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174 j. g. f. powell
that e.g. quid habet enim vita commodi would be treated as if it were quid
habet vita commodi.
Instances involving interposition of parts of esse need a separate category,
since although the verb esse often behaves like a postpositive, grammatically
it is still a fully-fledged verb, i.e. a higher-order constituent than any
surrounding noun phrase. There are also further complexities to do with
distinguishing the subject from its complements, distinguishing the existential
from the copulative sense of esse, and so on, which need not be gone
into here.
2.5 Genuine discontinuity with stronger words intervening
Where the intervening material consists of a word or words stronger than
a postpositive, one may distinguish three types. I have provided these with
distinguishing names: ‘long-range’ hyperbaton, ‘short-range’ hyperbaton,
and ‘double-focus’ hyperbaton.
(i) I shall first examine ‘long-range’ hyperbaton, in which there appears
to be no theoretical limit on the number or type of constituents that
can intervene. Extreme examples of this can be found from time to time,
such as the famous sentence magna dis immortalibus habenda est atque
huic ipsi Iovi Statori, antiquissimo custodi huius urbis, gratia, quod hanc
tam taetram tam horribilem tamque infestam rei publicae pestem totiens iam
effugimus, ‘Great are the thanks we owe to the immortal gods and to
Jupiter Stator himself, the most ancient guardian of this city’, etc. (Catil.
1.11), quae vobis potest cum hoc gladiatore condicionis aequitatis legationis esse
communitas?, ‘What could you and this gladiator either in moral or legal
or diplomatic standing possibly have in common?’ (Phil. 6.3), or tantamne
unius hominis incredibilis ac divina virtus tam brevi tempore lucem adferre rei
publicae potuit ...?, ‘Could glory so brilliant be brought to the Republic
in such a short time by the incredible and divine excellence of one man?’
(Man. 33). 27 To this type belongs also the Rhetorica ad Herennium’s second
example omnes invidiose eripuit bene vivendi casus facultates (4.44; see above,
p. 163).
For ‘long-range’ hyperbaton, the following rules may be tentatively
stated:
(a) The first element of the enclosing noun phrase always belongs to a certain
restricted range of semantic categories which include determiners
27 Cf. H–S 691;moreexamplesinPearce1966: 168–70; Fraenkel 1968: 75–6, 106.