[5] It is difficult to say when the great vowel-shift took place in Latin. It is clear that Greek words in Plautus like _calamus_, _colaphus_, and _hilarus_ had not come under the influence of the shift. Either they were very recent arrivals or had been used so little in Latin folk-speech (like _barbarus_, a Greek term of abuse) that Plautus could spell them in the Greek fashion. Words like _oliva_, _Hercules_, _Massilia_, _Tarentum_ were of course acclimated long before and took on the regular vowel changes of Latin. However it is probable that many Greek words that were adopted during the Pyrrhic and first Punic wars felt the full influence of the great shift. This shift seems to have begun after the twelve tables and the Duenos inscription and it was by no means over when Plautus wrote: cf. the inscriptional spelling _mereto_, _soledas_, _Esquelino_, _Arimenese_, _popolom_, _saxolus_, etc. It is difficult to see how _Acragas_ (Agrigentum) could have got into frequent Latin usage before 262 B.C. It is highly probable that the vowel-shift in Latin, like the similar change in English, marks a politico-social shift, an emergence of a social group that pronounced certain vowels in a way not considered correct in aristocratic Rome. We may possibly associate it with the elevation of the plebeians after the Publilian and Hortensian laws of 339 and 287 B.C., which made the tribal assembly supreme in Roman legislation. The new tendencies in pronunciation would then be a strong factor in speech during the First Punic War. Furthermore, the fact that the dramatists could transform Δήμοφων to Demipho at one stroke shows how quickly a word would adapt itself to Latin custom. I feel sure that we have placed the arrival of most of the Greek words too early. [6] _Catapulta_ was probably not very old in Latin since only the third syllable shows a change, and that a relatively late one. In words like _sumbola_ we doubtless have the Doric pronunciation of _u_; in the short penult of _gynaeceum_, _balinea_, and _platea_, the cause need not lie wholly in a Latin tendency to shorten one vowel before another but in part perhaps to the similar tendency found in Greek and especially in Sicilian. In Latin _latro_, _barbarus_, _choragus_, and the like we certainly have not standard Greek meanings but such as might have been heard in Sicily during the Punic war. Sturtevant’s interesting discussion “Concerning the Use of Greek in Vulgar Latin,” _Trans. Am. Phil. Assoc._ (1925), quite misses the heart of the question when it speaks of the “Romans consciously mocking the Greeks of the city.” There were very few Greeks there then, and they were not significant enough to invite mocking. [7] Fraenkel, _Plautinisches im Plautus_, chap. III; unfortunately he has failed to comprehend the nature of the Plautine public. Legrand’s _Daos_ makes the more serious mistake of treating the Greek and Roman New Comedy as a single phenomenon. [8] Sedgwick, _Class. Quart._ 1927, 88.