adesset. This use of the nomen agentis for the future participle seems pro-ethnic. Mr. Postgate (Class. Rev. 5. 301 and I.-G. F. 4. 252) has given reasons, as we have seen, for thinking venturus a late development from the invariable infinitive venturum. To the question: How did the idea expressed by the future participle thus evolved find expression before it was developed? the answer seems plain: By the nomen agentis. We find it so used in prose as well, as in: ipse Hannibal, qua turris mobilis ... agebatur, hortator aderat (Liv. 21. 11. 7), and it occurs repeatedly in Tacitus, as in: rector iuveni et ceteris periculorum praemiorumque ostentator (Ann. 1. 24. 3), neque legatus aut tribunus moderator adfuit (Ann. 1. 49. 3). Turning to Sanskrit we find the cognate nomen agentis used with or without the verb 'to be' as a periphrastic future: data (= Latin dator) is 'he will give', and dataras (= Latin datores) 'they will give', but datāsmi (= Latin dator sum) is 'I shall give' and datāsthas (= datores estis) 'you will give '(Whitney, Skt. Gram. 942-4). The obvious solution of this coincidence in syntax seems to be the reference of both uses to a pro-ethnic use of dator in the sense of the later daturus. XXIII POETIC DICTION WHEN we turn from Caesar or Cicero to Virgil or Horace, we feel at once the marked difference between the diction of prose and that of poetry. At first we are inclined to regard prose as much the simpler and less ornate; for we are apt to forget that ornatus is a later form of ordinatus. We do best here to begin by ascertaining and comparing the primary meanings of the words 'prose' and ' verse'. 'Prosa' is an assimilated feminine of prorsus, short for provorsus 'straightforward'. A similar assimilation gives us pessum for persum and rusus for rursus. Versus, older vorsus, is the past participle of vorto 'I turn', which has become a noun of the fourth declension, as have adventus, auditus, conventus, gestus, gressus, haustus, and many others. So numerous are the past participles thus converted, that, though the older nouns of the fourth are mostly feminine or neuter, our grammarians speak of nouns of the fourth in us as masculine, and treat the feminines as exceptions. But a comparison with Greek makes it easier to see why nouns like nurus and socrus should end in -us. These past participles seem first to have appeared among nouns as neuters of the second declension. Servius (ad Aen. 10. 689) notes of monitis, that while Persius (1. 79) used monitus as the acc. pl., we have not a dative either singular or plural of the fourth. And we find words like senatus and tumultus partly of the second, partly of the fourth; i.e. the transference to the fourth is not yet complete. The word 'versus' indicates that the sentence does not go straight on as in prose, but, after completing a definite series of long and short syllables, turns back to repeat itself, or to complete another of a definite series. Often the closing syllables of the first verse have their sound reflected in that of a following verse; and this we call 'rhyme'. This effect, characteristic of modern verse, is almost as common in the prose as in the verse of the Greeks and Romans. As an example of rhyme in Latin prose I might cite Augustine's comment on the words of Peter: 'bonum est nos hic esse'; in monte requiescere cupiebas; descende laborare, praedica veritatem, habe caritatem; et sic pervenies ad aeternitatem, ubi invenies securitatem. |