And says:
[Id. ib. iv. 7.] An cujuslibet auris est exigere litterarum sonos?
But after citing some of those idiosyncrasies which appear on the pages of all the grammarians, he finally sums up the matter in the following significant words:
[Id. ib. vii. 30, 31.] Indicium autem suum grammaticus interponat his omnibus; nam hoc valere plurimum debet. Ego (note the ego) nisi quod consuetudo obtinuerit sic scribendum quidque judico, quomodo sonat. Hic enim est usus litterarum, ut custodiant voces et velut depositum reddant legentibus, itaque id exprimere debent quod dicturi sumus.
This is still a characteristic of the Italian language, so that one may by books, getting the rules from the grammarians, learn to pronounce the language with a good degree of correctness.
On this point Professor Munro says:
“We see in the first volume of the Corpus Inscr. Latin. a map, as it were, of the language spread open before us, and feel sure that change of spelling meant systematical change of pronunciation: coira, coera, cura; aiquos, aequos, aecus; queicumque, quicumque, etc., etc.”
And again:
“We know exactly how Cicero or Quintilian did or could spell; we know the syllable on which they placed the accent of almost every word; and in almost every case we already follow them in this. I have the conviction that in their best days philological people took vast pains to make the writing exactly reproduce the sounding; and that if Quintilian or Tacitus spelt a word differently from Cicero or Livy, he also spoke it so far differently.”
Three chief factors are essential to the Latin language, and each of these must be known with some good degree of certainty, if we would lay claim to an understanding of Roman pronunciation.