Apart from after /u/, /w/ and /kw/, where the raising of /ɔ/ was retarded until the first century BC, which is discussed below (Chapter 8), there are few cases of <o> for <u> arising from these contexts in the corpora. Even where we do find <o>, a confounding factor in identifying old-fashioned spelling of /u/ of these types is the lowering of /u/ to [o] which eventually led in most Romance varieties to the merger of /u/ and /ɔː/. According to Adams (2013: 63–70), this can be dated to between the third and fifth centuries AD, and did not take place at all in Africa. This requires him to identify a number of forms which show <o> for /u/ as containing old-fashioned spelling (or having other explanations) in the Claudius Tiberianus letters (Adams 1977: 9–11, 52–3; 2013: 63–4).

The Latin alphabet inherited from its Etruscan model a superfluity of signs to represent the phoneme /k/: <c>, <k> and <q>. It also inherited, to some extent, the convention in early Etruscan inscriptions whereby <k> was used in front of <a>, <q> before, and <c> before <e> and, although consistent usage of this pattern is found rarely even in the oldest Latin inscriptions (Hartmann 2005: 424–5; Wallace 2011: 11; Sarullo 2021). Over time, <c> was preferred for /k/ in all positions, while the digraph <qu> was used to represent the phoneme /kw/. Nonetheless, both <k> before <a> and <q> before (with the value /k/) lived on as optional spellings into the imperial period.

Single *i̯ between vowels was lost very early in Latin (possibly at the Proto-Italic stage). Consequently, the sound represented by consonantal between vowels was actually geminate /jj/ from various sources (Weiss 2020: 67–8). I have not been able to find any epigraphical examples of <ii> prior to the first century BC, and Weiss’ (2020: 68 fn. 64) statement that ‘[g]eminate spelling … is frequently encountered on inscriptions’ seems exaggerated. A search for ‘cuiius’, one of his two examples, on the whole of the EDCS, finds 13 examples, as opposed to 793 for ‘cuius’. The other is maiiorem (CIL 2.1964.3.10): a search for ‘maiior’ finds 12 examples, including derived names, beside 948 for ‘maior’.

The reduplicated perfect of spondeō ‘I swear’ was originally spepondī, a spelling still used by Valerius Antias, Cicero and Caesar in the first century BC, according to the second century AD author Aulus Gellius (Noctes atticae 6.9.12–15), implying that spopondi was the standard spelling at the time. The inscriptional evidence outside the corpora is not very numerous; to some extent it supports this interpretation. There are only 4 instances of spepondi (AE 1987.198, AD 256; AE 1987.199, AD 254–256, both from Ostia; CIL 6.10241, around the age of Hadrian; CIL 6.18937). By comparison, there are 8 of spopondi, of which 2 are dated to the first century AD: CIL 2.5042 = 5406 (AE 2000.66), CIL 6.10239 (EDR177718).

The diphthong /ɔu/ became /oː/ and then /uː/ by the third century BC (see p. 000). On the use of <o> in place of in poplicos > pūblicus and words derived from it, see p. 000. It is possible that iodicauerunt (Kropp 11.1.1/26) in a curse tablet from Carthage, in the second century AD, for iūdicāuē̆runt < *i̯oudik- is an old-fashioned spelling representing the mid-point of the change (at any rate, no other explanation springs to mind). Since we have long /uː/ in the first syllable, this spelling cannot be explained by confusion of /ɔː/ and /u/. At least in legal texts, derivatives of iūs were particularly favoured for this (Decorte 2015: 160–2), although use of <o> for /uː/ rather than <ou> was never common, even in the archaic period.

apices ibi poni debent, ubi isdem litteris alia atque alia res designatur, ut uénit et uenit, áret et aret, légit et legit, ceteraque his similia. super i tamen litteram apex non ponitur: melius enim [i pila] in longum producetur. ceterae uocales, quae eodem ordine positae diuersa significant, apice distinguuntur, ne legens dubitatione impediatur, hoc est ne uno sono eaedem pronuntientur.

Several of the Isola Sacra funerary inscriptions contain apices (see Table 31). The most important variable in the use of the apices is position in the text. Their main purpose is to emphasise the initial dīs mānibus formula (as noted by Christiansen 1889: 12) and/or some or all of the names on the tomb (particularly the names of the deceased, or the person for whom the tomb is intended). As will be discussed shortly, although the i-longa is mostly used differently, in some cases it also takes part in this usage. Thus in IS 69, there are apices on mánibus and on three out of four of the non-abbreviated parts of the name formulas of the two dead women, while in IS 70, which uses the abbreviation d. m. for dīs mānibus, there are two name formulas which each receive an apex on the only long vowel (which is not /i:/) in the formula. In some cases words modifying these names are also given apices.

As we have seen, the use of apices is characteristic of the writing of scribes in both the Vindolanda and TPSulp. tablets, but a fine-grained analysis highlights similarities and differences between the two corpora, and between them and the inscriptions studied by other scholars.

A number of sound changes raised original /ɔ/ to /u/ in Latin in the course of the third and second centuries BC (in addition to those given on p. 000, this raising also took place before the sequence -lC-, for example *solkos > sulcus ‘furrow’, in the second century). However, the raising was delayed in all cases after /u/, the labial glide /w/ and the labiovelar stop /kw/ until the first century BC. I have found no certain examples of a spelling <uu> in these sequences prior to the first century. It is often stated or implied in modern scholarship both that original /wɔ/, /kwɔ/ and /uɔ/ became /wu/, /kwu/ and /uu/ at the same time, and that the use of <uo> fell out of use extremely quickly. However, neither of these statements appears to hold true.

Flavius Cerialis was the prefect of the Ninth Cohort of Batavians at the fortress of Vindolanda, in northern Britain, in the late 90s and early 100s AD. He was probably a Batavian noble, and necessarily of equestrian rank. We have some texts probably written in his own hand, including a draft of a letter (Tab. Vindol. 225), of which Adams (1995: 129) has observed that ‘[i]ts orthography is consistently correct, and it has two types of old-fashioned spelling (the etymologically correct -ss- in occassio, twice, and saluom)’. On the basis of this and other evidence, he concludes that Cerialis’ father was probably made a Roman citizen for loyalty to Rome, and that Cerialis received a formal education in upper-class Roman literary culture.

There are two environments in which spelling with <u> and <i> alternated in Latin orthography, with, on the whole, a movement from <u> to <i>, although in certain phonetic, morphological or lexical contexts the change in spelling either did not take place at all, or took place at different rates. These environments are: (1) original /u/ in initial syllables between /l/ and a labial; (2) vowels subject to weakening in non-initial open syllables before a labial. Both the question of the history and development of the spelling with <u> and <i>, and what sound exactly was represented by these letters is lengthy and tangled (especially with regard to the medial context; for recent discussion and further bibliography see Suárez-Martínez 2006 and Weiss 2020: 584).

A key result which arises from my investigation is that treating old-fashioned spelling as a single category is not a particularly useful approach. More nuance is required, since the history, development and survival or loss of individual spelling rules and individual lexemes are highly varied, and depend on a number of factors.

In the second half of the second century BC, the Romans adopted the practice of writing long vowels with double letters from the Oscan alphabet (Oliver 1966: 151–5; Vine 1993: 267–86; Wallace 2011: 18; Weiss 2020: 32). However, it did not remain a standard part of Latin orthography past the end of the Republic. According to Oliver, Wallace and Weiss, the double spelling of long vowels can be found as late as the early fourth century AD. Oliver points out uii (CIL 3.4121) = uī ‘by force’ from AD 312–323, exercituus (CIL 6.230) for exercitūs ‘of the army’, from AD 222–235, and aara (Lemerle 1937 no. 12) for ārās, fourth century according to Oliver, third century according to Lemerle.

In the tablets of the Sulpicii there are 76 instances of apices (Table 38). 27 of them are on personal names. In the TPSulp. tablets, as at Vindolanda, apices feature particularly in parts of the tablets written by the scribes (Camodeca 1999: 39): out of 76 instances of apices, 74 are found in scribal parts, with the remaining two coming from the chirographum of A. Castricius (deductá 81, repraesentátum 81). This divide between scribes, who use apices, and individual writers, who mostly do not, suggests a difference in education for the purpose of writing, as at Vindolanda.

Original *kw was lost before back vowels in Latin, as in *sekwondos > secundus ‘following, next’, *kwolō > colō ‘I cultivate’, in the second half of the third century BC (Meiser 1998: 92; Weiss 2020: 165). The spelling with <qu> was maintained (or reintroduced) in some words (e.g. equus ‘horse’, aequus ‘equal’, on the basis of parts of the paradigm where /kw/ occurred before a non-back vowel; quottidiē ‘every day’, which is attested later than cottidiē, Ernout and Meillet 1985: 146), notably in quom for cum ‘when, since’ < *kwom (and by extension, also for cum ‘with’ < *kom).