[51] 



CLASSICAL NOTES. 



BY W. D. PEARMAN, M.A., 



CLASSICAL TUTOR, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, TORONTO. 



Read before the Canadian LixtUute, February \st, 1873. 



The first point to "whicli I would call your attention is an attempt 

 to explain an anomaly in the use of the tenses of the subjunctive, 

 in Latin, in conditional propositions. This anomaly consists in the 

 employment of the present subjunctive in the protasis, followed by 

 an imperfect in the apodosis, whereas, from the ordinary rules of 

 syntax, we should expect to find the same tense employed in both, 

 or, if there were any variety, that the present and perfect or the 

 impei'fect and phiperfect might be interchanged, and not, as in the cases 

 to come before us, to have a definite tense in the protasis followed by 

 an indefinite tense in the apodosis. Some striking instances of this 

 anomaly are quoted by Munro, in his edition of Lucretius, in a note 

 on Bk. v., V. 277. They are Virgil, G. iv. 116 ; Tibullus i. 4, 63 ; 

 i. 8, 22 ; Catullus vi. It occurred to me that the difierence in tense 

 might be accounted for by the preference which the Latins, as well 

 as the Greeks, always gave to the present tense, in such cases as 

 an action, though begun in past time, was regarded as still going on : 

 e.g., where in English we say ''I have long thought," the Latin 

 would be " diu cogito ;" becaitse we still continue to think at the 

 present time, although the first occasion of our doing so may have 

 been some time 2>o,st. This explanation, so far as their meaning is 

 concerned, will suit the passages quoted. In the first, Lucret. v., 

 277 : Qui nisi contra corpora retribuat rebus recreetque fluentis 

 omnia jam resoluta forent, &c. Lucretius says that all things would 

 have long ago been resolved and converted into air, if the aii- had 

 not kept restoring them in the form of showers. Here we see that, 

 though the act of resolution would have taken place at any time 

 past, the act of restoration is still going on ; and therefore, in accord- 

 ance with the use which I have mentioned, is expressed by the 

 present subjunctive. 



Again, Yirg. G. iv. 116 : Extremo ni jam sub fine laborum vela 

 traham et terris festinem advertere proram Forsitan . . , . et 



