it steadily made
headway, and ultimately triumphed over the synthetical principle. The
method adopted by literary Latin of indicating the comparative and the
superlative degrees of an adjective, by adding the endings -ior and
-issimus respectively, succumbed in the end to the practice of prefixing
plus or magis and maxime to the positive form. To take another
illustration of the same characteristic of popular Latin, as early as the
time of Plautus, we see a tendency to adopt our modern method of
indicating the relation which a substantive bears to some other word in
the sentence by means of a preposition rather than by simply using a case
form. The careless Roman was inclined to say, for instance, magna pars de
exercitu, rather than to use the genitive case of the word for army, magna
pars exercitus. Perhaps it seemed to him to bring out the relation a
little more clearly or forcibly.

The use of a preposition to show the relation became almost a necessity
when certain final consonants became silent, because with their
disappearance, and the reduction of the vowels to a uniform quantity, it
was often difficult to distinguish between the cases. Since final -m was
lost in pronunciation, _Asia_ might be nominative, accusative, or
ablative. If you wished to say that something happened in Asia, it would
not suffice to use the simple ablative, because that form would have the
same pronunciation as the nominative or the accusative, Asia(m), but the
preposition must be prefixed, _in Asia_. Another factor cooperated with
those which have already been mentioned in bringing about the confusion of
the cases. Certain prepositions were used with the accusative to indicate
one relation, and with the ablative to suggest another. _In Asia_, for
instance, meant "in Asia," _in Asiam_, "into Asia." When the two case
forms became identical in pronunciation, the meaning of the phrase would
be determined by the verb in the sentence, so that with a verb of going
the preposition would mean "into," while with a verb of rest it would mean
"in." In other words the idea of motion or rest is disassociated from the
case forms. From the analogy of _in_ it was very easy to pass to other
prepositions like _per_, which in literary Latin took the accusative only,
and to use these prepositions also with cases which, historically
speaking, were ablatives.

In his heart of hearts the school-boy regards the periodic sentences which
Cicero hurled at Catiline