A Type of Hyperbaton in Latin Prose

Abstract

False generalisations have often been made about the use of hyperbaton in Latin prose. According to Hofmann-Szantyr, for instance, ‘die klass. Prosa geht im Gebrauch des Hyperbatons…kaum über die Praxis des Aldateins hinaus'. The same scholars also imply that even when Cicero and Caesar do separate a substantive from its attribute, the separating word is seldom a verb. Again, E. Fraenkel, while showing that long disjunctions are common in Cicero, has maintained that hyperbaton ‘vielmehr ist… in der Umgangssprache zuhause’.E. Skard has recendy pointed out the frequency with which Cornelius Nepos uses hyperbaton of the kind which comprises a substantive separated from its attribute by a verb. Since Skard accepts the above assertions of Hofmann-Szantyr, he is led to suggest that Nepos must have been following a Greek master. The favoured candidate is Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Dionysius not only has hyperbaton more often than any earlier Greek prose author; his work περὶ ἐνδόξων ἀνδρῶν may have been a source for some of Nepos' biographies.It is the purpose of this paper to discuss the history of one type of hyperbaton in Latin prose, that consisting of a verb standing between a substantive and its adjective (henceforth for convenience referred to as ‘verbal hyperbaton’). It will be demonstrated that, however easy disjunction might seem in a synthetic language, our device was artistic rather than natural to ordinary speech. The statements of Hofmann-Szantyr mentioned above will be shown to be inaccurate, and Skard's hypothesis to be unnecessary.