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[p. 365]
Parnassian laurel too
Lifts (subicit) 'neath large mother-shade its infant stem.
But neither the preposition ob nor sub is long by nature, nor is con long either, except when it is followed by the letters which come directly after it in constituit and confecit, 1 or when its n is lost, as in Sallust's faenoribus copertus. 2 But in those instances which I have mentioned above the metre may be preserved without barbarously lengthening the prefixes; for the following letter in those words should be written with two i's, not with one. For the simple verb to which the above-mentioned particles are prefixed, is not icio, but iacio, and the perfect is not icit, but iecit. When that word is used in compounds, the letter a is changed into i, as happens in the verbs insilio and incipio, and thus the first i acquires consonantal force. 3 Accordingly, that syllable, being pronounced a little longer and fuller, does not allow the first syllable to be short, but makes it long by position, and thus the rhythm of the verse and the correct pronunciation are preserved.

What I have said leads also to a knowledge of this, that in the line which we find in the sixth book of Virgil: 4

Unconquered chieftain, save me from these ills;
Or do thou earth cast on (inice) me,

1 Cf. ii. 17.

2 “Loaded with debt,” Hist. fr. iv. 52, Maur.; see note on ii. 17. 11, p. 168. Copertus is from co- (not con-) opertus, and there is no loss of n.

3 Gellius is partly right. As in + capio and in + salio became incipio and insilio, so ob + iacio became obiicio. As the Romans disliked the combination ii, only one i was written, but both were pronounced, and the syllable ob was thus long “by position.” In the early Latin dramatists the scansion ăbicio indicates that the i was syncopated and the semi-vowel changed to a vowel. See Sommer, Lat. Laut- und Formenlehre, p. 522.

4 Aen. vi. 365.

The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius. With An English Translation. John C. Rolfe. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1927.

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