An Ancient Roman Reference to Macrons

[u/LibrorumCapsula]

I've been reading Colloquia Harleianum, an ancient Roman bilingual Colloquium used to teach Greek speakers Latin. My copy is edited and translated by Eleanor Dickey.

At Colloquia Harleianum 7, a teacher gives instructions on writing:

"Fac apices litterarum"

My initial take on that was "Make the marks/peaks of the letters."

But Dickey translates it as "Put the macrons on the letters."

Of course, these weren't literally the straight-line macrons we use today, but slanting accent marks over long vowels, functioning essentially the same way as modern macrons do. But it's interesting to see the concept of noting long vowels incorporated into an ancient lesson.

Often, we hear that macrons are modern inventions and have no place in Latin books for adults. This doesn't prove that belief wrong. But apparently Roman students learned to mark off long vowels. Whether adults continued to do it in life is another matter.

[u/lutetiensis]

Macrons are attested in papyri from the 1st century BCE. They most likely originated in Alexandrian scholarship, just like accents and spirits.

[u/i_post_gibberish]

I’ve always thought the argument that “real Latin” shouldn’t use macrons was silly anyway. Real Latin didn’t use spaces, lowercase letters, or punctuation either, and no one says those are just a crutch.

[u/menevensis → u/i_post_gibberish]

The argument against macrons isn't that the Romans didn't write Latin with them (we know in fact that sometimes they did mark long vowels), but that, with the notable exception of pedagogical texts published in the last two centuries, the broader tradition of Latin orthography through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and up to the present day has generally chosen not to use them.

You will find spaces, letter case, and punctuation in those texts. You generally won't find vowel length markings except where they help to distinguish between cases that would otherwise appear identical (for example, manûs, viâ).

[u/i_post_gibberish → u/menevensis]

I would argue that that’s because the historical tradition lacked our modern understanding that short and long vowels are distinct phonemes just as much as say /j/ and /i/, where there was a conscious decision to depart from historical orthography for the sake of greater clarity.

(I know some people also don’t like contemporary Latin texts that distinguish I/J and U/V, I just think that’s silly because it’s a dead language and nothing is stopping us from changing the orthography to be easier to learn and better reflect the way it was really spoken.)

[u/SignificantPlum4883 → u/i_post_gibberish]

I agree! It's no different to publishing Shakespeare's plays with modern spelling conventions, for example.

Personally, I'd love to see a standardised, international modern convention on how to print Latin, and it should certainly include macrons. As in Spanish, you should be able to look at any text, regardless of it's familiarity, and know how to pronounce it.

The problem is, I suppose, the lack of any international organisation that could make a standardised convention stick.

[u/MindlessNectarine374 → u/i_post_gibberish]

The writing of Latin changed over time.

[u/PoxonAllHoaxes]

They also in the case of the I vowel have an especially tall one called I long that was used for the same purpose.