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Possessive pronouns in Plautus 87
However, this usage of proprius is restricted to cases like example (29),
where it stands in opposition to communis or alienus (Menge et al. 2000:
101); only in later Latin can proprius replace meus or suus without such
an opposition (Krebs and Schmalz 1905–7: ii.408). More common is the
reinforcement of possessive pronouns with the genitive ipsius:
(30) ac si restituor, etiam minus videbimur deliquisse, abs teque certe, quoniam
nullo nostro, tuo ipsius beneficio diligemur. (Cic. Att. 3.15.4)
If I am restored, we will seem to have erred less gravely, and at any rate
we will be loved by you, for the sake of the good you yourself have done
for us, since we haven’t done any for you.
Since possessive pronouns, though agreeing in case with their head
nouns, could be regarded as shorthand for the genitive of a noun, it makes
sense to reinforce them with the genitive ipsius. Naturally, ipsius can also
modify possessives of the third person, as in eius ipsius domum ‘into his own
house’ (Cic. Pis. 83). This usage is alien to Plautus and Terence. Perhaps
even more commonly Cicero uses ipsius on its own when he wants to say
‘his own’; this usage occurs in formal prose as well as in the letters, as in ex
ipsius epistula ‘from his own letter’ (Cic. Att. 9.6.6). Plautus has the genitive
ipsius only once (Capt. 287), and there it is not contrastive, but simply
means ‘his’. Terence has two tokens of contrastive ipsius foreshadowing the
Ciceronian usage (An. 818, Ph. 725).
The existence, and the frequency, of such alternative constructions indicate
that Cicero deliberately avoided the type suus sibi. If I am correct in
saying that this type was not vulgar, the question arises why he did so.
Perhaps the answer has to do with linguistic purism. I have discussed a
similar case elsewhere (de Melo 2007b: 119–29): Plautus uses the types cave
ne facias, cave facias and cave feceris more or less indiscriminately, all meaning
‘don’t do’. In the second of these, ne is left out by analogy with fac ut
venias/fac venias ‘see to it that you come’, and the absence of a subordinator
enabled speakers to reanalyse cave as a prohibition marker similar to ne.
This is why cave (without ne) can also be combined with the prohibitive
perfect subjunctive. Cicero uses cave with perfect subjunctive only once,
in a letter (Q. fr. 3.7(9).4). The construction was probably not colloquial
in Plautus’ time. Cicero may have avoided it because for him cave was a
verb form and the perfect subjunctive would violate the sequence rules.
Similarly, it is conceivable that Cicero avoided suus sibi because for him
sibi was a dative, not a particle for emphasis, and a dative not governed by
a verb had no place in a Ciceronian possessive construction.