The same may be said of the argument drawn from the anecdote related by Cicero in his de Divinatione:
[Cic. de Div. XL. 84.] Cum M. Crassus exercitum Brundisii imponeret, quidam in portu caricas Cauno advectas vendens “Cauneas!” clamitabat. Dicamus, si placet, monitum ab eo Crassum caveret ne iret, non fuisse periturum si omini paruisset.
Now when we remember that Caunos, whence these particular figs came, was a Greek town; that the fig-seller was very likely a Greek himself (Brundisium being a Greek port so to speak), but at any rate probably pronounced the name as it was doubtless always heard; and that u in such a connection is at present pronounced like our f or v, and we know of no time when it was pronounced like our u, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the fig-seller was crying “Cafneas!”—a sound far more suggestive of Cave-ne-eas! than “Cauneas!” of Cawe ne eas!
But beyond the testimony, direct and indirect, of grammarians and classic writers, an argument against the w sound appears in the fact that this sound is not found in Greek (from which the vau is borrowed), nor in Italian or kindred Romance languages.
The initial u in Italian represents not Latin u consonant, but some other letter, as h, in uomo (for homo). On the other hand we find the v sound, as vedova (from vidua),—notice the two v sounds,—or the u sometimes changed to b, as serbare from servare; bibita and bevanda, both from bibo.
In French we find the Latin u consonant passing into f, as ovum into œuf; novem into neuf.
It seems not improbable that in Cicero’s time and later the consonant u represented some variation of sound, that its value varied in the direction of b or f, and possibly, in some Greek words especially, it was more vocalized, as in vae! (Greek ουάι). Yet here it is worthy of note that the corresponding words in Italian are not written with u but with gu, as guai!
In considering the sound of Latin u consonant we must always keep in mind that the question is one of time,—not, was u ever pronounced as English w; but, was it so pronounced in the time of Cicero and Virgil. Professor Ellis well says: “Any one who wishes to arrive at a conclusion respecting the Latin consonantal u must learn to pronounce and distinguish readily the four series of sounds: ŭa ŭe ŭi ŭo, wa we wi wo wu, v’a v’e v’i v’o v’u, va ve vi vo vu.”
Now the question is: At what point along this line do we find the u consonant of the golden age? Roby, though not agreeing with Ellis in rejecting the English w sound, as the representative of that period, declares himself “quite content to think that a labial v was provincially contemporary and in the end generally superseded it.”
But ‘provincialisms’ do not seem sufficient to account for the use of β for u consonant in inscriptions and in writers of the first century. For instance, Nerva and Severus in contemporary inscriptions are written both with ου and with β: Νέρουα, Νέρβα; Σεουῆρος, Σεβῆρος. And in Plutarch we find numerous instances of β taking the place of ου.