63 Colloquial and Li.. - Ganino.com

Possessive pronouns in Plautus 89
used the collocation because for him it had an archaic ring, but he probably
did not fully understand its meaning. 27
4 suus instead of eius
The remaining question concerns other uses of suus instead of eius. In
general, Latin uses the possessive pronoun suus whenever possessor and
grammatical subject are identical. Elsewhere, it is mainly eius which is
used. However, there are three more contexts in which both early and
classical Latin use suus rather than eius. The first context consists of cases
in which there is no subject, as with impersonal verbs. Here it is naturally
the constituent whose semantic function comes closest to that of a subject
which can govern a reflexive possessive pronoun:
(33) eosque qui secus quam decuit vixerunt peccatorum suorum tum maxime
paenitet. (Cic. Div. 1.63)
And those people who have lived differently from how one ought to then
regret their mistakes most.
The impersonal paenitet requires the person who feels regret to be in
the accusative. In the absence of a grammatical subject, this experiencer
constituent comes closest to subjecthood and thus governs a reflexive
possessive. 28
The second context is subordinate clauses which are highly dependent
on their main clauses:
(34) [sc. Amphitruo] eos legat, Telobois iubet sententiam ut dicant suam.
(Pl. Am. 205)
He [sc. Amphitruo] sends them as envoys and orders them to tell the
Teloboians his terms.
The ut clause here is an object clause. Its close connection with the main
clause can be seen from the fact that it follows the sequence of tenses. In
27 The other tokens are: Apol. 6 sua sibi urina ‘with his own urine’; Apol. 69 sua sibi voce ‘with his
own voice’; Fl. 9.17 suis sibi manibus ‘with his own hands’; Fl. 16.14 suo sibi lectulo ‘in his bed’
(unemphatic); Fl. 18.20 suo sibi discipulo ‘with his pupil’ (unemphatic); Fl. 23.5 in sua sibi copiosa
domo ‘in his own wealthy house’; Met. 1.6 asuissibiparentibus‘by her own parents’; Met. 1.10 in
suis sibi domibus ‘in their own houses’; Met. 4.32 cum sua sibi perspicua pulchritudine ‘despite all her
manifest beauty’ (unemphatic); Met. 6.30 cum suo sibi funiculo ‘with her own rope’; Met. 7.28 suam
sibi fasciam ‘her breast-band’ (unemphatic); Met. 8.14 in suo sibi pervolutata sanguine ‘having rolled
around in her own blood’; Met. 9.40 in suum sibi cubiculum ‘into his own room’.
28 Traditional grammars speak of a ‘logical subject’. For subject properties of experiencers see Palmer
1994: 40–4.