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Hyperbaton and register in Cicero 165
degree. 5 In my usage, focus may be a characteristic of either topics or
predicates, although the main focus of a sentence is usually (for reasons
that should be obvious) on the logical predicate or part of it.
Statistical surveys of the frequency of ‘hyperbaton’ are often rendered less
useful than they might be, because of the tendency to lump together different
types of real or apparent discontinuity which have different underlying
causes and may turn out to have different distributions: in section 2 of this
chapter I shall point towards a clearer (probably not at this stage exhaustive)
classification of different types of hyperbaton. My other main purpose in
this chapter is to reopen the question of the relationship of hyperbaton to
register in Latin prose (verse is entirely outside the scope of this discussion),
and I provisionally take Cicero as my main source of examples, 6 for the
simple reason that he is the only author from the classical period whose
corpus of genuine texts embraces a sufficient range of identifiably different
prose genres and registers. With due care, it appears possible within this
corpus to isolate variations due to genre or register (as opposed, say, to
chronological variations or matters of authorial preference) with a reasonable
degree of certainty – a task which could be difficult or impossible in
connection with other areas of Latin.
It is usual to rank Cicero’s works on a scale of formality, with the letters
to Atticus, say, at the colloquial end, 7 and this can be adopted as a rule of
thumb: if a feature occurs significantly more often in the Atticus letters than
in the speeches, that may well indicate that it is a colloquial feature, bearing
in mind the reservations expressed in Chapters 1–5 of this volume regarding
the difficulties of defining and identifying colloquialism. 8 The speeches,
on the whole more formal than the letters, show an appreciable variation
in style, 9 although we should avoid thinking in terms of a simple linear
5 For example, Panhuis’s (1982) concept of ‘rhematicity’ seems to me to amalgamate these two theoretically
separable categories.
6 In this chapter, works of Cicero are referred to by abbreviated title alone.
7 ThecueforthiscomesdoubtlessfromCicerohimself,whoforexamplereferstohisexchangesof
letters with Atticus as ‘familiar conversation’ (sermo familiaris, Att. 1.9.1). In an often quoted passage
written to his friend Papirius Paetus (Fam. 9.21.1) Cicero distinguishes the ‘everyday’ and ‘plebeian’
language of informal letters from the language of political or forensic oratory, and also the ‘more
subtle’ language of private lawsuits from the ‘more ornate’ style of criminal trials: for this and other
relevant passages see Hutchinson 1998: 5–9. Cf. Ferri and Probert, this volume p. 39 and Thomas,
this volume, p. 255.
8 Pinkster in this volume (p. 189) points out with justification that the epistolary style is an example
of informal writing rather than informal speech, and does not necessarily reflect speech patterns; but
the weight of this is lessened by his observation that letters in the ancient world were customarily
dictated. Actually, dictation can lead to its own problems unless one is highly practised in it, since it
proceeds at a speed so much slower than ordinary speech.
9 See Laurand 1938; Albrecht 2003: esp. 11–27 and 79–85. Classifications of Cicero’s speeches according
to style often tend to rely on Cicero’s own (Orator 102) tripartite division into ‘plain’, ‘middle’ and