63 Colloquial and Li.. - Ganino.com

220 tobias reinhardt
The replacement of pronouns with or without preposition with pronominal
adverbs (e.g. hinc, unde, inde) is a feature which in classical Latin on
the evidence of its distribution is situated at the border between colloquialism
and usages acceptable in standardised prose. 23 It also has a number
of specialised usages e.g. in legal language (unde petitur = ‘the accused’,
Ter. Eu. 11), and some have argued that its origin actually is in what has
been dubbed Kanzleisprache (see Bagordo 2001: 90), but Löfstedt (1911:
181) rightly observes that this would be hard to square with the frequency
and wide distribution of this feature and its afterlife in the Romance languages.
Instances in Lucretius are outside strongly colloquial contexts like
the‘diatribes’(seethisvolume,p.204). They include, however, 1.54–6 nam
tibi de summa caeli ratione deumque | disserere incipiam et rerum primordia
pandam, unde [= a quibus] omnis natura creet res, auctet alatque (see
this volume, p. 206), which is a matter-of-fact address to the reader about
Lucretius’ plans, where a slightly conversational tone would not be out of
place (note 1.57 quove for quoque), but there are also passages which are
simply expository, like 5.200–3 principio quantum caeli tegit impetus ingens,
| inde [= cuius] avidam partem montes silvaeque ferarum | possedere, tenent
rupes vastaeque paludes | et mare ‘first, of all that the vast expanse of the
sky covers, a greedy part is taken up by mountains and forests full of wild
animals, and parts are held by rocks, huge swamps and the sea’.
Pleonastic accumulation of particles which are similar or identical in
meaning is another feature of colloquial language; it can be explained in
terms of the lack of intellectual discipline and stylistic control which oral
communication often exhibits. In poetry where otiose words are normally
avoided, such usages are striking. 24 Etiam and quoque in combination are
frequent already in Plautus and Terence, in the sequence quoque etiam,
etiam followed by and separated from quoque, andquoque followed by
and separated from etiam. Lucretius uses etiam quoque,andetiam followed
by and separated from quoque (3.292, 5.153, 5.517, 5.604, 6.503). All these
passages are of an expository nature. Interestingly, Lucretius once (5.751)
also uses item quoque, a collocation not found elsewhere but which may
or may not have been felt to have a colloquial register as well. By the
same token, Lucretius uses quippe etenim twenty times, though it occurs
only once elsewhere (in Apul. Apol. 72, where it is best explained as a
mannerism consciously lifted from Lucretius). The mechanism underlying
such duplications is plausibly explained by Einar Löfstedt (1911: 59): the
23 See H–S 208–10;E.Löfstedt 1911: 180–1; Palmén 1958.
24 Informative discussion in E. Löfstedt 1911: 59–64, 1956: ii.219–32; see also Wölfflin 1880: 427.