Note 6 — Chapter III · GREEK COMEDY ON THE ROMAN STAGE

Catapulta was probably not very old in Latin since only the third syllable shows a change, and that a relatively late one. In words like sumbola we doubtless have the Doric pronunciation of u; in the short penult of gynaeceum, balinea, and platea, the cause need not lie wholly in a Latin tendency to shorten one vowel before another but in part perhaps to the similar tendency found in Greek and especially in Sicilian. In Latin latro, barbarus, choragus, and the like we certainly have not standard Greek meanings but such as might have been heard in Sicily during the Punic war. Sturtevant’s interesting discussion “Concerning the Use of Greek in Vulgar Latin,” Trans. Am. Phil. Assoc. (1925), quite misses the heart of the question when it speaks of the “Romans consciously mocking the Greeks of the city.” There were very few Greeks there then, and they were not significant enough to invite mocking.