Note 5 — Chapter III · GREEK COMEDY ON THE ROMAN STAGE

It is difficult to say when the great vowel-shift took place in Latin. It is clear that Greek words in Plautus like calamus, colaphus, and hilarus had not come under the influence of the shift. Either they were very recent arrivals or had been used so little in Latin folk-speech (like barbarus, a Greek term of abuse) that Plautus could spell them in the Greek fashion. Words like oliva, Hercules, Massilia, Tarentum were of course acclimated long before and took on the regular vowel changes of Latin. However it is probable that many Greek words that were adopted during the Pyrrhic and first Punic wars felt the full influence of the great shift. This shift seems to have begun after the twelve tables and the Duenos inscription and it was by no means over when Plautus wrote: cf. the inscriptional spelling mereto, soledas, Esquelino, Arimenese, popolom, saxolus, etc. It is difficult to see how Acragas (Agrigentum) could have got into frequent Latin usage before 262 B.C. It is highly probable that the vowel-shift in Latin, like the similar change in English, marks a politico-social shift, an emergence of a social group that pronounced certain vowels in a way not considered correct in aristocratic Rome. We may possibly associate it with the elevation of the plebeians after the Publilian and Hortensian laws of 339 and 287 B.C., which made the tribal assembly supreme in Roman legislation. The new tendencies in pronunciation would then be a strong factor in speech during the First Punic War. Furthermore, the fact that the dramatists could transform Δήμοφων to Demipho at one stroke shows how quickly a word would adapt itself to Latin custom. I feel sure that we have placed the arrival of most of the Greek words too early.