5/25/2013 Tense and Aspect In Caesar’s De Bello Gallico IV-V
Simon Aerts GHENT UNIVERSITY
Ghent University Faculty of Arts and Philosophy Blandijnberg 2, 9000 Ghent
Master Thesis
TENSE AND ASPECT IN CAESAR’S DE BELLO GALLICO IV-V
Simon Aerts
Paper submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Linguistics and Literature – main subject English - Latin
Supervisor: prof. dr. M. Janse 2012-2013
Word count: 21828 of which 7221 constitute text samples from DBG, IV-V, and their translations
Acknowledgements
Before he left Ghent University to return to Oxford, my supervisor for my research paper, professor de Melo, made sure he left me and my soon-to-be master thesis in the capable hands of professor Janse. I thank them both for guiding me in writing this scription, professor Janse because he accepted to be my supervisor although he is normally engaged only in Greek linguistics, and prof. de Melo for being my officious supervisor, and for advising me from overseas with only e-mail as a means of communication. I thank them both for sharing their profound linguistic knowledge with me, and for their warmth and kindness in doing so.
I also thank my parents for their patience, their love, and their encouraging words: my father, for volunteering to read over the text although he did not understand a word I was writing; and my mother, for constantly obliging me to hand in my thesis in May.
I thank Klaas, for being my companion in two years of writing papers, for keeping me posted on his progress and thereby stimulating my own, for talking long into the night on so many occasions, and for keeping it light until the end.
Finally, I thank Lobke, for many of the above reasons, and for many more, but most of all, for her endless love and support.
Ghent, 25th of May, 2013
Simon Aerts
Summary in Dutch
Dit werkstuk behandelt de vraag of de twee werkwoordstammen in het Latijn, de infectum-stam en de perfectum-stam (zo genoemd door Varro), een relatieve tijdswaarde (naar Pinkster, 1983; 1990) of een aspectwaarde (naar Oldsjö, 2001) uitdrukken. De stelling die wordt aangenomen is dat er geen nood is aan de categorie
‘aspect’ in het Latijnse werkwoordsysteem, en dat Pinksters theorie van relatieve tijdswaarde daarom de voorkeur verdient, daar het de meest economische en meest eenvoudige verklaring biedt voor het onderscheid tussen infectum en perfectum.
Het werkstuk neemt twee boeken uit Caesars De Bello Gallico, boek 4 en 5, als corpusmateriaal. Om die reden begint het met een inleiding op diens leven, werken en schrijfstijl (hoofdstuk 1). Daarna volgt een bondige status quaestionis (hoofdstuk 2), waarin eerst twee standaardwerken over Tempus en Aspect uit de algemene literatuur worden besproken van de hand van Comrie, gevolgd door een stuk uit Binnick dat handelt over Aktionsarten. Daarna volgt een overzicht van Varro’s kijk op deze materie, zoals het besproken wordt bij Serbat. De status quaestionis wordt afgesloten met de theorieën van Pinkster en Oldsjö.
Voor Pinkster duidt de infectum-stam op gelijktijdigheid en de perfectum-stam op voortijdigheid: het imperfectum geeft gelijktijdigheid weer met een referentiepunt in het verleden, het perfectum voortijdigheid met het moment van spreken. Dit eenvoudig en logisch systeem verklaart in één klap het gebruik van alle tijden in het
Latijnse tempussysteem.
Voor Oldsjö geeft de infectum-stam onvoltooidheid weer, de perfectum-stam voltooidheid: het imperfectum legt de focus op het verloop van de actie, het perfectum op de eindfase. Het nadeel aan deze redenering is dat ze enkel deze twee tijden kan verklaren, en de andere tijden die gevormd worden op de werkwoordstammen, buiten beschouwing laat.
In hoofdstuk 3 wordt eerst een statistisch overzicht gegeven van het gebruik van het imperfectum en het perfectum in boek 4 en 5 van De Bello Gallico. Daarna volgt een bespreking van 19 paragrafen uit deze boeken, waarbij volgende vaststellingen gedaan worden.
Het perfectum geeft belangrijke gebeurtenissen weer die zich bevinden op de narratieve tijdslijn, of voorgrond. Het imperfectum wordt gebruikt om de situatie te beschrijven die de tijdslijn begeleidt: de achtergrond. Het onderzoek in dit werkstuk bevestigt dat dit resulteert uit het feit dat het perfectum gebeurtenissen voorstelt als voortijdig t.o.v. het moment van spreken, waardoor ze noodzakelijkwijs gebeuren in de volgorde waarin ze voorkomen in de tekst. Het imperfectum duidt op gelijktijdigheid met een verleden referentiepunt, dat bepaald wordt door de perfecta
(of vormen in het historisch praesens) in de nabijheid.
Daarnaast gebruikt Caesar het perfectum om series van acties en reacties weer te geven. Als hij om een andere reden wil weergeven dat hij al ergens mee bezig was wanneer er zich iets voordoet, kan hij hiervoor het imperfectum gebruiken. Om deze redenen lijkt hij met het gebruik van imperfectum en perfectum ook zijn eigen kwaliteiten als generaal (vb. zijn reactievermogen) in de verf te zetten.
Uit het onderzoek blijkt ook nog dat het standaardtempus voor statieve werkwoorden het imperfectum is, en voor punctuele gebeurtenissen het perfectum. Dit is niet het resultaat van een verondersteld onderscheid in grammaticaal aspect, maar van het
Aktionsart (lexicaal aspect). Daarnaast blijkt ook dat het imperfectum zich zeer goed leent tot het weergeven van motieven, meningen en omstandigheden die een bepaalde beslissing of actie begeleiden. Ten slotte sluit dit werkstuk aan bij Pinkster in de mening dat conatieve en iteratieve interpretaties van imperfecta resulteren uit een botsing tussen tempus, Aktionsart en context die gelijktijdigheid van slechts één instantie van de werkwoorden uitgedrukt door imperfecta, onmogelijk maakt.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction 3
1.1. Caesar’s life 3
1.2. Caesar’s style and works 5
1.3. Scope and development of this paper 7
2. Status Quaestionis 8
2.1. Tense and aspect in general linguistics 8
2.1.1. Comrie, Tense (1985) 8
2.1.2. Comrie, Aspect (1976) 9
2.1.3. Binnick, Time and the Verb: a Guide to Tense and Aspect (1991) 11
2.2. Tense and aspect in the theory of Varro (in Serbat, 1976) 14
2.3. Tense and aspect in Latin linguistics 19
2.3.1. Pinkster, "Tempus, aspect and Aktionsart in Latin (recent trends 1961-1981)" (1983) and Latin Syntax and Semantics (1990) 19
2.3.2. Oldsjö, Tense and Aspect in Caesar's Narrative (2001) 23
2.4. Conclusion 28
3. Case study: Caesar, DBG IV-V 29
3.1. Statistic overview 29
3.2. Discussion of text samples 33
4. Conclusion 70
5. Bibliography 73
5.1. Editions, commentaries, translations 73
5.2. Other works 73
1. Introduction
1.1. Caesar’s life
The sources for this section are: Mommsen & Dickson (1895), Edwards (1917), and Holmes
(1923).
Gaius Julius Caesar was born in Rome in July of the year 100 BC, into a patrician family called the gens Julia. When he came of age, he started public life with the usual occupations appropriate for a young man of the nobility, like the office of flamen dialis
(priest of Jupiter) in Rome and rhetorical training on Rhodes. His political views were those of the populares, progressive politicians who relied on the people for their power, as opposed to the optimates, who were much more conservative in their clinging to senatorial authority.
After his admission to the senate and quaestorship in Spain in 68, he was aedile in 65, during which period he greatly indebted himself with the organisation of public games. In 63, he became pontifex maximus (high priest) after much lobbying and bribing. In 62 he was praetor, and afterwards he was rewarded with the governorship of Spain, a time of both military and financial successes.
On his return to Rome, he formed the first triumvirate with the mighty generals
Pompey and Crassus, who supported his election for consulship in 59. As consul,
Caesar secured certain advantages for both his benefactors and himself, including the proconsulship of Gaul: he was allowed to levy legions for his conquest of Gallia
Transalpina, thus securing a strong position for himself.
During the first two years of his proconsulship, he conquered the bulk of Gaul, for which he was allowed a triumph in 57. At a conference in Luca, where he met with
Pompey and Crassus, they settled their newly arisen differences: they decided that
3 Caesar’s proconsulship would be prolonged for another five years, and that Pompey and Crassus would be consuls the following year.
In the course of those five years, Caesar occupied himself with consolidating the new territories, crushing local revolts, and even crossing the Rhine to Germany and the
Channel to Britain. He greatly impressed Rome with his conquest of a few British tribes, but long-term Roman dominion of Britain was not established until Emperor
Claudius invaded the island in 43 AD. With the taking of Alesia, the stronghold of
Vercingetorix, who led the last great revolt of the natives in 51, Caesar regarded his conquest of Gaul as complete.
Back in Rome, the triumvirate had collapsed: Crassus had been killed in Asia Minor, and Pompey was now collaborating with the optimates to bring Caesar down. In 51, he was forced to contribute two legions to the war in Parthia. However, he was assisted in Rome by Curio, a tribune of the plebs, who vetoed a great deal of measures directed against him. In Gaul, he settled the remaining riots and divided the riches. At the end of his command in Gaul, he had succeeded in his goals to procure a large subjugated territory, a strong financial position and above all, loyal legions.
In 49, Caesar was ordered to disband his army. He refused and crossed the Rubicon with his legions, which was forbidden for Roman generals and meant civil war. His speedy march to the capital frightened the undermanned Pompeians, who left for
Greece. Caesar took control of the City, and made plans for dealing with Pompey’s army.
In 48, he defeated Pompey at Pharsalus in Thessaly. Pompey fled to Egypt, but was murdered on arrival. Scipio and Cato led the army to North-Africa. In 47, Caesar saw to the settlement of Egypt and Asia Minor. In 46, he won a decisive victory over Scipio and the Pompeian army at Thapsus in North-Africa. In 45, he concluded the Civil War with his victory over Pompey’s sons at Munda, Spain.
4 Caesar was bestowed with various honorary titles and offices. However, he was not very subtle in displaying his ambitions to be sole monarch of Rome. Brutus, Cassius and other Republicans made plans to dispose of the man they regarded as aspiring kingship. They sought to reestablish the Republic as it should be, where no single man could have all power. Caesar was assassinated on the Senate floor on the Ides of March,
44 BC.
1.2. Caesar’s style and works
The sources for this section are Batstone & Damon (2006), Eden (1962), Williams (1985), and
Gotoff (1984).
For Caesar’s contemporaries, Commentarii, or ‘memoirs’ as we would call the genre today, did not aspire to the same literary level as Historiae did. They were originally meant to justify the res gestae of the author, and served as a source for later historiographers. Among the famous Romans who wrote Commentarii before Caesar was the dictator Sulla. But only Caesar’s Commentarii survived: De Bello Gallico describes in seven books the subjugation of Gaul in 58-52, using the annalistic approach. Caesar published this work in 51, when he had to employ all possible means to preserve his prestige, in order to be granted another term as proconsul. In De Bello
Civili, which describes his res gestae in 49-48, Caesar’s aim is to display his desire for peace and the clementia he shows his enemies in defeat. This work consists of three books, but the third one was left unfinished, strengthening the general impression of incompleteness of De Bello Civile.
The main reason why Caesar chose the genre of Commentarii is that they were commonly recognized as being the raw material, purely factual and still devoid of embellishments. Historiae and Annales were adorned with stories that were in keeping with the gist of the events, but were not necessarily accurate. By titling his work
5 Commentarii, he claimed accuracy, truthfulness and objectivity.
However, Caesar’s historical reliability has often been assessed negatively, and yet he seems to be giving a report of the events that is biased rather than false. This can be most clearly seen in De Bello Civili, which we are able to compare with other narratives of the Civil War.
Concision, clarity and simplicity are the basic features of Caesar’s style: for example, he consistently avoids unnecessary synonyms, archaisms and vulgarisms. The effect of this consciously applied austere style is further amplified by Caesar’s pseudo- objective third person narration. As Cicero puts it in Brutus, 262 (translation by E.
Jones, 1776):
[F]or they are nudi, recti et venusti, and divested of all the ornaments of language, so as
to appear ... in a kind of undress. But while he pretended only to furnish the loose
materials, for such as might be inclined to compose a regular history, he may, perhaps,
have gratified the vanity of a few literary embroiderers; but he has certainly prevented
all sensible men from attempting any improvement on his plan. For in history, nothing
is more pleasing than a correct and elegant brevity of expression.
Caesar’s Commentarii were complemented by other writers, for he himself did not have the time to complete them. A. Hirtius, a legate in Caesar’s army, wrote the eighth book of De Bello Gallico on Caesar’s campaigns in 51-50. To De Bello Civili were added a
Bellum Alexandrinum, probably written by Hirtius as well, and a Bellum Africanum and a Bellum Hispaniense, which were also composed by some of Caesar’s officers. The latter work is particularly interesting because of the many features of vulgar Latin in its author’s language.
6 1.3. Scope and development of this paper
The aim of this paper is to bring together the different theories on tense and aspect that have hitherto been advanced in both general and Latin linguistics, and to apply these views to Caesar’s narrative. Given the historiographical nature of Caesar’s writings, our primary concern will be past tense, i.e. perfect and imperfect. Our material will be limited to DBG IV-V, providing a corpus of 96 paragraphs or 11.939 words, which will be sufficient for this purpose.
In chapter 2, the existing views on tense and aspect will be presented in three sections: general linguistics (Comrie, Binnick), ancient Latin "linguistics" (Varro), and finally modern Latin linguistics. In this final section, we will take a closer look at two opposing perspectives on tense and aspect in Latin: Pinkster’s relative tense theory and Oldsjö’s aspectual theory. In chapter 3, these theories will be applied to Caesar’s
DBG IV-V. We will begin this chapter with some statistics of perfects and imperfects in DBG IV-V, and attempt to present a clear overview of both tenses. Afterwards, we will look at some examples and attempt to account for them using both frameworks.
7 2. Status Quaestionis
This chapter contains an overview of the different theories concerning tense and aspect in the fields of general linguistics (Comrie, Binnick), ancient Latin "linguistics" (Varro) and 20th-21st century Latin linguistics (Pinkster, Oldsjö). The sections on Comrie,
Pinkster en Oldsjö are based largely on Aerts (2012).
2.1. Tense and aspect in general linguistics
2.1.1. Comrie, Tense (1985)
Comrie distinguishes between absolute tense and relative tense. The former is defined as “tenses which take the present moment as their deictic centre” (36). There are three absolute tenses, which are related to the present moment as follows (123):
present: E simul S
past: E before S
future: E after S
(E: event time, S: moment of speech)
Relative tense is again subdivided into pure relative tense and absolute-relative tense.
The former is defined as tenses where “the reference point for location of a situation is some point in time given by the context, not necessarily the present moment” (56). The possibilities for relative tense are (125):
relative present: E simul R
relative past: E before R
relative future: E after R
R (reference point) is not anchored: it is not itself located in time relative to any deictic
centre, such as the present moment, but it is given by the context (when absent in the
context, it’s taken to be the present).
8 Finally, in the case of absolute-relative tense, “a reference point is established relative to the present moment, and a situation is then located in time relative to that reference point” (125). The possibilities for absolute-relative tenses are (125-128):
pluperfect: E before R before S
future perfect: E before R after S
future in the future: E after R after S
future in the past: E after R before S
2.1.2. Comrie, Aspect (1976)
Comrie defines aspects as follows (5):
Aspect is not concerned with relating the time of the situation to any other time-point,
but rather with the internal temporal constituency of the one situation; one could state
the difference as one between situation-internal time (aspect) and situation-external time
(tense).
The major aspectual distinction Comrie makes, and also the one this paper is primarily concerned with, is the one between perfectivity and imperfectivity (16):
Perfectivity indicates the view of a situation as a single whole, without distinction of the
various separate phases that make up that situation; while the imperfective pays
essential attention to the internal structure of the situation.
Comrie continues by distinguishing between various types of “inherent aspectual (i.e. semantic aspectual) properties of various classes of lexical items” (41), but we will say more about these Aktionsarten (as they will be termed in this paper) in the next section.
9 According to Comrie, “the perfect1 is rather different from these aspects, since it tells us nothing directly about the situation in itself, but rather relates some state to a preceding situation” (52). He distinguishes between the perfect of result, where “a present state is referred to as being the result of some past situation” (56), the experiential perfect, where “a given situation has held at least once during some time in the past leading up to the present” (58), the perfect of persistent situation, where “a situation that started in the past ... continues (persists) into the present” (60), and the perfect of recent past, where “the present relevance of the past situation referred to is simply one of temporal closeness, i.e. the past situation is very recent."2 (60)
Comrie states that certain aspectual distinctions are restricted to certain tenses:
[T]he difference between the Aorist and the Imperfect exists only in the Past Tense, and
there is no corresponding distinction in other tenses. ... [T]he aspectual distinction is
essentially between perfective meaning on the one hand and imperfective meaning on
the other. Given that this is the basic distinction, it is not surprising from a functional
viewpoint that there should be no similar distinction in the present, since the present, as
an essentially descriptive tense, can normally only be of imperfective meaning. (71-72)
[T]he most typical usages of verbs in the present tense are those denoting actions in
progress or states (i.e. with continuous, or continuous and habitual meaning), whereas
in the past the most typical usages of verbs, especially nonstative verbs, are those with
perfective meaning. If we take it that it is most natural for a past tense verb to have
perfective meaning, then it is natural for a language to seek some other means of
expressing a past tense that does not indicate a single complete action, and it is here that
the Imperfect/Aorist distinction enters. In fact, the Imperfect expresses in past tense an
aspectual value that is more typical of the present. (72)
1 The traditional terminology is confusing: the perfect(ive) as an aspectual category is quite different from the Latin perfect tense. 2 This effect, however, applies mostly to British English: one might hear "I have just seen it" in Britain, whereas Americans would rather say "I just saw it".
10 2.1.3. Binnick, Time and the Verb: a Guide to Tense and Aspect (1991)
Binnick has an elaborate section on "Aristotelian Aspect", which will be termed
Aktionsart in this paper. An exploration of Aktionsart is necessary for the purpose of this paper, as will become clear from our discussion of text samples in chapter 3.
Binnick defines the difference between aspect and Aktionsart as follows (170):
Both may be marked by differences in verb stems, and both have to do with the internal
structures of events or situations, rather than with the sort of temporal relations involved
in tense. Aspect is a fully grammaticalized, obligatory, systematic category of languages,
operating with general oppositions such as that of perfective and non-perfective, while
Aktionsarten are purely lexical categories, nongrammatical, optional, and unsystematic,
defined in very specific terms such as inceptive or resumptive.
Most scholars would agree on the subdivision of "situations (states of affairs, instantations of temporal properties)" into "states (static situations, non-dynamic states of affairs)" and "non-states (occurrences, dynamic states of affairs)". Non-states can be further subdivided into "atelic situations (processes, activities, non-terminative states of affairs)" and "telic situations (events, performances, terminative states of affairs)".
Finally, telic situations comprise "developments (non-momentaneous states of affairs, protracted events, accomplishments)" and "punctual occurrences (momentaneous states of affairs, instanteneous events, achievements)" (180-181).
Concerning the difference between states ("unchanging throughout their duration"
(183); "persistent" (184); lacking "volitionality or agency" (184)) and non-states
("dynamic" (183); "tend to stop unless actively continued" (184); "often involve acts of will" (184)), Binnick states (173-174):
1. Only non-statives occur in the progressive:
*John is knowing the answer.
John is running.
John is building a house ...
11 2. When an activity or accomplishment occurs in the simple present tense (or any non-
progressive tense), it has a frequentative (or habitual) interpretation in normal contexts
...
John knows the answer. (right now)
John runs. (habitual)
John recites a poem. (habitual) ...
7. The [Aktionsarten] act differently as complements of the aspectual auxiliary verbs.
Statives do not normally occur with aspectual auxiliary verbs such as start, stop, finish,
though they do so occur in a habitual or frequentative sense ...
Joan started being ill (all the time).
stopped being ill (all the time).
*finished being ill.
Activities and accomplishments are different in the following features (175-176):
1. Whereas accomplishment verbs take adverbial preposition phrases with in but only
very marginally with for, activity verbs allow only the phrases with for:
?John painted a picture for an hour.
John painted a picture in an hour.
John walked for an hour.
*John walked in an hour ...
4. For activity verbs, x VERBed for y time entails that at any time during y, x VERBed was
true. For accomplishment verbs, x VERBed for y time does not entail that x VERBed was
true during any time within y at all. John walked for an hour entails that during that hour
it was true that John walked. John painted a picture for an hour does not entail that during
that hour it was true that John painted a picture.
5. For activity verbs, x is (now) VERBing (or x VERBs, this latter too with statives) entails
that x has VERBed. For accomplishment verbs, x is (now) VERBing entails that x has not
yet VERBed. John is painting entails that John has painted. John is ill entails that John has been
ill. John is painting a picture entails that John has not yet painted a picture ...
12 7. For activity verbs, x stopped VERBing entails that x did VERB, but for accomplishments,
x stopped VERBing does not entail x VERBed but only x was VERBing. John stopped walking
implies John did walk. John stopped painting a picture does not imply John did paint a picture,
but only John was painting a picture.
8. Only accomplishment verbs can normally occur as the complement of the verb finish.
John finished painting a picture.
*John finished walking.
Finally, achievements differ from accomplishments in these traits (177):
1. Although accomplishments allow both for-phrase and in-phrase time adverbials with
equal success, achievements are generally strange with a for-phrase.
John noticed the painting in a few minutes.
??John noticed the painting for a few minutes ...
4. Unlike accomplishment verbs, achievements are generally unacceptable as
complements of finish:
*John finished noticing the picture.
John finished painting the picture.
5. Stop occurs with achievements only in a habitual sense: John stopped noticing the picture
can only mean that he was broken of the habit of noticing the picture, not that he
"finished" noticing the picture on a certain occasion.
The same is true of start: Joan started noticing the lint on her suit can only have a progressive
or frequentative/habitual sense: over a period of time she noticed more and more lint, or
she over and over again had occasion to notice lint, on her suit.
With achievements, but not accomplishments, start VERBing entails VERBed: if Joan
started winning the race at 12:01, she must have won the race. But if she started painting
a picture at 12:01, she didn't necessarily ever paint a picture.
Non-states differ from states in developing from an initial state to a terminal state.
Within the category of non-states, events differ from activities in having a culminative
13 phase, and being able to finish as well as merely stop or cease. This telicity has been viewed as being all about terminativity, durativity or momentaneousness, or potential termination (188-189).
The oppositions telic/atelic and perfective/imperfective are independent of each other:
"Telic expressions may be used with imperfective aspect to indicate non-completion of a situation which is naturally [telic]." (190)
Binnick states that "every type of verb-centered linguistic expression assigns a phasic structure ... In the imperfective, the actualization of a culmination is not asserted ...
[The subject is] in the activity phase of an accomplishment." (192)
The difference between accomplishments and achievements is based on whether or not they contain an activity phase (durative – punctual).
"Accomplishments add to their activity phase an achievement phase, which is a point.
They naturally terminate at this point ... An achievement is all culmination, ... the verb
refers only to the achievement phase, not to the preceding activity." (194-195).
2.2. Tense and aspect in the theory of Varro (in Serbat, 1976)
Translations for originally Latin excerpts in this section are from Kent (1938).
As Serbat notes, a study of the Latin perfect and imperfect requires an elaboration on
Varro's distinction between infectum and perfectum. Linguists have always referred to to this prolific Roman scholar, whose De Lingua Latina is to be situated in the first century BC, in their discussions of tense and aspect, but "some have certainly made him say more than he actually wrote" (308). Nevertheless, however objective Serbat claims to be, his view and conclusion with respect to Varro's writings still remains biased.
14 In order to properly understand what exactly Varro wished to convey about the infectum – perfectum opposition, we should bear in mind the nature and structure of De
Lingua Latina. Of the twenty-five books it originally contained, only books V-X have survived intact, of which books V-VII are about etymology and books VIII-X about morphology. Varro was not interested in writing a complete synchronic grammar, but rather in the question whether morphology is regular or not, as this was the main controversy of his time. Varro himself occupies a moderate position: he believes that morphology is by and large regular (analogia, as opposed to anomalia), but that there are certain exceptions which can mostly be explained diachronically. Book VIII is written as a treatise against regularity, book IX as a treatise in favour of regularity, and book X is Varro's synthesis. In his discussion of Varro, Serbat quotes from all three of these books on morphology, but it should be noted that they are not all of the same value, and therefore do not equally reflect Varro's opinions.
In LL, VIII, 13 Varro defines the verb semantically as the word which is related to time
("verbum temporale"). Elsewhere, he defines the verb as expressing tense, but lacking case: "unum (genus) quod tempora adsignificat neque habet casus" (LL, VI, 36). Further,
Varro writes (LL, VIII, 20):
In verborum genere quae tempora adsignificant, quod ea erant tria, praeteritum,
praesens, futurum, declinatio faciunda fuit triplex, ut ab saluto, salutabam, salutabo;
cum item, personarum natura triplex esset ... haec ab eodem verbo declinata ...
Inasmuch as in the class of words which indicate also time-ideas there were these three
time-ideas, past, present, and future, there had to be three sets of derived forms, as from
the present saluto 'I salute' there are the past salutabam and the future salutabo. Since the
persons of the verb were likewise of three natures ... there are these derivative forms of
each and every verb.
As Serbat clarifies, Varro here invokes an obligatory correlation between morphology and a pre-existing natura, sc. that of tria tempora and tres personae. (309)
15 In LL, IX, 95 two other categories are added:
Quod ad verborum temporalium rationem attinet, cum partes sint quattuor, tempora,
personae, genera3, divisiones ...
We now come to the logical system of verbs; this has four parts: tenses, persons, kinds,
and divisions.
According to Serbat, "these divisiones comprise, among other oppositions, what we call the opposition between infectum and perfectum." (310)
However, in book X Varro names six verbal categories, sc. tense, person, interrogative, answer, wish and command (LL, X, 31). Clearly these species are quite heterogenous, as Serbat notes (310): interrogative and answer belong in a discussion of syntax, whereas wish and command are illustrative of mood; but what has become of the genera (voices) and the divisiones, which in book IX constituted, together with the tempora and the personae, the four categories of the Latin verb? The answer is provided in LL, X, 33:
Accedunt ad has species a copulis divisionum quadrinis : ab infecti et perfecti, ut emo
edo, emi edi; ab semel et saepius, ut scribo lego, scriptito lectito; a faciendi et patiendi,
ut uro ungo, uror ungor; a singulari et multitudinis, ut laudo culpo, laudamus culpamus.
There are added to these categories those which proceed from the four sets of pairs
consisting of the divisions: from that of the incomplete and the completed, as emo 'I buy'
and edo 'I eat,' emi 'I have bought' and edi 'I have eaten'; from that of the act done once
and the act done more often, as scribo 'I write' and lego 'I read,' scriptito 'I am busy with
writing,' and lectito 'I read and reread'; from that of active and passive, as uro 'I burn' and
ungo 'I anoint,' uror 'I am burned' and ungor 'I am anointed'; from that of singular and
plural, as laudo 'I praise' and culpo 'I blame,' laudamus 'we praise' and culpamus 'we blame.'
3 Kent (1938: 516): "Apparently a genus of verbs is a group of verbs which make their forms similarly, a conjugation or a group belonging to one conjugation; but it may also be a set of forms having one function, and hence equal to 'mood'."
16 Disregarding the second divisio (scribo/scriptito), which is a category purely lexical by nature, and those species which are situated on the syntactic level, we are left with six categories: tense, person, mood, the infectum/perfectum distinction, voice, and number.
The notions of infectum and perfectum, which are of primary concern at present, are hardly clarified in this paragraph, or anywhere else in De Lingua Latina, except for a single replacement of infecta res by inchoata res. (311) However, as we have noted earlier, substantial parts of De Lingua Latina were lost, among others the parts where
Varro wrote about syntax and semantics. In books VIII-X, from which all of our information is to be drawn, his main concern is morphology. Therefore, we must refrain ourselves from judgements such as these, because Varro may well have elaborated on these topics in other books of the original De Lingua Latina.
Remember that Varro's primary concern is to affirm and clarify the role of analogia in
Latin conjugations (cf. supra):
Primum quod aiunt analogias non servari in temporibus, cum dicant legi lego legam et
sic similiter alia: nam quae sint ut legi rem perfectam significare, duo reliqua lego et
legam inchoatam, iniuria reprehendunt: nam ex eodem genere et ex divisione idem
verbum, quod sumptum est, per tempora traduci infecti potest, ut discebam disco
discam, et eadem perfecti, ut didiceram didici didicero. (LL, IX, 96)
First as to their saying that the Regularities are not preserved in the tenses, when they
give perfect legi 'I have read,' present lego 'I read,' future legam 'I shall read,' and others
in just the same way: they are wrong in finding fault with those forms like legi as
denoting completed actions and the other two, lego and legam, as denoting action only
begun; for the same verb which has been taken from the same kind and the same
division, can be paraded through the tenses of non-completion, like discebam 'I was
learning,' disco 'I learn,' discam 'I shall learn,' and the same of completion, thus didiceram
'I had learned', didici 'I have learned,' didicero 'I shall have learned.'
Although Varro points out precisely the phenomenon that renders Latin conjugation different from its Greek counterpart, sc. what he calls divisio, he does not provide a
17 satisfactory clarification of the problem: he never explains why the past participle is used for the formation of the passive perfect, nor does he examine the formal connections between amas and amavisti, or try to account for do, dedi as opposed to amo, amavi. 4 (312-313)
Be that as it may, the Varronian divisio between infectum and perfectum still represents a fundamental observation on the morphological level. However, we are left without a clear answer as to the values these forms signify: legi expresses a res perfecta, lego a res infecta (inchoata), but Varro never specifies the exact meaning he intended for these notions, nor the relationship between this opposition and the tria tempora. When he speaks of tempora, he only knows praeteritum, praesens, and futurum. Therefore, we should apply these tempora to the category of perfectum as we do for the infectum. In that case, we should alter our terminology of the perfect tenses to 'perfect present',
'perfect past', and 'perfect future'. However, it should be noted that Varro never proposes this terminology in De Lingua Latina!5 Modern scholars are responsible for the attribution of such a value to the perfect, reasoning deductively that, if the three perfectum forms have to represent the three natural tempora, the present in this series is legi. Yet in the passage cited above, Varro's only objection of legi in the series of legi, lego, legam is one of divisio, and none of tense, implying that he views legi as praeteritum rather than praesens. (313-315)
Serbat concludes as follows (315):
The construction of an aspectual system of the Latin verb, taking Varro's writings as a
basis, is an audacious and even erroneous undertaking. Drawing, as did Riemann and
then Meillet, a schema where lego and legi are situated on the same line of the present,
one forgets the capital fact that Varro saw a past situation in legi ... Varro is primarily
4 Cf. supra, p. 17. 5 Cf. supra, p. 17.
18 concerned with the morphology of the verb, ... and the interpretation of his formal
remarks in syntactic terms is entirely our doing.
However, as we have made clear earlier, Serbat has little regard for the fragmentary nature of De Lingua Latina. Accordingly, we should bear in mind that his conclusion is based on an incomprehensive study of Varro's work, and therefore far from unbiased.
2.3. Tense and aspect in Latin linguistics
2.3.1. Pinkster, "Tempus, aspect and Aktionsart in Latin (recent trends 1961-1981)"
(1983) and Latin Syntax and Semantics (1990)
About the Latin verb system, Pinkster states (1990: 218):
The Latin verb system turns out to be construed systematically according to two
dimensions:
(i) most verb forms contain information as to the chronological order (anterior,
contemporaneous, posterior) of the predication with regard to a past, present or future
moment known from context or situation;
(ii) part of the verb forms, especially indicative forms, also contain information (apart
from that mentioned in (i)) as to the location of the predication in time (past, present,
future).
The first dimension corresponds to Comrie’s definition of pure relative tense, and comprises non-finite verb forms such as infinitives and participles. The second dimension corresponds to Comrie’s definition of absolute-relative tense, and comprises finite verb forms such as the indicative and to some extent the subjunctive.
For Pinkster, the opposition between the infectum stem and the perfectum stem is one of relative tense: the former indicates simultaneity, the latter anteriority. Absolute tense is conveyed by the endings of the finite verb forms, e.g. dic-o: taken together, the
19 infectum stem and the ending of the present tense indicate simultaneity with the present moment.
The Latin perfect fits into this two-dimensional system as follows (1983: 294-295):
The perfect indicates that a state of affairs has existed before the moment of speaking.
The perfect shares its anterior character with the other forms of the perfectum stem; it
differs for example from the plusquamperfectum in orientation moment. Saying that a
state of affairs is anterior with respect to the moment of speaking implies that the state
of affairs is represented as ‘not longer going on’, as ‘finished’, or ‘having ended’ ... [and]
that the state of affairs itself obtained in the past.
Clarifying the place of the perfect in the Latin tense system, Pinkster states (1983: 295):
In Latin indicative verb forms there are three orientation moments (past, present, future).
States of affairs may be ordered anterior, simultaneous or posterior with respect to each
of these orientation moments. ... [T]he perfect and imperfect differ from each other with
respect to their orientation moment, but both indicate that the state of affairs obtained in
the past. Notice that this similarity also appears from the fact that the
plusquamperfectum can be used to express anteriority with respect to each of them.
As an illustration, consider dix-i vs. dic-ebam. The former indicates anteriority
(perfectum stem) in relation to the present moment (perfect tense ending), whereas the latter indicates simultaneity (infectum stem) with some reference point in the past
(imperfect tense ending).
According to Pinkster, the advantages of such a conception are the following (1983:
295-296):
a) it does justice to both the past and present features of the perfect and its occurrence in
two types of contexts [i.e. ‘present’ contexts and past, narrative texts];
b) it does justice to the difference between perfect and imperfect (anterior vs.
simultaneous; finished vs. going on);
20 c) the perfect can be described in terms that are useful for the other verb forms as well,
so that:
d) it is not necessary to introduce the category of aspect for which there is little support
in the tense system as a whole. ... [T]he ‘aspectual effect’ of the juxtaposition of perfect
and imperfect in historical narrative (perfecto procedit, imperfecto insistit oratio) derives
from their semantic value and need not force us to introduce the category of aspect.
Furthermore, ... the difference between the aspectual notions of perfectivity and
imperfectivity and the temporal notions of anteriority and simultaneity is not very
clear.6
Pinkster regards any apparent exceptions to this rule, such as gnomic uses, prohibitions, ingressive uses and verbs like memini “I remember” as either idiomatic or specific interpretations, in a specific context, of predicates of a specific type (1983:
299-300; 1990: 231-232).
About the imperfect, Pinkster states:
The imperfect is used in predications that refer to a situation or event that occurred at a
certain moment in the past (or contemporaneous with a moment that itself is in the past.
...) That such events were still going on can be proved with the aid of instances in which
the imperfect cannot be replaced by a perfect, because then an implication would be
created that is contrary to reality ... (1990: 227)
Like the conative interpretation, iterative and other interpretations of the imperfect
completely depend on the context. (1990: 227)
6 In Pinkster’s framework, there is no room for aspect as a primary contrast, but since the imperfect tense and the perfect tense essentially convey the same temporal meaning, he admits that aspect could indeed play some part in the Latin tense system, but merely as a secondary contrast.
21 Finally, in his chapter on the use of indicative tenses in narrative texts, Pinkster acknowledges the fact that perfect indicative forms make up the events on the time line, whereas the imperfect draws the scene for these events:
'Perfecto procedit, imperfecto insistit oratio' (‘In the perfect the text moves on, in the
imperfect it stands still'). The use of the perfect as the tense for successive actions in the
foreground and of the imperfect as the tense for accompanying circumstances in the
background has long been recognized for Latin, and has parallels in many languages.
The use of the imperfect as a background tense is a result of its value, viz. to characterize
a predication as taking place at and contemporaneous with a certain moment in the past.
Predications marked by the imperfect thus constitute the framework within which other
events and situations occur. In contexts in which one or more predications in the
imperfect are followed by a predication in the perfect the latter will be interpreted as the
incident that takes place in a situation in the past … (1990: 237)
Pinkster clarifies how the relations between imperfect forms and perfect forms can be recognized:
The relations between (a) preceding predication(s) in the imperfect and (b) following
predication(s) in the perfect are often indicated explicitly, e.g. with connectors such as
igitur, ergo ('therefore'). In contexts where the order is reversed, so first a perfect and then
one or more imperfects, the predication in the imperfect will often be interpreted as
offering additional information or a motive. This can be made explicit by connectors
such as nam, enim ('for') … (1990: 237-238)
Just like the imperfect indicative, the perfect indicative in narrative texts can be accounted for in terms of relative tense:
A predication in the perfect refers to an event or situation which is presented by the
speaker, from his situation, as 'ended', anterior. If the context does not contain any
further information, a series of predications will be interpreted as referring to events that
have occurred successively (without overlapping one another) ... In a series of
22 predications in the imperfect, however, the predications can overlap; as a rule, they are
not intended as successive … (1990: 238)
2.3.2. Oldsjö, Tense and Aspect in Caesar's Narrative (2001)
Oldsjö has a wholly different view on tense and aspect in Latin. Where Pinkster states that the distinction between ‘finished’ (perfect) and ‘not finished’ (imperfect) is an implication of their being relative tenses, Oldsjö believes that this distinction is in fact the basic function of the perfect and the imperfect.
In response to Pinkster’s claim that “the perfect and imperfect differ from each other with respect to their orientation moment, but both indicate that the state of affairs obtained in the past” (1983: 295), Oldsjö states that in this way,
the imperfect will be reduced to what Comrie calls “absolute-relative tense”...,
completely parallel in function to the pluperfect and the past future. This, in its turn, has
the undesired effect of ascribing exactly the same tense function to the imperfect
indicative as to the imperfect subjunctive in subordinate clauses, which according to the
consecutio temporum indicates simultaneity to a past point of reference. (60)
Although Oldsjö calls this effect 'undesired', there is no reason why Pinkster should not have wanted the indicative imperfect to have the same temporal value as the imperfect subjunctive. Subordinate clauses mostly provide background information, whereas main clauses can provide either foreground or background information. Main clauses are particularly prone to provide background information if the style is paratactic, i.e. if it contains few subordinate clauses. Moreover, in subordinate clauses the subjunctive is very common (e.g. ut-clauses), whereas in main clauses it is rare
(mostly commands or wishes). When we now look at the imperfects, it is natural that the imperfect subjunctive is almost restricted to subordinate clauses, being both a
23 background tense and a mood typical of subordinate clauses. The imperfect indicative should occur in both main and subordinate clauses, but as a background tense.
Olsjö further criticizes Pinkster, saying that,
according to the relative tense theory, the imperfect and the pluperfect are parallel, since
they both relate a situation to a past reference point. (60)
This cannot be true, Oldsjö says, because of all the past tenses in Caesar’s main clauses, there are much more indicative imperfects than indicative pluperfects. Moreover, most of the indicative imperfects occur in Caesar’s main clauses, whereas most of the indicative pluperfects occur in subordinate clauses (60-61). He concludes (61):
The pluperfect is an “absolute-relative” tense form that describes a situation as anterior
to some past reference point. In practice, this means that the pluperfect often is used in
clauses temporally subordinated to main clauses. The imperfect, on the other hand,
relates situations directly to the point of speech, as does, for example, also the narrative
perfect and the present. Apart from temporally describing a situation as past, the
imperfect means adopting an imperfective aspectual perspective, viewing a situation as
incomplete.
However, this similarity between the imperfect and the pluperfect in Pinkster’s theory is not as strange as Oldsjo says it is. If there is a lot of background information to be told, most will be simultaneous and very little will be anterior. The anterior information can easily be packaged into subordinate clauses (pluperfect tense). But a high amount of simultaneous background information cannot be restricted to subordinate clauses without creating endlessly long sentences, and therefore often occurs in main clauses (imperfect tense).
Be that as it may, Oldsjö believes that aspect and Aktionsart do play a role in the
Classical Latin, contrary to Pinkster. In fact, they are “integral parts” of its verb system
(62):
24 In the case of historical narrative it is more pertinent to reduce the importance of the
function of tense, since the temporal relation between most situations in a narrative and
the point of speech is the same, namely anteriority. It is in the light of this fact that the
frequency of the present of narration and the infinitive of narration in Classical Latin
historiography should be explained: There is simply no need to mark tense for each
single past situation in long narratives ...
Pinkster’s denial of the existence of aspect in Latin could be seen as a too strong but still
sound reaction against the long lasting tradition of treating the Latin verb system in the
same way as the classical Greek system, which by nature is more manifestly aspectual.
It would certainly be correct to tone down the comparisons to Greek and to approach
Latin aspect more independently. The problem is that Pinkster questions the category of
aspect even in Greek ..., which makes his opinion extreme.
Oldsjö sees the opposition perfective-imperfective as the general aspectual opposition in Latin. The two most important Latin verb stems, the infectum (imperfective) and the perfectum (perfective), are essentially aspect stems to him, to which are added tense suffixes. However, in Classical Latin, “this opposition is functionally salient only for past tense” (68).
When a past situation is to be narrated in Latin, there is an evident choice between two
aspectual alternatives in the indicative, the narrative perfect, which is morphologically
marked, and the imperfect, which is morphologically unmarked. (68-69)
This means that an aspectual semantic value is always present when these two tense forms are used. Using the imperfective aspect means “viewing an incomplete situation, without reference to its end phase” (69).
With the perfective aspect, the beginning or middle of the situation is not overtly
presented but only implied through the mentioning of the end phase. With the
imperfective aspect, which focuses on the course of the situation, the beginning is
implied but the end completely excluded. (69-70)
25 Oldsjö defines aspect as follows (72-73):
A non-deictic grammaticalized category whose function is to express the phasal
perspective chosen to describe a (normally past) situation as complete, i.e. perfective, or
incomplete, i.e. imperfective.
On the morphological marking of aspect, he says (91):
The aspect meaning of the imperfective stem is indicated by the absence of a perfective
marker. Another way to put it is that the imperfective stem acquires its aspectual
meaning from the existence of a corresponding morphologically marked perfective
stem.
Tense, on the other hand, is morphologized by affixes. The present and the perfect lack tense affixation completely: they do not signal remoteness from the hic et nunc of the speaker, and are therefore interpreted as referring to the moment of speech (91-92).
From a morphological point of view, this means that
the use of these tense forms primarily cannot be explained with reference to the category
of tense. Instead, in the case of the aspectually marked perfect the possibilities of and
restrictions on its use should be sought in its indication of aspect. From this, a
fundamental conclusion for the morphology of the Latin verb system can be drawn: the
indication of aspect can have deictic implications. (93)
Oldsjö concludes his discussion of morphological marking of tense and aspect as follows (129):
The perfect marks perfective aspect but not tense. Since perfectivity implicates
anteriority, the perfect can be used to indicate anteriority in relation to all three temporal
reference points present, past and future. The present is unmarked both for tense and
aspect. This morphological features gives this form the highest functional potency of all
tense forms, since in principle it is compatible with any temporal relation and both
aspects.
26 Finally, concerning the different functional uses of imperfect and perfect, Oldsjö summarizes:
The application of imperfective aspect means viewing a situation as incomplete, or
ongoing. When telic situations are viewed imperfectively, there arises an aspectual
contrast between the telic phasal character of the situation and the imperfective
perspective. The normal reason for describing a telic situation imperfectively is that it is
iterated over a period of time. Sometimes, however, we are dealing with a single ongoing
situation which then receives a clearly marked progressive sense. The alleged conative
meaning is not the result of aspectual contrast between imperfective and telicity; it is
rather a contextual feature. (489)
Situations are viewed as complete through the perfective aspect. The aspectual contrast
between perfective and stative situations may give rise to an ingressive sense. This
contrast is not so pronounced, and we find the ingressive meaning mainly in temporal
subordinate clauses as well as in certain other instances where the context supports an
ingressive meaning. (490)
27 2.4. Conclusion
As we have seen, there are two main traditions when it comes to tense and aspect in
Latin. On the one hand, relative tense theory states that the opposition between infectum stem and perfectum stem is a temporal one: the former indicates simultaneity, the latter anteriority. Among others, Pinkster thus explains the distinction between the
Latin imperfect and perfect in terms of tense: they both indicate a past situation, but relate it to a different orientation moment.
On the other hand, aspectual theory states that the aforementioned opposition is an aspectual one: the infectum stem indicates imperfective aspect, the perfectum stem indicates perfective aspect. Accordingly, linguists like Oldsjö account for the distinction between imperfect and perfect in terms of aspect: the imperfect, being morphologically marked for tense but not for aspect, relates a situation to point of speech as past and views it as incomplete, whereas the perfect, being morphologically marked for aspect but not for tense, can relate a situation as anterior to all three temporal reference points, the anteriority being a result of its perfective aspect, which conveys completeness.
28 3. Case study: Caesar, DBG IV-V
3.1. Statistic overview
Table 1: Distribution of Imperfects and Perfects in Caesar's DBG IV-V
Main Clause Subordinate Clause
Imperfect
Indicative 119 92
Subjunctive 0 (+ 5 Or. Ob.) 223 (+ 32 Or. Ob.)
Perfect
Indicative 280 61
Subjunctive 0 17 (+ 8 IR Or. Ob.)
From Table 1, visualized in Figure 2, we can deduce that the perfect indicative occurs far more often in main clauses than in subordinate clauses, whereas this contrast is much less distinctive for the imperfect indicative. Another conclusion to be drawn is that all subjunctive forms (excluding the ones in oratio obliqua) occur in subordinate clauses, and that these are nearly all imperfect subjunctives. Therefore, it is obvious that main clauses strongly prefer the indicative mood and subordinate clauses the subjunctive mood, whereas their preference in tense is less distinctive, though still sound.
Since the subjunctive occurs primarily in clauses that are ‘subordinated’ to main clauses, it is not surprising to see that the imperfect is used mostly in clauses which are greatly dependent on the temporal reference point of the main clause for the choice of tense, such as ut-clauses, whereas the perfect subjunctive, if it occurs at all, is used in cases where the tense form of the subordinate clause depends less on the main clause, such as relative clauses.
29 A final note should be made about the distrubution of tenses in De Bello Gallico IV-V.
Pinkster (1983: 311) counts 55% perfect indicative forms in main clauses in book 4, and only 15% imperfect indicative and 25% present indicative forms. However, according to his research, book 5 features only 24% perfect indicative and 12% imperfect indicative forms, and an astounding 61% present indicative forms.7
Dressler (1968: 148, as paraphrased in Pinkster, 1983: 313) takes the position that the historic present is a stylistic (‘intensive’) variant of the perfect. Pinkster, however, follows Kravar (1969; 1971), who “replied that the present may also be used in contexts in which an event is expressed as going on and is not necessarily successive, i.e. where an imperfect could replace the present.” (1983: 313) Pinkster’s conclusion is that “such differences as exist between perfect and imperfect in narrative texts are neutralized if the (historic) present is used.” (1983: 314)
Now, since book 5 of De Bello Gallico features so many present indicative forms, we will try to account for them upon encountering them in our text samples. This present study does not aim to clarify the issue of the historical present in Latin narratives, but we will look at these individual examples and try to make a few suggestions.
The problem with the historical present, which has not been resolved by Pinkster or others, is its distribution across main clauses and subclases. In main clauses, the present tense can replace either the perfect tense or the imperfect tense. This double value might result from an original implicature of using the present tense, which basically conveys simultaneity with the moment of speaking, that the narrative is represented as an eyewitness account. After all, an eyewitness can both recount events occurring before his eyes (foreground), and describe the situation in which these events take place (background): both would be simultaneous with the moment of
7 Research for the present study yielded very similar results, confirming Pinkster’s findings for tense distribution in main clauses in DBG V: 59% present indicative forms, 14% imperfect indicative forms, and 26% perfect indicative forms.
30 speaking. At a later stage, the effects of ‘vividness’, ‘immediacy’, and ‘unexpectedness’ became the sole thing authors like Caesar had in mind when using the present tense, which explains why an episode in the historical present in his narrative does not necessarily require a literal transposition of the author or the audience to the scene of the action.
Subordinate clauses, however, may depend for their verb tense on a present tense in the corresponding main clause. An author like Caesar has two options for the tense in such a subordinate clause: he can either regard the main clause’s present tense as a secondary tense (i.e. past tense) and choose the subordinate clause’s tense accordingly, or he can choose the subordinate clause’s tense on formal grounds and opt for the present tense, because there is a historical present in the main clause. The former option does not present any problems, since the subordinate clause’s tense must be past. The latter option, however, could result in a present tense replacing either perfect or imperfect. However, although subordinate clauses prefer imperfect tenses, we should refrain from concluding that the historical present replaces the imperfect tense in subordinate clauses, and the perfect tense in main clauses: both are sweeping statements which disregard the versality of the Latin language.
31
Figure 1: Distribution of Imperfects and Perfects in Caesar's DBG IV-V
Table 2: Overview of tense, mood and clause types in Caesar's DBG IV-V
Total
Tense
Imperfect 471
Perfect 366
Mood
Indicative 552
Subjunctive 285
Clause Type
Main Clause 404
Subordinate Clause 433
32 3.2. Discussion of text samples
The translations of these passages are from Edwards (1917), adapted if necessary to serve the purposes of this paper.
We will now turn to a close investigation of some text samples from De Bello Gallico
IV-V. In Aerts (2012), random samples from book IV were discussed in order to find the most suitable explanation for the infectum – perfectum distinction in the Latin tense system. The outcome of that paper, which was clearly in favour of relative tense theory, will serve as the basis for the present one. Additional paragraphs will be submitted to similar questioning, the results of which will solidify our claim that the introduction of aspect is not as imperative as Oldsjö claims it to be, but that relative tense, a more economical, uncomplicated, and comprehensive solution, sufficiently accounts for the problem at hand.
[1]
Caesar cum ab hoste non amplius passuum XII milibus abesset, ut erat constitutum, ad
eum legati revertuntur; qui in itinere congressi magnopere ne longius progrederetur
orabant. Cum id non impetrassent, petebant uti ad eos [equites] qui agmen
antecessissent, praemitteret eosque pugna prohiberet, sibique ut potestatem faceret in
Ubios legatos mittendi; quorum si principes ac senatus sibi iure iurando fidem fecisset,
ea condicione quae a Caesare ferretur se usuros ostendebant: ad has res conficiendas
sibi tridui spatium daret. Haec omnia Caesar eodem illo pertinere arbitrabatur ut tridui
mora interposita equites eorum qui abessent reverterentur; tamen sese non longius
milibus passuum IIII aquationis causa processurum eo die dixit: huc postero die quam
frequentissimi convenirent, ut de eorum postulatis cognosceret. Interim ad praefectos,
qui cum omni equitatu antecesserant, mittit qui nuntiarent ne hostes proelio lacesserent,
et, si ipsi lacesserentur, sustinerent quoad ipse cum exercitu propius accessisset. (DBG,
IV, 11)
33 When Caesar was no more than twelve miles away from the enemy, the deputies
returned to him as was agreed: having met him on the march, they besought (ind. impf.)
him earnestly not to advance (subj. impf.) further. When they had not obtained this, they
asked (ind. impf.) him to send forward (subj. impf.) to the cavalry which had preceded the
column, and to prevent (subj. impf.) them from engaging, and to grant (subj. impf.)
themselves an opportunity of sending deputies into the land of the Ubii. They pointed
out (ind. impf.) that, if the chiefs and the senate of the Ubii had pledged their faith on
oath, they (the Germans) would accept the terms which Caesar offered (subj. impf.); he
should give (subj. impf.) them an interval of three days to settle these affairs. Caesar
supposed (ind. impf.) that all these pleas had the same object as before: that their cavalry,
which was absent (subj. impf.), would return (subj. impf.) after a delay of three days;
however, he said (ind. perf.) that on that day he would advance no further than four miles
for reasons of water supply. They should meet (subj. impf.) him there the next day with
as large a number as they could, in order that he might take cognisance (subj. impf.) of
their demands. Meanwhile he sent messengers to the commanders who had gone
forward with all the cavalry to instruct (subj. impf.) them not to provoke (subj. impf.) the
enemy to an engagement, and, if they themselves were provoked (subj. impf.), to hold
their ground (subj. impf.) until he himself with the army had come up nearer.
It is common knowledge in Latin linguistics that imperfect forms in a narrative constitute the background information to the main action, while the perfect forms make up the backbone of the narrative. Accordingly, orabant, petebant, ostendebant and arbitrabatur are seen by both Pinkster and Oldsjö as describing the ongoing situations that form the circumstances (background) as they were at the time when dixit occurred
(foreground)8. However, where Pinkster states that this results from the fact that these imperfect forms mark situations as simultaneous with some past reference point (E simul R before S), Oldsjö claims that the actual reason is the fact that they convey incompleteness at a past moment which is directly related to the moment of speech
(Eimperfective before S).
8 Cf. Fleischman (1985) for the use of this terminology.
34 Upon closer investigation of the lexical nature of these imperfect verbs, it turns out that they are all verbal processes, except for arbitrabatur, which is a mental process.
However, dixit is as much a verbal process as these imperfect verbs are. Therefore, it is difficult to imagine that Caesar wanted to stress a certain difference in completeness: without their respective end phases included in their meaning, orabant, petebant, and ostendebant are pointless. Caesar can only dicere when the enemy’s deputies have finished orare, petere and ostendere (arbitrare will be discussed in the next text sample, along with other imperfect mental processes). Moreover, there is no reason why
Caesar would regard only dixit from the perspective of its end phase and not the other processes as well. In his discussion of this passage, Oldsjö suggests an intensifying sense, a derivation of the iterative type resulting from the opposition imperfectivity- telicity (cf. supra, p. 27), but he himself explicitly restricts this nuance to “the specific contexts in which verbs of these types occur” (2001: 222-223), which leads us to conclude that, if such an interpretation is to be made, it is not a grammatical feature
(i.e. conveyed by the verb tense), but part of the lexical context.
It seems that every process in this paragraph revolves around dixit, to which all the indicative imperfect forms have been made “subordinate”, sc. on a textual level. It is this perfect form that is related directly to the moment of speech: by virtue of its anteriority to the present moment it establishes a past reference point which is exactly the same reference point with which all the imperfect forms are simultaneous.
Therefore, instead of resorting to aspectual oppositions, it seems more legitimate to account for the fact that these situations were all going on at the time of dixit in terms of relative tense. The implication is that orabant, petebant, ostendebant and arbitrabatur
(cf. infra) are seen as non-successive situations pertaining to the moment when dixit occurred, not merely in their end phase or in their progress, but as a whole.
35 [2]
Hoc facto proelio Caesar neque iam sibi legatos audiendos neque condiciones
accipiendas arbitrabatur ab iis qui per dolum atque insidias petita pace ultro bellum
intulissent; expectare vero dum hostium copiae augerentur equitatusque reverteretur
summae dementiae esse iudicabat, et cognita Gallorum infirmitate quantum iam apud
eos hostes uno proelio auctoritatis essent consecuti sentiebat; quibus ad consilia
capienda nihil spatii dandum existimabat. His constitutis rebus et consilio cum legatis
et quaestore communicato, ne quem diem pugnae praetermitteret, oportunissima res
accidit, quod postridie eius diei mane eadem et perfidia et simulatione usi Germani
frequentes, omnibus principibus maioribusque natu adhibitis, ad eum in castra
venerunt, simul, ut dicebatur, sui purgandi causa, quod contra atque esset dictum et
ipsi petissent, proelium pridie commisissent, simul ut, si quid possent, de indutiis
fallendo impetrarent. Quos sibi Caesar oblatos gavisus illos retineri iussit; ipse omnes
copias castris eduxit equitatumque, quod recenti proelio perterritum esse existimabat,
agmen subsequi iussit. (DBG, IV, 13)
After this engagement was over, Caesar felt (ind. impf.) that he ought no longer to receive
deputies nor to accept conditions from those who had sought for peace by guile and
treachery, and then had actually begun war. Further, he judged (ind. impf.) it the height
of madness to wait till the enemy’s forces were increased (subj. impf.) and till their cavalry
returned (subj. impf.). Knowing as he did the fickleness of the Gauls, he apprehended
(ind. impf.) how much influence the enemy had already acquired over them by a single
engagement; and he considered (ind. impf.) that no time to form plans should be given
them. When these matters had been decided, and when his purpose not to lose (subj.
impf.) a day in giving battle had been communicated to the lieutenant-generals and the
quartermaster-general, a most fortunate event occurred (ind. perf.), namely that the next
morning, by the same treacherousness and feigning, a large company of Germans, all
their principal and senior men having been summoned, came (ind. perf.) to his quarters,
both to clear themselves, as they said (ind. impf.), from the accusation that they had
engaged in a battle the day before, contrary to what had been said and to what they
themselves had asked for, as well as to get (subj. impf.) by deceiving what they could
36 (subj. impf.) in respect of the truce. Caesar, rejoicing that they were delivered into his
hand, ordered (ind. perf.) them to be detained; then in person he led (ind. perf.) all his
troops out of camp, and ordered (ind. perf.) the cavalry, which he judged (ind. impf.) to
be shaken by the recent engagement, to follow in the rear.
The imperfect forms in this paragraph are all mental processes. Since they essentially refer to states, they have no natural end phase (nor a beginning, for that matter) for an aspectual opposition between perfective and imperfective to focus on. Therefore, a distinction between perfect and imperfect tense can never signal an aspectual contrast in the case of stative verbs, since the notion that the situation they refer to has no beginning or end is inherent to the lexeme (Aktionsart), and not part of the grammar
(aspect). Due to their lexical value, the unmarked tense for stative verbs is the imperfect, since their meaning involves simultaneity with the main action. Notice, however, that some typically stative verbs can (a) have alternative, dynamic meanings, possibly under the influence of an aspectual morpheme9, or (b) be modified by other verbs expressing initiation or termination. Finally, note that dicebatur falls under the same reasoning as for the verbal processes in the previous text sample.
Evidently, this leads us to the same conclusion as before: instead of indicating incompleteness, the imperfect forms arbitrabatur, iudicabat, sentiebat, existimabat, and dicebatur merely convey a cluster of non-successive situations which make up the scene as it was when accidit (and venerunt, which defines accidit) occurred. Caesar then quickly moves into action, as well he should: the time line is continued by iussit, eduxit, and iussit, only to be interrupted once, by existimabat, which clarifies Caesar’s motive for the second order.
9 Cf. Haverling (1996).
37 [3]
In eadem causa fuerunt Usipetes et Tencteri, quos supra diximus; qui complures annos
Sueborum vim sustinuerunt, ad extremum tamen agris expulsi et multis locis
Germaniae triennium vagati ad Rhenum pervenerunt, quas regiones Menapii
incolebant. Hi ad utramque ripam fluminis agros, aedificia vicosque habebant, sed
tantae multitudinis adventu perterriti ex iis aedificiis quae trans flumen habuerant
demigraverant, et cis Rhenum dispositis praesidiis Germanos transire prohibebant. Illi
omnia experti, cum neque vi contendere propter inopiam navium neque clam transire
propter custodias Menapiorum possent, reverti se in suas sedes regionesque
simulaverunt et tridui viam progressi rursus reverterunt atque omni hoc itinere una
nocte equitatu confecto inscios inopinantes Menapios oppresserunt, qui de
Germanorum discessu per exploratores certiores facti sine metu trans Rhenum in suos
vicos remigraverant. His interfectis navibus eorum occupatis, priusquam ea pars
Menapiorum quae citra Rhenum erat certior fieret, flumen transierunt atque omnibus
eorum aedificiis occupatis reliquam partem hiemis se eorum copiis aluerunt. (DBG, IV,
4).
The Usipetes and the Tencteri, whom we have mentioned (ind. perf.) above, were (ind.
perf.) in the same case. For several years they endured (ind. perf.) the force of the Suebi,
but at last they were driven out of their lands, and after wandering for three years in
many districts of Germany they reached (ind. perf.) the Rhine, the localities about which
the Menapii inhabited (ind. impf.). These possessed (ind. impf.) lands, buildings, and
villages on both banks of the river, but alarmed by the approach of so great a host, they
had removed from the buildings which they had possessed beyond the river, and,
having set garrisons at intervals on the near side of the Rhine, they were preventing (ind.
impf.) the Germans from crossing. Since the Germans, having tried everything, could
(subj. impf.) neither force their way because of their lack of vessels nor cross secretly
because of the Menapian guards, they pretended (ind. perf.) to have retired to their own
homes and districts, and having proceeded for a three days’ journey, they turned around
(ind. perf.). Their cavalry, having completed the whole of this distance in a single night,
fell upon the unsuspecting Menapii, who, having learnt through their scouts of the
38 departure of the Germans, had moved back without fear over the Rhine into their own
villages. After they were killed and their vessels seized, the Germans crossed (ind. perf.)
the river before the part of the Menapii which was (ind. impf.) on the near side of the
Rhine, could learn (subj. impf.) of it, and, having seized all of their buildings, they
sustained (ind. perf.) themselves for the remainder of the winter on the supplies of the
Menapii.
Before we turn to the discussion of this paragraph, it should be noted that the second perfect form is a special case, since diximus does not refer to the narrative, but to
Caesar’s act of writing. In Pinkster’s relative tense theory, this case would be explained as referring to a situation of ‘mentioning’ that precedes the moment of speech10.
Aspectual theory, however, would rather emphasize that the ‘mentioning’ has been completed at the moment of speech, and that anteriority is implicated by this perfective aspect. Essentially, it seems that in both frameworks the basic function and its implication are being interchanged when this use of the perfect is concerned.
As we have seen in our discussion of text sample [2], the default tense for stative verbs is the imperfect tense, not because they are viewed in their progress, but because the situations they refer to are generally related to the main action as simultaneous. This reasoning allows us to account for perfect forms of stative verbs, such as fuerunt, as well, since (a) they cannot focus on an end phase of such a verb, and (b) they stress the fact that the situation they refer to is an important part of the main action, and thus constitutes a past reference point to which imperfect forms can align as simultaneous.
But why is fuerunt such an important event on the timeline, being merely a stative copula verb? The answer should be looked for in the preceding paragraph, where similar events happened to the Ubii. Paragraph boundaries were not as clear to Caesar
10 In writing, the moment of speech is the moment when the message is conveyed to the audience, i.e. the oral delivery of a text to a live audience or the visual reading by an individual reader. Essentially, the temporal gap between the act of writing and the perception by the reader/listener should be omitted.
39 and his audience as they are to us, so fuerunt might have been put in the perfect tense just to stress sequentiality with the situation of the Ubii.
Furthermore, the situation conveyed by sustinuerunt cannot have been viewed by
Caesar in its end phase either, which is exactly the eventual failure of several years of sustinere. Aspectual theorists would perhaps expect the imperfect tense with a conative interpretation in this case, but Pinkster, who believes that such interpretations of the imperfect tense depend entirely on the context (1990: 227), would say that sustinuerunt is part of the main action and therefore rightly occurs in the perfect tense. Indeed, no such difficulties would arise if we do not bring in aspect and choose the simplest option to explain sustinuerunt: relative tense. This way, the situation of enduring is viewed as taking a primary place on the time line, just like fuerunt and pervenerunt.
The imperfect forms incolebant and habebant are both states, which do naturally convey situations that are simultaneous to the events on the time line (cf. supra, p. 37), in this case pervenerunt. Prohibere, on the other hand, is an accomplishment, and consists of an activity phase and a culminative phase (Binnick, 1991: 194-195). Whereas Oldsjö would explain this use of the imperfect as focussing on the activity phase of prohibere, and on the lack of a culminative phase, relative tense theory can provide the equally satisfactory explanation that both phases of prohibere are viewed as going on at the time of simulaverunt, as a whole. Moreover, the context does not exclude that the
Menapii could hold off the Germans for a while, on the contrary. After simulaverunt, the sequence of events continues with reverterunt, oppresserunt, and transierunt, ending with aluerunt.
[4]
Dum in his locis Caesar navium parandarum causa moratur, ex magna parte Morinorum
ad eum legati venerunt, qui se de superioris temporis consilio excusarent, quod homines
40 barbari et nostrae consuetudinis imperiti bellum populo Romano fecissent, seque ea quae imperasset facturos pollicerentur. Hoc sibi Caesar satis oportune accidisse arbitratus, quod neque post tergum hostem relinquere volebat neque belli gerendi propter anni tempus facultatem habebat neque has tantularum rerum occupationes
Britanniae anteponendas iudicabat, magnum iis numerum obsidum imperat. Quibus adductis eos in fidem recepit. Navibus circiter LXXX onerariis coactis contractisque, quot satis esse ad duas transportandas legiones existimabat, quod praeterea navium longarum habebat quaestori, legatis praefectisque distribuit. Huc accedebant XVIII onerariae naves, quae ex eo loco a milibus passuum VIII vento tenebantur quo minus in eundem portum venire possent: has equitibus tribuit. Reliquum exercitum Q. Titurio
Sabino et L. Aurunculeio Cottae legatis in Menapios atque in eos pagos Morinorum a quibus ad eum legati non venerant ducendum dedit. P. Sulpicium Rufum legatum cum eo praesidio quod satis esse arbitrabatur portum tenere iussit. (DBG, IV, 22)
While Caesar tarried in these regions to fit out his ships, deputies came (ind. perf.) to him from a great part of the Morini to make excuse (subj. impf.) for their policy of the previous season, when in their barbarism and ignorance of our usage they had made war against
Rome, and to promise (subj. impf.) that they would carry out his commands. Caesar, believing that this had happened exceedingly opportunely to him, since he did not wish
(ind. impf) to leave an enemy in his rear, since he did not have (ind. impf) a chance of carrying out a campaign because of the lateness of the season, and since he did not think
(ind. impf) the settlement of such trivialities should take precedence of Britain, ordered
(ind. pres.) them them to furnish a large number of hostages. When these were brought, he received (ind. perf.) them under his protection. When about eighty transports, which he deemed (ind. impf.) to be enough for the transportation of two legions, had been collected and concentrated, he distributed (ind. perf.) all the ships of war he had (ind. impf.) over between his quartermaster-general, lieutenant-generals, and commandants.
To this were added (ind. impf.) eighteen transports, which were detained (ind. impf.) eight miles off by the wind, as a result of which they could (subj. impf.) not come to the same port: these he allotted (ind. perf.) to the cavalry. The rest of the army he handed over (ind. perf.) to Quintus Titurius Sabinus and Lucius Aurunculeius Cotta, lieutenant- generals, to be led against the Menapii and against those cantons of the Morini from
41 which no deputies had come to him. He commanded (ind. perf.) Publius Sulpicius Rufus,
lieutenant-general, with a garrison he considered (ind. impf.) sufficient, to hold the port.
In this paragraph, the main action consists of a single major event (venerunt), followed by a series of decisions and orders which constitute Caesar’s reaction to the opportunity: imperat, recepit, distribuit, tribuit, dedit, and iussit. Note that imperat has been put in the present tense to signal Caesar’s liveliness and sagacity (a trait more than once conveyed by perfect forms resuming the action), and should therefore be seen as part of the time line. Most of these verbs are surrounded by imperfect forms: volebat, habebat and iudicabat are states which describe Caesar’s motives at the time when he decided to imperare; existimabat indicates Caesar’s opinion when he decided on the number of transports that were to be assembled; habebat describes the size of
Caesar’s fleet of war ships at the time of distribuere; accedebant and tenebantur sketch another situation on which Caesar acted by tribuere; and finally, arbitrabatur relates once more Caesar’s opinion at the time of his action of iubere.
Once again, the need for aspect to account for these imperfect forms has been disproved: they all seem to float around the perfect forms, elaborating on the circumstances as they were at the time of Caesar’s orders and decisions. By relating his own deeds in the perfect tense, he portrays himself as a fine and vigorous general who saves the day with every single action he performs.
[5]
Quod ubi Caesar animadvertit, naves longas, quarum et species erat barbaris inusitatior
et motus ad usum expeditior, paulum removeri ab onerariis navibus et remis incitari et
ad latus apertum hostium constitui atque inde fundis, sagittis, tormentis hostes propelli
ac submoveri iussit; quae res magno usui nostris fuit. Nam et navium figura et remorum
motu et inusitato genere tormentorum permoti barbari constiterunt ac paulum modo
pedem rettulerunt. Atque nostris militibus cunctantibus, maxime propter altitudinem
42 maris, qui X legionis aquilam gerebat, obtestatus deos, ut ea res legioni feliciter eveniret,
' desilite', inquit, ' milites, nisi vultis aquilam hostibus prodere; ego certe meum rei
publicae atque imperatori officium praestitero.' Hoc cum voce magna dixisset, se ex navi
proiecit atque in hostes aquilam ferre coepit. Tum nostri cohortati inter se, ne tantum
dedecus admitteretur, universi ex navi desiluerunt. Hos item ex proximis primi navibus
cum conspexissent, subsecuti hostibus adpropinquaverunt. (DBG, IV, 25)
When Caesar remarked (ind. perf.) this, he commanded (ind. perf.) the ships of war, of
which the appearance was (ind. impf.) less familiar to the natives, and the movement
more unencumbered at need, to be a little removed from the transports, to be urged on
by the oars, and to be brought up on the exposed flank of the enemy, and thence the
enemy to be driven and cleared off with slings, arrows, and artillery. This movement
proved (ind. perf.) of great service to our troops. For the natives, frightened by the shape
of the ships, the motion of the oars, and the unfamiliar type of the artillery, came to a
halt (ind. perf.), and retired (ind. perf.), but only for a little space. And then, while our
troops still hung back, chiefly on account of the depth of the sea, the one who carried
(ind. impf.) the Tenth Legion’s eagle, after a prayer to heaven that his act would come
about (subj. impf.) favorably for the legion, cried (ind. perf.): “Leap down, soldiers, unless
you wish to betray your eagle to the enemy; it shall be told that I at any rate did my duty
to my country and my general.” When he had said this with a loud voice, he cast himself
forth (ind. perf.) from the ship, and began (ind. perf.) to bear the eagle against the enemy.
Then our troops, having exhorted one another not to allow (subj. impf.) so dire a disgrace,
leapt down (ind. perf.) from the ship with one accord. When likewise the first troops on
the nearest ships had seen them, having followed them closely, they drew near (ind. perf.)
to the enemy.
The first part of this paragraph seems to exemplify Caesar’s primary concern to portray himself as Rome’s most excellent military general. By stressing the sequentiality of animadvertit, iussit and fuit, using the perfect tense, Caesar displays his ability to act quickly and effectively in times of peril: he detects the problem, and immediately acts on it by issuing a series of commands, which result in a reversal of his soldiers’ fortune. If Caesar would have put animadvertit in the imperfect tense, the
43 implication would have been wholly different: his noticing the impending disaster would then be simultaneous to his acting on it, implicating that he tarried a while before he came to his senses. Obviously, this is not a general’s trait, and would discredit his character and reputation.
Fuit is then defined by (nam) constituerunt ac rettulerunt, but although these verbs convey the actions which constitute fuit, all three of them are perfect forms. Because of nam, which usually signals that additional information is about te be given, Pinkster would have expected constituerunt and rettulerunt to be in the imperfect tense (cf. supra, p. 22). Caesar’s stressing of sequentiality should here be seen in light of the principle of action and reaction: the barbarians’ halting and falling back make up their reaction on (the execution of)11 Caesar’s orders. If he would have used the imperfect tense here, the result of his astuteness would have appeared less important, more backgrounded, and most of all, less his doing.
In the second part of paragraph 25, Caesar grants glory to the aquilifer of the Tenth
Legion, using the implications of the Latin imperfect and perfect tense in a similar way.
Bear in mind, however, that this man in Caesar's army has been put in this fortunate position by Caesar himself, who has just ordered the ships to be arranged in this fashion, and that this character in Caesar's narrative is serving as a tempering of his egocentrism and bravado, which he must have realised by now is far too obvious.
[6]
Pugnatum est ab utrisque acriter. Nostri tamen, quod neque ordines servare neque
firmiter insistere neque signa subsequi poterant, atque alius alia ex navi quibuscumque
signis occurrerat se adgregabat, magnopere perturbabantur; hostes vero notis omnibus
11 I consciously use parentheses here: the use of infinitives to describe what actually took place, indicate that the soldiers’ executing these actions is made secondary to Caesar’s commanding them.
44 vadii, ubi ex litore aliquos singulares ex navi egredientes conspexerant, incitatis equis
impeditos adoriebantur, plures paucos circumsistebant, alii ab latere aperto in
universos tela coniciebant. Quod cum animadvertisset Caesar, scaphas longarum
navium, item speculatoria navigia militibus compleri iussit et, quos laborantes
conspexerat, his subsidia submittebat. Nostri, simul in arido constiterunt, suis omnibus
consecutis in hostes impetum fecerunt atque eos in fugam dederunt; neque longius
prosequi potuerunt, quod equites cursum tenere atque insulam capere non potuerant.
Hoc unum ad pristinam fortunam Caesari defuit. (DBG, IV, 26)
The soldiers on both sides fought (ind. perf.) fiercely. Our troops, however, because they
could (ind. impf.) not keep ranks, nor stand firm, nor follow their proper standards, and
because any man from any ship attached (ind. impf.) himself to whatever standard he
had chanced upon, were greatly thrown in confusion (ind. impf.). But the enemy knew
all the shallows, and when they had observed from the shore some soldiers
disembarking one by one from a ship, they spurred on their horses and attacked (ind.
impf.) them while they were in difficulties. Many surrounded (ind. impf.) few, others
hurled (ind. impf.) missiles into a whole party from the exposed flanks. When Caesar had
noticed this, he ordered (ind. perf.) the boats of the warships, and likewise the scout-
vessels, to be manned with soldiers, and to whom he had observed to be in distress, he
sent (ind. impf.) help. As soon as our men stood firm (ind. perf.) on dry land, they made
(ind. perf.) a charge into the enemy with all their comrades close behind, and put (ind.
perf.) them to rout; but they could (ind. perf.) not pursue very far, because the cavalry had
not been able to hold on their course and make the island. This one thing Caesar lacked
(ind. perf.) for his accustomed fortune.
In this paragraph, many of the (terminative) actions have been put in the imperfect tense. According to Oldsjö, the opposition imperfectivity-telicity results in an iterative sense: he believes that the terminative situations conveyed by poterant, adgregabat, perturbabantur, adoriebantur, circumsistebant, and coniciebant are repeated “either on several different occasions or at several different places during a specific period of time. In such cases, the imperfective viewpoint consequently cancels the normal sequentiality of telic situations” (2001: 470).
45 However, these instances can be equally satisfactorily explained using relative tense theory: pugnatum est draws the attention to the main action, and sets the past reference point with which the subsequent imperfect forms are ultimately related as simultaneous, thus constituting the background which is to be identified with pugnatum est. As we have seen before, Caesar promptly responds with iussit, but submittebat poses a problem, since it is coordinated with iussit: why did Caesar choose a different tense for this situation? The most probable answer is that he wanted to stress the fact that submittebat did not follow iussit, but was already going on when he started to take action, as would befit a fine general. Therefore, a more accurate translation would read: When Caesar had noticed this, he ordered ... and was already sending help. With iussit, the chain of events has been put into motion, and the soldiers reactions are depicted accordingly, in the perfect tense.
[7]
Eadem nocte accidit ut esset luna plena, qui dies a maritimos aestus maximos in Oceano
efficere consuevit, nostrisque id erat incognitum. Ita uno tempore et longas naves,
[quibus Caesar exercitum transportandum curaverat,] quas Caesar in aridum
subduxerat, aestus complebat, et onerarias, quae ad ancoras erant deligatae, tempestas
adflictabat, neque ulla nostris facultas aut administrandi aut auxiliandi dabatur.
Compluribus navibus fractis, reliquae cum essent funibus, ancoris reliquisque
armamentis amissis ad navigandum inutiles, magna, id quod necesse erat accidere,
totius exercitus perturbatio facta est. Neque enim naves erant aliae quibus reportari
possent, et omnia deerant quae ad reficiendas naves erant usui, et, quod omnibus
constabat hiemari in Gallia oportere, frumentum in his locis in hiemem provisum non
erat. (DBG, IV, 29)
That same night it chanced (ind. perf.) that the moon was (subj. impf.) full, which day is
accustomed to make the highest tides in the Ocean, and this was unknown to our men.
Thus at the same moment the tide was filling (ind. impf.) the warships, in which Caesar
46 had caused his army to be conveyed across, and which he had drawn up on dry land,
the storm was buffeting (ind. impf.) the transports, which had been made fast to anchors,
and our troops were not being given (ind. impf.) any chance of handling them or helping.
Several ships having been destroyed, and since the others were (subj. impf.) useless for
sailing by loss of cordage, anchors, and the rest of their tackle, a great disturbance of the
entire army took place (ind. perf.), which was (ind. impf.) inevitable to happen. For there
were (ind. impf.) no other ships in which they could (subj. impf.) be carried back, and
everything which was (ind. impf.) needful for the repair of ships was lacking (ind. impf.),
and, as it was evident (ind. impf.) to all that the army was to winter in Gaul, no corn had
been provided in these parts against the winter.
In this example, there is one perfect form which Pinkster correctly sees as idiomatic, and therefore as not pertaining to his general theory (cf. supra, p. 21): consuevit is a perfect form with present meaning, quite similar to modern linguistic phenomena such as Dutch kunnen. The present of this verb is conjugated as ik kan, jij kan (without the second-person ending -t of the present tense), etc. These forms originally constituted the conjugation of the past tense but have gained present meaning.
The rest of this paragraph can again be explained using relative tense theory. The perfect form accidit is the past reference point for the subsequent imperfect forms, although it carries little semantic meaning. Rather, it seems that the temporal effect of its tense is the only function of this verb form: it does not serve any other purpose. The imperfect forms erat, complebat, adflictabat, and dabatur give additional (background) information about the situation initiated by accidit, since they all occur simultaneous with it. The main action is then resumed with facta est, preceded by erat, which conveys that facta est was bound to occur at that time, and followed by erant, deerant, erant, and constabat, which describe the motives for the disturbance of the army, as they were at that time.12
12 Cf. Pinkster (1990: 237-238).
47 [8]
Haec civitas longe plurimum totius Galliae equitatu valet magnasque habet copias
peditum Rhenumque, ut supra demonstravimus, tangit. In ea civitate duo de principatu
inter se contendebant, Indutiomarus et Cingetorix; e quibus alter, simul atque de
Caesaris legionumque adventu cognitum est, ad eum venit, se suosque omnes in officio
futuros neque ab amicitia populi Romani defecturos confirmavit quaeque in Treveris
gererentur ostendit. At Indutiomarus equitatum peditatumque cogere, eisque qui per
aetatem in armis esse non poterant in silvam Arduennam abditis, quae ingenti
magnitudine per medios fines Treverorum a flumine Rheno ad initium Remorum
pertinet, bellum parare instituit. Sed posteaquam nonnulli principes ex ea civitate et
familiaritate Cingetorigis adducti et adventu nostri exercitus perterriti ad Caesarem
venerunt et de suis privatim rebus ab eo petere coeperunt, quoniam civitati consulere
non possent, veritus ne ab omnibus desereretur Indutiomarus legatos ad Caesarem
mittit … (DBG, V, 3)
Their state is by far the most powerful in cavalry of all the Gauls, and possesses great
forces of infantry; and, as we have shown (ind. perf.) above, it touches the Rhine. Two
men in the state were striving (ind. impf.) together for the chieftaincy, Indutiomarus and
Cingetorix. The latter of these, as soon as he was informed (ind. perf.) of the coming of
Caesar and his legions, came (ind. perf.) to him, and he affirmed (ind. perf.) that he and
all his followers would abide in loyalty and not forsake their friendship with Rome;
moreover, he showed (ind. perf.) what was afoot (subj. impf.) among the Treveri.
Indutiomarus, on the other hand, began (ind. perf.) to raise horse and foot, and to prepare
for war, as soon as he had hidden away those who could (ind. impf.) not serve in battle
because of their age, in the Forest of Ardennes, which, due to its great size, stretches
right through the territory of the Treveri, from the river Rhine to the border of the Remi.
But after some of the chiefs of the Treveri, actuated by their friendship for Cingetorix,
and at the same time alarmed at the coming of our army, had come (ind. perf.) to Caesar
and had begun (ind. perf.) to make requests of him as touching their own private
interests, since it was not in their power (subj. impf.) to take measures in the interests of
48 the state, Indutiomarus, fearing that he might be deserted (subj. impf.) by one and all,
sent (ind. pres.) deputies to Caesar …13
The verb forms in this paragraph are another clear illustration of the sequentiality typically expressed by the perfect tense (note, however, the exceptional case of forms like demonstravimus, which have been discussed on p. 39). Contendebant draws the background, explaining the problem which defines the situation as it was at the time when the action started. As soon as the two contenders learn of Caesar’s arrival, the
“good guy” immediately comes to him, shows himself loyal to Rome, and notifies
Caesar of the ill tidings in his tribe. By putting these actions in the perfect tense, Caesar stresses their importance and the fact that they occur in that specific order. Instituit must then constitute Indutiomarus’ reaction following on Cingetorix’ actions, since the perfect tense does not allow simultaneity. Similarly, venerunt and coeperunt convey the reactions of the Treveri chiefs on Indutiomarus’ actions, but one could also argue that the perfect tense is obligatory after postquam in this case.
As we have stated on p. 30, DBG V features a great amount of present indicative forms in main clauses, most of which are to be interpreted as praesens historicum. As we have now come to our first text sample of book 5, we will include the historical present in our discussion from now on, whenever it occurs. Here, the present tense form in question is mittit, which evidently continues the time line with Indutiomarus’ reaction on the course of action taken by the Treveri chiefs. One possible explanation for
Caesar’s choice for the present tense in this case, might be that Caesar deemed a distinction necessary between the (obligatory) perfect tense forms in the preceding subordinate clause (following postquam), and the action in the main clause. However,
13 Omissions in text samples in the present study occur only because of longer stretches of oratio obliqua, or because of sentences which feature only pluperfect indicative forms, both of which are of no concern to us here.
49 we should perhaps more generally conclude that Caesar found Indutiomarus’ reaction to have been immediate or highly unexpected.14
[9]
Caesar, etsi intellegebat qua de causa ea dicerentur quaeque eum res ab instituto
consilio deterreret, tamen, ne aestatem in Treveris consumere cogeretur omnibus ad
Britannicum bellum rebus comparatis, Indutiomarum ad se cum CC obsidibus venire
iussit. His adductis, in eis filio propinquisque eius omnibus, quos nominatim
evocaverat, consolatus Indutiomarum hortatusque est uti in officio maneret; nihilo
tamen setius principibus Treverorum ad se convocatis hos singillatim Cingetorigi
conciliavit, quod cum merito eius a se fieri intellegebat, tum magni interesse
arbitrabatur eius auctoritatem inter suos quam plurimum valere, cuius tam egregiam in
se voluntatem perspexisset. Id tulit factum graviter Indutiomarus, suam gratiam inter
suos minui, et, qui iam ante inimico in nos animo fuisset multo gravius hoc dolore
exarsit. (DBG, V, 4)
Although he knew (ind. impf.) the reason why these things were being said (subj. impf.),
and the circumstance which was discouraging (subj. impf.) Indutiomarus from his
deliberate design, Caesar nevertheless commanded (ind. perf.) Indutiomarus to come to
him with two hundred hostages, that he might not be obliged (subj. impf.) to waste the
summer among the Treveri when everything had been prepared for the campaign in
Britain. When these had been brought in, among them his son and all his relatives, whom
Caesar had summoned by name, he comforted (ind. perf.) Indutiomarus and exhorted
(ind. perf.) him to abide (subj. impf.) in loyalty. Nevertheless, after he had assembled the
chiefs of the Treveri at his headquarters, he won them over (ind. perf.) severally for
Cingetorix, since he was aware (ind. impf.) that Cingetorix deserved this of him, but also
deemed (ind. impf.) it of great importance that the authority of one whose signal goodwill
towards himself he had fully proved should be as strong as possible among his own folk.
14 Cf. Schichler (1931).
50 This action Indutiomarus took grievously to heart (ind. perf.), for he saw that his own
influence among his people was being diminished, and though he had previously felt
hostility towards us, his indignation now burst far more vehemently into flame (ind.
perf.).
With intellegebat, we have again a mental process in the imperfect tense, which is the default tense for verbs denoting stative situations (cf. supra, p. 37). Iussit then continues the time line with Caesar’s reaction on mittit in the previous paragraph; after this command, and logically after the execution thereof, Caesar first comforts
Indutiomarus and only then does he exhort him to abide in loyalty: the perfect tense forms oblige us to interpret these events in that particular sequential order. Next,
Caesar conciliavit, his motives being intellegebat and arbitrabatur, two mental processes
(and stative situations) which describe the circumstances at the time when the foregrounded event took place, and for which the imperfect is the default tense.
Indutiomarus’ reaction is again put in the perfect tense (tulit), although ferre graviter is a mental process as well, and a stative situation. Ferebat, however, would have made this situation simultaneous with a past reference point, either conciliavit or exarsit. The former of these would be unsuitable as a reference point, since in that case the implication would be that ferre was already going on at the time of Caesar’s conciliare, which is of course impossible; the latter option would make ferre subordinate (on a textual level, as a motive for instance) to exarsit, which would then follow immediately after conciliavit on the time line. Although this is not entirely impossible, Caesar’s choice for tulit shows that he wanted to stress sequentiality: tulit graviter and exarsit are both equally important reactions to conciliavit, and occur in that specific order.
Finally, note that focussing on the end phase of exarsit cannot have been Caesar’s intention, as aspectual theorists would claim: being an achievement, exarsit has no activity phase for an opposition between imperfectivity and perfectivity to focus on.
Similarly, in relative tense theory, achievements cannot normally be seen as
51 simultaneous with a past reference point. Therefore, just like the imperfect is the default tense for states, the perfect is the default tense for achievements.
[10]
Erat una cum ceteris Dumnorix Aeduus, de quo ante ab nobis dictum est. Hunc secum
habere in primis constituerat, quod eum cupidum rerum novarum, cupidum imperi,
magni animi, magnae inter Gallos auctoritatis cognoverat. Accedebat huc quod in
concilio Aeduorum Dumnorix dixerat sibi a Caesare regnum civitatis deferri; quod
dictum Aedui graviter ferebant, neque recusandi aut deprecandi causa legatos ad
Caesarem mittere audebant. Id factum ex suis hospitibus Caesar cognoverat. Ille
omnibus primo precibus petere contendit ut in Gallia relinqueretur, partim quod
insuetus navigandi mare timeret, partim quod religionibus impediri sese diceret.
Posteaquam id obstinate sibi negari vidit, omni spe impetrandi adempta principes
Galliae sollicitare, sevocare singulos hortarique coepit uti in continenti remanerent; …
Haec a compluribus ad Caesarem deferebantur. (DBG, V, 6)
Among the others there was (ind. impf.) Dumnorix of the Aedui, of whom we have
spoken (ind. perf.) before. Caesar had determined to keep Dumnorix in particular with
him, because he had learnt that he was bent on revolution, bent on sovereignty, a man
of great courage and of great weight among the Gauls. To this was added (ind. impf.) that
in the council of the Aedui Dumnorix had said that Caesar meant to offer him the
kingship of the state; and while the Aedui took the saying grievously to heart (ind. impf.),
they did not dare (ind. impf.) to send envoys to Caesar either to repudiate or deprecate
his purpose. Caesar had learnt this fact from his own partisans. Dumnorix at first by
every kind of entreaty pressed (ind. perf.) his petition to be left (subj. impf.) in Gaul, partly
because he was unused to a voyage and feared (subj. impf.) the sea, partly because he
said (subj. impf.) that he was hindered on religious grounds. When he saw (ind. perf.) that
leave was inexorably refused, and all hope of obtaining it had been taken away, he began
(ind. perf.) to stir up the Gallic chieftains, drawing them aside severally and exhorting
52 them to stay (subj. impf.) on the Continent. … These plots were reported (ind. impf.) to
Caesar by several persons.
This paragraph starts with a series of imperfect forms, interrupted only once by dictum est, which falls under the same category as diximus and demonstravimus (cf. supra, p.
39). The imperfect tense again expresses collective simultaneity with the past reference points provided by the subsequent perfect forms: the situations conveyed by erat, accedebat, ferebant, and audebant are all occurring and valid at the same time. Note that ferre graviter has been put in the imperfect tense here, as opposed to tulit graviter in text sample [9], where Caesar wanted to stress sequentiality and the fact that it constituted
Indutiomarus’ reaction in a chain of reactions. Although it is true that ferebant graviter and audebant are also reactions (sc. the Aedui’s reaction on Dumnorix claim in the council), this was clearly not what Caesar wanted to emphasize in his narrative: by making Dumnorix’ action subordinated to a main clause with an imperfect tense, he downsizes the importance of these individual events and turns them all into equal parts of a single situation which is subordinated (on a textual level) to contendit and the other events on the time line.
Indeed, contendit draws the attention to the main action which occurs at that particular time (defined by the imperfect forms). Focussing on the end phase of this verb cannot have been Caesar’s aim, since contendere, being an activity verb, has no natural end phase for an opposition imperfective-perfective to focus on. Therefore, the perfect tense signals only sequentiality here: the focus is shifted from the background to the foreground, and after contendit we get vidit, followed15 by coepit. Finally, the tense of deferebantur implies that Caesar was being notified about Dumnorix’ deeds as they were happening. Apparently, not only vividness and sagacity are general’s traits:
15 Since Latin obviously offers plenty of other options for temporal subordination, postquam seems to emphasize sequentiality even stronger, combining its own meaning with an obligatory perfect tense.
53 Caesar was also keen on keeping himself informed of everything that happened in
Gaul, as it was happening.
[11]
His rebus gestis, Labieno in continente cum tribus legionibus et equitum milibus duobus
relicto ut portus tueretur et rem frumentariam provideret quaeque in Gallia gererentur
cognosceret consiliumque pro tempore et pro re caperet, ipse cum quinque legionibus et
pari numero equitum, quem in continenti reliquerat, ad solis occasum naves solvit et
leni Africo provectus media circiter nocte vento intermisso cursum non tenuit, et longius
delatus aestu orta luce sub sinistra Britanniam relictam conspexit. Tum rursus aestus
commutationem secutus remis contendit ut eam partem insulae caperet, qua optimum
esse egressum superiore aestate cognoverat. Qua in re admodum fuit militum virtus
laudanda, qui vectoriis gravibusque navigiis non intermisso remigandi labore longarum
navium cursum adaequarunt. Accessum est ad Britanniam omnibus navibus meridiano
fere tempore, neque in eo loco hostis est visus …16 (DBG, V, 8)
When this had been done, and Labienus had been left on the Continent with three
legions and two thousand horse, to guard (subj. impf.) the ports, to ensure (subj. impf.)
the corn-supply, to learn (subj. impf.) what was afoot (subj. impf.) in Gaul, and to make
(subj. impf.) plans according to occasion and circumstance, he himself, with five legions
and a contingent of horse equal to one he had left on the Continent, weighed anchor
(ind. perf.) about sunset; and having been carried on by a gentle southwest wind, after
the wind had failed about midnight, he did not make (ind. perf.) the course; and having
been carried on too far by the tide, he sighted (ind. perf.) Britain left afar on the port side
at sunrise. Then, once more having followed the turn of the tide, he strove (ind. perf.) by
rowing to make (subj. impf.) that part of the island of which he had learnt in the previous
summer that it was the best place of disembarkation. And herein was (ind. perf.) the spirit
of the troops much to be commended, who, in the heavily built transports, by
16 Cf. footnote 13.
54 uninterrupted effort of rowing kept level (ind. perf.) with the men-of-war. The whole
fleet reached (ind. perf.) the shore of Britain about midday, but no enemy was seen (ind.
perf.) there …
This paragraph is another clear illustration of the function of the Latin perfect tense: solvit, tenuit, conspexit, contendit, fuit, adaequarunt, accessum est, and est visus are to be interpreted, as a result of their tense form, as occurring in that particular, successive order. These situations have no temporal relation to each other, but because of their direct relation of anteriority with the present moment, they happen in the order in which they are related to hic et nunc, i.e. their order of appearance in the narrative.
[12]
Caesar exposito exercitu et loco castris idoneo capto, ubi ex captivis cognovit quo in loco
hostium copiae consedissent, cohortibus decem ad mare relictis et equitibus trecentis,
qui praesidio navibus essent, de tertia vigilia ad hostes contendit, eo minus veritus
navibus, quod in litore molli atque aperto deligatas ad ancoram relinquebat, et praesidio
navibus Q. Atrium praefecit. Ipse noctu progressus milia passuum circiter XII hostium
copias conspicatus est. Illi equitatu atque essedis ad flumen progressi ex loco superiore
nostros prohibere et proelium committere coeperunt. Repulsi ab equitatu se in silvas
abdiderunt, locum nacti egregie et natura et opere munitum, quem domestici belli, ut
videbantur, causa iam ante praeparaverant: nam crebris arboribus succisis omnes
introitus erant praeclusi. Ipsi ex silvis rari propugnabant nostrosque intra munitiones
ingredi prohibebant. At milites legionis septimae, testudine facta et aggere ad
munitiones adiecto, locum ceperunt eosque ex silvis expulerunt paucis vulneribus
acceptis. Sed eos fugientes longius Caesar prosequi vetuit, et quod loci naturam
ignorabat, et quod magna parte diei consumpta munitioni castrorum tempus relinqui
volebat. (DBG, V, 9)
When the army had been landed and a place suitable for the camp had been chosen, and
when he learnt (ind. perf.) from prisoners where the enemy’s forces had taken post,
55 having left ten cohorts and three hundred horse by the seashore, who were to be (subj.
impf.) guards for the ships, he pressed on (ind. perf.) towards the enemy, starting in the
third watch, having the less fear for the fleet because he was leaving (ind. impf.) it at
anchor on a sandy, open shore; and he appointed (ind. perf.) Quintus Atrius to command
the troops guarding the ships. He himself, having advanced about twelve miles in the
night, came in sight (ind. perf.) of the enemy’s forces. Having advanced their cavalry and
chariots from the higher ground to a river, they began (ind. perf.) to check our troops and
to engage. Driven back by our horse, they concealed (ind. perf.) themselves in the woods,
having procured a position excellently fortified by nature as well as by handiwork,
which, as it appeared (ind. impf.), they had prepared before for a war among themselves;
for all the entries had been barred by a great number of felled trees. The enemy fought
(ind. impf.) from the woods in small groups, and sought to prevent (ind. impf.) our troops
from entering the fortifications. But the men of the Seventh Legion, having formed a
“tortoise” and thrown up a ramp against the fortifications, took (ind. perf.) the position
and drove (ind. perf.) the enemy out of the woods, having been injured only lightly.
Caesar forbade (ind. perf.) them to pursue the fugitives very far, because he did not know
(ind. impf.) the character of the country, and also, since a great part of the day had been
spent, because he wished (ind. impf.) to leave time for the entrenchment of the camp.
Before we begin our discussion of this paragraph, note that cognovit falls under the same reasoning as consuevit, which has been discussed above (cf. text sample [7]). The remainder of this text sample can be analyzed in much the same way as before:
Caesar’s first course of action on the time line is contendit, for which relinquebat is his motivation. Only then, it would seem, does he appoint a commander for the ships he has just left. This is rather odd, since Caesar should have settled this matter before leaving camp to set out for the enemy. The only logic in this apparent temporal confusion is that the matter of appointing a commander must have seemed less relevant to Caesar than his march on the enemy, and therefore came only as an afterthought, which is reflected in his writing. Indeed, conspicatus est follows after contendit and is reacted on by coeperunt, which has abdiderunt as a result. When the enemy has hidden in the woods, a certain stretch of time begins during which they
56 propugnabant and prohibebant. These verbs are (far from incorrectly) translated by
Edwards with a conative interpretation, but note that this is not because of the imperfect tense in which they occur, but because of the context17: it is only because the next sentence indicates their eventual failure that prohibebant can be translated with sought to prevent. The only indication made by the imperfect tense, is that propugnabant and prohibebant were happening at the time when ceperunt occurred. After they took the fortification, the Romans expulerunt the natives, and then Caesar vetuit, for which his motives are again described in the imperfect tense: ignorabat and volebat convey his thoughts as they were at the time of vetuit.
[13]
Postero die procul a castris hostes in collibus constiterunt rarique se ostendere et lenius
quam pridie nostros equites proelio lacessere coeperunt. Sed meridie, cum Caesar
pabulandi causa tres legiones atque omnem equitatum cum Gaio Trebonio legato
misisset, repente ex omnibus partibus ad pabulatores advolaverunt, sic uti ab signis
legionibusque non absisterent. Nostri acriter in eos impetu facto reppulerunt neque
finem sequendi fecerunt, quoad subsidio confisi equites, cum post se legiones viderent,
praecipites hostes egerunt magnoque eorum numero interfecto neque sui colligendi
neque consistendi aut ex essedis desiliendi facultatem dederunt. Ex hac fuga protinus,
quae undique convenerant, auxilia discesserunt, neque post id tempus umquam
summis nobiscum copiis hostes contenderunt. (DBG, V, 17)
On the next day, the enemy took post (ind. perf.) on the hills, at a distance from the camp,
and began (ind. perf.) to show themselves in small parties and to assail our horsemen,
though more feebly than on the day before. But at noon, when Caesar had sent three
legions and all the cavalry with Gaius Trebonius, the lieutenant-general, to get forage,
the enemy swooped (ind. perf.) suddenly from all directions upon the foraging parties,
with such vigour that they did not stop short (subj. impf.) of the legions drawn up for
17 Cf. Pinkster’s discussion of the conative interpretation on p. 22.
57 battle. Our troops, having charged them fiercely, drove (ind. perf.) them back, and did
not make (ind. perf.) an end to the pursuit until the cavalry, relying on support, since
they saw (subj. impf.) the legions behind them, drove (ind. perf.) the enemy headlong and,
having slain a great number of them, they gave (ind. perf.) them no chance to rally or
stand fast, nor to leap down from their chariots. After this rout, the succours which had
assembled from all quarters took their departure (ind. perf.); and never afterwards did
the enemy engage (ind. perf.) us at our full strength.
If we consider that in DBG, V, 15 Caesar described a battle with an unfortunate outcome for the Romans (mainly in the perfect and present indicative), and in DBG, V,
16 he gives an explanation on account of the natives’ deviating battle tactics (mainly in imperfect subjunctive and indicative forms, dependent on a single perfect form intellectum est ‘it was realized’), it is clear that the events of this paragraph continue the events on the time line, which have been interrupted in the previous paragraph. Our focus is drawn to the natives, who constiterunt, coeperunt and eventually even advolaverunt. However, our expectation that they will have the upper hand again
(considering the advantages they had at that time, explained in the previous paragraph) is not fulfilled: the focus is shifted towards the Roman soldiers (nostri), who react on the natives’ provocations with reppulerunt, fecerunt, egerunt and dederunt, which happen in that particular order, as their tense form indicates. The result of the
Romans’ brave deeds are that the natives discesserunt and never again contenderunt under those circumstances after that day.
[14]
Caesar cognito consilio eorum ad flumen Tamesim in fines Cassivellauni exercitum
duxit; quod flumen uno omnino loco pedibus, atque hoc aegre, transiri potest. Eo cum
venisset, animum advertit ad alteram fluminis ripam magnas esse copias hostium
instructas. Ripa autem erat acutis sudibus praefixis munita, eiusdemque generis sub
aqua defixae sudes flumine tegebantur. His rebus cognitis a captivis perfugisque Caesar
58 praemisso equitatu confestim legiones subsequi iussit. Sed ea celeritate atque eo impetu
milites ierunt, cum capite solo ex aqua exstarent, ut hostes impetum legionum atque
equitum sustinere non possent ripasque dimitterent ac se fugae mandarent. (DBG, V, 18)
Having obtained knowledge of their plans, Caesar led (ind. perf.) his army into the
borders of Cassivellaunus as far as the river Thames. This river kan be crossed at one
place only on foot, and that with difficulty. When he was come thither, he remarked (ind.
perf.) that on the other bank of the river a great force of the enemy had been drawn up.
The bank was (ind. impf.) fortified with a fringe of sharp projecting stakes, and stakes of
the same kind fixed under water were concealed (ind. impf.) by the stream. When he had
learnt these details from prisoners and deserters, Caesar, having sent the cavalry in
advance, ordered (ind. perf.) the legions to follow up instantly. But the troops moved
(ind. perf.) with such speed and such spirit, although they had (subj. impf.) only their
heads above water, that the enemy could (subj. impf.) not withstand the assault of legions
and cavalry, but abandoned (subj. impf.) the banks and betook (subj. impf.) themselves to
flight.
This paragraph shows once more that relative tense suffices as an explanation for the use of the imperfect and perfect tenses: duxit follows the action in the previous paragraph and precedes animum advertit; erat and tegebantur describe the scene and
Caesar’s motives as they were at the time of iussit, which follows animum advertit on the time line; iussit itself is followed by ierunt, which constitutes the soldier’s execution of Caesar’s command. The eventual outcome of the battle, however, is syntactically subordinated to ierunt, which leads us to conclude that Caesar considered his order and its proper execution the most important elements of the battle: the natives’ reaction is portrayed as a natural and predictable result, and less relevant with respect to the narrative’s time line.
59 [15]
Cassivellaunus, ut supra demonstravimus, omni deposita spe contentionis dimissis
amplioribus copiis milibus circiter quattuor essedariorum relictis itinera nostra servabat
paulumque ex via excedebat locisque impeditis ac silvestribus sese occultabat, atque eis
regionibus quibus nos iter facturos cognoverat pecora atque homines ex agris in silvas
compellebat et, cum equitatus noster liberius praedandi vastandique causa se in agros
eiecerat, omnibus viis semitisque essedarios ex silvis emittebat et magno cum periculo
nostrorum equitum cum eis confligebat atque hoc metu latius vagari prohibebat.
Relinquebatur ut neque longius ab agmine legionum discedi Caesar pateretur, et
tantum in agris vastandis incendiisque faciendis hostibus noceretur, quantum labore
atque itinere legionarii milites efficere poterant. (DBG, V, 19)
When Cassivellaunus, as we have shown (ind. perf.) above, had relinquished all hope of
a struggle, disbanded the greater part of his force, and left over about four thousand
charioteers, he kept our marches under observation (ind. impf.), withdrew (ind. impf.) a
little from the route, concealed (ind. impf.) himself in entangled positions among the
woods, drove (ind. impf.) all cattle and human beings from the fields into the woods in
whatever districts he had learnt that we intended to march, sent out (ind. impf.)
charioteers from the woods by every road and path whenever our cavalry had dashed
out over the fields to plunder and devestate more freely and engaged (ind. impf.) with
them to their great danger, and prevented (ind. impf.) them by the fear thus caused from
ranger farther afield. There remained (ind. impf.) only that Caesar was to allow (subj.
impf.) no party to remove very far from the main column of the legions, and to do (subj.
impf.) as much harm to the enemy in laying waste the fields and in conflagrations as the
marching powers of the legionaries could (ind. impf.) accomplish.
This paragraph features nothing but imperfect forms18, and is therefore very important to our research. If we encounter no evidence that aspect should be introduced as a category in Latin, our support for relative tense theory will be greatly reinforced.
18 Note again that demonstravimus falls under the exception discussed on p. 38.
60 After the battle of the preceding paragraph, there appears to be a pause in the fighting between Romans and Britons, indicated by the lack of any events in the perfect tense: there are no actions undertaken by either side, and no reactions following them. Caesar no longer distinguishes between important, individual events, but seems to be painting a Bruegelian19 picture of various smaller situations which all happen simultaneously: Cassivellaunus servabat, excedebat, occultabat, compellebat, emittebat, confligebat, and prohibebat all at the same time. This should not be interpreted too strictly, since some of these actions cannot be performed literally at the same moment in time; rather, the function of the imperfect tense is to indicate that all of these actions pertain, as a whole, to the moment when the events on the time line resume in the next paragraph. It is true that we might need to allocate an iterative interpretation to some of Cassivellaunus’ actions, but Pinkster rightly explains that this interpretation results not from the imperfect tense itself, but from the combination of context, Aktionsart, and tense form, which does not allow only one instance of each of these separate actions to occur simultaneously (cf. supra, p. 21).
Finally, note that Caesar does not emphasize the importance of his own response to
Cassivellaunus’ tactics: his actual reactions are in the subjunctive mood in a clause that is subordinated to a verb in the imperfect tense. Accordingly, relinquebatur should be interpreted as the other half of our Bruegelian picture, which shows what Caesar and his troops were doing at that time. After this final sentence, the painting has been completed, and the audience is now expecting something unexpected to happen in the narrative. Indeed, in the next paragraph the time line resumes with a series of events in the present indicative, which is Caesar’s perfect tool for attaining this purpose.
19 Reference to Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525-1569), famous for his landscapes and peasant scenes.
61 [16]
Diebus circiter XV, quibus in hiberna ventum est, initium repentini tumultus ac
defectionis ortum est ab Ambiorige et Catuvolco; qui, cum ad fines regni sui Sabino
Cottaeque praesto fuissent frumentumque in hiberna comportavissent, Indutiomari
Treveri nuntiis impulsi suos concitaverunt subitoque oppressis lignatoribus magna
manu ad castra oppugnatum venerunt. Cum celeriter nostri arma cepissent vallumque
adscendissent atque una ex parte Hispanis equitibus emissis equestri proelio superiores
fuissent, desperata re hostes suos ab oppugnatione reduxerunt. Tum suo more
conclamaverunt, uti aliqui ex nostris ad colloquium prodiret …20 (DBG, V, 26)
Within about 15 days, during which the troops moved (ind. perf.) into winter quarters,
the beginning of disorder and revolt suddenly arose (ind. perf.) from Ambiorix and
Catuvolcus. These two, after they had attended Sabinus and Cotta upon the borders of
their kingdom and had brought in corn to the cantonments, having been induced by
messages from Indutiomarus of the Treveri, stirred (ind. perf.) up their own folk and,
having suddenly overwhelmed the detachments gathering wood, came (ind. perf.) with
a large force to assault the camp. When our troops had speedily taken up arms, had
mounted the rampart and, a party of Spanish horse having been sent out on one flank,
had proven superior in a cavalry fight, the enemy withdrew (ind. perf.) their men from
the assault, despairing of succes. Then, according to their national usage, they called out
(ind. perf.) loudly that some one of our number should go forth (subj. impf.) for a parley
…
This paragraph once more proves that the Latin perfect indicates sequentiality on the time line: first the Romans moved into winter quarters, then the beginning of the revolt was started21, then Ambiorix and Catuvolcus stirred up their people, and only then did they come to the camp. The next event on the time line is reduxerunt, but obviously this happened only after (and because of) the actions of the Roman troops, which is expressed by the cum historicum introducing the subordinate clause which contains
20 Cf. footnote 13. 21 This tautology can be found in the Latin text as well: initium … ortum est.
62 these events. Did Caesar consider his soldiers’ deeds less important here? Was he already thinking of the imminent catastrophe in the subsequent paragraphs when he wrote this one, and did he want to give credit to Ambiorix and his people? Or was cum historicum just another equally adequate means of indicating the importance of an event? It suffices here to indicate this problem in Caesar’s Latin, and the need for further research on this matter.
[17]
Tum demum Titurius, qui nihil ante providisset, trepidare et concursare cohortesque
disponere, haec tamen ipsa timide atque ut eum omnia deficere viderentur; quod
plerumque eis accidere consuevit, qui in ipso negotio consilium capere coguntur. At
Cotta, qui cogitasset haec posse in itinere accidere atque ob eam causam profectionis
auctor non fuisset, nulla in re communi saluti deerat et in appellandis cohortandisque
militibus imperatoris et in pugna militis officia praestabat. Cum propter longitudinem
agminis minus facile omnia per se obire et, quid quoque loco faciendum esset, providere
possent, iusserunt pronuntiare, ut impedimenta relinquerent atque in orbem
consisterent. Quod consilium etsi in eiusmodi casu reprehendendum non est, tamen
incommode accidit: nam et nostris militibus spem minuit et hostes ad pugnam
alacriores effecit, quod non sine summo timore et desperatione id factum videbatur.
Praeterea accidit, quod fieri necesse erat, ut vulgo milites ab signis discederent, quae
quisque eorum carissima haberet, ab impedimentis petere atque arripere properaret,
clamore et fletu omnia complerentur. (DBG, V, 33)
Then indeed Titurius, who had anticipated nothing, was alarmed and ran hither and
thither and posted cohorts, yet even this he did in timid fashion and in such a way that
all judgement seemed (subj. impf.) to fail him, which is accustomed (ind. perf.) to happen
to those who are forced to decide in the moment of action. Cotta, however, who had
thought this might happen on the march, and for that reason had not been an advocate
of departure, neglected (ind. impf.) nothing for the safety of the force and in addressing
63 and encouraging the troops he excelled (ind. impf.) in his duty as a commander, in action
in his duty as a soldier. When by reason of the length of the column the generals could
(subj. impf.) less easily control everything in their own person, and less easily provide for
the action which was (subj. impf.) necessary at each point, they ordered (ind. perf.) to pass
the word along the line that they should abandon (subj. impf.) the baggage and form
(subj. impf.) square. This plan, though it is not reprehensible in such an emergency,
nevertheless had an unfortunate result (ind. perf.): for it diminished (ind. perf.) the hope
of our own troops and made (ind. perf.) the enemy keener for the fight, since this did not
appear (ind. impf.) to have been done without the greatest fear and despair. Moreover, it
happened (ind. perf.) – and this was (ind. impf.) bound to happen – that on all sides
soldiers deserted (subj. impf.) their standards, and that each of them hastened (subj. impf.)
to seek and seize from the baggage-train all that he accounted (subj. impf.) dearest, and
that everything was a confusion (subj. impf.) of shouting and weeping.
Remember that consuevit have already been discussed, in accordance with Pinkster, as idiomatic (cf. text sample [7]). The rest of this paragraph poses no new problems to our thesis. The imperfect forms deerat and praestabat once again serve to emphasize the actions of a fine commander. Because of their sharp contrast with the historical infinitives which indicate the scrambledness, haphazardness and confusion of
Titurius’ actions, deerat and praestabat show that Cotta was already performing his duty in an organised way at that particular time. Next, iusserunt is brought forward as one of Cotta’s (and apparently also Titurius’) exploits, which occurred in the particular situation sketched by deerat and praestabat. Once this command has been given, it is executed (accidit), which then results in minuit and effecit. The reason for effecit is given in the default imperfect tense with videbatur. Finally, accidit concludes the events of this paragraph, although it has no significant semantic value of its own. It is defined by a series of imperfect subjunctives, which are semantically more important than accidit, but are nonetheless made syntactically subordinate to it, in order to temper the impact of this failure for the Romans.
64 [18]
At barbaris consilium non defuit. Nam duces eorum tota acie pronuntiare iusserunt, ne
quis ab loco discederet …22 Erant et virtute et studio pugnandi pares; nostri, tametsi ab
duce et a fortuna deserebantur, tamen omnem spem salutis in virtute ponebant, et
quotiens quaeque cohors procurrerat, ab ea parte magnus numerus hostium cadebat.
Qua re animadversa Ambiorix pronuntiari iubet, ut procul tela coniciant neu propius
accedant et, quam in partem Romani impetum fecerint, cedant (levitate armorum et
cotidiana exercitatione nihil eis noceri posse), rursus se ad signa recipientes insequantur.
(DBG, V, 34)
But the natives were not lacking (ind. perf.) in resource. Their leaders ordered (ind. perf.)
the command to be given along the line that no one was to leave (subj. impf.) his rank …
The enemy were (ind. impf.) our equals in valour and in fighting zeal; our troops,
although they were deserted (ind. impf.) by their commander and by fortune, still set
(ind. impf.) all hope of safety in valour, and as often as each cohort had dashed forward
a great number of the enemy fell in that quarter. When he had noticed this, Ambiorix
ordered (ind. pres.) the command to be given that his men should discharge their missiles
at long range and not approach too near, and give way where the Romans had made
(subj. perf.) a charge (by reason of the lightness of their armament and their daily training
no harm could be done to them), and pursue in their turn, retiring upon their standards.
Caesar opens this paragraph with a stative verb in the perfect tense, similar to what we saw in text sample [3]. Our conclusion then was that he wanted to stress sequentiality with the previous paragraph, a reasoning that can be applied to this paragraph as well: defuit is the barbarians’s reaction on accidit in text sample [17], a valiant reaction which stands in sharp contrast with the Romans’ failure to keep ranks.
The result of the natives’ keeping their wits about them, is then indicated by iusserunt.
With erant, deserebantur, ponebat and cadebat, Caesar withdraws the focus from the foreground and shows us the background, where on one side the natives are fighting
22 Cf. footnote 13.
65 valiantly, and on the other side the Romans are desperately struggling to win the upper hand. Together, these imperfect forms interrupt the narratio (cf. “perfecto procedit, imperfecto insistit oratio”) and force us to look at the situation on the battle field from an aerial view, and to assess the balance of forces. As Bruegel did when he painted his landscapes and peasants, we assume the role of a bird and see the natives fighting valiantly here, the Romans being deserted by their commanders there and putting their faith in virtue there, and some metres away we see natives being killed. The audience, surveying thus with Caesar the situation in the valley, is suddenly drawn into the action again with iubet, which by virtue of its present form seems to come competely out of the blue.
[19]
Caesar his de causis quas commemoravi Rhenum transire decreverat; sed navibus
transire neque satis tutum esse arbitrabatur neque suae neque populi Romani dignitatis
esse statuebat. Itaque, etsi summa difficultas faciendi pontis proponebatur propter
latitudinem, rapiditatem altitudinemque fluminis, tamen id sibi contendendum aut
aliter non traducendum exercitum existimabat. Rationem pontis hanc instituit. Tigna
bina sesquipedalia paulum ab imo praeacuta dimensa ad altitudinem fluminis intervallo
pedum duorum inter se iungebat. Haec cum machinationibus immissa in flumen
defixerat fistucisque adegerat, non sublicae modo derecte ad perpendiculum, sed prone
ac fastigate, ut secundum naturam fluminis procumberent, iis item contraria duo ad
eundem modum iuncta intervallo pedum quadragenum ab inferiore parte contra vim
atque impetu fluminis conversa statuebat. Haec utraque insuper bipedalibus trabibus
immissis, quantum eorum tignorum iunctura distabat, binis utrimque fibulis ab extrema
parte distinebantur; quibus disclusis atque in contrariam partem revinctis, tanta erat
operis firmitudo atque ea rerum natura ut, quo maior vis aquae se incitavisset, hoc artius
inligata tenerentur. Haec derecta materia iniecta contexebantur ac longuriis cratibusque
consternebantur; ac nihilo setius sublicae et ad inferiorem partem fluminis oblique
agebantur, quae pro ariete subiectae et cum omni opere coniunctae vim fluminis
66 exciperent, et aliae item supra pontem mediocri spatio, ut, si arborum trunci sive naves deiciendi operis causa essent a barbaris missae, his defensoribus earum rerum vis minueretur neu ponti nocerent. (DBG, IV, 17)
For the reasons which I have mentioned (ind. perf.) above, Caesar had decided to cross the Rhine; but he deemed (ind. impf.) it not safe enough, and ruled (ind. impf.) it unworthy of his own and the Roman people’s dignity, to cross in boats. And so, although the extreme difficulty of building a bridge was put forward (ind. impf.) because of the breadth, the rapidity and the depth of the river, he still thought (ind. impf.) that he must make that effort, or else not take his army across. He adopted (ind. perf.) this method of building the bridge. He joined together (ind. impf.) pairs of balks eighteen inches thick, sharpened a little way from the base and measured to suit the depth of the river at an interval of two feet. When these had been lowered into the river by means of rafts, he had set them fast, and driven them down by rammers, not like piles, i.e. exactly perpendicular, but leaning forward at a uniform slope, so that they inclined (subj. impf.) in the direction of the stream. Opposite to these, again, he set up (ind. impf.) two balks coupled in the same fashion, at a distance of forty feet from base to base of each pair, slanted against the force and onrush of the stream. When beams two feet in diameter – which was the interval separating (ind. impf.) the balks in each pair – had been placed on the top of the balks, they were kept apart (ind. impf.) by a pair of braces on the outer side at each end. These having been separated and contrariwise fastened together, the stability of the structure was (ind. impf.) so great and the laws of nature such, that the stronger the force of the water had rushed forward, the tighter the balks were held (subj. impf.) in lock. These trestles were interconnected (ind. impf.) by timber laid over at right angles and covered (ind. impf.) by long poles and wickerwork. But nevertheless, piles were driven (ind. impf.) in aslant on the side facing down stream, so that they, having been thrust out below like a buttress close joined with the whole structure, could receive
(subj. impf.) the force of the river. And likewise other piles were placed at a little distance above the bridge, so that if trunks of trees, or vessels, were launched by the natives to break down the structure, the force of such shocks might be lessened (subj. impf.) by these fenders and they would not damage (subj. impf.) the bridge.
67 Before we come to a general conclusion of this study, I would like to turn to the last text sample I discussed in Aerts (2012), which is the first passage employed by Oldsjö to illustrate the alleged need for the category of aspect in the Latin verb system. The outcome of this discussion meant a great reinforcement of our findings, and should therefore not be ommitted in the present study.
According to Oldsjö,
“[t]he first four imperfects arbitrabatur, statuebat, proponebatur, and existimabat are very
normal imperfects, in this case giving the background to the decision to build the bridge.
Of these arbitrabatur, statuebat, and existimabat refer to the opinions of Caesar, whereas
proponebatur refers to a general evaluation of the character of such an undertaking.”
(2001: 62-63)
However, as we have seen in our discussion of text sample [2] (cf. supra, p. 37), stative verbs are not in the imperfect because they are viewed in their progress, but because the situations they refer to are generally related to the main action as simultaneous.
Oldsjö continues his discussion of this paragraph as follows:
The imperfects iungebat, statuebat, distinebantur, contexebantur, consternebantur, and
agebantur all refer to the gradual measures taken in the construction. The choice of the
imperfective aspect here emphasizes the ongoingness and progression of the building of
the bridge. The imperfective aspect also allows itself to be interpreted as indicating that
some of these situations, i.e. the different steps in construction, were repeated several
times. (2001: 63)
Apparently, Oldsjö believes that relative tense theory cannot satisfactorily account for these imperfect forms. However, this misconception is based on his translation of the sentence which constitutes the past reference point which is central to this paragraph:
“Rationem pontis hanc instituit.” His translation reads: “He decided upon the following plan of construction for the bridge” (2001: 62). Alternatively, and more precisely, one can opt for Sang’s translation: “He adopted this method of building the
68 bridge” (1991: 38), as we have done in this paper. The subtle difference is that Sang’s translation allows for the imperfect forms to be aligned as simultaneous with instituit: the method that Caesar adopts consists of the situations expressed by iungebat, statuebat, distinebantur, contexebantur, consternebantur, and agebantur. In other words,
Caesar’s adopting this method constitutes the past reference point and main action, and the subsequent imperfects give us additional information about the exact nature of this method, since they convey the events that took place at the time of instituit.
Oldsjö’s interpretation, on the other hand, restricts the situations expressed by the imperfects from happening at the same time as instituit, forcing them to happen after instituit, since “deciding on a plan” does not involve the execution of the planned actions. Oldsjö therefore resorts to the category of aspect to account for this paragraph, but as we have shown, there is no need for this.
69 4. Conclusion
As we have seen, there are two main theories when it comes to tense and aspect in
Latin. Pinkster’s relative tense theory is definitely the most economical one, and therefore the most attractive. In his system, the infectum stem and the perfectum stem have one fixed meaning each: they convey relative tense (simultaneity and anteriority respectively) towards a reference point that is indicated by the tense endings (past, present, or future). Consequently, the imperfect and the perfect differ only in reference point. The main advantage of Pinkster’s framework is that he provides one relatively simple and logical system that can account for all tenses in Latin. However, his too general discussion of the imperfect and perfect does not guarantee a satisfactory explanation of more specific instances of these tenses.
Oldsjö, on the other hand, focuses mainly on the opposition between imperfect and perfect. In his aspectual theory, the infectum stem conveys incompleteness, whereas the perfectum stem indicates completeness. In other words, the imperfect focuses on the course of the situation, while the perfect concentrates on its end phase. Although this system allows him to cover the more specific cases of these two tenses, it does not take the other tenses into account: despite the fact that the pluperfect is formed on the same stem as the perfect, Oldsjö does not charge it with the same aspectual value.
Since Oldsjö’s essential claim is that the category of aspect should be introduced as the primary function of the Latin verb stem because the category of relative tense cannot adequately account for all instances of the imperfect and the perfect, it has been our main purpose to verify whether or not Pinkster’s theory can be satisfactorily applied to Caesar’s narrative. In Aerts (2012) we examined a random yet small selection of text samples, and came to a provisionary conclusion that there is in fact no need for the introduction of aspect into the Latin verb system. In the present study we examined nearly four times as many text samples, only to arrive at the same conclusion.
70 We have seen that Caesar uses the difference between the imperfect tense and the perfect tense for various purposes. Firstly, and most generally, the perfect tense highlights events as important actions which occur on the narrative time line or foreground, whereas the imperfect tense is used for describing the situation which accompanies this time line, i.e. the background. In our opinion, this results from the fact that the perfect tense relates events as directly anterior to the moment of speaking
(or reading), and therefore situates them on the time line in the order in which they are narrated. The imperfect tense, however, indicates simultaneity with a past reference point, which is supplied by the perfect (or historical present) forms in the vicinity (note that this vicinity might be extended to preceding or subsequent paragraphs). Our most potent proof of this reasoning were the paragraphs consisting of only perfect forms or imperfect forms: a series of the former indicates that the events in that paragraph happened in that particular sequential order, whereas a series of the latter indicates a group of non-successive situations which are all true at the same time.
Secondly, Caesar uses the perfect tense particularly to indicate chains of action and reaction, and if a further distinction is necessary, he can even use the historical present for this purpose, which replaces (and seemingly intensifies) an original perfect tense.
If, on the other hand, he wishes to implicate that he was already working on a solution at the time of a sudden disaster, he can use the connotations of the imperfect tense for this purpose. It will be clear that these implications of the perfect and imperfect tense help to serve Caesar’s goal of making himself appear Rome’s most excellent general, or commending others when it suits him.
Thirdly, we have seen that more specific instances of imperfect and perfect forms can be explained using relative tense theory: (a) the default tense for stative verbs is the imperfect tense, not because of the opposition imperfectivity – perfectivity, since stative verbs have no natural end phase for a perfective aspect to focus on, but because their lexical meaning (Aktionsart) involves simultaneity with the main verb; (b) similarly, the default tense for achievements is the perfect tense, again not because of
71 the opposition imperfectivity – perfectivity, since achievements have no activity phase for an imperfective aspect to focus on, but because their lexical meaning excludes simultaneity with the main verb; (c) the imperfect is the default tense for motives, opinions, or circumstances which accompany an action in the perfect tense; (d) conative and iterative interpretations of the imperfect tense result not from an opposition between imperfectivity and telicity, as Oldsjö claims, but from the lexical value (Aktionsart) and context, which conjointly sometimes do not allow a single instance of each of a series of imperfect forms to occur simultaneously.
Although the relatively large quantity of text samples strongly solidifies these findings, there are still some questions left to be answered: why does Caesar use the present indicative in 60% of the main clauses in book 5, and much less often elsewhere?
Why does he not place certain important events on the time line, but rather in subordinated clauses? Is any selection of text samples not arbitrary and therefore necessarily silent about certain aspects of the Latin verb system? Indeed, further research remains possible and desirable, so that the debate might be settled once and for all.
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