Aliquandō in the treatises of Tacitus

Abstract

Abstract In studies on Latin adverbs (e. g. Menge 1961. Repetitorium der Syntax und Stilistik, 16th edn. A. Thierfelder (ed.). Munich: M. Hueber; Bos 1967. L’adverbe en Latin. Tentative de classification structurale. B.S.L. 62. 106–122; Löfstedt 1967. Bemerkungen zum Adverb im Lateinischen. IF 72. 79–109; Pinkster 1972. On Latin adverbs (North Holland Linguistic Series 6). Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Company), the discussion of a specific temporal adverb in a certain corpus is rare. On the other hand, several items of research are worth mentioning: the position of adverbs denoting measure in Roman comedy and in de Agri Cultura by Cato (Booth 1923); abhinc and ante (Lundström 1961); adhuc (Torrego 1991); nunc (Risselada 1996); modo (Bertocchi 2001); iam (Huitink 2005). Moreover, an adverb peculiar to the treatises of Cornelius Tacitus (55–56 until the second decade of the second century ad) has not yet been analyzed in the studies concerning his language and style (e. g. Draeger 1967 [1882]. Ueber Syntax und Stil des Tacitus, 3rd edn. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner. Reprint, Amsterdam: A. M. Hakkert; Voss 1963. Der pointierte Stil des Tacitus (Orbis Antiquus 19). Münster: Aschendorff). Our study fills a gap, to a certain extent, in the research on the adverbs in Latin prose in general and in the corpora of Tacitus in particular, by examining the characteristic and unique usages of aliquandō in his treatises regarding content and style. The grammatical approach adopted here is descriptive. Quotations are made in order to clarify and illustrate the phenomena with a literal translation, wherever applicable. Maximum use of statistics is made by comparative tables concerning the following points: (i) the distribution of the adverb in each book; (ii) its proximity to an additional temporal/measure adverb; (iii) the sentence types, in which it is included; (iv) the part of speech modified by aliquandō, which is mainly a finite verb, sometimes infinitive, rarely P.P.P., an adjective, an adverb or a whole clause (cf. Pinkster 1972. On Latin adverbs (North Holland Linguistic Series 6). Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Company: 59; Menge 2000. Lehrbuch der lateinischen Syntax und Semantik. Th. Burkard and M. Schauer (eds.). Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft: 198, § 148); (v) the position of aliquandō concerning its modified element, along with examining the linguistic and stylistic means employed by the author in this context (where some message is to be highlighted, word order, anaphora, a chiastic structure or a parallel one [mainly when two pairs of words are contrasted; cf. Fanetti 1978–1979. Il Chiasmo nell’ Agricola di Tacito. MCr 13/14. 389–400], the omission of words, etc.). Aliquandō is usually placed before the modified element with exceptions, in which the adverb occurs after it (apart from monosyllabic words, such as non, vel = valde); (vi) A concluding comparison, in which identical and different features of aliquandō between Ag., Hist. and Ann. have been highlighted in the points indicated above. Phenomena which are peculiar to aliquandō in one of his books do not necessarily occur in his other ones, because each book has features of its own, which are influenced by its content and style.