This practice of authors dictating their works created a necessity, or at least a conveniency, of writing with rapidity, and of employing contractions, or conventional marks, in almost every word.
Accordingly, from the earliest periods of Roman literature, words were contracted, or were signified by notes, which sometimes stood for more than one letter, sometimes for syllables, and at other times for whole words. Funccius, who main[pg A-4]tains that Adam was the first short-hand writer[495], has asserted, with more truth, that the Romans contracted their words from the remotest ages of the republic, and to a greater degree than any other ancient nation. Sometimes the abbreviations consisted merely in writing the initial letter instead of the whole word. Thus P. C. stood for Patres Conscripti; C. R., for Civis Romanus; S. N. L., for Socii Nominis Latini. This sort of contraction being employed in words frequently recurring, and which in one sense might be termed public, and being also universally recognized, would rarely produce any misapprehension or mistake. But frequently the abbreviations were much more complex, and the leading letters of words in less common use being notata, the contractions became of much more difficult and dubious interpretation. For example, Meit. expressed meminit; Acus., Acerbus; Quit., quærit; Ror., Rhetor.
For the sake, however, of yet greater expedition in writing, and perhaps, in some few instances for the purpose of secrecy, signs or marks, which could be currently made with one dash or scratch with the stylus, and without lifting or turning it, came to be employed, instead of those letters which were themselves the abbreviations of words. Some writers have supposed that these signs were entirely arbitrary[496], whilst others have, with more probability, maintained that their forms can be resolved or analysed into the figures, or parts of the figures, of the letters themselves which they were intended to represent, though they have often departed far from the shape of the original characters[497]. Ennius is said to have invented 1100 of these signs[498], which he no doubt employed in his multifarious compositions. Others came into gradual use in the manual operation of writing with rapidity to dictation. Tiro, the favourite freedman of Cicero, greatly increased the number, and brought this sort of tachygraphy to its greatest perfection among the Romans. In consequence of this fashion of authors dictating their works, expedition came to be considered of the utmost importance; it was regarded as the chief accomplishment of an amanuensis; and he alone was considered as perfect in his art, whose pen could equal the rapidity of utterance:
Hic et scriptor erit felix, cui litera verbum est,
Quique notis linguam superet, cursumque loquentis,
Excipiens longas per nova compendia voces[499].
These lines were written by a poet of the age of Augustus, and it appears from Martial[500], Ausonius[501], and Prudentius, that this system of dictation by the author, and rapid notation by his amanuensis, continued in practice during the later ages of the empire.
Such was the mode in which most of the writings of the ancients came originally from their authors, and were delivered to those friends who were desirous to possess copies, or to the booksellers to be perscripta, or transcribed, for publication.
There exists sufficient proof of the high estimation in which accurate transcriptions of the works of their own writers were held by the Romans. The correctness of printing, however, could not be expected. In the original notation, some mistakes might probably be made from carelessness of pronunciation in the author who dictated, and haste in his amanuensis; but the great source of errors in MSS. was the blunders made by the librarius in copying out from the noted exemplar. There was the greatest ambiguity and doubt in the interpretation, both of words contracted in the ordinary character and in the artificial signs. Sometimes the same word was expressed by different letters; thus MR. MT. MTR. all expressed Mater. Sometimes, on the other hand, the same set of letters expressed different words; for instance, ACT. signified Actor, Auctoritas, and Hactenus. The collocation of the letters was often inverted from the order in which they stood in the word when fully expressed; and frequently one letter had not merely its own power, but that of several [pg A-5]others. Thus AMO. signified animo, because M had there not only its own force, but, as its shape in some measure announces, the power of ni also. Matters were still worse, when not only abbreviations, but signs had been resorted to. These were variously employed by different writers, and were also differently interpreted by transcribers. Some of these signs were extremely similar in form: it was scarcely possible to discriminate the sign which denoted the syllable ab from that which expressed the syllable um; and the signs of the syllables is and it were nearly undistinguishable; while ad and at were precisely the same. The mark which expressed the word talis, being a little more sloped or inclined, expressed qualis; and the difference in the Tironian signs which stood for the complete words Ager and Amicus, was scarcely perceptible[502].
The ancient Latin writers also employed a number of marks to denote the accents of words, and the quantities of syllables. The oldest writers, as Livius Andronicus and Nævius, always placed two vowels when a syllable was to be pronounced long[503]. Attius, the great tragic author, was the first to relinquish this usage; and after his time, in conformity to the new practice which he had adopted, a certain mark was placed over the long vowels. When this custom also (which is stigmatised by Quintilian as ineptissimus[504]) fell into disuse, the mark was frequently misunderstood, and Funccius has given several examples of corruptions and false readings from the mistake of transcribers, who supposed that it was intended to express an m, an n, or other letters[505].