artificial poetry and oratory of the Augustan age, in which quantity was more rigidly observed by the Roman imitators than by the Greek originals, we find traces of this tendency; and Virgil does not hesitate to use in his stately heroics such forms as aspris, for asperis, semustum for semiustum, oraclum for oraculum, maniplus for manipulus; and, like Terence, to make rejicere (rēīcĕrĕ) a dactyle.[172] A number of the most common words, sanctioned by general usage, and incorporated into the language when in its most perfect state, were contractions—such as amassent for amavissent, concio for conventio, cogo from con and ago, surgo from sub and rego, malla for maxilla, pomeridianus from post-mediam-diem, and other instances too numerous to mention. But in the earlier periods, when literature was addressed still more to the ear than to the eye, when the Greek metres were as yet unknown, and even when, after their introduction, exact observation of Greek rules was not yet necessary, we find, as might be expected, these principles of the language carried still further. They pervade the poems of Livius and Ennius, and the Roman tragedies, even although their style is necessarily more declamatory than that of the comic writers; but in the latter we have a complete representation of Latin as it was commonly pronounced and spoken, and but little trammelled or confined by a rigid adhesion to the Greek metrical laws. In the prologues, indeed, which are of the nature of declamation, and not of free and natural conversation, more care is visible; the iambic trimeters in which they are written fall upon the ear with a cadence similar to those of the Greek, with scarcely any license except an occasional spondee in the even places. But in the scenes little more seems to have been attended to, than that the verse should have the required number of feet, and the syllables pronounced the right quantity, in accordance with the widest license which the rules of Greek prosody allowed. What syllables should be slurred, was left to be decided by the common custom of pronunciation. Besides the licenses commonly met with in the poets of the Augustan age, the following mutilations are the most usual in the poetical language of the age of which we are treating:— 1. The final _s_ might be elided even before a consonant, and hence the preceding vowel was made short: thus mălīs became mali, on the same principle that in Augustan poetry aūdīsnĕ was contracted into audĭn’. Thus the short vowel would suffer elision before another, and the following line of Terence would consequently be thus scanned:— Ut mă | līs gāŭ | dēat ălĭ | ēn’ ātq’. | ēx ĭn | cōmmö | dīs. 2. Vowels and even consonants were slurred over; hence Liberius became Lib’rius; Adolescens, Ad’lescens; Vehemens, Vemens; Voluptas, V’luptas (like the French voila, v’la;) meum, eum, suum, siet, fuit, Deos, ego, ille, tace, became monosyllables; and facio, sequere, &c., dissyllables.