PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 69 



The Constructions with Refert and Interest. By Prof. A. J. Bell^ 

 Ph.D. 



(Read February 28th, 1897.) 



The constructions in question are thus described in "Allen and Greenough's Latin 

 Grammar" : 



"The impersonals interest and refert take the genitive of the person, rarely of the 

 thing, affected, — the subject of the verb, being a neuter pronoun or a substantive clause, 

 as Clodii intererat Milonem penre (Cic. in Mil., 21). 



(a) Instead of the genitive of a personal pronoun the corresponding possessive is 

 used in the ablative singular feminine after interest and refert: as quid tua id refert? — 

 magni (Ter. Ph.) ; vehementer intererat vestra qui patres estis (Plin.). 



{b) The accusative with ad is used to express the thing with reference to which one 

 is interested : as magni ad honorem nostrum interest" (Fam. XVI. i). 



The question is : How is it that, while the person interested is expressed by the 

 genitive of the substantive in Clodii interest or eius refert, it is expressed by the ablative 

 singular feminine of the possessive adjective in mea interest or tua refert, while the thing 

 concerned is expressed by the accusative with ad in ad honorem nostrum interest ? 

 Indeed, the question is really somewhat more involved ; for in the last construction, 

 instead of the accusative with ad we find the dative : as in non referre dedecori (Tac. 

 Ann. 15.65.), and the dative is also used instead of the genitive to express the person 

 interested: as in quid refert intra natures fines viventi (Hor. Sat. I. i. 49.). Indeed the 

 distinction given regarding persons and things, while the rule, is not universal : cf. 

 multum interesse rei familiaris tuce (Cic. ad Fam'. 4. lo- 2.) with quid id ad me aut ad 

 meam rem refert (PI. Persa. 513), and in this inquiry we may disregard this distinction. 

 There is, as yet, no agreement among grammarians about the solution of this question, 

 though what seem to me to be correct solutions of the main difficulties involved have 

 been stated or suggested by some of them. 



Of the constructions mentioned above, those represented by mea refert or mea 

 interest and illorum refert or illorum interest have always been felt to be the cardinal 

 ones, those on the solution of which a correct understanding of the nature of the 

 remaining constructions depends. And first let us notice some of the solutions that 

 have been proposed. Donatus, whose grammar was the text-book of the Middle Ages, 

 in a note on Quid tua, malum, id refert ? (Ter. Ph. 753) suggests that tua is for ad tua; 

 and his explanation is evidently based on the idea naturally occurring to anyone who 

 examines these constructions, that, whatever constructions are in fact found with refert 

 and interest, the dative is the case we should expect to find dependent on them. But in 

 Donatus' day, in the first half of the fourth century of our era, in ordinary thought and 

 conversation the dative had in all likelihood been supplanted by the accusative with ad, 

 the construction that takes its place in the Romance Languages. A like view seems to 

 have been in the mind of Scaliger, when he explained tua nil refert as equivalent to tuas 

 res non repraesentat, i.e., affert. Sanctius, the famous Jesuit grammarian, and Ruddiman 

 agree in thinking tua here an accusative ; but Sanctius prefers to make mea interest, the 

 more usual form of expression in Golden Latinity, his starting point, and explains it 

 as equivalent to est inter mea. Vossius and Bentley showed that mea here could not be the 

 accusative as the a is long, and the view was abandoned. It was revived, however, in our 

 day by Emanuel Hoffmann, who.in a paper in thejahrbuch fiirPhilologie for 1878, suggests 

 that mea interest is equivalent to est inter mea, and explains interest omnium as equivalent 

 to est inter omnium, proceeding from a consideration of such phrases as in Diana, ad 



