A sicilicus was an old
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power ...
diacritical mark
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
, , like a reversed C (Ɔ) placed above a letter and evidently deriving its name from its shape like a little
sickle
A sickle, bagging hook, reaping-hook or grasshook is a single-handed agricultural tool designed with variously curved blades and typically used for harvesting, or reaping, grain crops or cutting succulent forage chiefly for feeding livestock, ...
(which is ''
sicilis'' in Latin). The ancient sources say that during the time of the
Republic it was placed above a
geminate consonant
In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from ''gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from s ...
to indicate that the consonant counted twice, although there is hardly any
epigraphic
Epigraphy () is the study of inscriptions, or epigraphs, as writing; it is the science of identifying graphemes, clarifying their meanings, classifying their uses according to dates and cultural contexts, and drawing conclusions about the wr ...
or
paleographic evidence available from such an early time. When such geminate consonants began to be represented during classical times by writing the letter twice, the ''sicilicus'' naturally fell into disuse in this function, but continued to be used to indicate the doubling of vowels as an indication of length, in the developed form of the
apex. Fontaine suggests that
Plautus
Titus Maccius Plautus (; c. 254 – 184 BC), commonly known as Plautus, was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest Latin literary works to have survived in their entirety. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the ...
alludes to the sicilicus in the prologue to ''
Menaechmi
''Menaechmi'', a Latin-language play, is often considered Plautus' greatest play. The title is sometimes translated as ''The Brothers Menaechmus'' or ''The Two Menaechmuses''.
The ''Menaechmi'' is a comedy about mistaken identity, involving a se ...
''.
Michael Fontaine
Michael may refer to:
People
* Michael (given name), a given name
* Michael (surname), including a list of people with the surname Michael
Given name "Michael"
* Michael (archangel), ''first'' of God's archangels in the Jewish, Christian and ...
'' ''Sicilicissitat'' (Plautus, ''Menaechmi'' 12) and Early Geminate Writing in Latin (with an Appendix on ''Men''. 13).''
''Mnemosyne'', Volume 59, Number 1 (2006) pp. 95-110.
See also
*
Open O, although this is a full letter, and not a diacritic placed above a letter
*
Antisigma, although this is a full letter, and not a diacritic placed above a letter
*
Apex (diacritic)
In written Latin, the apex (plural "apices") is a mark with roughly the shape of an acute accent which was sometimes placed over vowels to indicate that they are long.
The shape and length of the apex can vary, sometimes within a single ins ...
, used for long vowels instead of long consonants
*
Apostrophe
The apostrophe ( or ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes:
* The marking of the omission of one ...
, whose shape is derived from it
*
Comma (punctuation)
The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark () in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline o ...
, whose shape is similar
*
Latin spelling and pronunciation
Latin phonology continually evolved over the centuries, making it difficult for speakers in one era to know how Latin was spoken before then. A given phoneme may be represented by different letters in different periods. This article deals primar ...
References
Lewis and Short Latin Lexicon
Notes
{{Navbox diacritical marks
Latin-script diacritics
Palaeography