It is generally agreed that Latin accent is characterized by stress. Vendryes (L'intensiMt initiale en Latin, Paris, 1902, p. 68) maintains that if this theory were true, and if Latin verse did not recognize this essential element of the language, the poetry of Rome must have been. absolutely artificial, and that it could not have been in any sense a national poetry. He allows that all testimony on this subject is in accord in affirming that the language of poetry and prose in Rome was one in character, that the verse of Plautus was composed for the people and in the language of the people, that the poetry of Virgil was in a true sense national and popular. He finds his solution of the difficulty in assuming that the accent of Latin was musical, like the Greek, and not one of stress. We must admit the general truth of his premises. No one can deny that the language would be spiritless and colorless if it were deprived of its accent, and no one can deny that it would be artificial if it introduced a principle of accent entirely different from that of the spoken language. The solution of the difficulty is to be sought, not in abandoning the well-established theory of the stress accent, but rather in recognizing the part which accent plays in the structure of the verse.2 I have sought to show (Trans. Am. Phil. Ass. XXXVI, pp. 82 ff.) that when elision occurred between syllables separated by a sense-pause it conformed to definite laws of accent, and that, this type of elision, when the second element was short, was governed by somewhat different rules from those which prevailed when the second element was long. This suggested that a