Saturday, January 20, 2018

 

Asyndeton in Tertullian, De Spectaculis

Tertullian, Apology. De Spectaculis. With an English Translation by T.R. Glover ... Minucius Felix. With an English Translation by Gerald H. Rendall ... . (1931; rpt. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977 = Loeb Classical Library, 250), pp. 260-261 (Tertullian, De Spectaculis 10):
Scimus nihil esse nomina mortuorum, sicut nec ipsa simulacra eorum; sed non ignoramus, qui sub istis nominibus institutis simulacris operentur et gaudeant et divinitatem mentiantur, nequam spiritus scilicet, daemones.

We know that the names of dead men are nothing—just as their images are nothing—but we are not unaware who are at work under those names and behind the images set up for them,a what joy they take in them, and how they feign deity,—I mean, evil spirits, demons.

It is possible to take institutis as "customs" and render "those names, customs, images"; but in this tract at least there is hardly another case of asyndeton.
Other examples of asyndeton in Tertullian, De Spectaculis:
§ 8 Magnis Potentibus Valentibus (p. 252)

§ 22 quadrigarios scaenicos xysticos arenarios .... curia rostris senatu equite (p. 284)

§ 23 amores iras gemitus lacrimas (p. 286)

§ 29 sancta perpetua gratuita (p. 296)
See Einar Löfstedt, Zur Sprache Tertullians (Lund: C.W.K. Gleerup, 1920), pp. 29-33 ("Kopulative und asyndetische Verbindung"). Emanuele Castorina, Tertulliani De Spectaculis. Introduzione, testo critico, commento e traduzione (Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1961), is unavailable to me.



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