Chapter XXXII - Asyndeton in Latin

Summary

Asyndeton bimembre was old (see e.g. III.1, XIX.1), but I have resisted the idea that it was ‘undoubtedly older’ than explicit coordination of pairs (III.1). -Que and its root were ancient too, and I would prefer with e.g. Dunkel (1982) to leave open the matter of relative antiquity and to assume a long coexistence (III.1). From the very beginning in Latin asyndeton bimembre was diverse in its types and in their stylistic level. It has however been exposed to snap judgements derived from a failure to look at the distribution of its forms in a range of genres. For example, at XXIV.5.1.1, 8 (cf. 5.1.1, 1) Skutsch is quoted as saying that two adjectives with one noun are characteristic of ritual language. Asyndetic pairs of adjectives are common in many writers, some of them working in mundane genres (see below, this section), and indeed one type (consisting of pairs of judgemental adjectives in open-ended lists placed at the end of cola) we have related speculatively to a pattern of speech (see IV.4; cf. V.2, and also below, this section). Or again, Ogilvie (1965: 730), commenting on Livy 35, describes a pair of privatives (inuisitato inaudito) as ‘almost sacral’. Privatives in asyndeton, whether two together or one juxtaposed with a different type of adjective, are so widespread in a variety of genres, e.g. oratory, historiography, Horace’s Satires, that a whole chapter has been devoted to them (VI). Similarly Jocelyn (1967: 175) on Enn. trag. 9 pugnant proeliant refers to the ‘official language’, but while some pairs of verbs belonged to legal language this is not one of them, and asyndetic pairs of verbs fall into diverse categories (see below, this section).