1 /r\ 22-4 5" 59 .■.■-^— , SG9 :m !m ^w^M ':?^^^| i Digitized, by Microsoft® BpUGilT WITH THE INCOME --" FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF Henrg W. Sage 1891 \£ S^.'^.-^r.^du, ^.k/A//..0... 6896-1 Digitized by Microsoft® PA 2245''?S9S69"""'"' """^ iBlllliiiiIiiiiimiiiiiHi''' '"•'j""""** ■' 3 1924 021 616 044" ■*e shows ^ffl The uiiitv of the Latin subjunctfve :a qu All books are subject to recall after two weeks Olin/Kroch Library DATE DUE 1 inm ^ei&—i t^'RW*" GAYLORD PRINTED IN U.S.A. Digitized by Microsoft® This book was digitized by Microsoft Corporation in cooperation witli Cornell University Libraries, 2007. You may use and print this copy in limited quantity for your personal purposes, but may not distribute or provide access to it (or modified or partial versions of it) for revenue-generating or other commercial purposes. Digitized by Microsoft® THE UNITY OF THE LATIN SUBJUNCTIVE Digitized by Microsoft® WORKS ON GRAMMATICAL SUBJECTS By the Same Author Plautus, CAPTIVI, with critical and explanatory notes (London, Swan Sonnenschein & Co.): 1880. Plautus, RUDENS, with critical and explanatory notes (Oxford, Clarendon Press). Editio Maior (1891) ; Editio Minor, with an Appendix on Metre (1901). Plautus, MOSTELLARIA, with critical and explana- tory notes ; 2nd edition, 1907 (Oxford, Clarendon Press). A Latin Grammar for Schools (London, Swan Sonnenschein & Co., in the Parallel Grammar Series): 1887- 1907. A Greek Grammar for Schools (London, Swan Sonnenschein & Co., in the Parallel Grammar Series) : 1892- 1909. An English Grammar for Schools, in collaboration with J. Hall and A. J. Cooper (London, Swan Sonnenschein & Co., in the Parallel Grammar Series): 1889- 1909. Reports on Grammar, Lexicography and Metric in The Year's Work for 1906, 1907, 1908, 1909 (London, John Murray). Digitized by Microsoft® THE UNITY OF THE LA*riN SUBJUNCTIVE : A QUEST BEING A PAPER READ IN ABSTRACT BEFORE THE CLASSICAL ASSOCIATION BY EDWARD A. SONNENSCHEIN D.Litt., Oxon. ; Professor of Classics in the Uniyersity of Birmingham Liberavi animam meam LONDON JOHN MURRAY Albemarle Street, W. 1910 Digitized by Microsoft® ^6 'Ay/.. CONTENTS I. II. III. IV. V. VI. Introduction ....... A neglected usage of the Subjunctive Mood (Ex- pressions of Natural Necessity and Determined Futurity) ...... The meaning of the Subjunctive per se Definition of " Obligation " . Expressions of Volition, Permission and Wish Psychological classification of sentences involving Volition ..... Interrogative Subjunctives . Expressions of Permission Expressions of Wish .... Inferences ...... Other categories of the Subjunctive (i) Potential (2) Prospective ..... (3) Final and Consecutive . (4) Conditional Sentences . History of the Future Indicative (5) C2«;j-constructions (6) Dependent Questions and Examinations (7) Oratio Obliqua .... Conclusion ...... Classification of Sentences . Negative Inferences .... Practical Applications .... Addendum ...... 5 17 19 20 21 26 29 3° 32 33 34 34 35 41 47 48 SI 52 54 55 56 59 60 Digitized by Microsoft® THE UNITY OF THE LATIN SUBJUNCTIVE : A QUEST.^ I. Introdnctioh Comparative philologists have pointed out that the Latin sub- junctive is historically a mixture of two moods, the subjunctive and the optative of the parent language; and, assuming that forms and meanings must of necessity go together, have argued that any unity of meaning in the Latin subjunctive is excluded by this simple historical fact. But this assumption is insecurely based : it is common enough in languages to find two entirely different forms conveying the same meaning ; as, on the other hand, identical forms may convey different meanings. Thus, for instance, the two Aorists of Greek were synonymous from the earliest Indo-european times ;^ nor have we any evidence to show that they ever differed in meaning. There seems, then, to be nO' reason a priori why the subjunctive and the optative inflexions should not have been originally synonymous and only gradu- ally differentiated in Greek through a long process of develop- ment. Moreover, the argument that difference of form implies, difference of function really proves too much ; it would break up the unity of the Greek, as well as of the Latin, subjunctive : for the short-vowel subjunctives differ in form from the long- vowel subjunctives of Greek. And are we to assume that all the different formative elements which enter into the present ^ This paper is a fuller statement of the views which I expressed in brief summary in a paper read before the General Meeting of the Classical Association in Birmingham, Oct. 9th 1908, and printed in the Froceedings for 1908, pp. 21—32. 2 See Brugmann, Kune VergUichende Grammatik, § 736. For an insiance of the converse phenomenon, ibid. § 629. I Digitized by Microsoft® 2 THE UNITY OF THE LATIN SUBJUNCTIVE: stems of Greek verbs originally denoted entirely different ideas ?^ If so, what becomes of the unity of the present tense? The conclusion to which the history of language seems rather to point is that in an early stage of human speech there often existed more than one form to express a single meaning. This common meaning was probably conceived somewhat vaguely at first. In course of time, as it became differentiated into a number of dis- tinct meanings, the originally synonymous forms entered on a stage of delimitation ; so that distinct forms came to be associated with distinct meanings. The course of semantic development I therefore conceive as a process from a unity of vague meaning to a multiplicity of more or less distinct meanings. A third theory, which differs both from that which I am opposing and from that which I support, has recently been advanced with much force of argument and wealth of illustration by Professors Oertel and Morris of Yale.^ The contention of these writers is that all inflexions were originally meaningless, and that the meanings which they have in the developed language were acquired by a process of " adaptation." ' But they main- tain that each inflexion sprang at a bound from a condition of meaninglessness to one of definite and specialized meanings, possessing little or nothing in common with one another : and they regard the stage at which a unity in these diverse meanings was perceived as a later stage, due to a process of conscious reflexion which must be regarded as alien to early habits of thought. Their conception, therefore, of the process of develop- ment is that to a stage of meaninglessness there succeeded a stage of multiplicity of distinct meanings, which was in its turn followed by a stage of abstract unity of meaning. My object in this " Quest " is to trace the connexion between the various meanings of the Latin subjunctive, and, if possible, ^Some of them, no doubt, denoted different ideas from others ; but it does not follow that all of the 23 classes of present and strong aorist stems enumerated by Brugmann, Griechische Grammalik, 1900, §§ 308 — 372 (in Iwan M-liller's Handbmh der klass. Altertums-Wissenschafi) viete distinguish- able in meaning. ^ The Nature and Origin of Indo-enropean Inflection (Harvard Studies, vol. xvi., pp. 63—122). See especially pp. 106, inf., Ii4f. ^The writers acknowledge obligation to various works by Ludwig, e.g. Agglutination oder Adaptation, Einc sfrachwissenschaftliche Streitfrage (1873). Digitized by Microsoft® A QUEST 3 to point out the concrete element of meaning which they have in common. What I am concerned with in the first instance is the unity of the developed meanings of the inflexions; with the doctrine of their original meaning or no meaning I am not con- cerned except in so far as it is involved in my general contention. I do not accept the second stage of development, as set forth by Professors Oertel and Morris ; for I think I see a palpable relation between the meanings of the subjunctive, as they are exhibited in the earliest extant monuments of the Latin language. But at many points I am indebted to the Yale Professors for their clear exposition of a theory which differs from my own. And in maintaining a unity of meaning in the earliest Latin ■sage of the subjunctive inflexions, I admit at the outset (i) that some of the forms comprised within what we call the sub- junctive mood of Latin (notably the ' imperfect ' and the ' plu- perfect ' subjunctive) are apparently of later date than the other forms ; their origin is obscure, but it seems probable that their connexion of meaning with the Indo-germanic forms of the sub- junctive is due to a development within the limits of Latin and its immediate neighbours : and (2) tiiat there are later develop- ments of meaning in the mood which are due to a disintegration of syntax. The history of Latin modal syntax from Plautus to Tacitus may be described as a gradual encroachment of the subjunctive on the sphere of the indicative. The most that I can hope to do in regard to these later usages is to indicate how they were or may have been developed. The supreme value of the Latin of Plautus is that it shows us some of the later usages in the making.^ And Plautus is practically our point of departure in the study of the Latin subjunctive ; for the other writers of his period exist only in fragments, and our knowledge of Latin prior to the middle of the 3rd century B.C. is extra- ordinarily scanty. It follows that any supposed diversity of subjunctive and optative meanings at an earlier date (say 1000 B.C.) ' On the other hand it is easy to exaggerate the differences between Plautine Latin and classical Latin, as has been shown by Dittmar {Studien zur lat. Moduslehre, 1897) and Gaffiot (Le Subjonctif de Subordination en Latin, 1906). But I cannot accept the contention of these writers that there was no develop- ment of Latin modal syntax between Plautus and Cicero. [Dittmar deals only with subordinate constructions of the subjunclive.] Digitized by Microsoft® 4 THE UNITY OF THE LATIN SUBJUNCTIVE : must be purely hypothetical, and must indeed rest on the a priori assumption referred to above. ^ In considering the meanings of the subjunctive I shall make use of a line of argument which has been employed very effec- tively by Professor Morris.* To the meaning expressed in any given sentence many factors contribute. The inflected form is only one of these : another is, for example, the tone of voice in which the sentence is uttered; but of even greater importance is the whole environment and setting of the modal inflexion — in other words, the context. Take, for example, an expression like abeas in Plautus. In a sentence like^ PA. Numquid vis P PI. Abeas : ceUriter factost opus (Bacch. 604) it is a command — " Go away, and look sharp about it." With quaeso it would be a polite request. In a sentence like LA. Quaeso hevcle ahire ut liceat. LO. Abeas, si velis (Rud. 834) it is an expression of permission — " You may go away if you like." If we were to add ittinam or veliiii, it would be an expression of wish ("May you go away"); if we were to append aequissimum est it would be an expression of obliga- tion or propriety — "You ought to go away, it is only fair"; if we were to add vix it would be an expression of possibility — " You can scarcely go away." In subordination it assumes various shades of meaning according to the verb on which it depends, e.g., HA. Numquid vis? PS. Dormitum ut abeas (Pseud. 665). Quaeso ut adsis neve abeas (Amph. 1037). Potin abeas? (Pers. 297). Si nequeo facer e ut abeas, egomet ahiero (Poen. 442). TR. Ecquid condicionis audes ferre ? GR. Ut abeas (Rud. i03of.). ^Professors Oertel and Morris carefully guard themselves against making any such assumption. "Especially are we opposed to the establishment of Indo-European forms upon a basis of parallel forms in the Greek and Indie alone. For who can be sure that they do not belong to a period of Greco- Indic union, and are not therefore some thousand years younger than the real Indo-European period?" (Op. cit. p. loi.) It is upon this unsound foundation that the current doctrine of a "fusion" or "merging" of two distinct moods in Latin rests. -In his Principles ami Melhods in Laliii Svn/a.r (igoi), especially ch. iv., pp. 63 — lOI ; and in I'fic Subjunctive in independent sentences in Plautiis (American Journal of Philology, vol. xviii). See also Prof. H. C. Xuttinn's paper on Method in study of the moods (Classical Review, vol. xv, pp. 42ofr,). Digitized by Microsoft® A QUEST 5 But. if the full meanings of command, wish, possibility, etc., are due partly to the context — mere accidents of the context, they might be called — a very important consequence follows. The element of meaning contributed by the subjunctive inflexion per se {aiiTrj >] viroTaKTiKY), as Plato might have said) must be something less than any of these full meanings. To define exactly what this element of meaning is in every particular sentence may be difficult or impossible ; but at any rate we are prepared to expect that the meaning of the subjunctive qua subjunctive will turn out to be something rather vague — something which only assumes definite shape in connexion with its particular context. With these preliminary remarks I turn to my quest. I will proceed inductively and examine the chief kinds of subjunctive in succession. II. A neglected usage of the Suhjwictive Mood. Let us start by adding one more to the already formidable array of categories of the subjunctive ; for in no grammar do I find a heading which exactly suits such instances as I am about to quote. They clearly have some relation to the category for which Professor W. Gardner Hale of Chicago and myself are jointly responsible, and which is now generally recognised by grammarians under my name of " Prospective ".' But these prospective subjunctives are found only in subordinate clauses ; whereas the subjunctives now to be considered stand in in- dependent sentences. Their relation to "prospective sub- junctives" will be briefly considered later (Section V. i). If I were to follow an example which is only too well established in the writings of grammarians, I should content ^ The Prospective Stibjunctive, by the present writer (Classical Review, vol. vii., 1893, pp. 7-11); The Anticipatory Suhju^ictive in Greek and Lathi, by Prof. Hale (vol. i of Studies in Classical Philology, University of Chicago, 1894). Among grammarians who have accepted . this category as well- established may be mentioned Delbriick ( Vetgleichende Syntax ii, p. 387), Brugmann (Griech. Gram. § 557, and Kurze Vergl. Gram. § 754), Schmalz (Lat. Synt. § 277), Blase (Tempora und Modi, in, Landgrafs Historische Grammatik der lateinischen Sprache, III, I, § 13). IVly colleague Mr. St. George Stock calls my attention to the curious fact that Macrobius describes the aorist subj. TKTrS as a " futurum secundum " {De differentiis et societatibus Graeci Latinique verlii, under the heading De coniugationibus, sub. fin, ). Digitized by Microsoft® 6 THE UNITY OF THE LATIN SUBJUNCTIVE : myself with calling the subjunctives in question "gnomic", for some of the most prominent examples are found in sentences of a sententious or proverbial character; but such a description would be purely superficial. What are we to make of the following examples of the subjunctive of the indefinite second person ? ' (i) Ubi mortuos sis, ita sis ut nomen cluet (Plaut. Trin. 496). (2) Tantum habeas, tantum ipse sies tantique habearis (Lucihus 1 120, Marx; Dousa suggested quantum for the first tantum). This proverbial saying appears in various forms, e.g., Tanti quantum habeas sis (Horace Sat. I. i. 62 ; the fact that this example is subordinated to quia may be neglected in the light of the other instances) ; Assem habeas, assem valeas (Petronius, Cen. Trim. 77)- These sentences clearly do not express Command : " when you are dead, be dead " is nonsense. Lucilius, Horace, and Petronius do not command or advise a man to be worth just what he possesses.^ " When you are dead you should be dead " = " ought to be dead " (subjunctive of ethical obligation) is equally absurd. Nor can these instances be translated by "may", or "would": " when you are dead you maybe dead" makes no sense, whatever meaning we may assign to the word " may ", whether possibility or permission : " when you are dead you would be dead" is less objectionable, but still not satis- 1 1 take these examples from an article by Prof. Hale called ''An Unrecog- nised Construction of the Latin Subjunctive ; the Second Person Singular in General Statements of Fact" (Classical Philology I. i, pp. 21-42; cf. the Latin Grammar by Professors Hale and Buck, § 542). His doctrine is, briefly, that the subjimctive of the principal clause in such examples denotes "general fact" {^sis = es, habearis— haberis, valeas = vales), i.e., that it has the same meaning or absence of meaning as is found, according to commonly accepted views, in subordinate clauses containing a second person singular with indefinite subject ; and, indeed, that it is transferred from these subordinate clauses to principal clauses by a sort of attraction. The doctrine that this subordinate subjunctive is "a mere sign of indefiniteness " (due to Madvig, Latin Grammar § 370, English translation) will cor»e up for brief criticism below ; but I agree with Prof. Hale in rejecting all the explanations (no less than six in number) which have hitherto been offered of the subjunctive in these principal clauses. ''Hale (in the article referred to aboTe, p. 32) rightly insists on this point. Digitized by Microsoft® A QUEST 7 factory.! jsjqj. ^an we say that these sentences contain a softened statement of fact — " when you are dead you are perhaps dead " : a softened statement is just what is not wanted here. Oratio Obliqua is out of the question. What, then, is the meaning? Professor Hale's translation "when you are dead you ave dead" makes perfectly good sense, but it takes all the characteristic meaning out of the subjunctive. What forbids our seeing in these sentences a meaning which may be rendered by a simple " shall " in English — a word which seems to have been designed by nature to make the Latin subjunctive in- telligible to English-speaking peoples ? I venture to translate the above instances " when you are (lit. ' shall be ') dead, dead you shall hi " ; " what you possess (lit. ' shall possess ') that shall be your value, and that you shall be held worth " ; " have a penny, you shall be worth a penny ''. My " shall " is no doubt slightly archaic, but that is no objection to it if it expresses the meaning ; and the meaning seems to be analogous to that found in English sentences like "Ginger shall be hot i' the mouth ".^ " Dead you shall be " seems to mean " it is determined by some law of providence, or fate, or nature, that when a man is once dead he is bound to be dead indeed ". In the other instances quoted above we have the expression of a similar law of human society (regarded as a natural organism) that a man is bound not to be valued at more than he possesses. Such sentences might, then, be roughly described as expressing the idea of " natural necessity " (necessitas Naturae, Cicero, De Fato 48). The distinction between this use of the subjunctive and that which is found in commands is clear. Commands are directed towards influencing the will of another, as in " thou shalt not steal " ; whereas expressions of natural necessity denote that something must happen, whether the person addressed wills it or not. Determination by a law of nature involves the idea of futurity ; so that expressions of " Natural Necessity " might be also spoken of as expressions of " Determined Futurity '', i.e., futurity deter- mined by some law : e.g., " This night thy soul shall be required ! Because the sentence would then be equivalent to a conditional sentence with a. suggestion of reserve as to the fulfilment of the condition (" if you were to die, you would be dead "), which is not quite suitable in respect of meaning. "Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, II. 3, 126. Digitized by Microsoft® 8 THE UNITY OF THE LATIN SUBJUNCTIVE : of thee" (St. Luke xii. 20, auth. vers.); "As a tree falls so shall it lie"; Cowper's "Rome shall perish" may be interpreted in this sense'. The meaning of determined futurity is generally expressed in independent sentences of Latin by the future indicative used as a so-called "future of prophecy''; e.g., the last instance might be translated Roma pevihit ; but such future indicatives are really synonymous with the subjunctives con- sidered above, and they differ from futures that express bare futurity just as the gerundive differs from a future participle passive ; e.g., prima dicte mihi, summa dicende Camena (Hor. Epist. L I. i), "who shalt (not ' wilt ') be spoken of"." The passage of Petronius quoted above (p. 6) goes on " habes, habeheris ", " you shall be valued at the value of your posses- sions".^ This future indicative of Petronius seems exactly parallel to the present subjunctive habearis of Lucilius, and exhibits indeed only another form of the same proverbial ■expression. If anyone is inclined to urge that habeberis means "you will be valued" as distinct from "you shall be valued", I reply that to give habearis the same value would at any rate be far nearer to the meaning for which I am contending than to say that it is equivalent to a present indicative ("you are valued"). All that I insist on is that the present subjunctive and the future indicative both differ widely in meaning from the paresent indicative which we get in Apuleius (Apol. 23, p. 442, Delph. Ed.) — tanti re vera estis quantum habetis.^ This is a statement of a particu- lar fact, not merely another form of the proverbial saying quoted 1 " Rome shall perish, write that word In the blood that she' has spilled ". (Cowper, Boadicea, lines 13!). ^The gerundive is called a " future participle passive " by Weisweiler, Das lateinische Participium Futurum Pstssizii (1890) ; but he recognizes that the shall-Tasamng is fundamental. So too Delbriick, Vtr^leich. SyM., and. part., p. 489 ; and Hale, Grammar § 600. 3. Sometimes it approaches very near to an expression of bare futurity, e.g. in Ovid, Fast I. 10. ' Hale, who quotes this continuation of the sentence (p. 38), has missed the significance of the future tense, which he treats as expressing simple futurity. On this and similar future indicatives see below (p. 47). ''The context of this passage should be examined : note the words re vera. "You and men like you (homines inciiUi et agrestes) are living illustrations of the truth of the old adage ; you actually are worth no more than your possessions". See also Seneca Epist. 115. 14 ubique tanti quisque quantum haiuit fuit. Digitized by Microsoft® A QUEST 9 above (though, of course, the adage might be expressed in the language of fact; cf. Juvenal III i43f.. Quantum quisque sua nummorum servat in area, tantum hahet et fidei, and Pindar, Isthm. II. 17, Xpij/mar' avrip)- Contrast the adage as quoted by St. Augustine : unde et illud provevhium : Quantum habebis, tantum eris (De Disc. Christ. 11 12 ; quoted by Hale). Sententiae like the above, with the subjunctive of the indefinite 2nd person singular in the principal clause, are quite common in Latin writers. The following instances from Plautus and Terence seem to me to denote what is determined by some law of human nature, and to be translatable (literally) by " shall " ; but, lest I should seem to be begging the question at issue, I will avoid the word "shall" in translating. Quom inopiast, cupias : quando eius copiast, turn non velis (Trin. 671): "when a man hasn't got a thing he is bound to desire it (cannot help desiring it) ; when he has plenty of it, then he is sure not to wish for it "} Si non est, nolis esse neque desideres ; Si est, abstinere quin attingas non queas (Bacch. 914 f.) : "if you haven't got it (a lippiis ocuhts), you are sure not to desire it or miss it ; if you have got it, you are bound to be unable to refrain from fingering it ". Quod in manu teneas atque oculis videas, id desideres (Trin. 914); "what one grasps with one's hands and sees with one's eyes is the very thing for which one is sure to be at a loss ". Abs quivis homine, quom est opus, beneficium accipere gaudeas (Terence Ad. 254) ; " one cannot but rejoice ", etc. Unum quom noris, omnis noris (id., Phorm. 265): "when once you know one of them, you are sure to know them all". In the Sententiae of Publilius Syrus (a contemporary ot Julius Caesar) there exists ready made a large collection of instances admirably adapted to illustrate the above meaning of " natural necessity". Side by side with a number of sentences which must ^ This velis Blase (T. und M,, p. 136) includes among jussive, hortative and optative subjunctives, perhaps only by an oversight. Brix-Niemeyer, 4th ed., and Gray call it potential. In his 5th ed. Niemeyer translates " dann -will man's nicht mehr ". Digitized by Microsoft® 10 THE UNITY OF THE LATIN SUBJUNCTIVE: be interpreted either as "jussive"' or as denoting what ought to be done by the person addressed, like — Feras, non culpes, quod mutari non potest (176) " One should ( = ought to) put up with, and not find fault with, what cannot be changed " = " What can't be cured should be endured ", there are a number of examples which cannot be so regarded. These latter instances are described as potential by Blase ;^ but what the sense demands is the idea of what must be or is bound to be {i.e., what cannot but be) rather than that of what may possibly be or can be ; for example : — Cum ames non sapias, aut cum sapias non ames (117) Frustra, cum ad senectam ventum est, repetas adulescentiam (185) Iniuriam facilius facias quam feras (280) Peccatum amici veluti tuum recte putes (474) Quodcumque celes, ipse tibi fias timor (512) Quicquid bono concedas, des partem tibi (530) Ubi sis cum tuis et bene sis, patriam non desideres (635) and, with the perfect subjunctive : — Dixeris male dicta cuncta, cum ingratum hominem dixeris (126) Mortem ubi contemnas, viceris omnes metus (364). All these instances and many more in Publilius seem to me to express what is determined by a law of human nature ; thus 280, " It is a law of human nature that a man shall inflict an injury more easily than submit to it" = "It is necessarily easier to do a wrong than to submit to it"; 117, "When one is in love one is bound not to be wise ; when one is wise one is sure not to be in love ". Here alternative necessities are expressed — either love without wisdom or wisdom without love.^ A potential " may " ^ This is the term used by Blase to describe such instances ; he quotes Ames parentem, si aequust : sin aliter, feras (8). The action is marked as obligatoty on the person addressed. Stt h\i Temfora und Modi, 'p. 127. The numera- tion of lines in these sententiae is given as in Ribbeck's Comicorum Romanoritm Fragmenta. "^ Ibid., p. 142, on Publ. Syr. 280. ' Of course all these propositions might be expressed ss, facts : thus — The wise want love, and those who love want wisdom (Shelley, Prometheus Unbound, Act I). Such statements may, of course, be untrue ; that is an entirely different matter. Digitized by Microsoft® A QUEST II seems too weak in such cases : " can " would be a possible transla- tion in some cases, but in some cases " can " is also unsuitable ^•8-i 53° ■ "Whatever one grants to a good man one can grant part to oneself" is no sense. The sense requires "one must necessarily (one cannot but) grant a part of it to oneself". Similarly in 185 (with fnistra) " when you have reached old age, you shall in vain ask for your youth back again " — not " you can (or may) in vain ask"; similarly in 474 (with recte). In the following instance we have a 3rd person : Animo ni imperabis, animus imperet potius tibi.' (Sententia Turicensis; Ribbeck, Com. Rom. Frag. p. cxxxiii). But this kind of subjunctive is not limited to sentences of a gnomic character. We find in Plautus instances hke Quo6 quom ferias, tibi plus noceas (Pseud. 137) : "when one beats them, one is bound to hurt oneself more than them " (so thick are their hides). BaUio is beating the slaves as he speaks ; so that the sense " if one were to beat them, one would hurt oneself more " is unsuitable, as Prof. Hale says. And with the 3rd person (not indefinite) : Numquam hoc uno die efliciatur opus, quin opus semper siet (True. 907) : "never shall this work be completed in one day, in such a way that there shall not always remain work to do " Im some instances the idea expressed is that of logical rather than naUiral necessity — i.e., a necessity of thought, a necessary inference. The sentence ubi mortuos sis, ita sis ut nomen duet might itself be interpreted in this way. But a better instance is found in Plaut. Pers. 699 : SAG. Geminum autem fratrem servire audivi hie meum : Eum ego ut requiram atque uti redimam volo. TOX. Videor vidisse hie forma persimilem tui, Eadem statura. SAG. Quippe qui frater siet. " Why (surely) he must be my brother ! ", " he should (according to all appearances) be my brother ".^ This is much better sense ' Contrast the statement oifacl in Horace Epist. I. 2. 62f : animum rege, qui nisi paret imperat. ^ Cf. "If my sight fail not, you should be lord ambassador" (Shakesp., Henry the Eighth, IV. 2. 109), " This same should be the voice of Friar John" (Rom. and Jul. V. 2. 2), etc. In a precisely similar passage Plautus uses oportet (Rud. 116$) : Jiliam meam eses hanc oportet. [Cf. p. 12, last three lines.] Digitized by Microsoft® 12 THE UNITY OF THE LATIN SUBJUNCTIVE: than " of course, if (or ' since ' ) he is my brother "- Qui is the indefinite adverb, not the relative pronoun ; cf. Aul. 348, Rud. 384- But this meaning is far commoner iri interrogative sentences, e.g., Plaut. Amph. 576 and 769 quid hoc sit heminis ? "what sort of a fellow should this be ? " ^ Some of the following in- stances Prof. Hale refers to his category of " subjunctives of Natural Likehhood " ; those from Cicero I take from a recent article by Prof. Tenney Frank.^ When we ask " Why should a guinea and a feather fall to the ground at the same rate in vacuo ? " we are probably thinking of a force of nature as the cause of the pheno- menon, and we mean to ask " What makes them fall to the ground in the same time ? " ; but we may mean " By what process of reasoning does one arrive at the conclusion that they fall to the ground in the same time ? " The answer would be very different in the two cases. When Cicero asks (De Fato § 46) Cur minimo decUnent intervallo, maiore non ? he means " What reason can Epicurus give to justify his statement that they swerve only the least possible distance ? " It is this logical necessity which he has in mind when he says (De Fin. III. 4. 15) Si enim Zenoni licuit, cur non liceat Catoni .'' " If Zeno was privileged (to give new names to new things) by what process of reasoning does it follow that Cato should not be similarly privileged ? " The cur refers to a reason as distinct from a cause ; but in many cases the two things cannot be distinguished ; in English " what is to pre- vent ? " might be used in either sense. Where the word causa means " motive ", as in quae fuit causa quamohrem venenum dare vellet ? (Pro Cael. 23. 56) "what motive had Cselius for wish- ing to poison that woman ? ", the meaning seems to be rather that of natural cause than of logical reason. Many of these instances might of course be translated by " ought " ; but the " ought " would be an expression of logical, not of ethical obliga- tion. The word oportet itself may have logical content ( = " must necessarily" as a matter of inference), as in haud longe abesse oportet (Plaut. Amph. 322) "he can't be far off", lit., "he must 'C/. "What should this be?" (Merry Wives, V. 5. 36), "Where the devil should this Romeo be ? Came he not home to-night ? " (Rom. and Jul. II. 4. i), "But how should Prospero be living and be here?" (Tempest, V. I. 119), etc. - T/te Semantics 0/ Modal Construction, Part II. Classical Philology, III. i. Digitized by Microsoft® A QUEST 13 be at no great distance", and many other passages of Plautus; pevfrices fvontem oportet (Seneca Ep. 40. 13) "you must in that case put off all shame ", " you cannot avoid being shameless " : ' similarly rf«6«o in Lucretius I. 789, etc. A large number of so- called dehberative questions, introduced by words meaning "why?", "why not?", "how?", "how not?", are of this character, though many of them may be interpreted differently. Thus q%i.i ego istuc cyedam ? "why should I believe that?" (Plant. .Cure. 641, Merc. 627, 903) = " what grounds have I for believing that ? ", qui sciam ? " how should I know ? " (Ter. And. 971). Similarly quin potitts tali natura praedita quaedam corpora constituas ? (Lucr. I. 798) " why should you not rather decide (as an inference from the facts just mentioned) that there are certain bodies possessed of such a nature ? " : quin potius ministyum veneni excruciaret ? (Tac. Ann. IV. 11) " why should he not (as a reasonable being) have put the prisoner to the torture?"^ Similarly with quidni : — SC. Fateor. PE. Quidni fateare, ego quod videvim ? (Plant. Mil. 554) " why should you not confess ? " = " what reason have you for not confessing ? " ; quidni haec cupias ? "why should you not desire these things?" (Juv. X. 95); quidni non titneat qui mori sperat ? (Seneca Epist. 102, § 30) " wh,y should a man who hopes for death not be fearless ? " = " of course such a man has no fear ". And the same meaning comes out in such dependent clauses as denique cur nequeat semper nova luna creari . . . dificilest vatione docere (Lucr. V. 731) "finally, it is difficult to give a reason why it should be im- possible for a new moon to be created every day " ^ (similarly cur ausis, line 730) ; mirum quin tu illo tecum divitias feras (Plaut. Trin. 495) " strange indeed that you should not be able to take your riches with you to that place!" {i.e. ad Ackeruntem) — an ironical statement meaning " of course you can't take your riches with you when you die ". I have reserved for the end of this section a group of subjunc- tives which are generally regarded as " potential ", but which I am. 'The equivalence nf "cannot" to "must . . . not" and of "must" to " cannot avoid " in English is worth notice. ^These and similar instances of yniiz with the subjunctive in independent sentences have been generally ignored by grammarians (except ^uhi rogetji,' Plaut. Mil. 426) ; see my note on Plautus, ^lostellaria 614, 2nd edition. '^ Cf. "What it should be . . I cannot dream of" (Hamlet II. 2. 7). Digitized by Microsoft® 14 THE UNITY OF THE LATIN SUBJUNCTIVE : inclined to bring into connexion with the idea of " determined futurity " ; I mean subjunctives of the type of videas, cernas, audias, censeas, scias, nescias, invenias, and videres, cerneres, etc. In some cases the sentence is gnomic, e.g. Siquoi mutuom quid dederis, fit pro proprio perditum : Quom repetas, inimicum amicum beneficio invenias tuo (Trin. 105 if.)'- But in most cases it is not : e.g. Quamvis malam rem quaeras, ilhc reperias (Ibid. 554). Videas eam medullitus me amare (Most. 243 ; cf. conspicias Poen. 585). Hoc numquam verbum ex uxore audias (Mil. 689, cf. 761). Sad cecum incedit. At, quom aspicias tristem, frugi censeas (Cas. 562). Quid olant nescias ; nisi id unum ni male olere intellegas (Most. 278; cf. scias, Pseud. 1176, etc.). The following instance seems to me best interpreted as expres- sing the idea of videas " one shall see " in passive form, 3rd person : Nee me miserior feminast, neque uUa videatur magis (Amph. 1060) " nor shall any more wretched ever be seen '', = neque ullam videas magis. These expressions denoting " you shall see (hear, think, know, find) " form a class by themselves, and the number of examples is very large ; but anyone who maintains a distinctively potential meaning for these subjunctives has to face the difficulty that the future indicative is often used in the same class of expressions without any apparent difference of meaning, e.g., videbis Virg. Georg. I. 365, 455, spectabis Ovid Fasti III. 519, invenies ibid. 533, Plant. Mil. 659, Seneca Epist. 47, 16, scies ibid. 102, 30.^ The close parallelism between the present subjunctive and the 1 We have the same idea expressed in the language of fact by Polonius (Hamlet, I. 3. 75) : "Neither a borrower nor a lender be ; for loan oft loses both itself and friend". Similarly in Plaut. Poen. 635 Malo si quid bene facias, beneficium iiiterit. ^ Where the sentence is interrogative the difficulty of drawing a distinction between ' potential ' and ' deliberative ' subjunctives has also to be faced : compare the interrogative invenias of Cic. Verr. II. 16.40 and Lael. 17.64 with the quid facias? of the former passage and Hor. Sat. I. i. 63 (which cannot be potential because it is answered by iubeas luiserum esse). Digitized by Microsoft® A QUEST IS future indicative is shown by such a passage as Juvenal XIV. 4 if. : Catilinam Quocumque in populo videas, quocumque sub axe, Sed nee Brutus erit, Bruti nee avunculus usquam. " A Catiline you shall discover in any clime, but nowhere shall there be found a Brutus or the uncle of a Brutus ". ' No doubt the translation " may " is generally possible and sometimes very effective, but a " shall " is also generally effective, Saepe tribus lectis videas cenare quaternos (Horace Sat. I. 4. 86; cf. II 2. 114, Virgil Georg. I. 387, Aen. IV. 401, cernas migr antes). A most interesting parallel to this Latin use of the subjunctive in expressions meaning "you shall see", "you shall find", etc. is the corresponding English idiom, which is found in a multitude of examples from Shakespeare to the present day. There are numerous Elizabethan instances like "You shall mark Many a duteous and knee-crooking slave. That, doting on his own obsequious bondage. Wears out his time." (Shakespeare, Othello, I. i. 44ff.) " A man shall see, where there is a house full of children, one or two of the eldest respected and the youngest made wantons." (Bacon ; and so in many places of the Essays). Addison, Swift, Lamb, Thackeray, Ruskin, E. A. Freeman, R. L. Stevenson and other writers have the same usage : — ^ " You shall sometimes hiow that the mistress and maid shall quarrel . . . and at last the lady shall be pacified ", etc. (Addison) " His merits balanced, you shall find The Laureate leaves them far behind " (Swift) " You shall find a young beauty, who was a child in a school- room a year since, as wise and knowing as the old practitioners in that exchange ". (Thackeray) ^ In Plautus the fat. indie, often denotes what is to be done, as distinct from what willhe done, e.g., quid faciemus? (Plaut. Mil. 973, Epid. 274) means "■v;ha.t.are-!ve to do?", guidjiet? (Epid. 151, Merc. 413, Most. Il65) "what is to be done?" See Sjogren, Zum Gebrauch des Fut. p. 97. ^ See the late Dr. MoUoy's "The Irish Difficulty : shall ^nA will" (London, 1897) under the heading " A peculiar use oi shall" (p. looff). Digitized by Microsoft® 1 6 THE UNITY OF THE LATIN SUBJUNCTIVE: " You shall not merely see they have more virtue than the others, but see more of that virtue more clearly; and the less virtue there is, the more dimly you shall see what there is of it". (Ruskin) "On no other coast that I know oi shall you find ..." etc. (Stevenson) "The picture of Valentine and Ursine . . is as pretty a piece of landscape as you shall find in any printed book ". (Saturday Westminster Gazette, May 30th, 1908). It may be asked in regard to all the subjunctives quoted in this section (pp. 6-15), Why is the 3rd person so much rarer than the 2nd? And why is the 2nd person generally indefinite? The reason I believe to be not that the subjunctive mood makes the subject of the verb indefinite or acts as a " sign of indefiniteness " (for the 2nd person is frequently indefinite in the present and future indicative and also in the imperative,* and sometimes where the mood is subjunctive the subject is not indefinite),^ but rather that there is a natural affinity between the ideas of " natural necessity ", " logical necessity " and " determined futurity " on the one hand, and an indefinite subject on the other. They both find their place in the same kinds of sentence, viz. in statements of universal import. And the 2nd person singular is the commonest way of expressing the idea of an indefinite "one "(French "on", German "man") in Latin. It should be remembered, however, that this indefinite 2nd person is after all only the person addressed taken as typical of all men. When Heine writes " Wenn du nach Venedig kommst denkst du an Shakespeare's Shylock ; dein Auge sucht ^e.g. Natio comoeda est : rides, maiore cachinno concutitur (Juv. III. 100) ; so constantly in the satirists and Publilius Syrus : si adfers Plant. Asin. 242. Future indie, fades, Amph. 704 (= resolvas 705), and in subordinate clauses voles. Men. 87, Merc. 146, vincies, Men. 93: see also instances on p. 14 (videbis, spcctabis, etc.) For the imperative we have instances like cetera rape, trahe, fuge, late, Plaut. Trin. 289, cf. Pseud. IjSf. ; qiic?nvis media erue turba, Hor. Sat. I. 4. 25 ; nrcutnspice omnium corpora, nulli noii color proprius est. Sen. Epist. 1 13. 15 (addressed in the first instance to Lucilius, but really meant for the reader, i.e. for anyone). Other instances of the indie, will be found in Biases Studieii and Kriliken zur lat. Synt. II., e.". Plaut. True. 768, Publ. Syr. 52, Hor. Sat. II. 3. 131. 'e.g. Videos mercedis quid tibist aequom dari, Ne istae aelate me sectere gratiis. (Plaut. Bacch. 27f.) Una opera ebur atramento candefacere/£i^/«/«. (Most. 259) Digitized by Microsoft® A QUEST 17 ihn iiberall . . . und du glaubst manchmal sogar seine kreischende Stimme zu horen — ' Dreitausend Dukaten : gut ' " \ he is only addressing his reader; yet the " du " is equivalent to a "man". — This is not the place to criticise in detail Madvig's rule which limits this kind of subjunctive to the indefinite 2nd person {Gfiimmar, % 370, Engl. Transl). It has long been suspected of being- an overstatement and misleading;^ .ind it certainly comes into conflict with a considerable number of Ciceronian instances in which the subjunctive of an indefinite 3rd person is used in subordinate clauses. * Above all, it fails altogether to connect the meaning of " indefiniteness " with any recognized meaning of the subjunctive mood. III. The meaning of the subjunctive "per se ". The interest and value of the usage considered in the previous section is mainly that it suggests a new point of view from which the idea of a unity of meaning in the subjunctive mood may be approached. But it would be a mistake to regard the meaning of " natural necessity ", " logical necessity " or " determined futurity " as more fundamental than other special meanings of the mood. In the first place these concepts, as we understand them, cannot have been consciously present to the minds of those who first used these subjunctives ; they are merely our metaphysical interpretations of what was going on in their unmetaphysical minds — otir attempt to realize in full consciousness what to them was at most semiconscious or subconscious. In the second place these special meanings are obviously dependent on the context in which the subjunctive '^Shakespeare^! Mddchen itnd Frauen — Porzia. Similarly latuis regnesr (Hor. Od. II. 2. 9) though addressed to Sallustius Crispus is meant to apply to all men. 2 See Kiihner, Ausfilhrliche Gram, der lat. Sfr., II. p. 480, and Blase in Archiv IX. p. igf, and Gaffiot, Le Suhjonctif de Subordination, p. i63f. On the other side see I.ebreton, Etudes sur la langue et la gramviaire de Cicerone pp. 349-353- ^ There is also such a thing as an indefinite 1st person ; see H. Richards,, Xenophon and Others, p. 59-61, and add Juv. III. 289. This is the real explanation of the ego in Horace, A. P. 234 ( = any sensible person) or Horace was not himself a writer of satyric dramas, nor need we suppose, as. ICiessling suggests, that he felt himself well qualified for this style of com- position. Digitized by Microsoft® t8 the unity of the LATIN SUBJUNCTIVE: stands ; the mood does not express all this in itself. We must, therefore, go further and ask what concrete element of meaning underlies these special uses. One concrete idea there is which the sentences hitherto considered agree in expressing — the idea that something is bound to happen, the idea of a non-ethical " ought " ; " when you are dead, you are bound to be dead ", " when you are in love you are bound to be unwise ", " that man is bound to be my brother ". \Vhere there is a clear reference to the future, it is to a future which is botmd to be realized. Let us now compare with these sentences a sentence of a different type : Feras, non culpes, quod mutari non potest (Publilius Syrus, 176; quoted above, p. 10). " One ought to bear, not to find fault with, what cannot be altered". Here too we have an expression of what is bound to be, but in a different sense. The " ought '' is an ethical " ought ", expressing moral obligation. At first sight the difference may seem to be fundamental. But observe : this ethical meaning, like the meaning of necessity in the other sentences, is a special meaning due to the context, and in particular to the parenthetical words non culpes. ' Remove these and the words that remain might just as well be non-ethical in signification and mean " what can't be cured must {i.e. must necessarily) be endured " ; or they might be a command. ^ In other words, the difference in meaning between these two sentences is not expressed by the modal inflexion ; the subjunctives in themselves are identical. Let us take a further step. What is the difference between feras, non culpes and a command — say feras, ne culpes ? Only the difference that there is in English between "you ought to bear and not find fault with " and " bear and do not find fault with". The difference is, psychologically speaking, that the second sentence expresses the will of the speaker and the first does not, or may not. But they are both directed towards influencing the action {i.e. the will) of the person addressed, and are so far identical ; compare " love your neighbour " with " you ought to love your neighbour". Now how is this difference 'It is curious what a. difference the presence of these two words makes. This was first pointed out to me by my colleague Mr. C. D. Chambers. 'As in Mutare quod non possis, ut natum est, feras (Publ. Syr. 370). Digitized by Microsoft® A QUEST 19 expressed in the Latin ? Not by the subjunctives alone : feras and nilpes might in themselves be either commands or expressions of obligation. The difference is expressed, so far as it is expressed at all, by the negatives ; ne has associations with commands (though it is sometimes found in statements of obligation, see p. 23, n.), non with statements. I infer then that the subjunctive of command and the subjunctive of ethical obliga- tion are in themselves identical in meaning, just as in English "thou shalt bear" and "thou shalt not find fault with" might denote either command or obligation.' The apparent differences between the various subjunctives considered above are really differences in their contexts. The subjunctive mood is a chameleon whose colour depends on its environment. '' This analysis has brought us to what I believe is the meaning of the subjunctive mood pev se — the idea of Obligation, not limited to the sphere of either the ethical or the non-ethical " ought ''. And this is also the essential idea of the English verb " shall ", which was used in Anglo-Saxon times to express various kinds of obligation. Its general range of usage in Shakespeare (including at one extreme the idea of bare futurity) is strikingly analogous to that of the Latin sub- junctive. The verb "ought" (the past tense of "to owe", O.E. dgan) is more limited in range, but it too expresses a considerable part of the fundamental meaning of the Latin subjunctive. And the fact that it may be used to denote natural or logical as well as moral obligatoriness may perhaps be regarded as justifying the use here made of the term " obligation ", which, I repeat, is not intended to be synonymous with moral obligation but to embrace as species of a genus natural obligation, logical obligation, moral obligation, etc. Obligation, in this wide sense, is equivalent to determination by some law or some will. The meaning of the past imperfect subjunctive corresponds in past time to that of the present subjunctive in present time : thus \i feram, feras, ferat express present obligation ("I am to bear", " you are to bear", "he is to bear"), ferrem, ferves, ferret ought ■"In Bidding Prayers one hear.s "ye shall pray" alternate with "ye are bound to pray". And the Latin imperative may express obligation as well as command, e.g. posce "■ yau ought to pray for" [=orandnin est), Juvenal X 356/ ; cfi adgnoscito in Cicero Tusc. 1. 70. Digitized by Microsoft® 20 THE UNITY OF THE LATIN SUBJUNCTIVE : to express past obligation, i.e., obligation in the past (" I was to bear ", " you were to bear ", " he was to bear "), and this, I hold, is the fundamental meaning of this tense. In many cases " should " (the past of " shall ") is an adequate translation, especially where the idea of past time is clearly indicated, e.g., imperavi ut ferres. But where this is not the case, " should " will not serve, because it has come to be used of present obligation ; thus the present subjunctive feras non culpes might be translated " you should bear, not find fault with ''. In this use " should " is itself a subjunctive, or rather an optative, in origin ( = " you would be bound to ", " it would be right for you to"). In the sequel I will put the idea of obligation to the test, by asking how far it is capable of explaining the chief usages of the subjunctive mood. IV. Expressions of Volition, Permission and Wish. Expressions of Volition. — The so-called " subjunctives of volition " or " volitive subjunctives " form the most important of all the groups of subjunctive usage and call for detailed examination. It is usually maintained that the idea of volition expressed in sentences belonging to this group is expressed by the subjunctive mood. But I am going to be so bold as to maintain that in all such sentences the subjunctive per se expresses nothing more than the simple idea of Obligation as defined above (p. 19), i.e., the idea that something is to happen, is hound to happen, shall happen ; and that the idea of volition is really an inference from the context. Volition may be said to be suggested by the modal inflexion, in the same sort of way as the idea of a solid object is suggested by a sense impression on the retina of the eye ; but just as the idea of solidity is not really conveyed by the sense impression, so the idea of volition is not expressed by the modal inflexion : the latter is merely the vXn of the volitional idea. In order to show this clearly I will attempt a classification on a purely psychological basis of the various kinds of meaning expressed in sentences of a volitional character, without reference to the modal or other mechanism by which these meanings are expressed in any particular language. The sentences expressing Natural or Logical Obligation Digitized by Microsoft® A QUEST 21 discussed above (Section II) might be described negatively as not expressing the will of the speaker and making no direct appeal to the will of the person addressed or spoken of. In some cases it would no doubt be possible to regard the sentence as expressing the will of God or of a personified fate, and some such idea may, indeed, be in the background in all cases : but what sharply distinguishes these sentences from those about to be considered is that they declare that something must necessarily happen or he, independently of the will of the speaker and of the will of the person addressed or spoken of; as in Shakespeare's " Ginger shall be hot i' the mouth " (see p. 7) or "Look, what is done cannot now be amended; men shall deal unadvisedly sometimes" (Richard the Third, IV. 4. 292). Sentences involving volition proper may be classified as follows ; — (A) Sentences expressing the will of the speaker and making a direct appeal to the will of the person addressed or spoken of {Commands, Requests, Prayers) : e.g., " Pay me what you owe " ; "Sing, heavenly Muse"; "Give us this day our daily bread"; " Let him sail" {naviget, Virg. Aen. IV. 237).^ Here the will of the speaker is directed towards influencing the will of the person addressed or spoken of ; for this person is bidden or entreated to act in a certain way, and such action cannot take place without the operation of his will. In other words, the action desired by the speaker is a voluntary action on the part of the person addressed or spoken of, though of course it may be one which it does not please him to perform, e.g., the action of handing over one's purse in response to the demand of a highwayman, " Give me your money ". (B) Sentences expressing the will of the speaker but making no direct appeal to the will of the person addressed or spoken of. Such sentences may in general and for the sake of distinction be called expressions oi Resolve : e.g., " Trelawney shall not die ". When the speaker intends by expressing his resolve to pledge himself to a certain course of action, the expression of Resolve ' When an appeal is made to the will of some third person, the will of the speaker is supposed to be communicated to that person by the person addressed. Thus in Aen. IV. 237 the will of Juppiter that Aeneas shall sail is supposed to be communicated by Mercury. Compare Plaut. True. 839. Digitized by Microsoft® 22 THE UNITY OF THE LATIN SUBJUNCTIVE : becomes a Promise or a Threat; e.g., "You shall receive a handsome reward", "You shall rue it", "It shall be done". (C) Sentences making a direct appeal to the will of the person addressed or spoken of but not expressing the will of the speaker. Such sentences are of various kinds. For example, the speaker may merely report the will of another person, as Mercury reports the will of Juppiter to Aeneas in Aen. IV. 272-276 (cf. 232-237,) or as a schoolboy reports the will of a master to one of the other boys (" Vou are to go to Mr. " : to which the natural answer would be "Who says so?"). Or the speaker may quote the terms of a contract which has been drawn up between two parties, and which represents their joint wills at the time when the contract was made. Or again the speaker may state some moral or social law as binding upon the will of the person addressed or spoken of. This law may be regarded as an expression of the will of some third power, such as God or the state {e.g., " you ought to love your neighbour '', " you ought to pay your taxes regularly ") ; and the speaker may identify himself with the will of this third power or show himself to be interested in its being obeyed ; but expressions of Ethical Obligation are, as they stand, independent of the will of the speaker. Such expressions of Ethical Obligation must be carefully distinguished from expressions of mere Propriety which make no appeal to the will of the person addressed or spoken of, e.g., " We should be woo'd and were not made to woo " (Shakesp. Mids. Night's Dream, II. i. 242); such sentences as these involve the will neither of the speaker nor of the person addressed or spoken of, and must therefore be classed with expressions of natural and logical obligation ; they might be called expressions of aesthetic obligation. Moreover, in so far as a sentence like "you ought to love your neighbour " is enunciated as a mere abstract proposition, not intended to influence the will of the person addressed, it belongs to the same class. All the ideas of volition classified above are found in Plautine sentences containing a subjunctive. ' But how much of these ' An example of an expression of Resolve or Promise is the Jta/ which occurs frequently in comedy as the answer to a command ; c.i,^, TH. / meciim, obsecro, una simul. SI. Fiat (Most. 1038 ; see my note on 803, 2nd ed.) ; LI. Teque obsecro, hercle, ut quae loculu's despuas. DE. Fiat : f^eratur mos tibi. (Asin. 30f.) Thisyfa^ is called jussive by Blase (p. 128), but clearly it Digitized by Microsoft® A QUEST 23 meanings is expressed by the modal inflexion, apart from the context ? If the subjunctive expresses volition, whose volition is it that is expressed ? There is nothing in the modal inflexion that enables us to identify the wilier. The only person indicated by the verb is the person who is to act, and that person is indicated not by the modal but by the personal inflexion {-m,-s,-t, etc). The Will, now here, now there, is a veritable Will o' the wisp. Its location is always a matter of inference, and sometimes a matter of difficulty. I maintain, then, that the subjunctive inflexion does not express will ; if it did, it ought not to leave us in doubt as to who the wilier is. We may arrive at a similar result by a different process of reasoning. Professor Luchs has pointed out in his lectures ' that if vendam meant " I will sell " (volo vendere), vendas ought to mean " you will sell " (vis vendere), vendat " he will sell " (vult vendere), just as we have esurio, " I desire to eat '', estiyis, " you desire to eat", esiirit, "he desires to eat". But they do not. does not here express command or wish (as in Mil. 1054, Pers. 293) : Hale calls it a " Subjunctive of Consent or Indifference " (Grammar § 531). I fail to see any criterion by which it can be distinguished from the future indicative fiet which also occurs, though less commonly, in such sentences, e.g., DE. Animum advorte. LY. Fiet sedulo (yieic. 302). Nor can I distinguish the mos geratiir of Asin. 39, Pseud. 559 and True. 961 from the vios geretur of Pseud. 22. Contrast also the fiat of True. 962 {see p. 29) and the inos geratur of Epid. 693. Hodie accipiat (Most. 920) " he shall receive it to-day" is an expression of Resolve, as is shown by the ne.\t line, where Tranio says " Or, if you like, pay the money over to me, and I will pay it to him " . In line 920, then, Theoropides must have meant " I will pay him the money myself to-day" (not " see that he gets it to-day," as Morris says). Compare auscuUet (Amph. 300) "he shall hear." Cena detur (Bacch. 537, True. 127) "you shall have a dinner " is a Promise.. So too habeas, -at in Kud. 1358 (cf sistentur, 1359), 1 121 (of. dabitur). Compingare in carcerem (Poen. 1409) "you shall be clapped into prison" is a Threat (substituted humorously for a Promise). Asin. 756-807 contains an excellent example of a contract : its terms are binding on the parties concerned — Diabolus and Cleaeteta — the former being the person addressed. All the subjunctives in this long passage must be translated by " shall " or " may " (for the enactments of the bond are in some cases only permissive, e.g., combtiras 766, invocet 781), not by imperatives. Expressions of Ethical Obligation: Men. 6ll(««), Merc. 633-7, Pers. 710, Pseud. 286-8, 437(k«), Trin. 133-S ; less clear in present time, Amph. 96of., Bacch. 652, 66if., Merc. 553, True. 163, 230, 232f , 855 ; cf. p. 44, n. ' So I gather from Blase Tempora und Medi p. 1 13, who refers to Guthmann, Ueber eine Art unwilliger Fragen im Lateinischen (1891), §4. I have been unable to procure a copy of this paper, which is out of print. Digitized by Microsoft® 24 THE UNITY OF THE LATIN SUBJUNCTIVE : Hence Blase infers that vendam, etc., denote not will, but some- thing akin to futurity. My inference is somewhat different; I regard the subjunctive inflexion as expressing in all cases that kind of obligation which is expressed in English by " is to " or " shall ", and the personal inflexion as expressing the person who "is to" or "shall": vend-a-m, I am-to sell, vend-«-5, you are-to sell, vend-a-t, he is-to sell. In proportion as a sentence con- taining the 2nd or the 3rd person becomes exclamatory, the statement of obligation passes into an expression of command or wish (if negative, negatived by ne, as distinct from non). The answer given by the upholders of the " volitive " idea runs briefly somewhat as follows. — The Indo-european subjunctive of volition originally expressed only the will of the speaker : reddam, " I will pay " {volo redder e), reddas " I will your paying " ( = " I will that you shall pay "). But it was afterwards developed so as to be used in cases where someone else's will is expressed, e.g., reddam ? " do you will my paying ? " ^ But does this theory of •developments really bridge the tremendous chasm between my will and your will ? Nor is there a particle of evidence to show that the interrogative form of speech is of later origin than the declarative.^ The doctrine of " analogical development " as here applied is due entirely to the assumption that the subjunctive inflexion denotes volition. From the point of view indicated above it becomes unnecessary. The result at which we have arrived tells against the view that subjunctives of the ist person singular like maneam opinor (Trin 1 136), taceam (Bacch. 1058), mane, hoc quod coepi primum marrem, Clitipho (Ter. Haut. 273), adeam credo (Phorm. 140), and the corresponding constructions of the ist person plural, e.g., maneamus, denote properly " I will remain " (volo manere), " I will hold my tongue '', " we will remain '', etc. No doubt these translations are in some cases quite suitable, and it perhaps makes little difference whether we say that the termination of the ist person denotes the wilier or the person who is to act, for these two persons are in this case the same. On the other ' For a. somewhat different account of the origin of the passage of " wollen " into "soUen" see Stahl, Greek Syntax, p. 229, and my comments in The Year's Work for 1909. ^See Morris, Principles, p. ir. Digitized by Microsoft® A QUEST 25 hand there is a great and obvious advantage of simplicity in a theory which connects the statement maneam " I am to remain " " I must remain " (suggesting but not expressing " I will remain ") with the questions maneam ? " am I to remain ? " vin maneam 1 "do you want me to remain?", i.e., which shifts the bearing of the subjunctive from the wilier to the person whose action is willed or declared to be obligatory. On these lines taceam optnmumst (Epid. 59) means literally"! must be silent; it is best ", rather than " I will be silent ; it is best " : and in some instances the translation " let me " is more suitable than " I will ", e.g., videam modo mercimonium (Pers. 542) "just let me see the goods " {cf. 575 modo ut sciam " only let me know "), which would then fall into line with the dependent subjunctive in sine modo ego abeam (Pseud. 239), "only let me go away".^ The psycho- logical analysis of these sentences with the first person seems to be rather complicated : we have in some cases the will of the speaker appealing to the will of the person .addressed to will or to permit the action of the speaker {videam = " it is my will that yon permit me to see ") ; in some cases there is no second person present.^ But what the inflected form seems to denote is not anyone's will, but only what is incumbent on the person who is to act.^ From this point of view instances like Virg. Aen. VIII. 507 succedam castris Tyrrhenaque regna capessam (a dependent command = " bidding me to come to the camp"), and Horace Sat. II. 1.5 ne faciam, inquis, omnino versus? "do you bid me not to write verses at all ? " fall into line at once. The subjunc- tive of the I St person plural (called "hortative") may be analysed in the same way; e.g., maneamus, not " we will remain " ( = manere volumus), but, as it is generally translated, "let us remain" (^sinite ut maneamus), the speaker appealing to his hearer or hearers to permit the action of the whole company, including himself. An instance like sed opinor quiescamus (Cic. Att. ix. 6. 2) might well be translated "we must (or ought to) ^ On the psychological relation of expressions of permission to expressions of volition, see p. 29. '^Maneam (Trin. 1136) and taceam (Bacch. 1058). •' In some cases where the sentence as a whole is an expression of Resolve, the subjunctive may be well translated "I had better — " (a modification of "ought" or " must"), e.g. Bacch. 1049, Trin. 758, Phorm. 140. Digitized by Microsoft® 26 THE UNITY OF THE LATIN SUBJUNCTIVE : abstain from action, I think " ; cf., cedat opinor forum castris (Pro Mur. 14, 30).' Be this as it may, a clear advantage — and no small one — which is secured by this point of view, is that the difficulty of classify- ing interrogative subjunctives, which has given so much trouble to grammarians, at once disappears. The problem is how to connect interrogative sentences like vendam ?, vendas ?, vendat ? with the non-interrogative uses of the same words. If we say that the latter express the voHtion of the speaker, we at once get into difficulties as to the meaning of the former.^ Now the meaning which I have assigned to the non-interrogative vendam, vendas, vendat supplies the key to the questions vendam ? " am I to sell?", vendas? " are you to sell ? " (Plant. Pers. 135, 338 A), vendat ? " is he to sell ? " ^ The interrogative stands to the non- interrogative use of the subjunctive in exactly the same relation as the questions vendo ?, vendis ?, vendit ? stand to the statements ziendo, vendis, vendit. The ordinary way of getting out of the difficulty of these questions is to call the interrogative subjimctive " deliberative " or " dubitative " ; but these terms do not go to the root of the matter : the deliberation or doubt is always about what is to he done or was to he done. The sentence as a whole may express deliberation or doubt, but these terms do not touch the meaning ^On the meaning of such .subjunctives of the ist person see Elmer in Class. Rev., vol. XII (1898), pp. 199-205). It is worth noting that in Old and Middle High German instances are found of wir sollei? where the modern German would say wir luollen (or, in questions, sollcn wir?): see Grimm, Deulsches Worterhuh. ed. Heyne (1905), under sollen, p. 1480. ^ For instance if taceain (ist person) expresses volition ("I will be silent ", Bacch. 1058), cur taceani ; ought to mean " why do I will to be silent ?" — a question as to my resolve, which is, at any rate, not the ordinary meaning. 'The 2nd person of the interrogative subjunctive (unknown in Greek) is not uncommon in Latin. It would be difficult to find an instance which enquires as to the will of the speaker. Some instances might be interpreted as enquiring about the will of the peison addressed (so Morris in Amev. Journ. of Phil. XVIII, p. 287), e.g. rendas} "do you want to sell?", Pers. 135, cf. Aul. 756, Bacch. 1176, Cas. in, Merc, 567, 575, etc., so too ,juid ibi faceresi "what did you want to do there?" Merc. 884. But this interpreta- tion will not suit Epid. 693 quidagas?. Mil. ^^i, qttidni fateare ! , Pers. 638, Merc. 633; hardly Asin. 489, 700, 8l3ff. The general meaning is "Is it reasonable or right for you to — ? " For classical instances see Hor. Sat. I. I. 63, Cic. Caec. 11.30, 2nd Verr. II. 16.40, Sest. 13.29, 12.27, Mur. 9.21, SuU. 15.44, In Cat. II. 8.18— all translatable by "are you to— ?"- Digitized by Microsoft® A QUEST 27 of the mood} Nor can I accept the idea of perplexity, despair, or indignation as an ultimate analysis of the subjunctive meaning, whether in questions addressed by the speaker to himself, or in those addressed to another.' This is an attempt to express the meaning of the subjunctive in terms of feeling as distinct from thought ; but there is no such thing in any language as a mood of perplexity, or of despair, or of indignation. One might as well speak of an indicative of indignation in Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra ? : the indignation lies in the sentence as a whole and not in the mood. Other grammarians have been tempted to classify some of these interrogative sub- junctives as merely rhetorical or exclamatory, i.e., to deny that they are really interrogative at all.^ I do not see how this theory helps us as to the meaning of the mood ; and it ignores the fact that these questions, when addressed to another person, often expect and receive an ansiver : e.g. : — PH. Quid ego nunc faciam ? TR. luhe haec hinc omnia amoUrier. (Plaut. Most. 371, cf. Bacch. 857, Epid. 255f.). GE. Quid faciam ? AN. Invenias avgentum. (Ter. Phorm. 540, cf. Plaut. Mil. 459, Most. 523, Pers. 42, Poen. 537). TYN. Nos fugiamus ? Quo fugiamus ? LOR. /« patviam. (Plaut. Capt. 208 ; cf. Stich. 696). No doubt a great variety of shades of meaning may be expressed by these interrogative subjunctives ; and for certain purposes, such as the determination of the precise usage of a particular author, these distinctions ought to be observed and registered. But this ought not to blind us to the ultimate unity which lies ^ Cf. Clans. Rev. vol. XVI, p. 166, vol. XV-, p. 452, vol. XIII, pp. 68 and 414. ^ Elmer, Studies in Latin Moods and Tenses, p. 229, note, protests against subjunctives of indignation. Sjogren, on the other hand (op. cit., p. 81), speaks of perplexity, despair, etc., as the ultimate meaning of the subjunctive in some questions, a meaning closely associated with the Gemiitss/immttng of the speaker ; and he defines deliberative questions proper as expressing this meaning, usually in monologue ; e.g., quid ego agam? (Most. 378). Questions as to the wish or an/// of another person he refuses to call "deliberative " ; so too, questions as to what ought to be done, which he calls "consultative questions". This precisely reverses the proposal of Elmer, who would limit the term " deliberative " to these last two classes. 'See Schmalz, Lateinische Syntax, §198 ("rhetorical questions"). Morris treats some of these questions as exclamatory (Amer. Journ. of Phil. XVIII, p. 142^.), and describes them in some cases as "repudiating", e.g.. Most. 301. But what is the meaning of the mood} [See Morris, ibid. p. 288.] Digitized by Microsoft® 28 THE UNITY OF THE LATIN SUBJUNCTIVE: behind the diversity — the meaning expressed by the mood per se. The idea of what is to be or shall be is present in all questions of this kind, whether addressed to the speaker himself or to some other person ; and this idea lends itself admirably to the suggestion of more explicit meanings under the pressure of the various forces which come into play in particular contexts. Sometimes the situation is such as to suggest the idea of possibility, and we may therefore translate by " can " ; ^ sometimes it suggests the idea of " ought " or " should " (denoting either ethical or esthetic or logical obligation) ; sometimes the idea of reported speech lies very near.^ But if we were to try to classify these sentences in such a way as to bring out the full value of each particular instance, we should arrive at an exceedingly com.plex scheme, especially if we were to take account of supposed Indo-European origins ; whereas' from my point of view these subjunctives are one and indivisible. Madvig's name for the class as a whole describes it with perfect accuracy : " Questions as to what is or was to be done ". I add a few examples to illustrate the above varieties of meaning and to show the translations which, as a teacher, I should give to my pupils or allow them to find for themselves according to the needs of the context. Solem quis dicere falsum audeat? (Virg. Georg. I. 463) "who shall dare to call the sun false?" or "who would dare?" Conington translates " who will dare ? " Quis cladem illius noctis . . . fando explicet? (Aen. II. 361) "who shall set forth in words the ruin of that night?" or "who could . . . ?" (so Hale, Gram. § 517, under the potential subjunctive, and Conington) ; " who may . . . ? " (Mackail). Quomodo ego vivam sine te ? (Plaut. Mil. 1206) "how am I to live without you?" or "how can I . . . ?" Hunc ego non admirer? (Cic. pro Arch. 8. 18) "am I not ' This is no sufficient ground, in my opinion, for regarding the subjunctive in such cases as of "potential " origin, i.e., as having caught the infection of potentiality from an optative of the parent language. It is to Lie noted that in Greek the Subjunctive may get from the context or "situation" an implication of Possibility, e.g., in questions like ttws I'm; and riij ayopdiui ; why, then, not the Latin subjunctive in the corresponding questions qiiovwdo earn ? and cur dicain ? -See below p. 52f. Thus the negcn' of Cicero ad Att. II. 12. i (lit. "are they to deny?"), like the neget of Horace Epist. I. 7. 63 (quoted on p. 29), suggests "do you (or does someone) say that they deny?" Digitized by Microsoft® A QUEST 29 to admire this man ? " or " ought I not . . . ? " (so Hale, Gram. § 513, under Subj. of Obligation or Propriety). Neget ille mihi? Negat improbus (Hor. Epist. I. 7. 63) "is he to say me nay ? " (so Wilkins) ; or " is it proper that he should say me nay?" or "is it possible that he says me nay?" or even " do you tell me that he says me nay ? ". Kiessling calls it a subjunctive of indignant question. Egone id exprobrem? (Plaut. Most. 301) "I reproach you?" or " is it natural (is it likely) that I should reproach you ? " or even "would you have it that I reproach you?" {cf. Italian volete che . . .) = " do you talk of my reproaching you ? " Nos fugiamus ? Quo fugiamus ? (Plaut. Capt. 208) " we run away ? run away where ? " or " whither should we run away ? " Closely connected with the above sentences involving volition proper, yet differing from them, are expressions of Permission and expressions of Wish. Expressions of Permission are analogous to expressions of Resolve (B above) because no appeal is made to the will of the person addressed or spoken of, which is assumed as known. But instead of an expression of Will on the part of the speaker we have an expression of the absence of will to prevent, e.g., " you may do this if you like '', " he may do this if he likes ", " Thy will be done ". In some cases the expression of Permission relates to the absence of any law of morality to prevent. Examples in Plautus are tu tibi istos habeas turtures, pisces, avis (Most. 46) " you may keep your turtle doves, fishes and birds for yourself";' ne diiis " you need not pay " (Capt. 331, 947, Rud. 1368); Tfa/ = " so be it " in some instances («.g-.. True. 962, cf. p. 23, note); and, in subordination, quo nihil invitus addas "a sum of money to which you need not add anything against your will" (Rud. 1329), cf. Horace, Sat. II. 3. 66 accipe quod numquain reddas mihi, "here is a sum of money which you are at liberty never to repay me ".^ 1 Cf. Amph. 558, 572, 64s, Most. 50, 772, Rud. 1165, Trin. 979, True. 736, etc. ^That these instances might be translated by "shall" is shown by the following quotation : " If you are unable to raise the ;^ioo yourselves, I will advance it and you shall repay me at your leisure " (Goldsmith, Vicar of Wakefield, ch. XXI : shall repay = may repay). The imperative is also found in expressions of Permission, e.g., in the Laws of the Twelve Tables, Digitized by Microsoft® 30 THE UNITY OF THE LATliN SUBJUNCTIVE: Expressions of Wish are also analogous to expressions of Resolve, in so far as they make no direct appeal to the will of the person addressed or spoken of; but they differ from them in so far as they express not will, but that less energetic attitude of mind which is called /Soi'Aiyo-ts (as distinct from -Trpoaipeo-is) by Aristotle ; e.g. " Long may you live '', " Joy be the consequence" (Shakespeare Merch. of Ven. Ill, 2. 107), "May you go blind." ^ Wish and volition are both species of desire. In some cases they can be clearly distinguished ; thus the following sentence is distinctly an expression of wish : Quod habes ne habeas, et illuc quod non habes habeas velim (Plaut. Trin. 351); for the reading I'elim see Brix and Morris A.J. P. XVHI. p. 137. The meaning is " bad luck to you " (" may you lose your possessions and get what you have not ", i.e., poverty or bad luck). In the following Ducas, easque in maxumam malam crucem (Cas. 611) " conduct her yourself (to your house) and go to the devil ! " the second clause {easqne . . . crucem) is shown to be a wish by the adverbial phras3 which defines where the person is to go toj but the first clause (ducas), as the sense of the passage shows, expresses volition. There is an important difference between going to the next house and going to the devil ; but clearly the subjunctives cl^lcas and eas do not express it. They are identical. Tab. 1\\. \, si volet, plus data, " if he likes he may give more ". As Wordsworth says in his note (Fragments and Specimens of Early Latin, p. 510), "The mood used in all these enactments is the imperative, even where the law only means to permit, not to enforce, a given course of action ". Compare instances in classical Latin like negato sane, si voles, pecimiatii accepisse (Cic. In Verr. Actio Secunda, II., 33. 81), which I take to be permissive : cf. Blase Temp. u. Modi, p. 249. The permissive sense comes out also in the phrase esto ut libet (e.g., Hor. Sat. II. 3. 31) and in the word vel, orisjinally an imperative aivolo with the meaning "you may choose'' "you may prefer". Compare Stahl (Kritisch-hist. Synt. des griech. Verbums, 1907, p. 362) on the Greek Imperative with " concessive meaning, of what one cannot or does not wish to hinder. 1 The most mportant distinction between expre'^sions of wish and commaiids is that the latter make a direct appeal to the will of the person addressed or spoken of and the former do not : and this is the practical test by which they may be distinguished. For it is often difficult to say whether the speaker is expressing that more energetic state of mind called willing or that less intense state of mind called desire; especially in the 3rd person, e.g., edit "may he eat " or " let him eat" (" make him eat ", Wickham in his translation), Hor. Epod. III. 3. Digitized by Microsoft® A QUEST 31 If anyone doubts this, let him ask himself whether in reading his Horace he has ever drawn any conscious distinction between the Imperatives in Sed me Imperiosa trahit Proserpina. Vive valeqat (Sat. II. 5. no) and those in Vive beatus, Vive memor quam sis aevi brevis {Ibid., II. 6. g6f.). Yet the first sentence expresses Wish (as in " O King, live for ever "), the second Command (vive = esto, with a predicative adjective).' In Epist. I. 6. 66f. Vivas in amore iocisque; Vive, vale the sentence with the subjunctive expresses Volition (as perhaps also Od. III. 27. 14 Et memor nostri, Galatea, vivas = " be mindful of me ") and that with the imperatives Wish ( = " may you live, farewell"). The common formulse of greeting are expressions of Wish, whether in the imperative or in the subjunc- tive : salve, salvos sis ; vale, valeas {cf. True. 433, Cure. 588). So too in Greek xaipe, xaLpoLi (opt.) ; eijTi'xet, evrvyoiq'i ; eppiacro, iiytatve : so too in Oscan eite uus pacris "go you in peace."' So little are even we conscious of the distinction between Wish and Will in these cases that an " Imperative of Wish " has never been recognised as distinct from the Imperative of Will in any Latin or Greek grammar, so far as I know.' Yet such a meaning of the imperative is quite natural ; it is only the counterpart of what we have learned from Delbriick about the Greek Optative, viz., that it has side by side with its wishing power a " prescrip- tive " use. In the optative the wishing use is the commoner, in the imperative the commanding use : that is all. It would be easy to quote passages showing the connexion between a wish and an expression of obligation (denoting 'You cannot under ordinary circumstances command a person to continue alive, for that does not lie in his power ; but you can command him to live in a particular way (expressed here by the predicative adjective) : e.^., " Live unbruised and love my cousin" (Shakesp., Much Ado, V. 4. no). ^ It is important to notice that this use of the imperative was shared by one of the Italic dialects — languages whose relation to Latin is specially close ; see Conway, 77te Italic Dialects, vol. I. No. 216, \. 6;cf. the subj. dida ( = det), 1. 7. *A few grammars introduce "wish" under the head of "will" or " command " ; and an imperative of wish has been recognized by Postgate on Propertius I. 8. 19 (and Introd. p. ex.) and by Morris (see quotationp. 23). Digitized by Microsoft® 32 THE UNITY OF THE LATIN SUBJUNCTIVE: "ought"), e.g., Vkg. Aen. IV. 678 vocasses ; X. 854 dedissem (these passages might have either meaning); Juv. III. 197 vivendum est illic " there let me live " : in Greek E"0' axpeXe /ult] yevea- 9ai ; in German " Der Kaiser 50/^ lehen !" { = vivat). I admit that the English " shall " (unlike the German " soil ") does not lend itself to the expression of wish' ; yet enough has been said to make it certain that a modal inflexion properly denoting what shall be or is to he is capable of taking on the power of expressing wish, without the assistance of an Optative form. As Morris has admirably said, " The forces which can give an optative sense to salve or di te amabunt will explam all optative subjunctives " ^ I desire to avoid all discussion of origins ; my object is simply to point out the connexion of meaning between the different uses of the subjunctive, and their relation to the " shall " meaning. But if I were to venture on an excursion into the realm of speculation I should be inclined to infer from the similarities of the developed meanings of the subjunctive and the optative and the imperative that the inflexions of all three moods must origin- ally either have been practically synonymous, or (if in themselves meaningless) have begun their career in sentences which were practically synonymous. In Latin the subjunctive replaced the optative in nearly all forms ; in Germanic languages the optative replaced the subjunctive entirely. How could this have happened if subjunctive and optative had been fundamentally distinct in meaning ? Let us pause for a moment to take our bearings. If the above analysis is correct, we have arrived at a conclusion which is simple, but discouraging to the theory of a dual origin of subjunctive meanings. There is, strictly speaking,^ no such 'Yet Dr. Johnson on one occasion, referring to the execution of the un- fortunate Mr. Ilackman, said in a fervid tone "I Aope he sha^l find mercy" (Boswell's Life ch. LXVIII, p. 62S of Croker's ed. ). — I recently read the following inscription on a Swiss house (at Balen, in the Saas valley) : "Jesus, Maria und Joseph so/Zen Beschlitzer dieses Haases sein ' — an expression of wish. Many other German expressions might be quoted in which so/kn is used in place of the more common mogcii ; e.g. " Gott so/l mich strafen, wenn das nicht wahr ist " ; " Der Teufel soli's holen." ^American Journal of Philology, XVIII p. 395. ^ Such terms as "subjunctive of command" are, however, convenient ex- pressions for practical purposes, as shorthand formulte for the cumbrous " subjunctive in sentences expressing command", etc. Digitized by Microsoft® A QUEST 33 thing as a "subjunctive of volition" or a "subjunctive of wish'', and never has been ; for the subjunctive in itself never expresses and, so far as we know, never has expressed the full meaning of will or wish. When we speak of a " subjunctive of will " we are reading into the mood a meaning which is really expressed by the sentence as a whole, of which the modal inflexion is only a part. It follows that we cannot, properly speaking, trace either the history or the pedigree of a "subjunctive of will" or a "sub- junctive of wish ". What we can do, and what historical syntax really does, is to trace the development of certain types of sentence, in which the subjunctive or the optative mood plays a prominent role, but is not the only dramatis persona. And in proportion as we realise this we get to see that the role of the mood has not changed so much as it seems to have done at first sight. How far an association had sprung up between the mood and the meaning of particular types of sentence as wholes, in such a way that the latter may be said to have been transferred to or acquired by the former, is a question to which no exact answer is possible. But I readily admit that to the Romans, as to us at first sight, the whole meaning may have seemed to be localized in the modal inflexion. Yet it was not really so. If you ask an Englishman of to-day what is the meaning of " should " in the sentence "If my sight fail not, you should be lord ambassador" (quoted above, p. ii, note), he will probably say that it expresses the idea of logical necessity (" you must be "), as in "By heaven, that should be my handkerchief" (Othello IV. i. 164). Yet this special meaning is due to the context; takeaway the words " if my sight fail not ", and what remains would natur- ally mean something quite diff'erent (e.g., " it would be right for you to be lord ambassador "). " That should be my handkerchief " gets its special meaning partly from the exclamation " by heaven ", partly from the fact that the idea of ethical obligation would be absurd in talking about the ownership of this handkerchief. The hearers know the story. V. — Other Categories of the Suljunctive. Considerations of space make it necessary to deal much more briefly with the remaining categories of the subjunctive. In some cases it will be sufficient, if I have carried the reader with me so 3 Digitized by Microsoft® 34 THE UNITY OF THE LATIN SUBJUNCTIVE : far, to give a tfere indication of the way in which the use of the mood may be traced to the idea of obligation, as defined above. And some less important usages I shall omit altogether. (i) As to the "potential subjunctive"' I have already shown how the idea of what may possibly happen or can happen arises in particular contexts (pp. i^f., 28); though the cases in which such translations are necessary are very few.'^ It may be added that the gerundive, which properly denotes what shall be or is to be done, sometimes comes to denote what cati be done — a meaning which nobody would regard as lying in the gerundive formation itself: e.g., homo non fereiidiis " an intolerable person " On the proper meaning of the gerundive see p. 8 note. Even licet "it is lawful" and nefas est "it is unlawful" come to denote possibility and impossibility in some contexts ; e.g. licet enim sine Inxuria agere festum diem " there is nothing to prevent one from spending a holiday without self indulgence " (Seneca, Epist. 18. 4); quidqiiid corrigere est nefas (Horace, Od. I. 24. 20). Cicero actually uses nefas as a translation of a^vvarov in Timaeus II. 6.' (2) The " prospective subjunctive " clearly stands in a very close relation to the use of the mood discussed in section II. In a sentence like ubi mortuos sis, ita sis tit nomen duet the subordinate clause is prospective, while the principal clause denotes "natural necessity" or "determined futurity" (see pp. 5-8). But obviously only a thin line of demarcation separates these two meanings ; and moreover both of them are due in part to the context ; and both are traceable to the idea of obligation (as defined above). The prospective subjunctive is essentially a 5/jfl//-subjunctive ; its natural translation is by "shall" in all 'I am using "potential"' in the narrower and what many scholars regard as the proper sense of the term ; not in that wider sense in which it includes the ?<'0? too panca quae ad ipsas lilteras pcrtiiteaitt " which shall be pertinent", Cic. Phil. XIV. 2. 6: aliqidd ijuod ad rem perliiual. Pro Rose. Amer. iS. 152, might be translated by a present indie, but it suggests the intention of Erucius. (" is 10 l.e pertinent"). Contrast the indie, in omnia quae ad rem ttrtiiieiif Pro Cluent. 30. 82. Digitized by Microsoft® A QUEST 37 that you shall not know yourself"; ita ie aliorum miserescat, ne lis alios misereat (Trin. 343, cf. Merc. 146) "in such a way that others shall not pity you "} In an instance hke the latter the meaning is clearly not that of purpose ("in order that others may not pity you ") : yet many instances show how near the consecutive and the final meaning are to one another,''' e.g., delegisti hos homines ut Romae manereni (final) and delegisti qui Romae manerent (consecutive). The former denotes the purpose of the chooser, the latter the destination of the chosen ; but purpose is after all only a kind of destination — destination by the mind of a personal agent ; and these two ideas find their unity in the translation " should ", which is at least possible in both cases. In the instances quoted above the principal clause itself refers to the future, and this might be supposed to account for the shall- meaning of the consecutive subjunctive. But in instances like' the following the principal clause has no future reference : ita paravi copias. . . ut facile vincam (Plaut. Pseud. 579ff.) "I have organized my forces in such a way that I shall be easily victorious," not " that I am easily victorious " ; qtiid tandem admisi in me, ut loqui non aiideam ? (Men. 712) "what crime have I committed that I should not dare to speak?" not "that I do not dare to speak"; non videor mihi sarcire posse aedes meas quin totae perpetuo ruant (Most. i46f.) " I think I cannot repair my house in such a way that it shall not tumble down from top to bottom," not " that it does not tumble down ". In many instances, it is true, an indicative may be used in the English translation ; but a comparison with the above instances ' I take the following figures from Dr. Thomas' dissertation (p. 49 n. ), though I have arranged the instances differently. The total number of consecutive clauses in Plautus depending on nt, ne or quin (excluding object and subject clauses, and " stipulative '' clauses, such as Rud. 929, 1 128) is about 112. Of these 66 depend on principal clauses which refer to the future (including those which contain an expression of command or resolve or wish or demand or obligation with clear future reference). The remaining 46 depend on a principal clause which does not refer to the future ; but of these, one half (23) cannot be translated by a present or past tense of the indicative in English ; for instances see the next paragraph above. \Ut non occurs 7 times : ne 6 times, Bacch. 224, Capt. 738, Cure. 29, Merc. 146, Trin. 343, Pseud. 1I46 (with quidem) ; ttt ne in Capt. 267, Merc. 960 (?).] ^ In Pliny Epist. I. 20. 8 ne dubitare possimus is "consecutive" in sense { = ut non d. p.); in Cic. Fam. VI. 7. 6 ita corrigas ne mihi noceat, Hor. A. P. I5if., etc., no line can be drawn between purpose and result. Digitized by Microsoft® 38 THE UNITY OF THE LATIN SUBJUNCTIVE : is sufficient to show that it does not render the full force of the Latin subjunctive : adeon me fuisse fnngum, ut qui illi crederem 1 (Bacch. 283) "to think that I was such a dolt as to trust him (that I should trust him) ", rather than " that I trusted him " ; nee recedit loco, quin statimrem gevat (Amph. 239) "nor does anyone yield his ground in such a way as not to fight steadily," rather than "in such a way that he does not fight steadily." A comparison of two passages of' the Poenulus is instructive; in 1 186 lit deceat may be said to contain a statement of fact; but in 1202 it cannot, because the principal clause is negative. It befits the girls to be castae ; it does not befit them to do wrong. The s/w//-meaning in these consecutive subjunctives is not a mere expression of futurity. Its real nature seems to me to illustrate in a striking way the meaning of the subjunctive mood which it is the object of this paper to establish ; and from this 'point of view what looks at first sight like an irrationality of the Latin language — almost amounting to a confusion of the ideas of purpose and result — turns out to be a highly logical and expressive form of speech. The consecutive subjunctive has been defined as marking that the antecedent action or quality and its consequence stand in the relation of cause and effect.^ To express the idea of a " causal nexus " what more suitable means could be found than the use of a mood which represents the effect " sub specie necessitatis ", as something bound to happen, something duc7 The idea of "natural necessity" is included in the idea of "obligation", as defined above (see p. 19). There is, then, an important difference between the Latin consecutive subjunctive and the indicative of consecutive clauses in Greek and modern languages : the former marks the consequence as an effect due to a cause and only implies its actuality (in cases where the effect is a fact) ; the latter expresses fact and only implies the relation of effect to cause in which it stands to its antecedent. Thus the translation by an indicative in English, idiomatically correct as it is in many instances, never does full justice to the Latin idiom ; the real representative of the Latin consecutive subjunctive is the infinitive with uxm in Greek and •So Mr. Rnby, Latin Graiiiinar, § 1678. This view has been recently enforced by Dr. Rudolf ilethner in Netie Jahi-biifher fiir das klassische AUertum, 1909, pp. 185-208, though he regards the subjunctive as " futuristic '' and calls it Modus der Enaarliing. Digitized by Microsoft® A QUEST 39 "as" in English, a construction in which the verb-noun retains its original datival meaning (" for — ing ") and is thus qualified to express a tendency} To take one of the stock instances of school grammars, the full meaning of tanta vis pyobitatis est, ut earn etiam in hoste diligamus is " so great is the power of honesty that we are hound to love {must love, cannot help loving) it even in an enemy ", " it is so great as to make us love it even in an enemy"; no doubt the writer also means that we do so love it, but this is only implied, not expressed. Similarly in past time: [Milites] ita disposuit, ut peditiim auxilia mediani aciem firmarent (Tac. Agr. 35. t) " he so disposed his forces that the auxiliary infantry should fovin a strong centre", implying but not expressing that they did form a strong centre.^ In one case, indeed, the idea oi fact finds expression. Where the perfect subjunctive is used in dependence on a tense of past time in the principal clause, there is superadded to the idea of an effect (expressed by the subjunctive mood) the idea of a fact ;, this is conveyed by the perfect tense, which by putting the consequence into relation to the time of speaking necessarily puts it to some extent out of relation to its cause : e.g., Asiam sic ohiit, ut in ea neque avavitiae neque luxuriae vestigium reliquerit (Cic. Pro Mur. 9. 20) " in such a way as to have left ( = that he has left or that he left ") in it no evidence of either cupidity or self indulgence ". This construction is sometimes extended to effects which stand in only a remote relation to their causes : e.g., Erat . . . ita non timidus ad mortem, ut in acie sit ob rem publicam intevfectus (Cic. de Fin. II. 1 Compare the Latin digiius notari (Hor. Sat. I. 3. 2/i,) = dignus qui noteUir, and the English "he is old enough to know better," German " er ist alt genug um das besser zu wissen ". German sometimes employs a subjunctive which is strictly analogous to the Latin subjunctive, e.g., " Es vergeht kein Tag, dass wir uns nicht sdhen ". ^Compare Gildersleeve and Lodge, Latin Grammar § 551. ' In either case the action is brought into relation to the speaker or writer, being marked as either completed at or having taken place prior to the time of speaking: of. Draeger, Histor. Synt. der lat. Spr. L 2. § 133. The nearest parallel in Plautus is Persa 56 (with qiiin) : contrast the imperf. subj. in Cist. 18, which puts the consequence into relation to the verb of the principal clause [fiiit). Compare also the perf. subj. depending on a tense of present time in Amph. 1054, Bacch. 1012, Cas. 201 ; oderim and meminerim are, of course, equivalent to present suj^junctives (with clear iAa//-meaning : Capt. 66, Cist. II, Trin. 683). Digitized by Microsoft® 40 THE UNITY OF THE LATIN SUBJUNCTIVE : 2 0. 63) "he was so little afraid of death that he died in battle for his country "- His fearlessness was not the immediate cause of his death in battle ; but it was the cause of his fighting for his country, and this caused his death in battle.' What really corresponds in Latin to the indicative construction of Greek and modern languages is a combination of coordinate clauses, such as the following: (i) magna est vis probitatis ; ergo earn etiam in hoste diligimus : (2) venttim gaudeo ecastor ad te ; ita hodie hie acceptae sitmus suavihus modis (Plaut. Cist. 17): (3) ita me occursant multae ; meminisse hand possum (id., Mil. 1047). That the consecutive subjunctive is not an entirely new kind of subjunctive is admitted by everybody ; ^ but it need not always express exactly the same shade of s/za//-meaning. In particular contexts it may vary just like the independent subjunctives discussed in sections II, III, IV : thus in Conficiet iam hie te verbis, tit tu eenseas non Pseudolum sed Soeratem tecum loqui (Plaut. Pseud. 464^) the eenseas is like the independent eenseas of Cas. 562 (quoted on p. 14); the mavelis of Pseud. 140 perhaps denotes conditioned futurity ; the quin roges of Epid. 437 is clearly related to the interrogative quin rogem? of Mil. 426; and so forth. The relation of the consecutive subjunctive to other subjunctives is also shown by the occasional use of ne in Plautus instead ut non ; e.g., Trin. 343, quoted on p. 37, Bacch. 224, Merc. 146, where no emendation is necessary. This usage throws light in particular on the relation of consecutive clauses to object clauses depending on verbs of "effecting" and other verbs of " effort " : compare efficiam posthac ne qucmquam voce lacessas (Virg. Eel. 3. 51, "that you shall not challenge") with rerum obscuritas facit ut non intellegatuv oratio (Cic. De Fin. II. 5. 15, "causes his language not to be under- stood"). Clauses depending on expressions meaning "it is brought about by fate or fortune or nature or custom ", such as accidit, natura fevt, mos est, locus est, tempiis est, fit, est are clearly akin to these, though the subjunctive of the clause de- pending on them seems at first sight to denote pure fact. 1 This and other instances are quoted by Methner in the article referred to above, but he explains them differently. 2 Professor Hale traces it to his "subj. of ideal certainty" (= conditioned futurity). Digitized by Microsoft® A QUEST 4-1 (4) The two subjunctives of conditional sentences. (a) The subjunctive of the if-clause is easily traceable. A sentence like " A shall be B ", whether independent or depen- dent, naturally develops a postulative meaning — " let A be B ", " supposing A to be B " ; the imperative is often used in the same way.' The word si (literally " so " — the same word as appears, with the demonstrative suffix ce, in sic) is not necessary to the sense, and is indeed often absent, e.g., Trin. 441, True. 571, Hor. Od. IV. 4. 65 . And this form of speech readily lends itself to a suggestion of reserve on the part of the speaker, which in some cases is equivalent to an implication of tmreality in the supposition which it makes. " Supposing A to be B " suggests the idea ' but I do not mean to say that it is (or will be) ', or even (in old Latin) ' but it isn't ', e.g., iu si hie sis, " if you were in my place " (Terence, Andria 310). The implication of a direct negative is, however, much commoner in the past tenses (esset and fuisset) : "A should have been B " = " supposing A to have been B" = " if A had been B (which it wasn't, or isn't) ". ^ But the implica- ^e.g., Tolle hanc opinioneTJi, luctum sustuleris {Cic. Tusc. I. 13. 30), Cras petito, dabitur (Plaut. Merc. 770) ; compare Argentum des, abdticas mulierem (Pseud. 1015). Esio sometimes means "supposing that it is so" (postulative), as distinct from "granted that it is so" (concessive) ; e.g., Horace Sat. I. 6. 19 (with Kiessling's punctuation): namque esto : pofulus Laevino mallet, etc. "for, supposing that I and men hke me did indulge the passion for external dis- tinctions, the people would prefer", etc. ^ The use of the past imperfect subjunctive in protases referring to present time is clearly a comparatively late development. In Plautus this tense refers to past time far more commonly than it does in classical Latin. The earlier meaning of a sentence like si haberem, darein was "supposing me to have had it (postulative of the past), 1 was bound to give it ", hence " I should have given it" • thus decs credo voluisse : nam ni vellent, iion fieret "for if they had not willed it, it would not have happened " (Aul. 742) ; nisi te amarem pluruinuvi, non facerem " if I had not loved you very much, I should not have done it" (Amph. 525^, see note of Palmer) ; ad focuin si adesses, non fissile haberes caput (Aul. 439/.) ; etc. How easily this form of speech comes to refer to present time is shown by Mil. 1262 videres pol, si atnares, which might be translated either " you would see him, if you were in love "or " you would have seen him, if you had been in love "- Exactly the same thing has happened in the case of the so-called " conditional " in the Romance languages (e.g., faimer-ais, originally "I had to love", amare habebam). These forms originally expressed a past obligation or necessity, but they have come to be used to denote, among other things, (i) futurity from a past point of view, e.g., il ripondit qtiil viendrait k lendemain, (ii) conditioned futurity (with reserve) from a present point of view, e.g., je sortirais s'ilfaisait beau. Digitized by Microsoft® 42 THE UNITY OF THE LATIN SUBJUNCTIVE: tion of the past tenses does not always amount to as much as this ; they sometimes merely suggest reserve : e.g., si idfumque pfoharet, ui prohat " if he approved of both definitions, as he actually does" (Cic. de Fin. II. 6. i8), where the parenthetical clause iit prohat goes on to afifirm the reahty of the condition which has just been expressed in the more guarded form si probaret, "if he approved (which I do not say that he does)". Similarly si placeret stto more loqui in the previous clause. When Horace says censorque moveret Appius ingenuo si non essem patre natus (Sat. I. 6. 21), he cannot mean to imply that he (the poet) actually is or was the son of an " ingenuus " Similarly, with an indefinite subject, qui videret, equum Troianum introductum diceret ("anyone who had seen it" = " if anyone had seen it", Cic. Verr. IV. 23. 52) and mirareiuy- qtii turn cerneret (Livy XXXIV. 9. 4) do not imply that the indefinite subject referred to by qui did not actually see the things in question. No more does the English past subjunctive in " if it were so, it was a grievous fault " (Shakesp., Jul. Caes., III. 2. 84) imply that it was not so. The implication of all these past tenses is precisely analogous in past time to that of the ordinary future condition with the present subjunctive : si venias " if you were to come " or " should you come " (implying only " but I do not mean to say that you will come " — a proviso to guard the speaker against being misunderstood to imply that the condition will actually be realised).^ This, I take it, is all that is essential in these " postulative " subjunctives ; and it is a force that is easily traceable to the shall-meaning. Si venias finds its exact English equivalent in a passage of Shakespeare : ORL. And whither, Adam, wouldst thou have me go ? ADAM. No matter whither, so you come not here. ( As You Like It, II. 3. 30) Note so = Latin si : come is a subjunctive ( = shall come). (b) The subjunctive of the principal clauSe (expressing what would he or would have heen) has given much trouble to grammarians, as is proved by the plethora ol names which have been applied to it. It has been called "potential", "hypo- thetical", "subjunctive of contingent futurity ", " subjunctive of conditioned futurity" (Delbriick), and "subjunctive of ideal 1 Cf. Plaul. Capt. 308. For instances with an indicative in the principal clause see my note on Rud. 1021 and Blase, Studien und Kritikcn II. p. 38f. Digitized by Microsoft® A QUEST 43 certainty ''. I believe that the true key to it is to be found in the idea of " ought " (the same " ought " as in fvatev siet, quoted p. ii). Originajly these sentences expressed the idea of a logical " ought ", marking the conclusion as a necessary con- sequence of the premises : " supposing A to be B, C otight to be (or must be) D ". This is surely a very natural form of speech to express the idea of a logical conclusion — an inference of thought. No doubt the necessity of the conclusion may be implied with- out the use of the subjunctive mood : " if A is B, C is D ". But the difference is just that in the latter case the necessity of the conclusion is only implied by the sentence as a whole, in the former it is expressed by the mood. Note that where the verb itself expresses the idea of ' ought ' or ' must ' {oportet, debeo, etc.) the subjunctive mood is unnecessary; and that the 'conditional ' of the Romance languages originally expressed necessity (aimerais ^amave habebam). In English we often get a " should " (second or third person), which betrays the real origin of the wonld- meaning : e.g., "in the course of justice none of us should see salvation" (Shakesp., Merch. of Ven., IV. i. 200) = " if justice were done, none of us ought (logically) to see salvation ".' But we are not limited to a logical'" ought ". In some cases the sentence expresses what is determined by a law of nature, or ethics or propriety, or by some human will, e.g. — ter si resurgat murus aeneus auctore Phoebo, ter pereat meis excisus Argivis, ter uxor capta virum puerosque ploret (Hor. Od. III. 3. 65-68) "Thrice it shall perish", "thrice the captive wife shall mourn"; this is either what is destined {cf. Cowper's "Rome ' Cf. ibid. II. 4. 10 {shall seem).. In current English compare : "They are not such good shots as people think, else they s/zsz etc. see Giles, Manual of Comparative Philology, p. 447 (2nd ed.). •'The mutually destructive views that this kindcffut. indie, has (i) a less strong (2) a stronger meaning than the pres. sulij. are neither of them supported by the eviilence. ''I called attention to this meaning in my note (edition of 1891), where I quoted'other in>tances ; add Most. 75 mihi iion fades moram "you shall not waste my time ", Ibid. 229 venibit " he shall be put up for sale". These are not "jussive" in the proper sense of the term. ]n expressions of this class ihe fut. indie, has almost ousted the subj. from use : cf. p. 23 n., Addendum p. 60. Digitized by Microsoft® 48 THE UNITY OF THE LATIN SUBJUNCTIVE: be done, e.g., uhi ego ero ? "where am I to be?" (Plaut. Most. 392), quid me fiet nnnciam ? {Ibid. 1166; cf. Rud. 1893, where I have quoted other instances; Ibid. 1270, Men. 198); nil ergo optabunt homines P (Juv. X. 346). See also p. 15, note i. (ii) The Romance future indicatives are historically expressions of obligation or necessity: j'aimer-ai "I have to love" { = amave habeo), tu aimer-as " you have to love ", etc.^ It seems probable, then, that the Indo-European parent language had originally no future tense as distinct from the subjunctive ; that the whole family was, in fact, in the same position as the Germanic branch, in which the future meaning is expressed either by an optative (as, for the most part, in Gothic) or by a periphrasis. The meaning of pure futurity which certain forms came to express is to be regarded as due to a modification of an earlier subjunctive or optative meaning. (5) CM«-constructions. — The subjunctive with cum has long been a problem of Latin syntax ; for neither the temporal nor the causal meaning of the conjunction justifies the use of the sub- junctive mood.^ But here, as elsewhere, Plautine syntax gives us a clue. It is a remarkable fact that in Plautus cum, whether temporal or causal, as a rule takes the indicative ; and that where the present subjunctive is used, as it is in many instances, it almost always has some clear meaning of its own. Often it is prospective, e.g., ut, quom videat, gaudeat (Asin. 185, see my note on Most. 148, 2nd. ed.); sometimes it is postulative (i.e. identical with the subjunctive in si-clauses), e.g., quom patrem adeas postulatum, puero sic dicit pater (Bacch. 442 ; that this 2nd person is indefinite makes no difference); credin pudeat quom antumes ? (Capt. 961, 2nd pers. not indefinite);^ some- times it may be regarded as both prospective and postulative; e.g., neque is quom roget, quid loquar cogitatumst (Merc. 344). The concessive meaning is merely a variety of the postulative; e.g., dubium habebis etiam, sancte quom iurem tibi (Capt. 892), ^ C/. Vivere ergo habei ^ '-jl/wj/ you live?" (Tertullian, Z>« 7(&/. 5). ^ Professor Hale pointed out long ago that as quia and (jiiod in the sense of "because'' regularly take the indicative, it is impossible to refer the sub- junctive with aim to the idea of cause. See his Vit .■■constructions : their history and functions ^-ixt I, 1887, p. 3; Part II, 1889, pp. 77-81). ^ The qtiod egofatear of the preceding clause is also postulative : " if I con- fess a thing". Digitized by Microsoft® A QUEST 49 " if I swear " or " although (=even if) I svrear ". Where the causal meaning is found, it may, I think, be traced to the postulative, e.g., nequeo quin fleam quom abs te. abeam (Mil. 1343 a): cf. the classical use of siqtiidem (lit. "if indeed") in the sense of "seeing that". Of the ten examples of the past imperf. subj. quoted by Ltibbert (Beitrage zur Tempus und Moduslehre, 1870), three are prospective (Amph. 128, Bacch. 955, Poen. 681; three are postulative (Bacch. 285, 433, Rud. 1 1 24); and the only representatives of the familiar classical construction of "temporal cum with the imperf. subj." are True. 162 and 381, in which the reading is dottbtfrl, and Merc. 980 : for Merc. 70 is a case of reported speech. Of the five pluperfect subjunctives after quom, three are prospective (Asin. 442, Epid. 356, Rud. 534), one is adversative (Mil, 391), one is probably corrupt (Asin. 395). There is not a single example of the classical " temporal cum with the pluperf. subj." ' It appears, then, that the use of the subjunctive in c«w-clauses, as we know it in Cicero and Csesar, is a comparatively late development of Latin syntax. It may be regarded as a stylistic peculiarity of the classical period; at any rate it cannot be regarded as inherent in the Latin language itself. And even in classical Latin I agree with the remark of Professor Reid ^ that cum with the subjunctive never has in Cicero quite the same force as cum with the indicative. It generally betrays traces of a postulative meaning : quae cum ita sint " this being so", rovrwv o-uTws ix°^'''^^ '> '^""^ Athenis essem "being at Athens'', 'A^ijvTjcrii/ &v. These cum-clauses denote something less ex- plicit than, " because these things are so", " when 1 was at Athens". Cum with the subjunctive is here exactly equivalent to a participle ; and the participle, while not excluding the idea of fact, does not 'express it. Rather it means "given the existence of these things", "given my presence at Athens", "under the circumstances of my being at Athens". The 'The above figures are confirmed by Dr. Henry Thomas' recent dissertation entitled A catalogue raisonni of the Subjunctive in Plautus ; in support of the theory of the unity of origin of the Latin Subjunctive (1909). I hope that this valuable treatise, which contains a classification of all the subjunctives in Plautus, will be published by the University of Birmingham. It will provtr very useful to students of Old Latin syntax, whether they agree with ils mai.i contention or not. 2 On Cicero, Pro Sulla, 5.14. A Digitized by Microsoft® so THE UNITY OF THE LATIN SUBJUNCTIVE: meaning is, in fact, similar to that of the postulative esto referred to on p. 41, note i. The equivalence of mm with the subjunctive to a participle forces itself upon the attention of every teacher of Latin com- position ; it is a standing substitute for a perfect participle active and a present participle passive in Latin, and it frequently represents a present participle active. These facts have been fully recognised, so far as " cum temporale " is concerned, by many/grammarians; e.g., Roby, Lat. G/fl«.§§ 1720, 1722; Hale, Ctim-constructions, pp. 184-192 ; Gildersleeve-Lodge, Lat. Gram. §585 R. (comparing Cic. Tusc. II. 15. 35 with II. 22. 53), §438 R. ; Lane, Lat. Gram. §1873; Lebreton, Etudes p. 337; and the matter has recently been clinched by Gafifiot, Pour le vrai Latin (1909), pp. 149-154, who quotes a number of passages in which Cicero, translating from the Greek, actually employs cum ■with the subjunctive to represent Greek participles, e.g., cum iam inveneris = ivp6vTa (Timaeus, 2. 6), cum constituisset = fSovXrjdeL's {ib. 3. 9), cum esset = ovarii (ib. 12. 44) ; the instances include three of the perf subj. Can anyone doubt that the pres. subj. has a similar effect in passages like De Orat. I. 28. 129 cum dicat "saying" (quoted by Hale), De Fin. II. 21. 68 ctim disseras (unnecessarily suspected by Madvig), ibid. v. 5. 12 cum quaeratur, V. 12. 34 cum sint, De Rep. III. 13. 23 cum teneant (MSS.), Pro Leg. Man. 6. 16 cum adsint, etc., Hor. Sat. I. 3. 121 cum dicas, Epist. I. 16. 69 cum possis, Tac. Dial. 5, line 10 cum non possit? To attempt to distinguish some of these instances as conditional, others as causal, others as temporal is like attempting to bisect water. In calling this usage 'postulative' I mean to say that it is analogous to a usage of the subjunctive which is found in certain clauses of condition accompanied by an indicative in the principal clause. Only instead of the meaning " supposing that " or "provided that" we have the meaning "bearing in mind that," " always remembering that '' : and the construction is posttatic as well as protatic. This postulative origin explains how this construction comes to be used in an adversative sense — a use clearly related to the conditional (although = even if). But obviously these causal and adversative ideas are mere matters of the context; for neither the conjunction nor the subjunctive n.uod is capable of expressing them; it would be strange indeed Digitized by Microsoft® A QUEST SI if they could express such opposite ideas as " owing to the fact that " and "in spite of the fact that." Quom, the older form of cum, may be in origin simply an accusative of the stem quo- (neuter), like quod (singular) and quia (plural). That it is not limited to a temporal meaning is shown by many extant uses, among which is its use in sentences which are fully conditional, and also in instances like turn cum adipiscaris "in case you should get" (Cic De Off. III. 12. 49). The hteral meaning oi cum is "in which case'' (posttatic) or "in case", "whereas" (protatic);' and the difference between ctim with the subjunctive and c%im with the indicative — a construction which is far commoner in classical Latin than is generally supposed — is parallel to that between quamquam est = " however much it is " and quamvis sit " however much it be," lit. "however much you wish it shall be" or "be it however much you wish." (6) The subjunctive of dependent questions and exclamations as to a matter of fact stands on a different footing from that of cum-c\aMses ; it is half established in Plautine Latin, where are found a multitude of examples like — Contempla, amabo, mea Scapha, satin haec me vestis deceat. (Most. 166)^ On the other hand the fact that the indicative is also very common, and that where the subjunctive is used it often has some proper meaning of its own ° debars us from regarding the ordinary classical usage as inherent in the Latin language, as such. Plenty of examples are to be found in which the development in the direction of meaninglessness may be traced : e.g. Mirari nolim vos quapropter Juppiter Nunc histriones curet (Amph. 87). The reason why the god should care for actors is the reason why he does care for them. We have here a coincidence of the ^ Zimmermann [1st die Partikel quom urspriinglich nur Zeitpariikel gewesen? 1884) calls the original sense of quom "explicative." The English when is often not strictly temporal, but rather (liUe the German wenn} conditional : e.g. " When a line is drawn bisecting an angle of an equilateral triangle, it will also bisect the opposite side." ^In Most. 199 and 969 and several other instances the indie, and the subj. stand side by side without difference of meaning. On the indie, see n. on Rud. 356. 'E.g. Amph. 852 numquid causam dicis quin multem "why I should not punish", Epid. 161 vide quid agas "what you are to do", etc. Digitized by Microsoft® 52 THE UNITY OF THE LATIN SUBJUNCTIVE: shottld-meaning (cf. pp. 12, 13) with the meaning of fact. And it may be that when the edge of the subjunctive had come to be blunted in examples of this kind a practice sprang up of extending the mood to cases where the sAfl//-meaning was no longer in place. But instances like the following — MEG. Quid est? EVC. Quid sit me rogitas? (Aul. 550 /.) are more obviously related to certain independent questions discussed in the next section : " what should it be ? do you ask me?"; cf. quid hoc sit hominis ? quoted on p. 12. (7) The subjunctive of oratio obliqua was already developed in Plautine Latin, though, as might be expected, there are not many instances of the construction in comedy. A long passage of oratio obliqua occurs in the Mercator, lines 48-79 and 83-86, containing subjunctives in lines 52 timerent (command), 55 quirem (relative clause), 57 invenisset (relative clause), 60 pudevet (if-clause) and ne Inheret (command or expression of ■obligation or propriety), 61 excesserit (temporal clause), 67 spectavisset (temporal clause), 70 diceret (temporal clause with quom), 73 recesset (temporal clause), 75 tolleret (relative clause), 78 haberet (relative clause), 78 peperisset after dum ("till he should have\ . . "), 79 decevet (comparative clause), forem (if- clause), 83 velit (if-clause), 84 obsequar (temporal clause). If these subjunctives be examined, it will be found that several of them have proper subjunctive meaning, and therefore call for no explanation. The fact that they occur in reported speech makes no difference to their nature. The only difficulty arises in those that imply fact (e.g., postquam excesserit 61, nt spectavisset 67, quom diceret 70). The origin of this use of the subjunctive must, like that of other subjunctives implying fact, be found in some other use of the mood; and I believe that here too the shall-m.ea.mng is fairly adequate. A clue is given by a certain usage of the German verb sollen and the English should and the French ' conditionnel ' in independent questions. Thus Tun illam vendas ? (Pers. 135) "are you to sell her?" (here = " is it reasonable that you~should sell her?" see p. 26 n. 3), echoing the words of the last speaker {sine me illam vender e, 134), inevitably suggests the meaning "Do you, mean to say that you will sell her?", "Do you talk (or think) of selling her?" Cf. Aul. 756, Merc. 567, Mil. 496/., Most. 578/., 619/., Pseud. 288, etc. In the following instances the interrogative subjunctive ■echoes a statement or question as to a matter of fact : — Digitized by Microsoft® A QUEST 53 LOR. At fugam fingitis. TYN. Nos fugiamus? Quo fugianms} (Capt. 208) ALC. Cur istuc, mi vir, ex ted audio ? AMPH. Vir ego tuos sim? Ne me appella, falsa, falso nomine (Amph. 813 f.) PHILE. Quor exprobras ? PHILO. Egone id expyobrem? (Most. 301; cf. 1017). "We run away? whither should we run away?", "I your husband?", " I reproach you?" might be represented in German by " wir sollten davonlaufen? wohin soUten wir laufen?" " ich sollte dein Mann sain ? ", " ich sollte dir Vorwurfe machen ? " AR. Etiam huic credis ? HE. Quid ego credam huic ? (Capt. 556) might be translated in French " Qu'est-ce que je croirais done d'apr^s vous ? " In such instances the sAo«/(^-subjunctive has passed into a means of representing the words or thought of another person : nos fugiamus? "should we run away?" or "would you have us run away?" = "would you have it that we shall run away?" " do you talk of our running away ? " The transference of this idea to the domain of relative clauses may be illustrated by Asin. 568ff, True. 383, etc. ^ ^ 1 owe this latter suggestion to Dr. Thomas' dissertation, where several other instances are quoted. I append a note on the modern German use of ick soll= " I am said to,'' and a certain dialectical usage of the English should to mark reported speech. (i) We find- in German, since about 1700 A.D., a use of sollen which expresses the full-blown meaning "to be said," e.g., Herzog Johann soil irren im G«i}«>^« (Schiller, Tell V. l). The precise origin of this usage is perhaps not known, but I am delighted to find it explained in Grimm's Deutsche! Worterbuch (under SOLLEN, p. 1484) on precisely the same principle as I have applied to the Latin subjunctive above. " The jo// expresses a fact which exists not in itself but only in the opinion or statement of people in general or particular people, and is therefore as it were dependent on their will : er soil ja verlobi sein = man will ( = behauptet, glaubf) dass er verlobt ist." This, translated word for word into English, runs — "he shall be betrothed = people will have it ( = maintain, believe) that he is betrothed.'' (2) Dr. Henry Bradley calls my attention to the fact that in certain dialects Digitized by Microsoft® 54 THE UNITY OF THE LATIN SUBJUNCTIVE : VI. Conclusion. I have now passed in review all the chief categories of subjunctive usage ; and, if I have succeeded in showing how they are bound together by a common element of meaning, it is unnecessary to discuss usages of minor importance. That no entirely new kind of subjunctive makes its appearance in these latter cases, all grammarians are agreed.^ According to the. theory which I have set forth the subjunctive mood stands midway between the imperative and the indicative, showing affinities to both. It resembles the imperative in that it expresses ObHgation (in the sense defined above, p. 19); it resembles the indicative in that it may stand in Statements and Questions.^ Its use in expressions of Command has been shown to be a natural development of its use in Statements (p. 24). The advantage of this point of view when we come to deal with certain dependent uses has been pointed out (p. 36). of English j^OTi/rf is still used to express reported speech ; he writes "I first heard this idiom about 1S75 from a person (of some education and not markedly dialectal in speech) who had lived many years in Sheffield, but who was a native of Chesterfield, some 12 miles south. It puzzled me very much, but I afterwards heard a good many e.xample.'; at Sheffield. One was something like this : Jife goes about telling people the parson should say Pvi a thief. I have met with a similar use in the 17th century, I think in Bacon." Further examples are given in Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, vol. \. (1904), generally in the form should say ; thus / believe that the doctor should say that it would go hard with him (Somersetshire) ; Mr. — come to me and zaid hoiv you should zay how I hacCn a-got no right there (Devonshire). * Professor Hale describes many constructions of the subjunctive as of "composite origin" or "'due to the influence of other constructions" (Grammar, p. 258). ^ The imperative is not incapable of standing in a question, as is proved by Greek. And I regard the Latin construction o( qui/t with the imperative as interrogative; e.g., quin aspice? " why not look ?" (Plaut. Most. 172). See my note in the 2nd ed. of that play (1907), and article on Interrogative Comminds in the Classical Review, vol. XVI. pp. 165-169. The construction is not confined to Old Latin ; qtiin aspice ? recurs in Virg. Aen. VI. 824 (cf. quin morete? ibid. IV. 547, etc.), and it is just as fully interrogative as quin aspiciasl which is found, according to the MSS., in Cicero, Somn. Scip. (De Rep. VI. 3. 14) ; the meaning in both cases is the same ; " why not look ?" i.e., "why should you not look?" But ill all these usages the imperative expresses the idea of obligation ("should"), not command. C/'.note2on p. 13 above. Digitized by Microsoft® A QUEST 55 I insert here, for the sake of explicitness, a proposal for a re- classification of sentences, on the lines indicated in several passages of this paper.' I. Statements. {a) as to a matter of fact {i.e, what is, was, or will be, or would be under certain circumstances which the speaker has in mind); e.g., ' Trelawney is dead', 'Trelawney will be put to death ', Lat. Indicative ; ' He would die if he heard this ', Lat. Subjunctive. (i) as to something which is or was to be done, e,g., 'Trelawney shall die ', ' He should be (should have been) put to death '. The Lat. Subjunctive is one of the forms used to express these meanings : see pp. 6-14, 23 n., 29 (Permission); Cic. pro Clu. 57. 155 {non recedamus), Catull. 76. 14, 16, Virg. Aen. XIL 78, Hor. Sat. II. 5. 91, etc. II. Exclamations. (a) as to a matter of fact ; e.g. ' Trelawney dead ! ' ' How sad it is ! ' Lat. Indie, (or no verb). (b) as to something which is or was to be done, e.g. ' Die Trelawney ! ' ' Perish India ! ' ' Rule Britannia ! Britannia rule the waves ! ' ^ Lat. Imperative or Subjunctive, e.g. Die, M. Tulli ! Hunc tu, Romane, caveto / Abeas / (' Be off ! ', Plaut. Bacch. 604, p. 4). Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus! Other examples on pp. 30-32. III. Questions. (a) as to a matter of fact; «.§". 'Is Trelawney dead?' Lat. Indie. (b) as to something which is or was to be done ; e.g. ' Shall Trelawney die ? ' ' Is (was) he to be put to death ? ' Lat. Subjunctive, pp. i2f, 26 (n. 3) — 29; Hor. Sat. II. 6. 30 (" is it reasonable that you should knock down . . . ? "), 7. 41. ^I find (on the eve of publication) that my classification coincides in respect of its main division into Statements, Exclamations and Questions with that adopted by Wundt, Volkerpsychologie (1900), I. 2. pp. 248-257. He, too, classifies Commands and Wishes as exclamatory. But he does not draw the distinction between fact and not fact which I have made under each of the three classes. ^This is, I believe the correct reading (not " rules"). Digitized by Microsoft® 56 THE UNITY OF THE LATIN SUBJUNCTIVE: My contention has also a negative side.' I contend that it is not possible to trace the usages of the Latin subjunctive to certain distinct meanings of the subjunctive and the optative of the parent language.^ For the further one goes back in the history of Greek and Latin the more does one find the usages of subjunctive and optative forms overlapping. In Homer there is far more overlapping than in Attic Greek ; = and in Plautus the few dis- tinctively optative forms that exist have the same general range of meaning as the subjunctive forms. Duim, duis, dtiit, for instance, is found : — (i) In expressions of command or permission: e.g., Asin. 460, Capt. 331, 947, Rud. 1368; similarly creduis Amph. 672, Capt. 60s, True. 307. (2) In expressions of wish : e.g.. Most. 655, Pseud. 937, Trin. 436; &\ra.\\ss\y perduit Asin. 467, Aul. 785, Cas. 642, etc. (3) In expressions of conditioned futurity: e.g., Aul. 672; similarly interduim Rud. 580, Trin. 994. (4) Dependent on ut, ne, or si : e.g., Amph. 72, Aul. 62, Men. 267; similarly /«yi«(M Amph. 845, Capt. 728. It appears, then, that duim in Plautus does not differ in usage from dem, which is a subjunctive form.^ In later Latin it is limited to expressions of wish {e.g. Cic. Cat. I. 9. 22 after ittinam, Deiot. 7. 21, ad Att. XV. 4. 3 without niiiiam, and Tacitus, Ann. IV. 38, dependent on ut). Its literary history is, in fact, almost exactly the opposite of what one would expect if it started on its career as an expression of wish exclusively. Of the other optative forms found in Old Latin, those in -sim and -ssim have the same range of usage as the corresponding subjunctives in -so and -sso ; ihusfaxim, empsim, ausim, negassim, locassim ; faxo, indicasso, liherasso, etc. They, or the 2nd and ^In my negative contention I find myself in complete agreement with Professor.s Oertel and Morris (op. cit. pp. 119- 122). * E.g. the seven categoric-! which Hale regards as " distinct " ■ Gram. § 459. '"The main difference between Homer and later writers in the use of the moods is that the later uses are much more restricted" (Monro, H. G. §322). ■•The same is true of Old Latin generally, as seen in Terence and various archaic formulae, such as those preserved in l.ivy XXH. 10. 2, where diiit stands in an expression of resolve (in parataxis to vcliiis iuheatisne], and X. 19. 17, where duis depends on si. Digitized by Microsoft® A QUEST 57 3rd persons formed from them, are found not only in expressions of wish, like Iuppiter prohibessit (Pseud. 14), di servassint (Asin. 654), di averimcassint (Pacuvius 112), but also in commands (negative), e.g., ne faxis (Most. 1115), ne occupassis (ibid. 1097, cf. Rud. 1028), nil curassis (Most. 526), cave f axis (ibid. 808, cf. Hor. Sat. II 3. 38), cave vespexis (ibid. 523); in prayers, with an appeal to the will of the deity, e.g., luppiter (voc.) prohibessis scelus (Ennius, Scenica, 286); in expressions of futurity, e.g., ausim (Aul. 474), faxim (Trin. 221) j dependent on si, ni ( = unless), Ht, ne, and relatives, e.g., si vespexis (Rud. 678), ni exoculassitis (ibid. 731), ut prohibessis (Aul. 611), tit faxim (True. 348), ne subrepsit (Mil. 333, Men. 861), ubi peccassit (Cas. 825), quae faxis (Asin 613). The optatives sim (originally siem), velim, nolim, malim, and perhaps edim,^ established themselves, together with the forms of the 2nd and 3rd persons, as the sole representatives of subjunctives throughout the course of Latinity, thus occupying in Latin the same position as the optatives (now called subjunctives} in the Germanic languages. So too the perfect optatives in -im. I am inclined, then, to maintain that there is no fundamental distinction in meaning between subjunctive forms and optative forms. Further evidence in support of this contention is forth- coming from the grammar of the Italic dialects.^ And the Greek optative was capable of use in sentences which are psychologically related to commands, in so far as they involve an appeal to the will of the person addressed : I refer to the " prescriptive optativfe " (to use the term introduced by Delbruck, Vergleich. Syntax, Part II. p. 370 ff.) or "optative of mild command" (as Monro called it, Horn. Gram. §2996, §3006): ^ Edas, edant appear in the MSS. in Plaut. Poen. 534, Stich. 554, and subjunctive forms also in MSS. of Tibulius and Ovid. See Postgate in Class. Rev. XVI p. 112 as to tiie forms edim, edis, edit in classical Latin. '^ Where optative forms are found in the Italic dialects they are used in. exactly the same senses as the subjunctive forms proper, and are therefore classed by grammarians of these dialects under the common name of "sub- junctive ", just as in Latin. For instance we find the Umbrian si ( = Lat. sis and sit) used in statements that something shall be, like " it shall be approved [prufe si) ", and dependent questions as to what is to be, like " take a vote as to what the fiamen's penalty shall be (siy , and also in dependent questions as to a matter of fact, like " take a vote as to whether it has been arranged properly (tera/z< « = curatum sit)". See Conway, The Italic Dialects, vol. II., pp. SOjff. ; Buc'.s, Grammar cf Oscan and Umbrian, §231, §§312-320. 5 Digitized by Microsoft® 58 THE UNITY OF THE LATIN SUBJUNCTIVE: e.g., ttlOoio fjioi "you ought to listen to me'', Od. IV. 193 : ti^ ovK av ^ao-iXrjas dva trrof).' i\oiv ayopivois, " you should not have kings' names on your tongue when you talk " = " do not revile kings", Iliad. II 250.1 See also Gildersleeve and Miller (Synt. of Classical Greek §394, on the " imperative optative ". '^ Brugmann admits that the prescriptive meaning is akin to that of volition (Griech. Gycim. p. 506, note i). If so, one of the meanings of the optative is more closely related to the leading meaning of the subjunctive than it is to the other meanings of the optative. Under these circumstances I see no cogent reason for inferring, as Hale does,^ that the Latin subjunctive of ethical obligation is descended from an original optative, to which it has no specially close relation either in form or in meaning. Many other special difficulties involved in this hunt for optatives in Latin might be mentioned. But I may sum up my contention on this point in a word. If the subjunctive and the optative (and, I may add, the imperative) of the parent language were akin in meaning, the task of tracing their descendants in Latin must necessarily be a hopeless one. It is like tracing the genealogy of a person whose remote ancestors had a double or a treble personality — like asking whether the founder of the family was Hyde as distinct from Jekyll, or Jekyll as distinct from Hyde. I therefore make so bold as to call in question the whole doctrine that the so-called optative of Greek (evKTiKri) was originally limited to expressions of wish proper and only later extended to other meanings. The optative of wish has no scientific claim to special prominence among the meanings of the mood in independent sentences of Homer, the multifarious- ness of which a reference to Monro's Homeric Grammar (§§299 and 300) will show. The " prescriptive optative " is found in ritual and legal inscriptions in Old Indie prose, as Delbriick proves. With the doctrine of the separate existence of an original mood of wish the current theory of a "fusion" of two distinct moods in Latin falls to the ground. One word on the practical applications of the theory under ' So elTj " let him be", Od. V. lo, = (trrui 8 ; fiii eli), Od. XVIII. 141. -In §442 instances of the optative with S,v ranging from "strong assurance" (mt/s/) to " faint presumption" (might) are quoted : e.g., /livoifi,' &v "I must Slay", iJKoi yip Si' deia i/diros "must have come" (Richards, Xen. and Others, p. lOl), fl ippuaai, eiJ &v Ix"'- •'Latin Grammar, §4591^. Digitized by Microsoft® A QUEST 59 discussion. I may be asked whether I expect school boys to be able to understand psychology and to grasp all the distinc- tions of meaning on which I have insisted. Nothing could be further from my thoughts. On the contrary, I should simply tell the beginner that the subjunctive mood in itself expresses the general idea of the English " shall " or " is to " ; but that in particular contexts this meaning suggests the meaning of Command, Wish, Possibility, Purpose, etc. The principle can easily be brought home even to a child by such examples as "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself", "Thou shalt not steal"; cf. "Honour thy father and thy mother" An example from Shakespeare is useful as indicating how " shall " is sometimes -equivalent to "may"; e.g., "1 will sing, that they shall heav I am not afraid" (Mids. N.D., III. i. 126). The pupil must, of course, be warned not to regard " shall " or " is to " as the idiomatic translation in all cases. But in many cases these are the best translations, as in fiat " it shall be done " ; quid faciam ? ■" what am I to do ? " : and in noun clauses dependent on certain verbs they at least explain the use of the subjunctive without -more ado : e.g., permitto ut fiat " I permit that it shall be done ", necesse est ut fiat, " it is necessary that it shall be done ", etc. ; here the English subjunctive is also possible (" that it be done "), but an indicative makes no sense (" that it is done "). Similarly " shall " supplies the rationale of all prospective clauses : £xspecto donee veniat " till he shall come '', exspectaham d^onec veniret "till he should come" And when the pupil at a more iidvanced stage comes across a difficult instance like quia tanti quanttim habeas sis in Horace, or mivahile videtuv quod non videat havuspex cum haruspicem viderit in Cicero, if he plays trumps .and translates " because you shall be estimated at the value ■of your possessions," " it is strange that a soothsayer should not laugh on meeting a fellow-soothsayer," he will have come as near to the meaning as any merely literal translation can bring him. In some constructions, no doubt, the English indicative is the •only idiomatic translation ; for instance in dependent questions relating to a matter of fact, and in some clauses of result. But the pupil ought to learn to regard these translations, however frequently they may present themselves, as due to a difference ■of idiom between Enghsh and Latin, and as in no way represent- int; the fundamental force of the Latin mood. Digitized by Microsoft® 6o THE UNITY OF THE LATIN SUBJUNCTIVE Addendum. — The statement made on p. 3, lines 22-24, ^^ ^o the encroachment of the subjunctive on the sphere of the indica- tive is somewhat incautiously expressed ; this encroachment was limited to subordinate constructions. In certain kinds of independent sentences the future indicative (itself a subjunctive in origin, for the most part at any rate) encroached on the sphere of the subjunctive, especially in expressions of Determined Futurity, Resolve, Promise and Threat, as is indicated on p. 8, p. 22/., note, and on p. 47, note 4 ; and in expressions of Ethical Obligation the subjunctive was to a great extent displaced by more explicit forms of speech, such as the gerund and gerundive with the indicative or verbs like oportet and deheo with the infinitive. Moreover there was an encroachment of the im- perative on the sphere of the subjunctive, in so far as the Old Latin use of the present subjunctive in Commands and Prohi- bitions was much restricted in the classical period. To find a satisfactory name for the subjunctive mood is a matter of extreme difficulty : and perhaps we shall have to remain content with the traditional name, inadequate and mis- leading as it is. The name ' injunctive ' (used by Sanscrit grammarians in a different sense) would be more expressive ; but it would have to be understood in a much wider sense than that which attaches to the verb ' enjoin ' and the noun ' injunction ' {i.e. Command).— Another desideratum is a single and brief name to denote the subjunctives which are found in questions as to what is or was to be done (pp. 26-28) ; 'deliberative' and 'dubitative' are inadequate. I suggest that these subjunctives might be called simply ' interrogative subjunctives '. Errata. — Page 11, note 2, last line but one, read esse for cscs. Page 17, note 3, line 3, read ' for ' (preceded by a colon) for ' or ' Page 24, line I, read ' Luchs ' for ' Blase '- Page 31, note 3, last line, read ' p. 32 ' for ' p. 23 ". W. JOLl.V .\\t> SONS, ALIl.WY I'RliSi, AIUKDEE.N. Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft®