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Livy and the Lexica

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Extract

It would be natural to expect, after all these years, that the language of an author so important as Livy would be adequately represented in the dictionaries. Unfortunately this is very far from being the case. It is disquieting to find numerous Livian words cited without any mention of Livy or of any other writer of the Ciceronian or the Augustan Age. It is equally disquieting to find Livian idioms or constructions attributed only to writers remote from Livy both in time and in genre. To crown all, we find a good many of Livy's notable usages entirely ignored. Perhaps a humble service may be rendered both to Livy and to the history of the Latin language by indicating a few deficiencies, especially in the parts of the alphabet not yet covered by the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1931

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References

page 38 note 1 Thes. cites also two examples with ordinal numerals, one from Seneca, the other from Tertullian. A trimo (Varro) scarcely belongs to the same category, being more akin to a puero and the like; the other two quotations in this section (from the elder Seneca and the younger Pliny) have still less right to their position.

page 39 note 1 Indictments of L.-S., by J. E. B. Mayor and others, have dealt mostly with its treatment of post-Augustan authors. Perhaps it is not generally realized how badly even Cicero is treated; the article on insitiuus is by no means an isolated phenomenon. As for Caesar, one need only refer to the treatment of intereo, a word used by Caesar with striking frequency. The article, which is a monument of slovenliness and incompetence from beginning to end, does not even mention Caesar.

I may, perhaps, take this opportunity of supplementing the lexica by pointing out that Livy has several examples of intereo. and uses it in more than one way, although he does not seem to share Caesar's fondness for it. I have noted the follwing instances: (a) with personal subjects (a use strangely concealed by L.-S.), 3. 13. 3; 8. 18. 9; 26. 16. 6; 30. 35. 2; (b) otherwise, 6. 1. 2; 9. 29. 11; 24. 4. 2.

page 40 note 1 Some of them have no doubt appeared in works other than dictionaries; but as this paper is specially concerned with the dictionaries, there is perhaps no great harm in allotting an occasional line in a long list to matters which, though familiar to scholars, are unknown to the lexicographers.

page 40 note 2 It would frequently have been possible to add other authorities, especially post-Augustan writers, to those mentioned in the lexica; but this did not seem necessary, as the present paper is concerned with what the lexicographers give.