In republican laws asyndetic coordination is widespread, whereas in early prayers in Latin, despite assumptions to the contrary (see e.g. Calboli 1997a: 800), it is uncommon. Umbrian religious language is a different matter: in the Iguvine tablets asyndeton is the normal type of coordination for pairs (see below, 4 for a detailed account of Umbrian).

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).

Part 3 on semantic types is highly selective, dealing as it does only with opposites, itself however a big subject, and with terms asyndetically specifying different family relationships. This second category has some overlap with that dealt with in XI. I have been selective in this part because semantic types are commented on constantly in the chapters on literary texts. I give a few cross references below.

Asyndeton bimembre is common in Plautus but not overwhelmingly so. There is little point in trying to produce definitive figures, because there are so many variations on the basic (single-word) type, such as word + short phrase, word + long phrase, short phrase + word etc., not to mention unitary pairs within longer asyndetic sequences, which may be treated either as asyndeta bimembria or simply as components of long asyndeta. Phrasal pairs are also common. I concentrate in this chapter mainly on the simple type, or types with only minor modifications of that.

In this chapter the different genres of Horace’s work, the Satires, Epistles, Odes, Epodes and Ars poetica, are kept apart. Striking generic differences in the use of asyndeton will emerge, between on the one hand the Satires and first book of the Epistles, and on the other the Odes (and Epodes).

Historiography I have split into two chapters, putting Livy in a separate chapter. Sallust and Tacitus are kept together because of the commonplace view that Tacitus was influenced by Sallust, and the pair will be compared at the end of the chapter (6). A brief treatment of the remains of the early annalists precedes that of Sallust.

Types of living beings are sometimes expressed by pairing the masculine term for that being with the feminine. For example, the totality of divine beings may be rendered by ‘(all) gods (and) goddesses’. Such pairings in Latin show variations between syndetic and asyndetic coordination, with the asyndetic variant common in legal language but coordination usually preferred otherwise. I have just used the term ‘totality’, but it is misleading without specification. ‘Men (and) women’ may refer to the infinite number of male and female adults in the world, but the phrase is more likely in ordinary narrative to denote a finite, even small, group in a particular context. The term ‘merism’ is all very well in idealised accounts of Indo-European poetics, but most people in the real world do not speak only in universals. Watkins’ definition (1995: 9, 15) of merism is ‘a two-part figure which makes reference to the totality of a single higher concept’. West (2007: 99–100), more clearly, refers to ‘pairings of contrasted terms, as an emphatic expression of the totality that they make up’. The method of coordination in male–female pairs in Latin seems unaffected by the difference between a finite set and an infinite.

A contrived structure with asyndeton is that in which an asyndetic pair is followed by another pair, asyndetic or syndetic, the members of which refer back to the members of the first pair. Usually the first member of the initial asyndetic pair is picked up by the first member of the following pair (and the second member by the second), but there is sometimes chiasmus, such that the second two terms allude to the first two in reverse order.

Asyndeton with an active verb form alongside a passive form of the same verb is rare in Latin. Just five clear-cut (single-word) instances have been noted, as far as I am aware, and to these may be added a slightly extended pair in Tacitus (see the next paragraph but one). Pairings of active and passive forms are more common when there is a coordinator (see Wills 1996: 295–8 for an extensive but mixed collection of material mostly from poetry, a good deal of it comprising not coordinations but actives and passives near each other in different types of clauses; for the coordinated type note e.g. Tac. Ann. 3.55.2 plebem socios regna colere et coli licitum). Wills states (296) that ‘the combination of voices in a “bimembre asyndeton” was possibly idiomatic’, a view that is at variance with the evidence, given that such pairs almost always have a coordinator. It will also be seen below that the few asyndetic examples are not a single type, such that the term ‘idiomatic’ might be appropriate.

In Latin, terms with the prefix in- occur in numerous asyndetic patterns, some of them of considerable age and stylistic interest. I am mainly concerned with adjectival pairs of which both members have the privative prefix in-, but will deal with other patterns as well to demonstrate the range of types. Material from Greek (showing terms with alpha-privative prefixes) will be cited, and reference will be made too to the Iguvine tablets and to the Rigveda. Presumably the type was inherited as distinct from developing independently in different languages. Prefixes other than in-/alpha-privative are also not infrequently repeated in asyndetic sequences (see further below, 7), but it is the type with negative prefix that is most distinctive.

Asyndetic pairs dependent on a single preposition have tended to be treated as problematic by editors and scribes, and manuscript variations are not unusual. I have not, however, noted explicit discussions of the issue by editors (see however Preuss 1881: 53). The criteria that may be used by an editor in judging possible cases of asyndeton include structural factors, and an author’s practice elsewhere. I start with a structural pattern and variants, and then refer to two possible asyndeta of this type in Caesar’s Bellum ciuile, which are dealt with in detail in XVIII. Finally, I consider possible examples in several other writers.

By ‘accumulation’ I mean the juxtaposition of one asyndetic pair with another pair, or with more than one other, or the placement of an asyndetic pair alongside or within coordinated groups of various lengths and types. An asyndeton bimembre is in an accumulation if it is not free-standing but is part of a sequence of items that are coordinated syndetically or asyndetically, or have a mixture of both types of coordination. Accumulations have come up frequently already in these introductory chapters, and they will come up more extensively in the later chapters dealing with writers and genres. Accumulations are a prominent location for asyndeta bimembria, such that they are one determinant of this type of asyndeton (see XXXII.3.1). Two words that are usually coordinated may well be used for once asyndetically because they are placed in such a sequence. My aim here is simply to introduce accumulations containing asyndeta bimembria with a little more detail than has been provided so far, but the most comprehensive lists and classifications will be found in later chapters, particularly on Cicero and the historians.