On Trajection of Words Or Hyperbaton
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The Classical Review http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR Additional services for The Classical Review: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here On Trajection of Words or Hyperbaton J. P. Postgate The Classical Review / Volume 30 / Issue 5-6 / August 1916, pp 142 - 146 DOI: 10.1017/S0009840X00010428, Published online: 27 October 2009 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009840X00010428 How to cite this article: J. P. Postgate (1916). On Trajection of Words or Hyperbaton. The Classical Review, 30, pp 142-146 doi:10.1017/S0009840X00010428 Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR, IP address: 128.122.253.212 on 24 Apr 2015 142 THE CLASSICAL KEVfeEW e ejus Callimachus in suo poemate est of the words /M»X°? " F px usus exordio; sive vulgare, quo Cre- being mutilated from KaXXt/tago?. He tenses fallaces - appellabantur, sive also suggests that Callimachus, who [Migne has sine by a misprint] furto appears to be the oldest authority for alieno operis in metrum rettulit.' the story, may have got it from Euhe- I cannot enter here on the question merus; a view which receives strong whether the Xprja/iol or the Mivwi was support from Cicero, De Nat. Deor. I. the. origin of the words in the Syriac 119, ' Ab Euhemero autem et mortes et commentaries; but surely Mr. Nicklin sepulturae demonstrantur deorum'; and cannot be right in his forced repunctua- that the account of the wounding of tion of Diogenes Laertius, by which he Zeus by the boar, for which this Syriac would show that the MH<<»9 rj 'PaSd- commentary is apparently the only fiavffvs was written in verse. The order authority, was a confusion .with the of the words seems quite decisive myth of Adonis; and that the state- against him, and in favour of Gress- ments of the Syriac writers are of post- mann. Nor can I here try to trace to Clementine origin. He also thinks that which work the several fragments belong it is certain from Clement, Strom. I. (see Diel, Frag. Pre-Socr. p. 493). xix. 91, that he cannot have known the But who was the Cretan poet regarded lines attributed to Minos; for in quoting by them as a prophet, ' who was thought Acts xvii. 22-28 he mentions Aratus by some to be Maxenidus'? (Ishodad only. I must leave this question to on Titus i. 12). ' It is a confusion with those who have studied the relations the letters that make Epimenides,' says between the Syrian and the Greek Dr. Rendel Harris; but I am bound to theologians. But I may perhaps be say that two eminent Syriac scholars in allowed to express a doubt' whether Oxford, whom I consulted, cannot see these quotations ought to be written any great resemblance between this back into hexameters at all, even as word and Epimenides when written in pseud-epigrapha. This raises a wider Syriac. But Professor Margoliouth has question; and I only set out to show made an interesting suggestion. Find- that the position of Dr. Rendel Harris ing that the MS. of Ishodad which he and Mr. Nicklin is difficult to maintain, possesses gives the name as MKSNNIDUS, and that the lines which they have he conjectures from Clement, Protrept. printed are not a genuine fragment of II. 37, Zijrei aov rbu Aia . 6 Kprj? the philosopher Epimenides. croi Sir)yij<reTai, trap1 w ical redairTat • K«X\t/ui%o? ev "Tjivois • ical yap ra<f>ov, J. U. POWELL. 8) ava, <relo K^Te? ireicTijvavTo ' reffvrjice St. John's College, yap 6 Zevi, that the name is a corruption Oxford. ON TRAJECTION OF WORDS OR HYPERBATON. INTELLIGENCES trained from the out- 343 ' ab Hyrcanis Indoquealitorest/Mw'1 set to regard the succession of words as a severe but wholesome shock. How the ultimate arbiter of their construc- desperately this shock is resented the tion, to expect the subject to precede attempts at its emendation show: Phasis its verb and the object to follow it, to Withof and uulsos Schrader for siluis, tie the prepositional phrases which now do duty for cases to the words that 1 Like Professor Conway in his article ' On the Interweaving of Words with Pairs of they define or determine, and to con- Parallel Phrases,' Classical Review, xiv. (1900) form to all the other rigid conventions PP- 357 sQQ-t I use italics to show the corre- of expression which an absence or a spondences of the words in question, not the paucity of inflexions involves, and by punctuation marks employed by Madvig Adver- saria 2 p. 71 and others after him, with their this training of necessity habituated to misleading modern associations. The effect view order as the basis of syntax, receive of such marks is not to reunite the separated from such a line as that of Lucaii VIII. words but to disjoin the rest. THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 143 Indorum limite for Indoque a litore Bur- Ovid Met. 2. 524 ' Argolica quod in ante man. Exact parallels to our disturbing Phoronide fecit' for ante in or Phoronide passage may be found in Ovid Met. 8. 9 3 1 'inter honoratos medioque in uertice ante, Prop. 3. 4. 18 'et subter captos canos,' Manilius 1. 429 ' discordes uultu arma sedere duces' but not Prop. 3.1. 4, permixtaque corpora partus' (with as some think, because of *'. It may be Housman's note), and again in Lucan noted that in these trajections the 5. 800 ' fertur ad aequoreas et se pros- limitation of vi. (below) is generally ternit karenas.' observed. Collections of such dislocations of Hi. Copulating and contrasting con- order have been made at various times.1 junctions introducing coordinated sen- But no classification, so far as I know, tences may be postponed.—This is so has been attempted. I propose there- common that it excites no surprise, fore to state briefly the conditions or except with que or ue whose enclitic restrictions to which they appear in character and the accident that in Latin general to conform. texts they are printed as an appendage In doing so I shall not take account to the preceding word make the licence of arrangements of words in single sen- appear greater than in the case of et or tences, such as the separation of con- aut. How frequent, for metrical con- nected words or the inversion of the venience, is this postponement in the members in pairs of corresponding pentameters of Tibullus and Ovid we words (chiasmus), that we find strange are all aware. but which are an integral part of the iv. Relatives and conjunctions intro- rhetorical machinery of Latin speech, ducing accessory or subordinated sentences although such arrangements are some- may be postponed.—This is common times included under Hyperbaton.2 enough, even in prose, with certain con- Further I shall for the most part deal junctions, especially cum. So also with with trajections by which a word or quod, si, ne, quoniam, etc. The extent of word-group is moved not merely from postponement does not seem to matter, the place but also from the' clause or provided the main verb does not precede sentence where we expect to find it. the conjunction. So the prose writers i. The prime condition of hyperba- and, in general, the poets. An excep- ton is this : that to a mind accustomed tion in Ovid Her. 3. 19 ' si progressa to regard the import of inflexions and forem caperer ne nocte timebam ' where to consider sentences as wholes, the also nocte belongs to the si clause, Mad- construction, and therefore the sense as vig I.e. determined by the construction, must To come to connected clauses or sen- be obvious, or, in other words, there tences. must be no real ambiguity. If this is v. In airo KOVVOV constructions, such not the case, as it would seem to be in e.g. as we have in comparisons, a noun an insignificant minority of instances, or verb may, contrary to expectation, the liberty of trajection has been appear in the subordinate instead of in abused. the principal member of the expression. Within single sentences we may next Ov. Her. 12.26' quam pater est illi, tam note as specially disturbing to our mihi diues erat.' In Hor. S. 1. 3. 9 sq., notions of propriety a passage which I have already fully ii. The appearance of prepositions at discussed in the Classical Review, xv. some distance from their cases.*—Copa (1901) 303 ' saepe uelut qui | currebat 2 1 fugiens hostem,' currebat appears in the 4 ' ad cubitum raucos excutiens calamos,' place of currit, i.e. ' saepe currebat uelut qui currit.' 1 E.g. Professor Housman has several copious vi. Adjacent single words or indivisible ones in his notes on Manilius and elsewhere. phrases may exchange places and so 2 E.g. in Kiihncr's Lateinische Grammatik, get just outside their own clauses or ed. Stegmann, vol. ii., pt. 2, pp. 618 sqq. 3 Their immediate postposition as in Lucr. sentences. The frequent variation in 1. 841 'ignibus ex' is a different matter and the succession of words connected •does not concern us here. syntactically, as noun and attribute, 144 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW verb and object, doubtless facilitated this trajection. Catullum' and Silius Italicus 11. 459 sqq. 'sed quos pulsabat Rhipaeum ad Lucan 5. 321 ' hie fuge si belli finis 3 placet ense relicto,' i.e. ' fuge, hie ense Strymona nerui \ auditus-sttpcris-auditus- relicto,' 3. 679 'hostilem cum torserit monibus-Orpheus | emerito fulgent clara 3 Z inter sidera caelo' where the phrase exeat hastam,' 7.