are keeping his master from returning home, and telling how different is the treatment he would have received at the hands of Odysseus, had he remained at home, from that which he has received and is receiving at the hands of the suitors (1. 58 ff.). The question is, what is the meaning to be assigned to pída? Eumaeus is apologizing because he cannot offer his guest better cheer (11. 58-9), and it is hard to believe that he is not contrasting his present evil plight with what would have been (i. e., would be) his favored position, if his master had not gone away. At any rate, there is nothing to prevent the hearer from feeling that the present is included. I trust that these examples serve to help make clear my meaning. If we are willing to go no further than Goodwin, insisting that Homer never uses the imperfect indicative for the present unreal condition, still there are certain cases in which the circumstances are such that there is nothing to keep the hearer from thinking of a present continuance; in the last case cited the circumstances are such as to almost compel the hearer to a consciousness of that aspect of the meaning. Possibly Homer has gone one stage further, and the speakers are to be thought of as using a past tense-form in certain cases with a conscious inclusion of the present. In either case, the fact that some passages wake doubt in us, the late-born readers, as to the precise time intended, is evidence that these passages must have been more or less ambiguous to the Homeric hearers, and that the door was open for a shift of meaning which developed a specific speech-form for an important class of conditional sentences. For the theory I have proposed no sweeping claim is made. It may turn out to be only a partial explanation. But in any case it is worthy of careful consideration in view of the principles and the method which underlie it. II. A COMPARISON OF THE USES OF THE PRESENT AND IMPERFECT SUBJUNCTIVE. As noted in the first part of this paper, the present subjunctive in the time of Plautus was still largely used for the present unreal conditional sentence, though the imperfect subjunctive was rapidly moving up and relieving it of that function, thus tending to restrict it to the ideal (or less vivid future). In this part of the paper I shall examine rather carefully the cases that use the present sub junctive, with a view to determining the underlying thought-form in a given case, and, at the end, make a comparison of Plautus' use of this tense (as contrasted with the imperfect) for the unreal conditional sentence. This will involve a study of two special varieties of this type of conditional thought. As a preliminary consideration, it is necessary to make clear what is understood by the terms 'ideal' and 'present unreal.' The fundamental difference is, I think, one of time. The present unreal deals with a fancied existent with implication of unreality, and the ideal with a fancied future. In addition to this, two idiomatic uses need to be noted. Capt. 307-9;3 Et quidem si proinde ut ipse fui imperator familiae Habeam dominum, non verear ne iniuste aut graviter mi imperet. In this passage I think that most English readers would feel it natural to interpret si . . . . habeam as unreal, if for no other reason than that (according to my own definition) it is hard to detect any future force in the phrase. But there is an idiomatic use of the Latin future that might find an exact parallel here. Ep. 646-7; hic sunt quadraginta minae. Siquid erit dubium, immutabo. The sense is 'If any of it proves (i. e. shall prove) doubtful', looking ahead to the time when the money will be examined. Men. 799-800; si ille quid deliquerit, Multo tanto illum accusabo quam te accusavi amplius. Here Menaechmus' past deeds are in question, and the meaning is 'If he shall prove to have committed any wrong.' This use of the future indicative is well established, and there seems noth 1'Existent' rather than 'present,' because the latter term is so apt to be understood in this connection as referring to only a moment of time. How inadequate the definition, so interpreted, would be, can be seen from such a phrase as If black were white.' I reserve, for the present, the question of the distinction between the ideal and the simple future conditional sentence. By the definition given above possibility, objective or subjective, is rejected as the distinguishing feature of this class of conditional sentence. The definition is intended to be purely psychological-not a description of anything and everything that finds expression in the present subjunctive. 3 References throughout are to the text of Goetz and Schoell. ing to hinder the same interpretation for a subjunctive that refers to the future. Thus si . . . . habeam might mean in the passage above' If I should prove to have such a master as I myself was.' This interpretation is more in accord with the conciliatory tone of the whole passage than to take the sentence as unreal. This latter sense would make Tyndarus imply that Hegio is not as good as he himself was, and is somewhat inconsistent with Hegio's cordial attitude (loquere audacter, 1. 310.) It is possible, then, that in a case like this, an instinctive drawing toward the unreal form may be misleading, and due to the influence of idiomatic tense use on the part of the Latin.' The second point concerns the English preference for verbs that denote a state in the unreal condition, and for those that denote action in the ideal. Thus we say 'If you knew,' but hardly 'If you should know'; in the ideal, 'If you should learn' comes much more readily to the lips. In the same way, but less strongly, we pair 'If I had' and 'If I should obtain (get.)' One with this feeling, meeting si scias in Plautus, wants to interpret it as unreal simply because he shrinks from 'If you should know ;' the real alternative is ' If you should learn.' Credo hercle has sustollat aedis totas atque hunc in crucem. ne tu iam mecum in gratiam redeas, si scias quam me pudeat.3 si sapias is another phrase that suggests the unreal form readily, but seems shut away from the ideal. 'If you should be wise' or 'If you shall be wise' are intolerable, but the Romans evidently had no such feeling. Rud. 1391; si sapies, tacebis. cf. Bacch. 1001-2, Tri. 559; Terence, Heaut. 594. We seem to use 'If you are wise' rather loosely with a future sense in certain connections. 1 Cf. Cicero, p. Cael. I. I. That Latin had no such feeling on the case of scio is shown by the use of future forms; Aul. 773, Mil. 860. 3Cf. Livy, Praef. §1, si sciam. Conversely, the Latin use of verbs of action in unreal sentences seems to us a little harsh. A. J. P. XXI, p. 272. A. Uses of the Present Subjunctive. In Plautus there are about eighty' examples of conditional sentences containing the present subjunctive in protasis and apodosis. Of these, a certain number are of course ideal. Their futurity is indicated in various ways, ranging from the use of temporal particles to the general situation. Capt. 203-5; TYN. At nos pudet quia cum catenis sumus. LOR. At pigeat postea Aut solutos sinat quos argento emerit. Aul. 233; Neutrubi habeam stabile stabulum, siquid divorti fuat. Here marriage is being contemplated. Any separation must be in the future. Cf. Capt. 416-7; Si ego autem memorem quae me erga multa fecisti bene, nox diem adimat. More or less obviously ideal are Asin. 458-9, Bacch. 57, 697, Ep. 451-2, Men. 1023, Merc. 405-6, Mil. 309-10, Pers. 206, 374-5, Tri. 885-6, Truc. 767; Ps. 338-9 contains a perfect form. A second group of sentences are those whose thought-form it is impossible to determine. I even go so far as to think that in some of these cases the speaker himself may not have made a conscious use of one thought-form rather than the other, for, at times, there is nothing at stake to force a distinction either in the mind of the speaker or of the hearer. Our use of 'would' and 'should' in the apodosis of both ideal and unreal sentences may serve to put us in touch with the feeling of the Roman for his ambiguous speech-form-the present subjunctive in both members. Suppose an orator should say 'A great navy would be a great advantage to this nation.' If he were stopped at that point and asked whether he meant that the country would be better off, if it had the navy at the time of speaking or that it would be better off if it should procure one at some future time, I can conceive the original being spoken under circumstances 1 This number could be largely increased by including doubtful cases, i. e., such as have forms in -am and -ar in one or both members, and those whose apodoses may have some subjunctive value apart from the conditional idea of the sentence in which they stand, e. g., velim and interrogative sentences. such that the man himself would not know which he did mean; as a matter of fact he would not be forced to a choice, for the real thought he wished to convey to his hearers may be no more than 'This country is in need of a great navy.' But he makes use of a rhetorical device-a conditional speech-form-which he has heard used in like connections, to convey his thought, and, whether the sentence be interpreted as ideal or unreal, the thought is conveyed. The complexity of the process that would lead a person in a case like this to make use of such a conditional speech-form to convey his thought seems to indicate that the connection between thought and language is not as exact and direct as some have supposed. In Plautus there is a little group of moralizing passages in which the speaker voices his discontent with the present state of morals or the like. All of these take the present subjunctive, and most of them could be interpreted either as ideal or unreal without loss to the thought; perhaps the speaker and his hearers were a little misty about the precise conditional thought-form. Tri. 217-20; Ps. 427-8; Quod si exquiratur usque ab stirpe auctoritas, Hoc ita si fiat, publico fiat bono. Homines qui gestant quique auscultant crimina Merc. 823, 826, 828-9; Utinam lex esset eadem quae uxorist viro. Ecastor faxim, si itidem plectantur viri, Ut illae exiguntur quae in se culpam commerent, In the first of these passages the speaker conveys the thought 'Gossips should be punished,' whether we interpret the conditional sentence to mean 'If we had such a law' or 'If we should pass such a law, it would be a blessing to the state.' Cf. Aul. 478 ff., Mil. 1436 ff., Pers. 73 ff. and perhaps, Truc. 324-5. The second case quoted in full is like the first except that the getting of the power (si . . . liceat) is so improbable that it is hardly likely to be looked at as a future possibility. This, in a way, shuts the case up to the unreal form, and the speaker may have been more or less conscious of that fact. The third case, on the |