Comedies

...the same accent remains, e.g., pros me towards me, pros polin towards the city, so the accent of the Latin apud among/at varies, e.g., apud me with me, apud templum at the temple. And not only Greek enclitic words, but also Latin ones are accustomed to receive the accent whenever they either have emphasis stress/emphasis by themselves (e.g., non ego sed tu fecisti not I, but you did it) or stand before another enclitic word (e.g., ego illum vidi I saw him).

Furthermore, I wonder if the different force of pronouns should not be recognized not only from the metrical ictus but also from the forms themselves, such that we might believe the same subtleties of varying meaning that exist between the various forms of pronouns in the Romance languages shine through between mi and mihi to me, ei and ei to him, huic and huic to this one, eius (huius, quoius) of him/this/whose and eiius (huiius, quoiius); perhaps also between the faster way of speaking, opust it is necessary, etc., and the slower, opus est; although it must be confessed that the scribes of the Middle Ages largely destroyed such things. Nevertheless, I would like you to believe with me that the verses of Plautus echo the daily speech of the Plautine age like an image.

Given at St Andrews,
1903

¹ Even when Plautus could not reconcile the metrical ictus with the accent, I believe the word that has emphasis stress/emphasis was usually marked by its own prosody. For just as in Menaechmi 389 tibi to you, which has the accent in the sentence and the metrical ictus in the verse, is also distinguished by what is called the prosodic hiatus:

so I believe in Rudens 540 the verse began with an anapest, not an iamb:

and in Asinaria 781 deam goddess was similarly pronounced as a disyllable: