Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights
John C. Rolfe, Ed.

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THE poet Annianus, ¹ in addition to his charming personality, was highly skilled in ancient literature and literary criticism, and conversed with remarkable grace and learning. He pronounced affalim, as he did admodum, with an acute accent ² on the first, and not on the medial, syllable; and he believed that the ancients so pronounced the word. He adds that in his hearing the grammarian Probus thus read the following lines of the Cistellaria of Plautus: ³

Canst do a valiant deed?—Enough (áffatim) there be
Who can. I've no desire to be called brave,

and he said that the reason for that accent was that affatim was not two parts of speech, but was made up of two parts that had united to form a single word; just as also in the word which we call exadversum he thought that the second syllable should have the acute accent, because the word was one part of speech, and not two. Accordingly, he maintained that the two following verses of Terence ⁴ ought to be read thus:

Over against (exádversum) the school to which she went
A barber had his shop.

[p. 41] He added besides that the preposition ad was commonly accented when it indicated ἐπίτασις, or as we say, “emphasis,” as in ádfabre, ádmodum, and ádprobe.

In all else, indeed, Annianus spoke aptly enough. But if he supposed that this particle was always accented when it denoted emphasis, that rule is obviously not without exceptions; for when we say adpotus, adprimus, and adprime, emphasis is evident in all those words, yet it is not at all proper to pronounce the particle ad with the acute accent. I must admit, however, that adprobus, which means “highly approved,” ought to be accented on the first syllable. Caecilius uses that word in his comedy entitled The Triumph: ⁵

Hierocles, my friend, is a most worthy (ádprobus) youth.

In those words, then, which we say do not have the acute accent, is not this the reason—that the following syllable is longer by nature, and a long penult does not as a rule ⁶ permit the accenting of the preceding syllable in words of more than two syllables? But Lucius Livius in his Odyssey uses ádprimus in the sense of “by far the first” in the following line: ⁷

And then the mighty hero, foremost of all (ádprimus), Patroclus.

Livius in his Odyssey too pronounces praemodum like admodum; he says ⁸ parcentes praemodum, which means “beyond measure merciful,” and praemodum is equivalent to praeter modum. And in this word, of course, the first syllable will have to have the acute accent.

[p. 43]