centuries, and none of sequm.

This data suggests that pecūnia is one of the most frequent words which appears spelt with <q>.²⁸ This is true both in the earlier period up to the end of the first century BC and in the period of the first to fourth century AD, even though the rate at which <q> was used for /k/ declined significantly in the first to fourth centuries AD compared to the earlier period.²⁹ In both periods, the rate at which <q> was used varies between lexemes.

The decline in the use of <q> before /u(ː)/ that we see in inscriptions is reflected in the relative lack of attention to this spelling provided by the writers on language (see pp. 138–43 for the relevant passages). Although it is often noted that <q> is only used before <u>, the examples given generally make it clear that the writer is thinking of the use of <qu> for /k^w/, rather than /ku(ː)/ (e.g. Maximus Victorinus, Ars grammatica, GL 6.195.19-23–196.1; the same may be true of Donatus, Ars grammatica maior 1.2, p. 604.16–605.2). Already in the mid-first century AD, Cornutus’ rule (at Cassiodorus, De orthographia 1.23–24) makes it clear that <q> is only to be used when it is followed by <u> and one or more vowels, i.e. when it represents /k^w/, and this is implied also by another passage (De orthographia 1.45–48); the same rule is stated by Curtius Valerianus (in Cassiodorus, De orthographia 3.1). Velius Longus (De orthographia 13.10), Marius Victorinus (Ars grammatica 4.36), and perhaps Terentianus Maurus (De litteris 204–209) are aware of <q> before /u/, and all deprecate it,³⁰ suggesting that it may have had some continued currency, but was presumably a minority usage. Servius (Commentarius in Artem Donati, GL 4 422.35–423.4) describes it as an old custom, no longer in use.

The use of <q> for /k/ before /u/ is found occasionally in the corpora, but is neither frequent nor widespread. There are no examples in the TPSulp. (dozens of cases, including 18 of pecunia) or TH² tablets (31 instances, including 4 of pecunia), nor in the graffiti from the Paedagogium (20 instances of <cu>), the Bu Njem ostraca (35 instances of <cu>), the tablets from Vindonissa (14 instances of <cu>), or the Isola Sacra inscriptions (71 instances of <cu>). Among dozens of instances of <cu> from Dura Europos, the only exception is in the name Iaqubus (P. Dura 100.xxvii.12, 101.i.f.3, 101.xxix.14, Dura 101.xxxv.15), where it presumably reflects an attempt to represent non-Latin phonology.

In the Jucundus tablets, the scribe of the earliest tablet twice writes pequnia (CIL 4.3340.1, AD 15); this text does not contain any other cases of /ku/. All subsequent scribes use <cu> in this lexeme (38 instances); in total there are more than 200 instances of <cu> used by both scribes and other writers. There is only one other certain instance of <qu>: Iuqundo (45, undated but presumably in the 50s or 60s AD); there are no other cases of /ku/ in this part of the text, which was written by P. Alfenus Varus, the first centurion of the praetorian cohorts, and subsequently praetorian prefect under Vitellius. His spelling is substandard (problems with geminates: Augussti for Augusti, acepisse for accepisse, Pollionnis for Pollionis, acctum for actum; missing final /m/: noue for nouem; misplaced aspirate: Nucherina for Nucerina).³¹ Both Privatus, the slave of the colony of Pompeii, and the scribe on his tablets use <q> several times in pasqua for pascua ‘pastureland’ (145, 146, 147), beside 1 instance of pascua[m] (146). However, this spelling could reflect the reduction of /ku/ to /kw/ before a vowel, and this seems particularly likely since there are another 15 instances of <cu> in tablets 145–147, used by both Privatus and the scribe.

There are two doubtful examples in the Vindolanda tablets beside more than a hundred instances of <cu>: q̣uụr (Tab. Vindol. 652) for cūr ‘why’ could be analysed as having <q> for /k/ and <uu> for /uː/, but since the use of double letters for long vowels is not otherwise found at Vindolanda, and seems to be very uncommon by the end of the first century AD (see pp. 129–31), it is more likely that this is an etymological spelling with <qu> for /k/ < *k^w before a back vowel (see pp. 165–8). In quequmque (Tab. Vindol. 643) for quaecumque ‘whatever’ it seems not improbable that <q> before <u> is triggered by the <qu> in the preceding and following syllables (<c> is used elsewhere in this letter in arculam, securem).

Compared to the absence of <qu> for /ku/ at Vindolanda, it is striking that it was clearly part of the orthography of several of the (presumably) military scribes writing the Claudius Tiberianus letters (Table 17), although it appears to be used consistently only in P. Mich. VIII 471/CEL 146 (and perhaps 470/145); all of these letters except 472/147 show substandard spelling.

Table 17 <q> and <c> before <u> in the Claudius Tiberianus letters

<q> before <u>	Text	<c> before <u>	Text
sequrum	P. Mich. VIII 468/CEL 142	cum	P. Mich. VIII 467/CEL 141
qumqupibit	469/144	cum	467/141
sequndu	469/144	secundum	467/141
sequrus	470/145	cum	467/141
aequma	471/146	cum	467/141
tequm	471/146	culcitam	468/142
qurauit	471/146	cụ[lcit]as	469/144
pauqum	471/146	cumcupịṣc̣[e]ṛ[e]	469/144
mequm	472/147	acuṃ[in]e	472/147

^a Presumably aequm for aequum represents spoken [ae̯kum], with reduction of /k^w/ to [k] before a back vowel; although here the standard spelling may have influenced the use of <q>.

In the other texts from CEL, there are two instances of <q> before <u>: ]q̣ụṣ, presumably for -cus (CEL 7),³² dated to a little before 25 BC, and qum for cum (CEL 10, the letter of Suneros, Augustan period); both also contain 2 instances of <cu>. CEL 7 contains some substandard features (nuc for nunc ‘now’, c̣ic̣quam for quicquam), as well as <u> for <i> in optumos for optimōs ‘best’ (although this is probably not old-fashioned at this time), while CEL 10 has spelling which is conservative to old-fashioned, as well as substandard features (see pp. 10–11). Otherwise only <cu> is found, in large numbers, in CEL.

The curse tablets also occasionally use <q>, across the first to third (or fourth or fifth) centuries AD (Table 18). Again, the middle <q> in quiqumque (Kropp 11.2.1/3) may have been instigated by the <q> in the preceding and following syllables. In Kropp 2.1.3/3, pequnia and pequniam for pecūnia with <q> are found beside qicumqui for quīcumque. The spelling is substandard: Cr[y]se for Chrysē, uius for huius, onori for honōri, senus for sinus, o[c]elus for ocellus; substandard spelling occurs also in Kropp 4.1.3/9 (uinculares for uinculāris) and in Kropp 11.1.1/15 (demo[n– for daemōn, oc for hōc, [a]c for hāc, ora for hōra). This small number of instances of <q> compares with more than 200 of <c> before <u> across the corpus

Table 18 <q> before <u> in the curse tablets

<q> before <i>	Tablet	Date	Place
qumbere (?)	Kropp 1.4.4/14	End of the second century AD	Rome
proqurator	Kropp 2.1.1/2	First century AD	Hispania Tarraconensis
proqurator	Kropp 2.1.1/3	First century AD	Hispania Tarraconensis
pequnia	Kropp 2.1.3/3	First–second century AD	Hispania Tarraconensis
pequniam	Kropp 2.1.3/3	First–second century AD	Hispania Tarraconensis
ququma (or Ququma)	Kropp 4.1.3/9	Fourth–fifth century AD; or second half of the third century AD	Trier
loquto	Kropp 11.1.1/15	Second–third century AD	Carthage, Africa

On the whole, those corpora which are more homogeneous, and produced in an environment which might favour uniformity of orthography, avoid <q> for /k/, in particular the scribes of the various Pompeian tablets, and texts from the army bases at Vindolanda, Vindonissa, Bu Njem, and Dura Europos as well as the Paedagogium. The single instance in the earliest Caecilius Jucundus tablet, and the Augustan dating of CEL 7 and 10, hint at a move away from its use in the first century AD (which we would expect on the basis of the inscriptional evidence). However, its use by P. Alfenus Varus in the Jucundus tablets, its appearance in a small number of the curse tablets, and in particular the quite remarkable cluster of instances in the Claudius Tiberianus letters, suggest that use of <q> maintained a somewhat underground existence in certain educational traditions. Given the assumption that the Claudius Tiberianus letters were written by military scribes, the use of <q> in some of them is particularly surprising. But, as already noted, these texts are remarkably heterogeneous in other features of their spelling, which might support the idea that their scribes had been educated in a less consistent fashion than in the other army corpora; I am not sure whether this means we should rethink the assumption that this education took place in the army.

There is not really enough evidence to discuss the lexical distribution of <q>; out of 20 tokens including <q>, 3 are pequnia, which may reflect the preponderance of this lexeme in the inscriptional evidence identified at the start of this section. However, we do not know how the scribe of CIL 4.3340.1 would have written other examples of /ku/ so cannot be sure that pecūnia had any special orthographic status for him; in Kropp 2.1.3/3 qicumqui does compare with pequnia.

Chapter 13 <qu> for /k/ before Back Vowels

Original *k^w was lost before back vowels in Latin, as in *sek^wondos > secundus ‘following, next’, *k^wolō > colō ‘I cultivate’, in the second half of the third century BC (Meiser 1998: 92; Weiss 2020: 165).¹ The spelling with <qu> was maintained (or reintroduced) in some words (e.g. equus ‘horse’, aequus ‘equal’, on the basis of parts of the paradigm where /k^w/ occurred before a non-back vowel; quottidiē ‘every day’, which is attested later than cottidiē,² Ernout and Meillet 1985: 146), notably in quom for cum ‘when, since’ < *k^wom (and by extension, also for cum ‘with’ < *kom). The spelling quom is found frequently in epigraphic texts of the first century BC and earlier, and there are still occasional examples in the first century AD and later.³ An ‘original texts’ search on EDCS for ‘ cum ’ (date range ‘1’ to ‘400’, 29/09/2022) finds 4,489 inscriptions containing cum. Such a small number of instances suggests that the spelling was old-fashioned by the first century AD, and this is likely to be all the more true for other spellings with <qu>.

Velius Longus and Curtius Valerianus confirm the view that on the whole the <qu> spellings are old-fashioned:

‘q’ quoque littera facit differentiam uocum ab antiquis maxime obseruata<m>. <nam ‘cum’> quotiens pro aduerbio temporis scribebant, ‘q’ littera utebantur; <quotiens> pro praepositione, ‘c’ ponebant. aliud est ‘cum subito adsurgens’, aliud ‘cum fluctu’. et haec pronomina, ‘cuius’ et ‘cui’, per ‘q’ censuerunt quidam scribenda, quo magis seruaretur origini fides, ut, quomodo ‘quis’ inciperet a ‘q’, si<c> ‘quius’ ‘qui’. hoc amplius, quo pinguior esset enuntiatio, ‘o’ quoque inserebant et per ‘quo’ ‘quoius’ ‘quoi’ scribebant. nos ad breuitatem festinauimus scribendi et illam pinguitudinem limare maluimus, tam hercule quam ‘cur’ magis <scribimus quam ‘quor’> quod genus est ἐτυμολογίας.

Also the ancients used the letter q very much to make a distinction between words. Whenever they used to write cum, in the sense of a temporal adverb, they used the letter q; whenever they used it as a preposition they spelt with c. Because ‘when (cum) suddenly rising up’ is a different thing from ‘with (cum) the tide’. And some of them thought that the pronoun forms cuius and cui should be spelt with q, the better to faithfully represent their origins, so that, just as quis begins with q, so should quius and qui. Furthermore, so that these words should be pronounced more fully, they also inserted an o and used to write quoius and quoi with the sequence quo. We in our hurry aim for brevity in writing and have preferred to file off such fullness, even going so far, by Hercules, as writing cur rather than quor, which is etymologically correct.

(Velius Longus, De orthographia 8.4.1–3 = GL 7.70.15–71.3)

item ‘cui’ utrum per ‘q’ an per ‘c’ debeat scribi, quia non nulli inuenti sunt qui ‘q’ littera<m> illo catholico tuerentur, quod in nulla uoce per declinationem prima littera immutetur. ita cum sit ‘quis’, ‘quius’ et ‘qui’ per ‘q’ litteram censent scribendum.

Likewise, whether cui ought to be written with ‘q’ or ‘c’, because a number of people can be found who maintain the letter ‘q’, on the general rule that in no word does declension take place by changing the first letter. So, since it is quis, they think one should write quius and qui, with the letter ‘q’.

(Velius Longus, De orthographia 9.3 = GL 7.72.8–11)

quasdam uero scriptiones antiquis relinquamus, ut in eo quod est ‘cur’. illi enim per ‘quor’ scribebant, ut supra dixi, nam et ipsum ‘cui’ per ‘quoi’, quo pinguius sonaret. <nos> contenti sumus per ‘cur’ scribere …

But let us leave certain spellings to the ancients, as in the case of cur. Because they used to spell it quor, as I have said above, and even cui as quoi, so that it might have a fuller sound. We are content to write cur …

(Velius Longus, De orthographia 13.7 = GL 7.77.9–12)

‘cur’ alii per c scribendum putauerunt dicentes non posse q litteram poni, ubi u esset sine alia uocale, secundum regulam supradictam; alii per q, eo quod originem trahat ab interrogatiuis aduerbiis, quae sunt ‘quando’, ‘quorsum’. usus autem obtinuit ut ‘cur’ per c scribatur.

Some have thought that cur ought to be written with c on the grounds that q should not be used when it is followed by u but no other vowel, according to the rule I have previously discussed; others that it should be written with q, on the grounds that it has the same origin as the interrogative adverbs, such as quando and quorsum. But usage has won out, so that cur is written with c.⁴

(Curtius Valerianus in in Cassiodorus, De orthographia 3.10–12 = GL 7.156.12–15)

However, Curtius Valerianus (in Cassiodorus, De orthographia 3.3–4) and Marius Victorinus make an exception for cum as a temporal adverb, recommending a (rather artificial) spelling quum. But the spelling quom (unmentioned by Curtius Valerius) is too old-fashioned for Marius Victorinus:

‘cum’ aduerbium temporis antiqui quattuor litteris scribebant [in] his, q u u m; apud Catonem ‘quum’ rursus per o, ‘quom’ … item ‘cuius’ per q u o i u s litteras scribebant. de quibus ne plura scribam, hoc custodite, ut, cum fuerit aduerbium temporis, per q u siue unum siue duo scribatis, ut ‘qum primum’ et ‘quum hoc facerem’.

The ancients used to write cum as a temporal adverb with four letters, as quum; Cato even took the spelling further back in time with o: quom … Likewise they used to write cuius as quoius. So as not to say anything more about these words, take care that when it is a temporal adverb, you write it with qu or quu, as in qum primum ‘when first’ and quum hoc facerem ‘when I was doing this’.

(Marius Victorinus Ars grammatica 4.31–32 = GL 7.13.11–12)

• Terentius Scaurus, however, does not rule out quom as old-fashioned:

‘cum’ quidam per ‘cum’, nonnulli per ‘quom’. quidam etiam esse differentiam putant, quod praepositio quidem per ‘c’: ‘<cum> illo’, ‘cum Claudio’, ‘cum Camillo’; aduerbium autem per ‘q’ debeat scribi, ut ‘quom legissem’, ‘quom fecissem’, quoniam antiqui pro hoc aduerbio †cuine† dicebant …

For cum some people write cum, others quom. There are even some who think that the difference is that the preposition should be spelt with c, as in cum illo ‘with him’, cum Claudio ‘with Claudius’, cum Camillo ‘with Camillus’; but the adverb should be spelt quom, as in quom legissem ‘when I had read’, quom fecissem ‘when I had done’, since the ancients used to say †cuine† for this adverb …

(Terentius Scaurus, De orthographia 8.6.3 = GL 7.28.6–9)

Caesellius Vindex recommends not only quum but also quiusque for cuiusque:

‘cum’ praepositio per c scribenda est; ‘quum’ aduerbium temporis, quod significat ‘quando’, per q scribendum est discretionis causa … ‘quuiusque’ non per c scribitur, sed per q …

The preposition cum ought to be spelt with c; the temporal adverb quum, which means ‘when’, ought to be written with q in order to distinguish it from cum … quuiusque ought not to be written with c but with q …

(Caesellius Vindex in Cassiodorus, De orthographia 10.7–9 = GL 7.207.1–4)

In line with most of the writers on language, spellings with <qu> are infrequent in the corpora. Although cum is a common word across these texts, we find quom ‘when, since’ only in a letter written by a scribe at Vindolanda (Tab. Vindol. 248) and qu[u]m or qu[o]m in a Claudius Tiberianus letter (P. Mich. VIII 472/CEL 147).⁵ At Vindolanda we also find q̣uụr (Tab. Vindol. 652) for cūr ‘why’ in a fragmentary letter whose writer is unidentifiable, although as they use an apex they are likely to be a scribe (see pp. 226–32).

There appears to be a hypercorrect use of <qu> in laqụonecoru (CEL 225), presumably for lacōnicōrum ‘steam baths’, in a papyrus letter of the fourth century AD from Karanis in Egypt, apparently a petition of some sort whose writer shows some substandard features.⁶ Curiously, there are also hypercorrect examples before <a> in a pair of curse tablets from Baetica in the first century BC: omut[e]sq[ua]nt (Kropp 2.2.3/4), [om]utesquant, [omut]esquant (2.2.3/5) for obmūtescant ‘may they become dumb’.

This evidence suggests that while use of <qu> in these contexts was old-fashioned and uncommon, it did survive within some educational traditions for quite some time, although its restriction to words in which it was etymologically correct was not necessarily well learnt or taught.⁷

Chapter 14 <xs> for /ks/

Mancini (2019) provides a useful summary of the history of the spelling <xs> for <x>. The earliest example in a Latin inscription is exstrad (twice) in the SC de Bacchanalibus (CIL 1².581) of 186 BC,¹ although two instances of faxsit in testimonia of the Laws of the Twelve Tables are argued by Mancini to reflect an edition carried out by Sextus Aelius Paetus, curule aedile in 200 BC, consul 198, and censor in 194.² In addition, the Marrucinian ‘Bronze of Rapino’, datable to the second half of the third century BC, has lixs ‘law’ < *lēg-s. In a corpus of inscriptions from this period until 30 BC, Mancini counts 135 occurrences of <xs> beside 1,310 of <x> (<xs> thus making up 9% of the total).

From the Augustan period it more or less dies out in ‘official’ inscriptions, with occasional archaising usages in juridical inscriptions in the first and, once, second century AD. However, it continues to be used in other inscriptions until a late period, although always making up a small minority compared to uses of <x>. Mancini compares the 655 examples of uixsit ‘(s)he lived’ with 62,946 cases of uixit (1%); likewise he finds 497 cases of uxsor beside 6,858 of uxor (7%).³ To what extent these figures are reliable as to the rate at which <xs> was used is unclear. The EDCS with which he carried out these searches throws up plenty of false positives, and with such great numbers not much checking can have been carried out. As an additional contribution, I carried out searches for sexaginta and sexsaginta, and checked them for accuracy. The former appeared in 71 inscriptions, the latter in 14 (16%), giving a much larger minority for <xs>.⁴ The variation may reflect the smaller numbers of sexaginta in inscriptions, or genuine lexical variation as to use of <xs> versus <x> (although no particular pattern arises on this front from my investigation of the corpora below).

The spelling <xs> is barely mentioned by the writers on language, except for a brief hint by Cornutus and more explicit statements by Caesellius and Terentius Scaurus that <xs> should only be used in compounds consisting of the preposition ex plus a word beginning with /s/. There is no suggestion that <xs> is old-fashioned, just incorrect:

‘exsilium’ cum s: “ex solo” enim ire, quasi ‘exsolium’ …

Exsilium with s: because it comes from ex solo, as though it were exsolium …

(Cornutus, in Cassiodorus, De orthographia 1.77 = GL 7.152.6)

quaecumque uerba primo loco ab s littera incipient, ea cum praepositione ‘ex’ composita litteram eandem s habere debebunt … cetera, quae simplicia sunt et non componuntur, sine ulla dubitatione x tantum habebunt, ut ‘uixi’, ‘dixi’, ‘uexaui’, ‘faxim’, ‘uxor’, ‘auxilium’, ‘examen’, ‘axis’ et ‘exemplum’.

Any word which begins with s ought to maintain the s when preceded by the preposition ex …⁵ Other words, which are simplicia and not compounds, should have, without any doubt, only x, such as uixi, dixi, uexaui, faxim, uxor, auxilium, examen, axis, and exemplum.

(Caesellius, in Cassiodorus, De orthographia 10.18–45 = GL 7.203.14–24)

item cum ‘exsul’ et ‘exspectatus’ sine ‘s’ littera scribuntur, cum alioqui adiecta ea debeant scribi, quoniam similiter ‘solum’ ‘spectatus’que dicatur, et adiecta praepositione saluum esse illis initium debeat.

Likewise when exsul and exspectatus are written without s, when on the contrary they should be written with it, since one says solum and spectatus alike, and their initial letter ought to be preserved when the preposition is added.

(Terentius Scaurus, De orthographia 7.2 = GL 7.22.13–16)

Terentius Scaurus also mentions people who argue that words ending in <x> should have <xs>; again this is described as incorrect rather than old-fashioned:

similiter peccant et qui ‘nux’ et ‘trux’ et ‘ferox’ in <‘s’> nouissimam litteram dirigunt, cum alioqui duplex sufficiat, quae in se et ‘s’ habet.

Likewise those who direct an additional s onto the end of nux, trux and ferox, when, on the contrary, the double letter (x) is enough, which contains s within it.

(Terentius Scaurus, De orthographia 6.4 = GL 7.19.13–14)

The marginality of the spelling <xs> is confirmed in my corpora, although with some variation.⁶ In the Vindolanda tablets (see Table 19) I find 10 certain instances of <xs> vs 66 of <x>.⁷ Mancini (2019: 27) reproves Adams (1995: 90) for the statement that ‘xs is commonly written for x in the tablets’, but at 13%, <xs> does appear at a higher rate than uixsit and uxsor in Mancini’s calculations from the whole corpus of Latin inscriptions. Adams sees the use of <xs> as formal or archaising, while Mancini (2019: 28) argues that it is ‘informal and bureaucratic’ (informale e cancelleresco).⁸ This disagreement may be due to a different perspective on the status of the Vindolanda tablets. Mancini is comparing the presence of <xs> in ‘everyday documents’ such as the tablets from Vindolanda, London and those of Caecilius Jucundus from Pompeii, alongside papyrus letters, with its absence in public epigraphy. By comparison, Adams is more focussed on the usages of individuals in the Vindolanda tablets, and variation between genres within the corpus.

Table 19 <xs> at Vindolanda

<xs>	Tablet	Document type
ụexṣịllari	Tab. Vindol. 181	Account
exsigas	Tab. Vindol. 284	Letter
sexs	Tab. Vindol. 301	Letter
axses	Tab. Vindol. 309	Letter
axsis	Tab. Vindol. 309	Letter
axses	Tab. Vindol. 309	Letter
uexsaṛe	Tab. Vindol. 343	Letter
uexsilló	Tab. Vindol. 628	Letter
mạxṣimum	Tab. Vindol. 662	Draft of letters
dịxsịt	Tab. Vindol. 735	Unknown

Clearly, the letters found at Vindolanda are ‘informal’ relative to public epigraphy, but we do have a hint that they could be marked out from other genres by the tendency for apices to be used preferentially in letters as opposed to other types of text (see pp. 235–6). And in fact, apices and <xs> co-occur in Tab. Vindol. 628. The sequence <xs> also tends to appear in letters, which provide 8 out of 9 instances in which the genre of the text is recognisable.⁹ This compares with <x>, of which 37/65 instances appear in letters (one document is of uncertain genre). The numbers are too small, however, to be sure that <xs> does correlate with letters.¹⁰ The use of <xs> is also not necessarily consistent within a text: 301 has explices beside sexs,¹¹ and in the letter of Octavius (343), apart from uexsaṛe, there are 6 instances of <x>, consisting of dixi and 5 examples of the preverb ex-.

Adams also observes that the three examples of <xs> in 309 appear alongside the spelling of mīsī ‘I sent’ as missi, ṃissi, in a text whose spelling is otherwise standard. And in fact there are further connections between use of <xs> and <ss>. The same hand that writes 181, which contains ụexṣịllari, also writes 180, another account, and 344, a letter which enables the author to be identified as a civilian trader. 180 (which has <x> in ex) also has <ss> in ussus for ūsūs ‘uses’. 344 has no instances of <x(s)> but writes comississem for comīsissem ‘I had committed’. Given the civilian status of the author, it may be that the spelling he or his scribe uses is the result of different training from that of the scribes in the army. In 343, the spelling <ss> is also attested indirectly in the form nissi for nisi ‘if not’ (see p. 185). It is striking that 5 of the 22 instances of <ss> in the Vindolanda tablets occur in documents which also have <xs>. In 343, apart from using <xs> and <ss>, the writer is also characterised by the rare use of <k> in a word other than k(alendae) and cārus ‘dear’: karrum and ḳarro for carrum ‘wagon’.

The spelling <xs>, therefore, appears in texts which use other spellings which might be considered old-fashioned. It is reasonable to suppose that <xs> may have had a similar value. From a sociolinguistic perspective, <xs> appears in letters from a range of backgrounds. In 301, the writer Severus is a slave, writing to a slave of the prefect Flavius Genialis in his own hand. The author of 284 is probably a decurion, writing to the prefect Flavius Cerialis, and 628 is also a letter to Cerialis from a decurion called Masclus (but both are probably using scribes; note the use of apices in the latter). The author of 309 (Metto?) is probably a civilian trader, though most of the letter is written in another hand. Very little remains of 662 or 735. All of these show otherwise standard spelling, as far as we can tell (other than Masclus for Masculus in 628, with a ‘vulgar’ syncope; but since this is the author’s name this does not necessarily suggest a lower educational standard on the part of the writer).¹²

On the other hand, the writer of 343, whose author was Octavius, who may have been ‘a civilian entrepreneur and merchant, or a military officer responsible for organising supplies for the Vindolanda unit’, according to the editors, combines use of <xs>, <ss> and <k> with the substandard spellings <e> for <ae> in illec for illaec ‘those things’, arre for arrae ‘pledge’, que for quae ‘which’, male for malae ‘bad’, <ae> for <e> in ṃae for mē ‘me’, and <i> for <ii> in necessari for necessariī ‘necessary’. The letter 344 contains only standard spelling, but the accounts 180 and 181, by the same writer, do include a few substandard spellings: bubulcaris for bubulcāriīs ‘ox-herds’, turṭas for tortās ‘twisted loaves’ (both 180), emtis for emptīs, balniatore for balneātōre, and Ingenus for Ingenuus (all 181).

Overall, Adams’ view that <xs> is formal or archaising, within the context of the Vindolanda tablets, receives some support from its association with other old-fashioned spellings, in the form of <ss> for <s> by three different writers, and with <k> in one of them. However, we cannot be sure that its greater frequency in letters is due to the relatively more formal status of these than other types of document. The writers who include <xs> in their texts all probably belong to the sub-elite, consisting of slaves, scribes and perhaps civilian traders. It is found in texts which demonstrate both standard and substandard spelling. It is conceivable that <xs> is not actually a major part of the scribal tradition of the army itself, since at least 4 of the instances come from letters whose authors were civilians (5 if Octavius, the author of 343, was also a civilian), and only 284 (1 example) and 628 (1 example) seem to have definitely been written by military personnel. But of course, military scribes, and/or education in writing, may have been available also to non-military personnel.

Two of the other corpora are particularly noteworthy in terms of use of <xs>. One is the London tablets, which contain 4 examples of <xs> and only 3 of <x> (see Table 20). The spelling of WT 44 and 45 is standard; WT 55 is substandard (see p. 264), and also uses another old-fashioned spelling, <ss> after a long vowel in u]s{s}uras and promis{ṣ}it; the spelling of WT 67 is also substandard (see p. 264). As for the tablets which have <x>, WT 29 has substandard features (see p. 264), along with 2 instances of <ss> in [o]cassionem for occāsiōnem ‘occasion’ and (hypercorrect) messibus for mēnsibus ‘months’. WT 31 has standard spelling except for Aticus for Atticus, which may simply be a haplography. WT 72 has Butu for Butum, but the reading is difficult and the word is at the end of a line anyway so may reflect lack of space. What other text there is has standard spelling (n.b. Ianuarium) and a hypercorrect use of <ss> in ceruessam. It seems that in these tablets <xs> can correlate with both standard and substandard spelling, and with <ss>, while <x> is found with substandard spelling and <ss>, but there is hardly enough evidence to draw particular conclusions from this other than that <xs> is remarkably common.

Table 20 <xs> and <x> in the London tablets

<xs>	Text	Date	<x>	Text	Date
exs	WT 44	AD 53–60/1	a<b>duxerat	WT 29	AD 80–90/5
conduxsisse	WT 45	AD 60/1–62	sex	WT 31	AD 62–65/70
dixsit	WT 55	AD 65/70–90/5	ex	WT 72	AD 65/70–80
Sexsti	WT 67	AD 90/5–125

The other corpus is the tablets of Jucundus, in which <xs> is characteristic of the scribes, who use it 35 times to 11 instances of <x>, whereas the other writers have 2 examples of <xs> and 15 of <x> (see Table 21 and Table 22). In fact, there seem to be three important factors which apply to the use of <xs>. 25 of the examples of <xs> occur in the word dixsit (and dixserunt) in tablets concerning auctiones, which contain the formulas habere se dixsit … ‘(s)he said that (s)he has [a certain amount of money]’ and accepisse se dixit/dixserunt … ‘(s)he/they said that (s)he/they has/have received [a certain amount of money]’, which are always written by scribes. The difference between use of <xs> in dīxit/dīxē̆runt and in other words by the scribes is statistically significant.¹³ An explanation for this might be that the spelling with <xs> was felt to be particularly appropriate for this word because it appears in a formulaic context.¹⁴ However, even if we leave dīxit/dīxē̆runt out of the equation (and not including one uncertain case), there is still a statistically significant difference between the rates of use of <xs> and <x> in other words by scribes (10:11) and other writers (2:15); see Table 23.¹⁵ Tablet 1 is the earliest of the tablets, and perhaps reflects a slightly different orthographic training: as well as using <x> in dixit, it also uses the spelling pequnia versus the pecunia found uniformly in the other tablets.

Table 21 <xs> and <x> in dixit in the Caecilius Jucundus tablets

<xs>	Tablet (CIL 4.3340)	Date	Writer	<x>	Tablet (CIL 4.3340)	Date	Writer
dixsit	2	AD 27	Scribe	dixit	1	AD 15	Scribe
dixsit	10	AD 55	Scribe	dixit	5	AD 54	Scribe
dixsit	11	AD 55	Scribe
dixsit	12	AD 55	Scribe
[di]xsit	13	AD 55	Scribe
dixsit	14	AD 55	Scribe
dixsit	17	AD 55	Scribe
dixsit	22	AD 56	Scribe
dixsit	25	AD 56	Scribe
dixsi[t	26	AD 56	Scribe
dixsit	27	AD 56	Scribe
dixsit	28	AD 57	Scribe
dixsit	31	AD 57	Scribe
dixsit	32	AD 57	Scribe
di]xsit	34	AD 57	Scribe
dixsit	35	AD 57	Scribe
dixsit	40	AD 57	Scribe
dixsit	43	AD 57	Scribe
dixsit	46	AD 56?	Scribe
dixsit	47	?	Scribe
dixserunt	48	?	Scribe
dixs[it]	55	?	Scribe
di]xsit	57	?	Scribe
dixsit	78	?	Scribe
dixsit	124	?	Scribe

Table 22 <xs> and <x> in other words in the Caecilius Jucundus tablets

<xs>	Tablet (CIL 4.3340)	Date	Writer	<x>	Tablet (CIL 4.3340)	Date	Writer
Maxs.	10	AD 55	Scribe	buxiaria(m)	5	AD 54	Scribe
s[e]xs	21	AD 56	M. Alleius Carpus	ex	17	AD 55	Non-scribe
sexsaginta	23	AD 56	Slave Of Umbricia Antiochis	ex	25	AD 56	D. Volcius Thallus
Maxsim(i)	38	AD 57	Scribe	ex	25	AD 56	D. Volcius Thallus
Axsioc.	40	AD 57	Scribe	se]x	26	AD 56	N. Blaesius Fructio
Maxsimus	49	?	Scribe	ex	28	AD 57	M. Fabius Secundus
Maxsi(mi)	49	?	Scribe	ex	33	AD 57	A. Messius Speratus
proxsima	71	?	Scribea	ex	33	AD 57	Uncertainb
Maxsimi	80	?	Scribe	Axiochus	40	AD 57	Sex. Pompeius Axiochus
Maxsi[m]i	84	?	Scribe	sexages	40	AD 57	Sex. Pompeius Axiochus
Alexsandrini	100	?	Scribe	ex	40	AD 57	Sex. Pompeius Axiochus
Alexsandrini	100	?	Scribe	ex	45	?	P. Alfenus Varus
				ex	45	?	Scribe
				ex	46	AD 56?	Non-scribe
				Sextili	71	?	Scribe
				Sextilì	92	?	Scribe
				Dextri	103	?	Scribe
				ex	141	AD 58	Privatus, slave of the colonia
				ex	141	AD 58	Scribe
				ex	142	AD 58	Privatus, slave of the colonia
				Sextio	143	AD 59	Privatus, slave of the colonia
				Sextio	143	AD 59	Scribe
				Sextio	143	AD 59	Scribe
				ex	145	AD 58	Privatus, slave of the colonia
				ex	145	AD 58	Scribe

^a Page 2 of this tablet, on which proxima occurs, has lost almost all its writing, but on the basis that there are nine witnesses, this tablet must be the record of an auctio, in which case the inner writing is always carried out by a scribe (Andreau 1974: 18–19).

^b Page 2 of this tablet contains the chirographum of A. Messius Speratus, which seems to end on that page; on page 3, on which ex occurs, we then get what appears to be an incomplete version of the auctio formula, which is in the third person, and hence would be expected to be written by a scribe. However, the spelling is substandard (abere for habēre ‘to have’, Mesius for Messius, Pompes for Pompeīs), as in the chirographum, and it looks as though the writer may have started off using the first person: Zangemeister prints abere m.., and comments ‘inchoasse videtur aliam constructionem: me (scripsi vel dixi)’. It seems more likely that for some reason Messius also wrote this page.

Table 23 Use of <xs> and <x> by scribes and others in the Caecilius Jucundus tablets

	Scribes	Others
<xs>	10	2
<x>	9	15

It is difficult to identify a cohesive pattern in the use of <xs> across the corpora. On the one hand, the scribes of the Caecilius Jucundus tablets heavily favour <xs> at a rate of 69%, or 53% if we assume that dix(s)it is a special case, which compares significantly with the usage of the other writers, who use <xs> only 12% of the time. By comparison, the typologically, geographically and chronologically similar corpora TPSulp. and TH² demonstrate an avoidance of <xs>, on the part of both scribes and others. The former has a single use of <xs> in sexsṭum (TPSulp. 46, scribe), compared to 87 other examples of <x> (and one case of <cs> in Ạḷẹcsì, TPSulp. 90). The latter has 32 instances of <x> and none of <xs>.

In Kropp’s corpus of curse tablets there are 19 instances of <xs> overall, and 131 of <x>, giving a rate of 13%. 7 of these are in texts dated to the second and first centuries BC; Table 24 gives all examples from the first century AD onwards. All of these tablets except 3.2/26 feature substandard spellings; 3.2/24 and 3.22/3 also have (hypercorrect) <ss> in nissi for nisi ‘if not’.

Table 24 <xs> in the curse tablets

	Tablet	Date	Location
exsemplaria	Kropp 2.2.1/1	AD 100–150	Hispania Baetica
Exsactoris	Kropp 3.2/9	Third century AD (?)	Aquae Sulis
paxsa	Kropp 3.2/24	Third–fourth century AD	Aquae Sulis
exsigatur	Kropp 3.2/26	Second–third century AD	Aquae Sulis
paxsam	Kropp 3.2/54	Third–fourth century AD	Aquae Sulis
exsigat	Kropp 3.22/3	Second–fourth century AD	Uley
exsigat	Kropp 3.22/3	Second–fourth century AD	Uley
maxsime	Kropp 5.1.3/1	First–second century AD	Germania Superior
uxsor	Kropp 5.1.4/8	First half of the second century AD	Germania Superior
uxso[r]	Kropp 5.1.4/8	First half of the second century AD	Germania Superior
Maxsumus	Kropp 5.1.4/10	First half of the second century AD	Germania Superior
proxsimis	Kropp 7.5/1	c. AD 150	Raetia

The Isola Sacra inscriptions contain a few instances of <xs>, with 5 compared to 105 of <x>. 1 example of uixsit (IS 258) compares with 43 instances of the perfect stem of uīuō with <x>, and the 1 example of uxsori (IS 98) with 7 of uxor (though this does give rates of 2% and 14% respectively, both twice as frequent as the rates found by Mancini in the epigraphic evidence more generally). Strikingly, the word most frequently spelt with <xs> is the cognomen Fēlix, with 3 instances of <xs> (IS 44, 225, 312) versus 4 of <x>. Only one of the inscriptions containing <xs> also contains a substandard spelling, in the form of comparaberunt for comparāuē̆runt (IS 312). The same inscription also has <x> in Maxima.

The other corpora mostly show no or little use of <xs>. The only instance of <xs> in the Bu Njem ostraca is sexsagi[nta (O. BuNjem 78), in a letter written by a soldier called Aemilius Aemilianus, whose spelling is not as bad as in some of the other texts, but does include some substandard features (see p. 263). They also include the non–old-fashioned transmisi, which appears in all the letters, but this spelling probably comes from the template that Aemilianus was using (Adams 1994: 92–4). There are 24 instances of <x> in other ostraca. At Dura Europos <xs> is entirely absent, and there are more than a hundred cases of <x>. Vindonissa has no examples of <xs>, but only 3 of <x>. The graffiti from the Paedagogium have 25 instances of <x> and none of <xs>.

Within the corpus of letters, <xs> is interestingly absent from those of Claudius Tiberianus, despite the preponderance of both old-fashioned and substandard spellings (although there are only 8 instances of <x>, 4 each in P. Mich VIII 467/CEL 141 and 472/147). The letters definitely attributed to Rustius Barbarus also have 9 instances of <x> (CEL 73, 74, 77, 78) and none of <xs>, although CEL 80, which belongs to the same cache but may not have been written by Rustius, has exsigas for exigās ‘you should take out’. Of the other letters, the private letter of the slave Suneros (CEL 10), of Augustan date, has 3 instances of <xs> (on Suneros’ spelling, see pp. 10–11). There is then 1 in CEL 88 (probably first century AD), and CEL 140, a papyrus copy of an official letter of probatio from Oxyrhynchus (AD 103), which also contains three examples of <x>, and which has otherwise standard spelling (including <k> in karissiṃ[e]).

Chapter 15 Geminates and Singletons

A number of different changes took place to reduce original geminate consonants in Latin. In addition, there was another rule (or rules) which produced geminates out of original single consonants. Since these changes did not take place at the same time, and were not necessarily reflected in spelling at the same rate, I will discuss them here separately.

<ss> and <s>

Double /ss/ was degeminated after a long vowel or diphthong around the start of the first century BC (Meiser 1998: 125; Weiss 2020: 66, 170), for example caussa > causa. A search for caussa finds 23 inscriptions from the first four centuries AD, compared to 269 for causa (a frequency of 8%), although the spelling with <ss> is rather higher in the first century AD (18 or 19 inscriptions containing caussa to 60 inscriptions containing causa = 23 or 24%),¹ including in official inscriptions such as the Res Gestae Diui Augusti (Scheid 2007; CIL 3, pp. 769–99, AD 14),² the SC de Cn. Pisone patri (9 instances of causa to 3 of caussa in the B copy; Eck et al. 1968, AD 20), and CIL 14.85 (AD 46, EDR094023). By comparison, a search for (-)missit finds 4 instances in the first four centuries AD compared to 192 of (-)misit (a frequency of 2%).³

Most of the writers on language clearly considered the <ss> spelling old-fashioned:

‘causam’ per unam s nec quemquam moueat antiqua scriptura: nam et ‘accussare’ per duo ss scripserunt, sicut ‘fuisse’, ‘diuisisse’, ‘esse’ et ‘causasse’ per duo ss scriptum inuenio; in qua enuntiatione quomodo duarum consonantium sonus exaudiatur, non inuenio.

Archaic writing should not prevent anyone from writing causa with a single s: for they also wrote accussare [for accūsāre], just as I find fuisse, diuisisse, esse, causasse written with double ss [as one would expect]. When these words are pronounced I do not know what the double consonant is supposed to sound like.

(Cornutus in Cassiodorus, De orthographia 1.34–36 = GL 7.149. 12–15)

quid, quod Ciceronis temporibus paulumque infra, fere quotiens s littera media uocalium longarum uel subiecta longis esset, geminabatur, ut “caussae” “cassus” “diuissiones”? quo modo et ipsum et Vergilium quoque scripsisse manus eorum docent.

What of the fact that in Cicero’s time and a little later, often whenever the letter s was between long vowels or after a long vowel, it was written double, as in caussae, cassus, diuissione. That both he and Virgil wrote this way is shown by writings in their own hand.

(Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 1.7.20)

iidem uoces quae pressiore sono edu[cu]ntur, ‘ausus, causa, fusus, odiosus’, per duo s scribebant, ‘aussus’.

The same people [i.e. the antiqui] wrote words which are now produced with a briefer sound, such as ausus, causa, fusus, odiosus, with double s, like this: aussus.

(Marius Victorinus, Ars grammatica 4.2 = GL 6.8.5–6)

Although Terentius Scaurus states that there are ‘many’ who use the double <ss> spelling in causa:

‘causam’ item <a> multis scio per duo ‘s’ scribi ut non attendentibus hanc litteram … nisi praecedente uocali correpta non solere geminari.

I know that causa is spelt by many with two s-es, as by those not paying attention to the fact that this letter is not geminated unless the preceding vowel is short.

(Terentius Scaurus, De orthographia 6.11.1 = GL 7.21.14–17)

At Vindolanda the 21 instances of etymologically correct <ss> compare with 24 of <s>, giving a total of 47% (see Table 25).⁴ The frequency with which the <ss> spelling is found in mīs-, the perfect stem of mittō ‘I send’, is out of kilter with the uncommon spelling of this lexeme with <ss> in the epigraphic evidence as a whole.

Table 25 <ss> at Vindolanda

<ss>	Tablet (Tab. Vindol.)
ussus	180
oc̣cạṣṣịọṇẹṃ [oc]c̣assionem ussibus	225
remisserịs	256
missi	268
missi	280
missit	299
missi ṃissi	309
promisṣịt	310
ṃịsseras	312
miṣsi	314
missi	318
nissi	343
commississem	344
].ṇfussicia	595
fussáb	645
dimissi	691
]ạṣṣeụmc	838
missi	868
missi	892

^a The editors suggest that this is to be taken as c]ọnf̣ussici ‘mixed’.

^b See Adams (2003: 556–7).

^c Assuming that the editors are right to understand this as c]asseum ‘cheese’.

In 225, <ss> is used in the draft of a letter probably written in the hand of Flavius Cerialis, prefect of the Ninth Cohort of Batavians himself, a man apparently of some education (on which, see Adams 1995: 129, and p. 1), who also uses <uo> for /wu/. It is also found in 255, from Clodius Super to Cerialis; the editors suggest that though a centurion, Clodius may have been an equestrian (but there is no evidence he wrote it himself). In 256, a letter to Cerialis from a certain Genialis, <uo> is also used for /wu/ in siluolas; there are no substandard spellings. In the case of 312, a letter from Tullio to a duplicarius whose gentilicium is Cessaucius, the editors note that ‘[t]he hand is rather crude and sprawling’, which may suggest a lower level of education in the writer, although no substandard spellings are found.⁵

Metto (the author of 309) and the anonymous author of 180 and 344 were probably civilians, and therefore not necessarily using military scribes. The writer of 309 also uses <xs> for <x>, as does the writer of 180 and 344 (who also writes 181: ụexṣịllari), who also includes substandard spellings in 180 (bubulcaris for bubulcāriīs ‘ox-herds’, turṭas for tortās ‘twisted loaves’ and 181 (emtis for emptīs, balniatore for balneātōre, and Ingenus for Ingenuus). Substandard spellings are also found in 892, a letter from the decurion Masclus to Julius Verecundus, prefect of the First Cohort of Tungrians, which has commiatum for commeātum and Reti and Retorum for Raetī, -ōrum. Since the final greeting is in a different hand, presumably that of Masclus himself, the writer of the rest of the text was probably a scribe.

Tab. Vindol. 343, whose author, Octavius, could have been a civilian or in the military, also contains a number of substandard spelling features (see p. 262), but also <k> for /k/ before /a/, and <xs>. The single example of <ss> in nissi is interesting because there was never an etymological *-ss- in nisi, which comes from the univerbation of *ne sei̯. However, since this univerbation must have occurred after rhotacism, nisi presumably contained an intervocalic voiceless /s/, a feature shared almost exclusively with forms like mīsī < mīssī, where it was the result of degemination of original /ss/. The writer of 343 must have learnt the spelling with <ss> and mistakenly overgeneralised it to nisi.

We can conclude that the spelling <ss> for /s/ after a long vowel or diphthong is common at Vindolanda (nearly half the examples). It correlates with other old-fashioned spellings such as <uo> for /wu/, <xs> for <x>, and <k> for /k/ before /a/. However, it does not correlate with quality of spelling: although it is used by the well-educated Cerialis, it also appears in texts which also feature substandard spellings, and in texts which are not necessarily written by military scribes.

Cotugno and Marotta (2017) argue against <ss> at Vindolanda being an old-fashioned feature, on the basis that since <ss> is found in accounts as well as letters, it cannot have been used as a stylistic marker, as might be the case in letters, and consequently that its use should not be considered an archaism. They suggest that instead it arose as a way of marking a voiceless tense /s/ among Batavian speakers of Latin (North-Western Germanic languages having, like Latin, turned original voiceless *s into /r/ by rhotacism); in this view, therefore, the use of <ss> would reflect Germanic interference in the Latin spoken by the Batavians at Vindolanda. But this is unlikely for several reasons. Firstly, given that (almost) all examples of <ss> are etymologically correct, Occam’s razor would lead us to prefer old-fashioned spelling as an explanation; secondly, spellings with double <ss> are found in other corpora where Germanic influence is not to be suspected (albeit mostly at lower rates); thirdly, other old-fashioned features, such as use of <xs> (Chapter 14) and <uo> for /wu/ (Chapter 8) are also found in documents other than letters; fourthly, it is implausible that the highly educated Cerialis, who otherwise spells in a completely standard manner and uses other old-fashioned features (<uo>), should have used a non-standard spelling solely in the use of <ss>; fifthly, at least three of the documents containing <ss> originate from civilian authors, who were therefore probably not Germanic speakers; these may of course have been written by military scribes but they might well not have been. The argument also rests on the implicit assumption that old-fashioned spelling is a variable that differs according to the register of text in which it is found. This may, but need not, be true, and requires demonstration rather than being a premise.

In the tablets of the Sulpicii, apart from in the sections written by C. Novius Eunus, which I consider separately below, spellings with <ss> are outnumbered by those with <s>: there are 4 instances, all of caussa, and 12 of <s> (25%); however, two of the instances of <ss> belong to a single writer, Lucius Faenius Eumenes, and another is found in the scribal portion of the same tablet (one wonders if the scribe, who also uses <s> in causá, could have been influenced by the spelling of Faenius). The clustering of examples of <ss> in causa and not in other lexemes seems to fit with the usage of the epigraphic evidence as a whole (see Table 26).

Table 26 <ss> and <s> in the tablets of the Sulpicii

<ss>	Tablet	Date	Writer	<s>	Tablet	Date	Writer
caussa	27	AD 48	Lucius Faenius Eumenes	promisit	13	After AD 44	Scribe
caussa	27	AD 48	Lucius Faenius Eumenes	pr]omisìt	14	After AD 44	Scribe
c̣aussạ	27	AD 48	Scribe	causá	27	AD 48	Scribe
caussa	87	AD 51	Scribe	promisisset	48	AD 48	C. Iulius Prudens
				promisisset	48	AD 48	Scribe
				promisì	56	AD 52	Scribe
				promisì	58	No date	Pyramus, slave of Caesia Priscilla
				promìsì	68	AD 39	Scribe
				prọmiṣisse	81	AD 45	Aulus Castricius
				causa	90	AD 61	Scribe
				causa	91	AD 61	Scribe
				ụṣus	101	AD 48	Scribe

Eunus shows a consistent double writing of intervocalic /s/, regardless of whether it results from original /ss/ or not. Once again, this will be an overgeneralisation of the rule that <ss> is to be written for /s/ in many words after a diphthong or long vowel to apply to all instances of /s/ (Adams 1990: 239–40; Seidl 1996: 107–8).⁶ Thus, in addition to promissi (TPSulp. 68), where <ss> is etymologically correct, he consistently spells the name Caesar with <ss> (51; 52, 3 times; 67, twice; 68, 3 times), generally does so for the name Hesychus (51, twice, 52, twice, 68 once, but twice with <s>), and also uses double <ss> in writing Asinius (67) and positus (51; 52, twice).

In the curse tablets, all instances of etymological <ss> are spelt with single <s> (7 examples, 3 of amisit,⁷ 4 of causa⁸), but Britain, and in particular Uley, provides a large number of instances of non-etymological <ss>, particularly in the word nisi (see Table 27).⁹ Should we explain double <ss> in nissi/nessi as the result of failure to learn (or teach) the rule whereby some words with /s/ are written with <ss> due to degemination after a long vowel, as with Eunus? Or should we posit some other local development, whether that be an educational tradition or influence on pronunciation from a second language (presumably Celtic)?

Table 27 Unetymological <ss> for /s/ in the curse tablets

<ss>	Tablet	Date	Location
nissi nissi	Kropp 3.2/24	Third–fourth century AD	Aquae Sulis
nessi	Kropp 3.2/79	Third–fourth century AD	Aquae Sulis
nessi	Kropp 3.18/1	First half of the third century AD	Pagans Hill
nissi	Kropp 3.22/2	Mid-third century AD	Uley
nissi	Kropp 3.22/3	Second–fourth century AD	Uley
ness[i] ness[i]	Kropp 3.22/5	Fourth century AD	Uley
nissi	Kropp 3.22/29	Second–third century AD	Uley
nessi	Kropp 3.22/32	Second–third century AD	Uley
missericordia	Kropp 3.22/34	Second–third century AD	Uley

The former seems more likely: it may seem remarkable that (mis)use of <ss> should cluster around this word in particular, but its frequency is probably just the result of the formulaic nature of the curse tablets: in the curse tablets from Britain it is common for the curse to threaten a thief with unpleasant punishments unless (nisi) the property is returned either to the owner (thus Kropp 3.22/2, Kropp 3.22/29) or to a temple (Kropp 3.2/24, Kropp 3.18/1, Kropp 3.22/3, Kropp 3.22/5). An alternative formula is that the thief is given as a gift to the god, and ‘may not redeem this gift except (nisi) with his own blood’ (3.2/79, 3.22/32). And in most of the tablets there are no other examples of single /s/, so we cannot say that it is only nisi which receives this treatment, while in 3.22/4, the only example is missericordia for misericordia ‘pity’, which is also spelt with a geminate.

However, there are two cases where /s/ is spelt singly in tablets which also have <ss> after a short vowel; in 3.22/3 there is also amisit, which has <ss> etymologically, and in 3.22./34 there is thesaurus, which does not have etymological <ss>, but which might be expected to be spelt with <ss> if the writer had generalised the rule that all instances of /s/ were to be spelt <ss>. But it is also possible that the writers of these tablets were simply inconsistent in their spelling.

The use of <ss> correlates with <xs> in 3.2/24 (paxsam ‘tunic’, but [3]xe[3]), 3.33/3 (exsigat ‘may (s)he hound’ twice, but laxetur); in both the spelling is not far from the standard, although the former has Minerue for Mineruae and the latter lintia for lintea. Most of the tablets have some substandard features in addition to <ss> after a short vowel:¹⁰ Minerue for Mineruae, serus for seruus, redemat for redimat, nessi for nisi (3.2/79), [di]mediam for dīmidiam, nessi for nisi (3.18/1), coscientiam for cōnscientiam (3.22/5),¹¹ tuui for tuī, praecibus for precibus, pareat for pariat (3.22/29), redemere for redimere (3.22/32).

In the London tablets (see Table 28), <ss> shows a remarkably high distribution, including in tablets relatively late in the first century AD; WT 56 includes two spellings with <ss> (promissit, ussurae) and one with <s> (causae). In addition there is mistaken use of <ss>, in messibus (WT 29) for mēnsibus ‘months’, which would have been pronounced [mɛ̃ːsibus] and hence appeared to be a case of single /s/ after a long vowel, where only one <s> is found in the 4 other instances of the same word in this tablet. The word ceruesa ‘beer’ is generally supposed to have been borrowed from Gaulish, and there is no evidence that it ever contained double /ss/. Four other instances in this tablet are spelt with single <s>. If the reading is correct, this would be an example of use of <ss> for /s/ after a short vowel. Once again, this is a corpus which has high frequency of the spelling <xs>.

Table 28 <ss> and <s> in the London tablets

<ss>	Tablet	Date	<s>	Tablet	Date
occas{s}ionem messibus	WT 29	AD 80–90/5	causa	WT 30	AD 43–53
fussum	WT 38	AD 80–90/5	promisi	WT 41	AD 80–90/5
u]s{s}uras promis{s}it	WT 55	AD 65/70–80	causae	WT 56	AD 65/70–80
promis{s}it us{s}urae	WT 56	AD 65/70–80
cerues{s}am	WT 72	AD 65/70–80

In the tablets from Herculaneum, geminate <ss> is only found in the name Nassius (TH² A3, D13, A16, 4),¹² where the spelling change may have been retarded in a name (cf. causam TH² 89, proṃisi A10, repromisisse 4, all 60s AD). In the letters, the only possible instances of <ss> being used after a long vowel or diphthong is bessem ‘two thirds (of an as)’ in CEL (72) in a papyrus letter of AD 48–49 from Egypt. I think the preceding vowel was probably long, but cannot be certain.¹³ Otherwise, 31 other instances show <s>.¹⁴

In the Isola Sacra inscriptions there are instances of causa (IS 57), laesit (IS 10), manumiserit (IS 320), permisit (IS 142 and 179) and, with <ss>, the word crissasse (IS 46) for crīsāsse ‘(of a woman) to move the haunches as in coitus’ (in a graffito written on a tomb; not earlier than the reign of Antoninus). The word is otherwise found with a single <s> at AE 2005.633 (second half of the second or early third century AD) and Solin (2020, no. 24a). An original geminate is implied by the absence of rhotacism, and is found in Martial and in the grammarians (TLL 1206, s.v. crīsō).¹⁵

At Bu Njem there is no sign of the <ss> spelling, but 17 examples of original /ss/ with <s>. At Dura Europos there are 5 examples of (a)misit; there are no examples of a double spelling for an old geminate.

<ll> and <l>

Double /ll/ was degeminated after a diphthong, as in paulus < paullus ‘little’, caelum ‘sky’ < *kai̯d-(s)lo- (Weiss 2012: 161–70) and between [iː] and [i], as in uīlicus ‘estate overseer’ beside uīlla ‘estate’, mīlle ‘thousand’ beside mīlia ‘thousands’ (Meiser 1998: 125).¹⁶ The latter change had taken place by the second half of the first century BC.¹⁷ The standard spelling for mīlia and mīlibus retained the double <ll> until late in the first century AD. Not including the TPSulp. tablets, I find 27 inscriptions containing these spellings dated to between AD 14 and 100 (many of which would be characterised as official),¹⁸ and only 11 in this period with the spelling milia, miliarius, milibus.¹⁹

The only reference to the geminate spelling in this context in the writers on language which I have found is by Terentius Scaurus, who actually recommends the double spelling:

uerum sine dubio peccant qui ‘paullum’ [et Paullinum] per unum ‘l’ scribunt …

There is no doubt that those who write paullus with one l are wrong …

(Terentius Scaurus, De orthographia 6.7 = GL 7.15–16)

The corpus with the greatest number of relevant forms is the tablets of the Sulpicii, all in the word mīlia, mīlibus ‘thousands’.²⁰ By comparison to the use of <ss>, where <s> is favoured by both scribes and writers other than Eumenes and Eunus, <ll> appears to be the standard for milia and milibus in the tablets, in agreement with the rest of the epigraphic evidence.²¹ In Table 29 there are 30 instances of these words being spelt with <ll>, by both scribes and others; none of the 11 instances of spelling with <l> are by scribes; 9 of them are by C. Novius Eunus, whose spelling is highly substandard (see p. 262).

Table 29 <ll> and <l> in the tablets of the Sulpicii

<ll>	Tablet (TPSulp.)	Date	Written by	<l>	Tablet (TPSulp.)	Date	Written by
millia	22	AD 35	Aulus Castricius Celer	milia milia milia milia milibus	51	AD 37	C. Novius Eunus
ṃillia	46	AD 40	Nardus, slave of P. Annius Seleucus	milia milia milia mila	52	AD 37	C. Novius Eunus
millia	46	AD 40	Scribe	m[i]lia	76	No date	C. Trebonius Auctus
miḷḷị[bus	49	AD 49	Scribe	milia	82	AD 43 or 45	L. Patulcius Epaphroditus
mìllia mìllia ṃị̀ḷḷia	51	AD 37	Scribe
millia millia	53	AD 40	L. Marius Jucundus
millia	53	AD 40	Scribe
millia millia millia	54	AD 45	Scribe
millia millia millia	57	AD 50?	Scribe
millia millia	58	No date	Pyramus, slave of Caesia Priscilla
millia	59	No date	Unknown non-scribe
mìllia	66	AD 29	M. Caecilius Maximus
millia mịḷḷịa	69	AD 51	C. Sulpicius Cinnamus
millia	71	AD 46	C. Julius Amarantus
millia mil[l]ia	74	AD 51	Scribe
millia	77	AD 58	C. Caesius Quartio
miḷḷịa millia	79	AD 40	Scribe
milliạ	98	AD 43 or 45?	Q. Poblicius C[…]
ṃillibus	108	No date	Unknown non-scribe

In the Caecilius Jucundus tablets, the balance between <ll> and <l> in millia ~ milia is much more even, with 4 instances of each spelling (Table 30). It looks rather as if use of milia tends to correlate with less standard spelling, and millia with more standard spelling, as we might expect if millia is standard. There are no instances of this word written by scribes. The writing of N. Blaesius Fructio (CIL 4.3340.26), who uses milia, is highly substandard (see p. 9 fn. 11). That of Salvius the slave (6) is much better, but omits final <m> in a number of words (see p. 262). M. Fabius Secundus (28) omits all final <m>: de]ce(m), auctione(m), mea(m), tabellaru(m), s[ign]ataru(m). In what is left of the writing of M. Aurelius Felicio (34), the spelling is largely standard, but he does omit the <n> in duce(n)tos.

Table 30 millia and milia in the Caecilius Jucundus tablets

<ll>	Tablet (CIL 4.3340.)	Date	Writer	<l>	Tablet (CIL 4.3340.)	Date	Writer
millia	3	AD 52 or 33	Non-scribe	milia	6	AD 54	Salvius the slave
millia	145	AD 58	Privatus, slave of the colonia	milia	26	AD 56	N. Blaesius Fructio
m]illia	150	AD 58	Privatus, slave of the colonia	milia	28	AD 57	M. Fabius Secundus
millia	151	AD 62	Privatus, slave of the colonia	milia	34	AD 57	M. Aurelius Felicio

By comparison, in tablet 3 there is little remaining of the writing of the non-scribe but the spelling is standard. Privatus, slave of the colonia, who writes the other tablets with millia, has largely standard spelling as well as the old-fashioned spellings seruos (142) and duomuiris (144). He does, however, have occasional deviations from the standard: Hupsaei, Hupsaeo for Hypsaei, Hypsaeo (tablets 143, 147 respectively), pasquam for pascuum (145, 146), pasqua for pascua (147).

In the tablets from Herculaneum, there are two instances of <ll> in this lexeme (millibus, TH² 52 + 90, interior; mi]ḷḷịḅụṣ A10, interior), both from the 60s AD, and none of <l>. The spelling with <ll> is also found in the name Pa]ullịṇạe (62).

In the letters the only case of <ll> is the name Paullini (CEL 13); I have found no other instances of original /ll/ after a long vowel or diphthong. At Vindolanda there is one instance of milia without a geminate (Tab. Vindol. 343 – the letter of Octavius, whose writing is characterised by both old-fashioned and substandard spelling; p. 262). The curses have paullisper (Kropp 1.5.4/3) in a curse tablet from Pompeii and hence no later than AD 79, whose spelling is entirely standard, but Paulina, 8.4/1, from the mid-second century AD, and milibus in 3.10/1 and 3.18/1, both from third century AD Britain. At Bu Njem there are no examples of original /ll/, and at Dura Europos there is only 1 example of the name Paulus. In the Isola Sacra inscriptions there is milia (IS 233, dated to the reign of Hadrian), and the names Paulus (176), Paulino (IS 288) and Paulinae (IS 343). This compares with one example of the <ll> spelling in the name Paullinae (IS 90).

Singletons for Geminate Consonants after Original Long Vowels

There were (at least) two sporadic rules which produced geminate consonants in the original sequence ⁽*⁾VːC > VCC (Weiss 2010; Sen 2015: 42–78). One of these affected high vowels followed by a voiceless consonant, in forms like Iūpiter> Iuppiter. Since long /iː/ and /uː/ from original *ei̯ and *ou̯ were affected, a terminus post quem for the change is the mid-second century BC. Another rule resulted in the sequence /aːR/ becoming /arr/ (Weiss), or synchronic variation between /aːR/ and /aRR/ (Sen).

According to Sen, the first rule was a diachronic change, while the variation between /aːR/ and /aRR/ was a continuing synchronic development. However, the exact status of the rules is difficult to establish, partly because the evidence of both manuscripts and inscriptions is not always easy to analyse or to date, partly because older spellings could continue to be used beside newer spellings, and partly because of the sporadic nature of the change: in the case of cūpa ‘cask’ and cuppa ‘cup’, both versions were maintained beside each other (and both continued into Romance), although with a semantic divergence. However, support for the Iūpiter-type rule being diachronic comes from the non-attestation of the long vowel variants of some words such as uitta ‘headband’ < *u̯īta. The evidence for the change involving /aːR/ is even weaker, but all the best examples (*pāsokai̯dā > parricīda ‘parricide’, gnārus ‘knowing’ beside narrāre ‘I tell’, parret ‘it appears’ besides (ap)pāreō ‘appear, be visible’) suggest a direction of change /aːR/ > /aRR/ and not vice versa, so I take it that this too is a diachronic change.

In the corpora there are two lexemes which contain these environments. The first is parret. The consistent long vowel in pāreō and its derivatives suggests that the long vowel was original in this word (de Vaan 2008: 445). Festus says that it should be spelt with <r>, on analogical grounds, but noting that it appears particularly in contracts:

parret, quod est in formulis, debuit et producta priore syllaba pronuntiari, et non gemino r scribi, ut fieret paret, quod est inveniatur, ut comparet, apparet.

Parret, which is found in contracts, ought both to be pronounced with a long first syllable, and not to be written with double r, so that it becomes paret, which is inuieniatur ‘should it be proved’, as in comparet and apparet.

(Festus, De significatu uerborum 262.16–19)

There is no clear chronological development in the attestations of parret and paret, but Festus does suggest that (in practice), the double <rr> spelling was found particularly in contracts, and, in our admittedly meagre data, there does seem to be a distinction between the impersonal usage with <rr> in legalistic contexts, while <r> was used in other senses and contexts. The <rr> spelling is attested in 87 BC in the Tabula Contrebiensis from Spain (CIL 1².2951a), the Lex riui hiberiensis, also from Spain, from the time of Hadrian (Beltrán Lloris 2006), and in a fresco depicting a wax tablet in a villa near Rome of around 60–40 BC (Costabile et al. 2018: 78, and for the dating 22–3).²² The spelling paret appears in the non-impersonal usage at CIL 12.915, CIL 13.5708, Kropp 4.4.1/1 (first century AD), and impersonal but not legalistic at CIL 3.3196 (dated to the second century by the EDCS: EDCS-28600186). The spelling parret (TPSulp. 31, scribe) is, therefore, not old-fashioned in the sense that the older form was probably pāret. However, it may be that its use with this spelling was specific to the legal/contractual context, and may therefore reflect particular training for this genre for the scribe.

The other relevant lexeme is littera, for which the non-geminate spelling is rare; leiteras (CIL 1².583, 123–122 BC) probably represents /liːtɛraːs/ (Sen 2015: 218), and one may add literas (CIL 1².3128; 100–50 BC, EDR102136), ḷịteras (Castrén and Lilius 1970, no. 266). The spelling with <tt>, on the other hand, is well attested inscriptionally, the earliest examples being litteras (CIL 1².588.10, 78 BC and CIL 1².590.1.3, 70s BC; Sen 2015: 218). In my corpora, the geminate is used in litteras in TPSulp. 46 (scribe, AD 40), 78 (non-scribe, AD 38) and 98 (non-scribe, AD 43 or 45). The geminate in litteras is found twice at Kropp 6.2/1, from Noricum. The spelling literae (Kropp 11.1.1.7, Carthage, first–third centuries AD) is probably a reflection of the writer’s inability to spell geminates correctly rather than an old-fashioned spelling (cf. posit for possit (twice), posu[nt for possunt, posint for possint, ilos for illōc). An early letter (CEL 9, last quarter of the first century BC), has ḷiteras; otherwise we find only littera- (CEL 13, AD 27, then 7 other examples, from the second to the fifth century). The spelling with a single <t> in CEL 9 might, however, be due to a general loss of geminates in this author, who also writes disperise for disperisse, sucesorem for sucessōrem, sufragatur for suffrāgātur, rather than reflecting an old-fashioned spelling.

Chapter 16 spepondi

The reduplicated perfect of spondeō ‘I swear’ was originally spepondī, a spelling still used by Valerius Antias, Cicero and Caesar in the first century BC, according to the second century AD author Aulus Gellius (Noctes Atticae 6.9.12–15), implying that spopondi was the standard spelling at the time. The inscriptional evidence outside the corpora is not very numerous; to some extent it supports this interpretation. There are only 4 instances of spepondi (AE 1987.198, AD 256; AE 1987.199, AD 254–256, both from Ostia; CIL 6.10241, around the age of Hadrian; CIL 6.18937). By comparison, there are 8 of spopondi, of which 2 are dated to the first century AD: CIL 2.5042 = 5406 (AE 2000.66), CIL 6.10239 (EDR177718).¹

It is reasonable to deduce that spopondi is the standard spelling in the tablets of the Sulpicii and the Herculaneum tablets; it appears frequently in those parts written by both scribes and others (TPSulp. 1, 1bis, 2, 6, 7, 8, 12, 22, 27, 42, 44, 48 (4 times), 51, 53, 54, 57, 63, 68, 69, 75, 103, 104, 105; TH² 6, 60, 59 + D01, 61, A6, A7, D12, 4, 3). It also appears once in the Caecilius Jucundus tablets (CIL 4.3340.154), and once at Vindonissa (T. Vindon. 3, AD 90).

In the tablets of the Sulpicii there are also instances of spepondi in the chirographa of C. Novius Eunus (TPSulp. 51, 52, 67, 68, AD 37–39), who actually writes spepodi, L. Faenius Eumenes (27, AD 48), and L. Marius Jucundus, freedman of Dida (53, AD 40). It is noteworthy that the old-fashioned spelling appears only in the writing of non-scribes, and that all three writers have at least one substandard spelling. In addition, both Novius Eunus and Faenius Eumenes also include other old-fashioned features. For the spelling of these writers, see p. 262.²

Chapter 17 popl- and pupl- for publ-

The word populus goes back to *poplos, and the unepenthesised form is still attested in inscriptions from the fifth to the early second century BC; populus is first seen in inscriptions dating from the second half of the second century BC (Sen 2015: 149–51). The word pūblicus ‘public’ and names such as Pūblius ultimately go back to derived forms like *poplikos, *poplii̯os etc. At some point the first vowel became /uː/ and the second *p became /b/. It is commonly supposed that this was due to contamination with pūbēs ‘manpower, adult population’, but a sound change is not ruled out. Both changes had taken place by the start of the second century BC on the basis of inscriptional evidence like Publio(s) (Marengo 2004: 169–70 no. 17: third or start of the second century), Poublilia (CIL 1².42), poublicom (CIL 1².402), poublic[om] (CIL 1².403), and long scansion of the first vowel in Plautus. On all this, see Sen (2015: 142–6, 151–2).

In the imperial period, the old spelling with <o> and <p> appears in names in Poplicola, Poplic̣ọla (TPSulp. 48) for Pūblicola, and with <o> but <b> in Poblici(us) (Kropp1.7.4/1, Cremona, early first century AD) for Pūblicius, Poblicola (TPSulp. 3, 77), Po[b]ḷịco[l]ạ (TPSulp. 32) for Pūblicola and Poblicius (TPSulp. 98) for Pūblicius. I have not done a thorough collection of examples in the corpora, since this spelling probably has more to do with the choices of the bearer of the name than the writer (assuming that those with this name adopted a spelling pronunciation).

However, there are also forms which are spelt with <u> but <p> rather than <b> . Whether pūblicus etc. is explained analogically, or by voicing of *p to /b/ followed by ‘breaking’ of *o to /ou/ > /uː/ as Sen supposes, there can never have been a form in which the *o had developed to /u(ː)/ but *p had not become /b/. So these forms must reflect not only old-fashioned spelling but artificial spelling. Again, in names such as Puplianus (P. Dura 100.xvii.13), I do not think that this tells us much about the education of the writer.¹

One writer, however, uses the spelling with <u> and <p> outside an onomastic context. C. Novius Eunus has puplicis for pūblicīs (TPSulp. 51, 52). The standard form is found in the part of the tablet written by a scribe, and also in both hands of one other tablet. Prior to its appearance in Eunus’ tablets this spelling only appears in the legal text CIL 1².583 (123–122 BC, Crawford 1996 no. 1), where it is presumably a false archaism felt to be appropriate for the legal register (the same text also has poplic- and poblic-). The old-fashioned nature of puplicis is highlighted by the fact that neither poplicus nor publicus are attested even in legal texts after the end of the second century BC (Decorte 2015: 168–9). The spelling puplic- is attested in a handful of inscriptions later (or possibly later) than the tablets of Eunus: CIL 8.1280 (no date), CIL 14.3530 (AD 88), CIL 6.2097 (AD 61–180, EDR020711), puplico(rum) (ILA 492, AD 412–414).²