Use of Auxiliary Verbs in Romance Languages. 51 



period, when the active voice became middle by the independ- 

 ent use of se {e.g. amo-se) ; the third period, when the verb 

 and se combined into a single word {aino + se > amor), and 

 the reflexive meaning was changed to a passive. Such trans- 

 fer of a reflexive to a passive meaning was the regular devel- 

 opment of human thought, which with a reflexive idea necessa- 

 rily and logically associates a passive idea ; so that in the 

 classical period of the Latin language the same endings had 

 to express a reflexive and a passive verbal notion. The new 

 period having been created by a tendency towards a passive 

 notion or idea, it is natural that the passive verbs should have 

 been more developed in the classical Latin than the reflexive 

 verbs ; but at the same time the tendency was not so strong 

 as to push all the more ancient reflexive verbs into passives. 

 Hence we have a certain number of them reserved by classi- 

 cal authors to a reflexive use exclusively ; but even these con- 

 tained in themselves the power of being used passively as 

 well as the others, and that power had been given them by 

 the general tendency that had pushed Latin verbs from reflex- 

 ives to passives. This seems the most plausible way to 

 explain how deponent verbs like adhortari, adniirari, consolari, 

 dilargiri, meditari, partiri, sortiri, reserved by classical writers 

 to deponent use, are found in the passive voice, especially in 

 the past participle (compare Livy : — 



Partitis divenditisque reliquiis XXI. 21 



Ex malignitate piaedae partitae V. 20 



Compare also Draeger, Historiehe Syntax, I., p. 156) ; and 

 how passive verbs retained the deponent meaning and were 

 used as deponent verbs (compare Livy : — 



Sed ruinae maxime modo jumenta cum oneribus devolvebantur . . . XXI. 33 



Ut idem in singulos annos oibis volveretur III. 10 



Priusquam hostes moverentm- XXXVII. 18). 



The fo7irtJi period, when the passive meaning was given up 

 through popular influence, and the original reflexive mean- 

 ing was restored by means of decomposition resulting in the 

 independent expression of the verb-form and the reflexive 

 pronoun. This last change, beginning at a time when the 



81 



