Ei (dat. sg.)

Pacifica

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What's up with the pronunciation of that form?

I've found it given as ei (diphthong), (I suppose that would be two syllables?) and even ēī in Plautus and Terence (I suspect that was perhaps actually ejjī?).

What was the more usual classical pronunciation? Do we even know? Verse evidence seems pretty scarce.
 
 

Matthaeus

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Tibi et Plautus et Terentius et Cicero ex inferis excitandi sunt!
:D
 

Pacifica

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So, for the record, I found one example of ei as an iambic disyllable in Ovid, and one of ei as a diphthong in Catullus. Vergil, Martial and Lucan apparently didn't use the form anywhere (unless I missed something). Lucretius seemed fond of making it a spondee, probably as a deliberate archaism.

The tentative conclusion I can draw from this scant evidence is that:

- Ei as a spondee is probably archaic, not the classical norm;
- The classical norm must have been either an iamb or a diphthong, or both; it's impossible to tell based on just two lines of verse which of these two pronunciations was more usual than the other, if indeed either was (it could have been roughly 50/50).

Unless some other evidence (like a statement by some ancient grammarian or whatnot) comes up, that's all I can conclude.
 

Laurentius

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The Appendix Vergiliana has one verse, but it is uncertain (both the Appendix' paternity and that verse's true wording). Of course if this is about writing poetry, I think Ovid and what we assume to be Virgil should be followed. Otherwise it may be better to follow Lucretius if we talk about the classical period. Since he seems to have spammed it perhaps it wasn't just an archaism.
 

Pacifica

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Verse 66 of Ciris, perhaps the website you consulted used one of the alternative wordings, but this one seems the most common.
Thanks. Indeed, the site I was using has ait there.
 

Serenus

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- Considering how common this pronoun form is in prose, it does seem classical poets deliberately avoided it. That in itself is interesting, and suggests we could think the pronunciation may not have been quite standardized...

- Michael Weiss has a fascinating addendum correcting his statement in Outline of the Historical and Comparative Grammar of Latin (2009) that the typical pronunciation of ei in Classical Latin was a monosyllabic diphthong, bringing up two epigraphic examples:
Weiss dixit:
In his review James Clackson points out correctly that it is misleading to say, as I do on pg. 342, that the monosyllabic scansion of dat. sg. ei is typical for Classical Latin. All forms of is, ea, id were less common in Classical (Augustan) poetry than prose and the oblique forms were especially rare. See Meader 1901 for some statistics. The dative singular is not used at all by Vergil or the Elegaic poets. There are, however, a number of instances of ei in Late Republican and Imperial poetry:

At Catull. 82.3 (eripere ei noli, multo quod carius illi) ei must be a monosyllable, but at Ps.-Ov. Hal. 34 (semper ei similis quem contegit, atque ubi praedam) it must be an iamb. Similarly at Germanicus' Arat. 333 (talis ei custos aderit canis ore timendo) and 457 (lactis ei color, et mediis via lucet in umbris). The form ei also occurs in epigraphic poetry once as a long monosyllable at CIL 3.10501 (= Buecheler CLE 489, Aquincum): vox ei grata fuit, pulsabat pollice cordas and once as an iamb at CIL 3.754 (Buecheler CLE 492:15, 3rd cent. CE, Nicopolis): intima nulla ei quae non mihi nota fuere, a poem which Buecheler says is omni genere vitiorum deformatum. There are some other instances of ei in CLE but the scansions are uncertain. Since the form was so rare it hardly makes sense to say that any scansion was typical.
- Months ago Anbrutal Russian told me of the above addendum and also that Christian James Fordyce's Catullus: A Commentary (1990), page 82, mentions that it's sometimes monosyllabic ei in Plautus, when it isn't the disyllabic ē-ī:
Fordyce dixit:
ei: monosyllabic, as sometimes in Plautus: elsewhere in Plautus and always in Lucretius the word is spondaic (i.e. is scanned ēi-ī, though only one i is written). The oblique cases of the colourless is are in general avoided in later verse, which prefers the stronger determinatives; the dative is not used either by Virgil or the elegiac poets. Cf. 84. 5 and see B. Axelson, Unpoetische Wörter, pp. 70 ff.
- To the above I'd like to add the following line of verse from Phaedrus (iambic senarius):
†Hoc argumen|tum veniam ei | dari docet
— — — — | — uu u — | u — u —
...where it's ĕ-ī. However, the † in the edition on PHI suggests to me this might contain an editor's emendation...
 
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Serenus

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An example of monosyllabic ei in Plautus can be found at the beginning of Miles Gloriosus (an iambic senarius again):
sororem ades|se. mox ei domi|nus aedium
u — u — | u — — uu | u — u —

Also, the hexameter and pentameter poetry on PedeCerto seems to universally have disyllabic ĕī in Late Latin authors, particularly including Paulinus of Nola and Venantius Fortunatus, for example:
Arboris, ut maneat || gratis perpes ei.
(Paulinus of Nola, Carmina 21.309)
 

Serenus

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While looking at a Loeb of Terence, I noticed it prints a summary attributed to Gaius Sulpicius Apollinaris ("a critic of the 2nd century AD"), with a note that the summary may actually be from earlier, from the 1st century BC. It's in iambic senarii and one line notably contains ei!

fore hanc; namque ali|am pater ei | desponderat,

where it has to be interpreted as disyllabic e-ī (áliam páter e-í).

This line appears to have been missed by Weiss. I wonder what other attestations are hiding here or there...
 
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