General

The standard Latin orthography does not distinguish between short vow els and long. This inadequacy was not unnoticed in ancient times, and various attempts were made to render the writing more representative of speech. The first such device was to write long vowels (like long consonants) double. The institution of this as a standard practice is attributed to Accius, who had presumably adopted it from Oscan, where it is common. Thus, for example, paastores (132 B.C.), leege, iuus (81 B.C.); the inscriptional examples in fact cover roughly the period 135 to 75 B.C., except in the case of uu, which continues to be used, especially in the fourth-declensional forms (e.g. lacuus), and is occasionally found even in MSS. Except for this, the practice does not long survive the death of Accius.

At no time is oo found for long ō in pure Latin inscriptions. A Faliscan inscription has uootum, but since a form aastutieis is found at Falerii before Accius (c. 180 B.C.), this may be an independent Faliscan adoption.1 The absence of oo may be fortuitous, but it is to be noted that o does not occur in the native Oscan alphabet, and so the precedent would have been lacking.

Nor does ii occur for long ī but we know that in this case Accius recommended the writing of ei (†Mar. Victorinus, K. vi, 8: it will be remembered (cf. p. 54) that by this time the original diphthong ei had come to be identical in sound with long ī).