Page:The poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus - Francis Warre Cornish.djvu/12

 time; and I have thought it lawful, on the ground of convenience, to write. and do not belong to the same alphabet,  being epigraphic, and  cursive, and therefore do not properly denote the distinction between vowel and consonant. But as they have been conventionally accepted for vowel and consonant signs, it may be permissible to use them in the same alphabet for convenience' sake. I have therefore printed such combinations as, instead of or  or.

The same rule of vowel and consonant should strictly apply to and, and I can only defend the exclusion of  by the argument that  was unknown to the ancients.

The MSS. of Catullus and inscriptions of his age frequently, but not universally, have where later authors wrote  for. I have given in all cases.

In compound words such as (.), I have in most cases preferred assimilation as being phonetic, whereas the etymologically correct forms (, &c), favoured by grammarians, are for the most part of later date.

The terminations were all in use for accusative plural: and no rigid rule can be drawn. I have followed generally Brambach's rules, bearing also in mind Munro's remarks on this heading