>your argument could lead us to believe
>that the Romans pronounced /v/ for /u/ and /i/ for /j/, since those
>letters came into use much later.
No it couldn't. My argument was that early spelling, poorly attested and
with some variation in practice, was not a good basis on which to establish
a difference in pronunciation.
This argument does not imply the converse, that uniformity of spelling
implies uniformity of pronunciation. We know that both consonantal and
vocalic pronunciations of written <I> and <V> occur, through the forms
required for proper scansion of poetry, and through descriptions of
native-speaker Latin grammarians.
Peter