Saturday, April 22, 2023
Decline
Vergil, Georgics 1.199-200 (tr. H. Rushton Fairclough):
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Thus by law of fate all thingsT.E. Page ad loc.:
speed towards the worse and slipping away fall back...
sic omnia fatis
in peius ruere ac retro sublapsa referri...
199. sic omnia...] 'So by fate do all things ever hasten to the worse and slipping backwards retrograde.' A characteristic instance of Virgil's 'pessimism,' and also of the art by which he embellishes his subject with philosophical reflections.On the so-called historic infinitive see Raphael Kühner and Carl Stegmann, Ausführliche Grammatik der lateinischen Sprache, Band II: Satzlehre, Teil I (Hannover: Hahn, 1912), pp. 135-138 (§ 34: "Infinitivus adumbrativus"), and Harm Pinkster, The Oxford Latin Syntax, Vol. I: The Simple Clause (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 527-530 (§ 7.71: "The use of the present infinitive as main verb").
200. ruere and referri are historic infinitives. Observe the alliteration in ruere, retro, referri, expressing the uninterrupted retrogression, cf. 203 praeceps prono rapit alveus amni.
