Abstract
SINCE ZIELINSKI, most scholars have felt that words in normal Latin speech were subject to elision in a manner at least similar to that exhibited in poetry.' The argument is twofold. First, the proportion of favored clausulae in the speeches of Cicero is higher if it is assumed that elision occurs in cases of vowel junction. Second, poets do not normally invent phonetic phenomena that have no basis in normal speech patterns (although they preserve some beyond their normal lifespan). The first argument is partially circular, since we have no guide to the ideal relative frequency of the clausulae other than our own empirical surveys.2 The second is valid, but only in a very broad sense. It does not tell us under what circumstances Latin speech required or admitted elision. Studies of the grammarians have frequently been careless; their interpretation has been
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