*jO PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 



Carmentis, — phrases in which he would not supply an accusative. But the quantity of 

 the a in mea seems fatal to his view. 



Priscian thinks of mea in mea refert as ablative, and would supply in re, making the 

 full construction mea in re refert equivalent in meaning to in mea utilitate refert. In this 

 he is followed by Valla, but. Sanctius denies that nica in re can have this meaning ; and 

 Vossius, who thinks with Priscian that mea is ablative, prefers to supply causa or gratia. 

 Later supporters of the view that mea is ablative — such as Reisig, Krueger and Schmalz — 

 recognize that in the first syllable of refert the e is long, and that it is properly written as 

 two words, re fert; and from the analogy of the Plautine phrase, e re mea "to my 

 advantage," they explain mea refert as for e mea re fert, "it bears to my advantage." 

 This explanation, which is the one now usually adopted, while it is a possible one, has 

 no support from the ancients, and affords no explanation for the constructions in refert 

 viventi or ad me refert quoted above. 



A third explanation given by the Romans, and the oldest of all, is that found in 

 Festus' Compendium of Verrius Flaccus' work, " De Significatu Verborum," where we 

 read (p. 282 M.) '' Refert cum dicimus, errare nos ait Verrius ; esse enim rectum reifert,-^ 

 dativo scilicet, non ablativo casu ; sed esse jam usu possessum." That is to say, in the 

 phrase mea re fert, Verrius thinks mea re primarily a dative and equivalent to mea; 

 rei, but acknowledges that the words in question are — jam usu possessum — generally 

 acknowledged to be ablatives, on account of their form, the identity of which with the 

 ablative is obvious, while into their real and primary nature few pause to inquire. But 

 Verrius was one of the few men who make it their business to inquire into the real 

 nature of such phrases, and of all Romans who engaged in such investigations, his 

 authority best deserves our attention. He lived in the reign of Augustus, who appointed 

 him tutor to his grandsons. Gains and Lucius Caesar ; and from the epitomes of his 

 work, "DtJ Significatu Verborum," made by Festus and Paulus Diaconus, we can see 

 that it was an exhaustive dictionary of Archaic Latin, made at a time when materials 

 were best available for such a work. Gerard Vossius feels the weight of his authority, 

 and is willing to acknowledge that refert may be for rei fert, being probably influenced by 

 Caesar's statement that the proper and usual endings of the dative singular in the fourth 

 and fifth declensions is not ui and ei, as given in the compendia of later grammarians, 

 and as written by later scribes, but u and e. But mea, Vossius thinks, cannot be the 

 dative, and for this- reason he rejects Verrius' explanation. But, in the light of the 

 testimony afforded by older Latin inscriptions, Vossius' reason for rejecting this 

 explanation becomes, it seems to me, our strongest reason for accepting it. In the 

 first volume of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum we find eleven instances of 

 undoubted datives of the first declension ending, not in ae, but in a, as for example in 

 Fortuna dedi or matre matuta dono dedro. W. M. Lindsay, in a paper in the Classical 

 Review of December last, recognizes in old Latin two forms of the dative singular for a 

 stems, represented by -Fo?'h/»fl? and Forh»trt, both derived from the primary Forh^wa + ai, 

 but for the differentiation of which he cannot account. So we find for stems two forms 

 of the dative in old 'Latm, populoi and popnlo, both derived from the primary ^o/im/o + ai ; 

 but here it is the shortened form that has held the field. Mea re is, then, if we accept 

 the testimony of Ctesar, and of the oldest inscriptions, as good a dative as mea rei ; and 

 mea re fert' is, according to our oldest authority, equivalent to mei^ rei fert, "it bears to 

 the advantage of my affair" ; which is precisely the explanation of the meaning of the 

 phrase now generally accepted, but attained without resorting to the Jesuit's trick of 

 the ellipsis, and presenting us with a noteworthy confirmation of the latest view with 

 regard to the form of the dative .in Archaic Latin. This explanation seems to me, 

 moreover, to be confirmed by some of the parallel constructions that are in use for mea, 

 the ablative so-called. Horace, as we have seen, wrote refert viventi, using an undoubted 

 dative. As far back as Plautus we find, used as a substitute for the dative, the prepo- 

 sition ad with the accusative, which takes its place in the Romance languages. And it is 



